| Benny Hill | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Birth name | Alfred Hawthorne Hill |
| Born | (1924-01-21)21 January 1924 Southampton, England |
| Died | 18 April 1992(1992-04-18) (aged 68) Teddington, England |
| Resting place | Hollybrook Cemetery, Southampton, England |
| Medium |
|
| Years active | 1947–1992 |
| Genres | |
Alfred Hawthorne "Benny"Hill (21 January 1924 – 18 April 1992)[1] was an English comedian, actor and scriptwriter. He is best remembered for his television programme,The Benny Hill Show, a comedy-variety show whose amalgam ofslapstick,burlesque,double entendre, andinnuendo in a format that included both live and filmed segments, featured Hill himself at the focus of almost every segment.
TheBFI called Hill "the first British comedian to attain fame through television" and that he was "a major star for over forty years".[2] Making his television debut in 1949, he appeared onBBC variety shows where he developed hisparodic sketches and, in 1954, was voted television personality of the year.[2]The Benny Hill Show, which debuted in 1955, was among themost-watched programmes in the UK; his audience was more than 21 million in 1971.[3] The show was also exported to over 100 countries around the world, a global appeal which the BFI attributed to "Hill's emphasis on visual humour transcending language barriers".[2][4]
Hill received aBAFTA Television Award forBest Writer and aRose d'Or, and he was nominated for theBAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance and for twoEmmy Awards forOutstanding Variety. In 1990,Anthony Burgess described Hill as "a comic genius steeped in the Britishmusic hall tradition".[5] In 2006, Hill was voted by the British public number 17 inITV's poll ofTV's 50 Greatest Stars.[6]
Outside television, Hill starred in films including theEaling comedyWho Done It? (1956),Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965),Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) andThe Italian Job (1969). Hiscomedy song, "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)", was 1971'snumber one Christmas song on theUK Singles Chart and earned Hill anIvor Novello Award from theBritish Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in 1972.
Alfred Hawthorne Hill was born 21 January 1924 (although some sources give his birth year as 1925) inSouthampton, Hampshire.[7] His father, Alfred Hill (1893–1972), manager of a surgical appliance shop,[1] and grandfather, Henry Hill (born 1871), had beencircus clowns. His mother was Helen (née Cave; 1894–1976).[7]
After leavingTaunton's School in Southampton, Hill worked atWoolworths and as a milkman, a bridge operator, a driver and a drummer before becoming assistant stage manager with a touring revue.[8] He wascalled up in 1942 and trained as a mechanic in theRoyal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers,British Army. He served as a mechanic, truck driver andsearchlight operator inNormandy after September 1944,[9] and transferred to theCombined Services Entertainment division before the end of the war.[10]
Inspired by the "star comedians" of Britishmusic hall shows, Hill set out to make his mark in show business.[11] He took the nickname of "Benny" in homage to his favourite comedian,Jack Benny.[8]
After the war, Hill worked as a performer on radio, making his debut onVariety Bandbox on 5 October 1947.[12] His first job in theatre was asReg Varney's straight man, with Hill beating a then unknownPeter Sellers to the role.[11] His first appearance on television was in 1949.[2] He later starred in a sitcom anthology,Benny Hill, which ran from 1962 to 1963, in which he played a different character in each episode. In 1964, he playedNick Bottom in an all-star TV film production ofWilliam Shakespeare'sA Midsummer Night's Dream.[11] He also had a radio programme lasting three series calledBenny Hill Time onBBC Radio'sLight Programme from 1964 to 1966. It was a topical show; for example, a March 1964 episode featuredJames Bond, 007, in "From Moscow with Love", and his version ofThe Beatles. He played a number of characters in the series, such as Harry Hill and Fred Scuttle.[2]
Hill appeared in five full-length feature films:Who Done It? (1956),Light Up the Sky! (1960),Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965),Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) andThe Italian Job (1969). He also made twoshort-subject films:The Waiters (1969) andEddie in August (1970), the latter a TV production. Finally, a clip-show film spin-off of his earlyThames Television shows (1969–1973), calledThe Best of Benny Hill (1974), was a theatrically-released compilation ofThe Benny Hill Show episodes.[13]
Hill's audio recordings include "Gather in the Mushrooms" (1961), "Pepys' Diary" (1961), "Transistor Radio" (1961), "Harvest of Love" (1963) and "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)", which was theUK Christmas number one single in 1971.[14] He received anIvor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in 1972.[15]
Hill had struggled on stage and had uneven success in radio, but in television he found a medium that played to his strengths. In the early 1950s, he appeared as a guest on variousBBC variety shows where he developed hisparodic sketches. In 1954, he was voted television personality of the year.[2]The Benny Hill Show, which debuted the following year, aired on the BBC and ITV (from 1969) between 15 January 1955 and 1 May 1989. It had amusic hall-derived format, combining live on-stage comedy and filmed sketches, which included his comic characters such as Fred Scuttle, and its humour relied on slapstick, innuendo and parody.[2][16] Recurring players on his show during the BBC years includedPatricia Hayes,Jeremy Hawk, Peter Vernon,Ronnie Brody and his cowriter from the early 1950s to early 1960s,Dave Freeman.[2] Short, baldJackie Wright was a frequent supporting player who in many sketches had to put up with Hill slapping him on the top of his head.[17]
