Jim Gerald 1891-1971

At the Melbourne Tivoli at Christmas 1940 Gerald played the Dame in Mother Goose during the day and headlined in the revue We’re in the Army Now at night. It was another prophetic title. General Blamey, Prime Minister Menzies and army minister Percy Spender decided that the 100,000 diggers in the Middle East needed some Tivoli-style entertainment, and that Jim Gerald should organise it. On 10 April 1941 he enlisted as a private in the AIF. He was promoted to the rank of Honorary Lieutenant Colonel the following day.

At his base at Victoria Barracks in Sydney, Gerald assembled the best available talent, including Jim Davidson, who became his musical director. With a repertoire of 20 shows, the unit sailed in the Queen Elizabeth. Their first presentation, All in Fun, opened at the Majestic Theatre at Beit Jirja, near Gaza, on 16 December 1941. The Eastern Times judged it ‘The best show in the Middle East’. Gerald went on to establish a network of other travelling concert parties. He returned to Australia in October 1942, leaving Jim Davidson in charge. Soon he was back, regularly topping the bill at the Tivoli.

Gerald transferred to the Harry Wren management, starring in Red Riding Hood in 1949 and with Bob Dyer in the revue Can You Take It? Then Wren cast him as the roué in Ladies’ Night in a Turkish Bath, an American farce notable mainly for its nubile, scantily clad girls, and sent him to the United States to see the show. It had proved an enormous success for the comedian Skeets Gallagher and in San Francisco Gerald took over during the star’s illness. He went on to play the role in Australia in 1951 and in a 1958 revival.

In 1952, at the Melbourne Tivoli, Gerald played a cockney bookmaker’s tout in Ted Willis’s No Trees in the Street, an early and unconvincing example of what became known as ‘kitchen sink’ drama. Also for Wren, Gerald starred with George Wallace and Gladys Moncrieff in a nostalgic revue called Gay Fiesta which played in Adelaide and toured New Zealand. At the end of the year Gerald was back on familiar territory – in the Tivoli’s Cinderella, with Tommy Trinder as Buttons. ‘He was the greatest Dame of them all,’ said Trinder. ‘I always called him “The Silver Fox”.’

Gerald had an interest in a uranium mine in the Northern Territory; he lived there for a while until Harry Wren put him back in the spotlight for more nostalgia with Thanks for the Memory (1953), The Good Old Days (1956) and Many Happy Returns (1959). After that, Gerald and his wife retired to a cosy bungalow at Rosebud on the Mornington Peninsula. He was in the audience when the Melbourne Tivoli closed on 2 April 1966, but Essie was too ill to attend. After she died in 1969 Jim retreated to the anonymity of a nearby hostel. The last of the ‘big three’ of Australia’s 20th century comics – Gerald, George Wallace and Roy Rene – died on 2 March 1971.

Graham Kennedy told a Sun reporter: ‘During the Depression, my father used to wash Jim’s car for him. But I never really came to know him until I visited him and his wife at their home down the coast. He was a “business” comedian, and I came to admire both him and his work. Some of us were going to see him at the hostel, but we understood he did not want visitors, and we never got around to it.’

Frank Van Straten, 2007