Jim Gerald 1891-1971

Gerald made his Tivoli debut in Melbourne in April 1930. With fellow comic Reg Hawthorne
he introduced a localised version of the song ‘Mr Gallagher and Mr Shean’, coming up with new topical verses every week. Also at the Tivoli he made his musical comedy debut as Mumps, the boisterous waiter in an indifferent musical comedy called The Honeymoon Girl. ‘Mr Gerald can laugh at his own jokes without becoming irritating,’ said The Argus, ‘and his dancing varies from graceful to hurricane knockabout.’ For Fullers’ he starred in For the Duration, a war farce. Its final performance, at the Melbourne Bijou on 19 July 1930, marked the end, for the time being, of Fullers’ live presentations. Like almost all other managements they surrendered to the ‘talkies’ and the Depression.

Gerald survived the bad times better than most. In August 1930 he starred for Williamson’s at the King’s Theatre in Melbourne in an American comedy, Little Accident, and then worked in revue for Connors and Paul, the Tivoli and for Bert Lennon in Adelaide. In 1934 he and the great English male impersonator Hetty King starred for Frank Neil and J.C. Williamson’s in Mother Goose at the King’s in Melbourne. Gerald’s status is confirmed by their respective weekly salaries: he got £105, King £60; most of the other principals received £8.

Reflecting his circus background, Gerald was the quintessential clown: he had a rubbery face that he could contort into endless quaint convolutions, and the loose-limbed body of an acrobat. He had funny walks, funny tumbles, funny dances, funny stances. ‘I used to do an acrobatic dance in every show, twice a day’ he said, ‘including my head spins. The head spin was a trick I learnt in my circus days, spinning on my head. Really hard work, it was. Then on each side of the proscenium I had blocks put in so I could run at the wall and do a somersault off it. And I used to somersault off the stage, over the orchestra and into the front stalls – and back again, thanks to a little hickory trampoline hidden in the pit.’ Unlike the sometimes aggressive Australianness of George Wallace and Roy Rene, Gerald was ‘international’ in his style, and he and Essie travelled overseas several times in search of material. He loved motoring and owned a succession of expensive cars. Gerald’s devoted fans called themselves the Geraldines, and his name was so familiar that ‘Jim Gerald’ became rhyming slang for the Herald newspaper.

In 1935 Gerald starred in the Tivoli revue London Calling – named to mark his imminent departure overseas. After touring the British provinces in a show called Shout for Joy, he opened on 30 October at the Garrick Theatre in the West End in Don’t Spare the Horses, a revue written by the Australian Kenneth Duffield. It garnered generally sympathetic reviews (‘It has a certain not altogether unattractive air of improvisation’) but closed after only five performances. He was back at the Tivoli the following year and played the Dame in Cinderella at Christmas. In 1939 the ABC engaged him for Jim and Jitters, in which he reprised his ‘New Recruit’ characterisation, backed by Jim Davidson’s dance band. Gerald recycled the character for the series Private Jitters, which was broadcast on commercial radio the following year.