Hill remained mostly with the BBC until 1968, except for a few sojourns withITV andATV stations between 1957 and 1960 and again in 1967. In 1969, his show moved from the BBC toThames Television, where it remained until its cancellation in 1989, with an erratic schedule of one-hour specials. The series showcased Hill's talents as an imaginative writer, comic performer and impressionist. He may have bought scripts from various comedy writers, but if so, they never received an onscreen credit (some evidence indicates he bought a script from one of his regular cast members in 1976,Cherri Gilham, to whom he wrote from Spain, telling her he was using her "Fat Lady" idea on the show in January 1977).[18]
"To this day,The Benny Hill Show, as watched by 21.1 million people in 1977, and which over the years won its star aBAFTA, theGolden Rose of Montreux, and a Variety Club of Great Britain ITV Personality of the Year award, remains the sole programme that spoke directly to the dream experience of the hot-blooded adolescent. This was perhaps why Thames could sell the show to so many foreign markets, from France, Spain and West Germany to the remotest jungle clearing in Brazil – deep up the Amazon River, photos of Hill were to be found in mud huts."
The most common running gag in Hill's shows was the closing sequence, the "run-off", which was literally arunning gag featuring various members of the cast chasing Hill, along with other stock comedy characters, such as policemen, vicars and old women. This was commonly filmed using "under-cranking" camera techniques and included other comic features, such as jogging instead of a run at full speed and characters running off one side of the screen and reappearing running on from the other. The tune used in all the chases,Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax", is so strongly associated with the show that it is commonly referred to as "The Benny Hill Theme". It has been used as a form of parody in many ways by television shows and films. In a 2015 UK-wide poll, the show's theme song was voted number 1 on theITV special,The Sound of ITV – The Nation's Favourite Theme Tune.[19]
From the start of the 1980s, the show featured a troupe of attractive young women, known collectively as "Hill's Angels". They would appear either on their own in a dance sequence or in character as foils against Hill.Sue Upton was one of the longest-serving members of the Angels.Jane Leeves appeared as well.Henry McGee andBob Todd joined Jackie Wright as comic supporting players and later shows also featured "Hill's Little Angels", a group of children, including the families ofDennis Kirkland (the show's director) and Sue Upton.Jenny Lee-Wright (who first appeared on Hill's show in 1970) earned the nickname, "The Sexiest Stooge", coined by Hill.[18]
Thealternative comedianBen Elton made a headline-grabbing allegation, both on the TV showSaturday Live and in the January 1987 edition ofQ magazine, thatThe Benny Hill Show incited crimes and misdemeanours. "We know in Britain, women can't even walk safe in a park anymore. That, for me, is worrying."[15] A writer inThe Independent newspaper, though, opined that Elton's charge was "like watching an elderly uncle being kicked to death by young thugs".[20]GQ magazine stated, "Pompous and portentous as this is, blaming Hill for rape statistics is like pointing a finger at concert pianists for causing elephant poaching."[15] Elton later parodied himself inHarry Enfield & Chums as Benny Elton, a politically correct spoilsport; Elton ends up being chased by angry women, accompanied by the "Yakety Sax" theme, after trying to force them to be more feminist.[21] A spokesman for the Broadcasting Standards Council commented that "the convention is becoming increasingly offensive ]...] It's not as funny as it was to have half-naked girls chased across the screen by a dirty old man."[22][page needed]
In late May 1989, Hill announced that after 21 years with Thames Television, he was quitting and taking a year off. His shows had earned Thames £26 million, with a large percentage due to the success of his shows in the United States.[23]John Howard Davies, the head of Light Entertainment at Thames Television, was cited by the British press as the man who sacked Hill when the company decided not to renew his contract.[24] "The show was past its sell-by date", Davies toldThe Guardian. "The audiences were going down, the programme was costing a vast amount of money, and he (Hill) was looking a little tired."[25]
In 1991, Hill started work on a new television series calledBenny Hill's World Tour, which would see Hill performing his sketches in various places around the world in places his show had become popular. However, Hill managed to record only one special calledGreetings from New York (with regular cast members such as Henry McGee, Bob Todd and Sue Upton), with the show becoming billed as "his final TV appearance" when released onDVD.[26][27]
In February 1992, Thames Television, which received a steady stream of requests from viewers forThe Benny Hill Show repeats, finally gave in and put together a number of re-edited shows. Hill died on the same day a new contract arrived in the post fromCentral Independent Television, for which he was to have made a series of specials.[28] He had turned down competing offers fromCarlton and Thames.[28]
"My father was mad about Benny Hill,Monty Python andThe Avengers,Bond movies and thePeter Sellers films, so that's what I grew up watching. Those clearly had a big influence on me."
