Roy Rene 1892-1954

Back in Australia he shared a bill with another young comic, Nat Phillips. They decided to form a double act and, as ‘Stiffy and Mo’ they exploded on Australian audiences from the stage of the humble Princess Theatre in Railway Square, Sydney, in July 1916.

As Stiffy, Phillips was the fast talking feed, the archetypal city ‘lair’, straight from the pushes of ‘Little Lon’ (Melbourne’s rowdy Little Lonsdale Street). Mo was the ‘top banana’, the lisping, lurking, lewdly leering larrikin, in baggy clothes and grotesque make-up, guying authority and ignoring order – and always grabbing the last word and the loudest laugh. Of course they were crude, but it was a heady, healthy, light-hearted crudity, echoing the slang of the city streets and the wit of the working classes.

Their success was immediate. They played a record 21 weeks at the Princess, and then transferred to Fuller’s. That Christmas, they starred with Queenie Paul in Fuller’s all-Australian pantomime, The Bunyip, which Nat Phillips wrote and directed. It was a smash hit, and clocked up nearly 300 performances. Later they romped through other pantos, like Cinderella at the Princess in Melbourne in 1920.

Then came the weekly-change Stiffy and Mo Revue Company. It toured the Fuller Circuit with undiminished popularity until 1925, when money squabbles split the partnership.

Astonishingly, Rene turned to the legitimate stage. He appeared for E.J. Carroll at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne with the American comedian Harry Green in the play Give and Take. Its success was so great that it was taken over by Williamson’s and toured throughout Australia. Next Rene teamed with English comedian Fred Bluett for a knockabout sketch called ‘The Admiral and the Sailor’, which they featured on the Tivoli Circuit. They also led the fun in Aladdin at the Grand Opera House in Sydney at Christmas 1926.

Phillips and Rene got together again in 1927, but split, for the last time, at the end of 1928. Rene split, too, from his first wife, soubrette Dorothy Davis. In 1929 he married Sadie Gale, a pretty comedienne and soubrette; she came from a theatrical family and, like Roy, had been on the stage since childhood.

The Depression and the introduction of ‘talkies’ brought lean times. Vaudeville all but disappeared, and Rene and his wife found work in Williamson’s 1930-31 pantomime The House That Jack Built. Roy was with the panto in New Zealand when he got a cable from Mike Connors and Queenie Paul who were resurrecting vaudeville at cheap prices at Sydney’s Haymarket Theatre – and they wanted Mo as their star. Roy rushed to join them.

Their success is legendary. Before long, Connors and Paul had created a new Tivoli Circuit, taking over the Melbourne Tivoli and the Grand Opera House in Sydney, which they renamed the New Tivoli. In Mike Connors, Rene found a ‘feed’, a foil, easily the equal of Stiffy, and possibly better. When Connors and Paul lost control of the Tivoli Circuit, Rene starred for Ernest C. Rolls in Rhapsodies of 1935, a lavish revue at Melbourne’s Apollo (Palace) Theatre. He appeared in elegant top hat and tails, and minus his traditional make up. It worked. Less successful was his only feature film, Strike Me Lucky, which Ken G. Hall made for Cinesound. The indifferent script gave Rene little chance to extemporise, and he missed the reaction and warmth of a live audience. It was one of his very few failures.