Johnny Carson and sidekickEd McMahon were both fans of Hill and tried several times to get him to travel to Los Angeles to be a guest on Carson'sThe Tonight Show.[30]
Radio and TV hostAdam Carolla said that he was a fan of Hill whom he considered "as American as The Beatles". Duringan episode ofThe Man Show in 2000, Carolla performed in what was billed as a tribute to "our favourite Englishman, Sir Benny Hill" (sic; Hill was never knighted), in more risqué versions of some of the sketches. Carolla played a rude and lecherous waiter, a typical Hill role, and the sketch featured many of the staples of Hill's shows, including aJackie Wright-esque bald man, as well as scantily clad women.[31]
During a British tour in the 1970s,Michael Jackson said in an interview that he was a fan of Hill.[32] In 1987,Genesis filmed a video for their song "Anything She Does", featuring Hill as his character Fred Scuttle, portraying an incompetent security guard who lets a ridiculous number of fans backstage at a Genesis concert.[28] In a June 2011 interview withThe Observer, the rapperSnoop Dogg declared himself to be a fan of Hill.[33]Busta Rhymes paid tribute to Hill while on the red carpet at the2024 MTV EMAs in Manchester, England.[34]
In theOmnibus episode, "Benny Hill – Clown Imperial", filmed shortly before his death, several celebrities, includingBurt Reynolds,Michael Caine,John Mortimer,Mickey Rooney andWalter Cronkite, among others, expressed their appreciation of and admiration for Hill and his humour. In Reynolds' case, the appreciation extended to the Hill's Angels as well.[35] The novelistAnthony Burgess was also an admirer of Hill. Burgess, whose novels were often comic, relished language, wordplay and dialect, and he admired the verbal and comedic skill that underlay Hill's success. Reviewing a biography of Hill,Saucy Boy, inThe Guardian in 1990, Burgess described Hill as "a comic genius steeped in the Britishmusic hall tradition" (as wereCharlie Chaplin andStan Laurel, two of Hill's childhood idols) and "one of the great artists of our age".[5] A meeting between the two men was described in a newspaper article by Burgess and recalled in theTelegraph newspaper by the satiristCraig Brown.[5]
Hill was noted for his frugality.[36] He never owned his own home in London and preferred to rent a flat rather than buy one.[37] He rented a double-room apartment on London'sQueen's Gate for 26 years until around 1986, when he moved to Fairwater House inTeddington. While looking for somewhere to live, he briefly stayed at 22 Westrow Gardens inSouthampton.[38]
Despite being a multi-millionaire, he continued with the frugal habits he picked up from his parents, such as buying cheap food at supermarkets, walking for miles rather than paying for a taxi unless someone picked up the tab for alimousine and regularly patching and mending the same clothes.[36][37] He also never owned a car, despite having a valid driving licence.[37]
Hill never married and had no children. He had proposed to three women, but none accepted.[36] Shortly after his death in 1992, actressAnnette Andre said that she turned down his proposal of marriage in the early 1960s.[39] Rumours circulated that he was gay, but he always denied them.[40]
Hill was aFrancophile and enjoyed visits to France, particularlyMarseille, where, until the 1980s, he could go to outdoor cafes anonymously, travelling on public transport and socialising with local women.[40] He spoke French fluently and also knew basic German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian.[40] Travel was the only luxury he permitted himself; even then, he would stay in modest accommodations.[37]
Hill's health declined in the mid-to-late 1980s and after his contract ended with Thames Television. After Hill had a mild heart attack on 24 February 1992, doctors recommended aheart bypass; he declined. A week later, he was found to have kidney failure, but he refused to undergokidney dialysis. Hill died at his flat inTeddington on 18 April 1992 at the age of 68,[1][41] but his body was not found until 20 April.[42][43] He died while watching television in his armchair. The cause of death was recorded ascoronary thrombosis.[1] Hill was buried atHollybrook Cemetery, near his birthplace in Southampton, on 28 April 1992.[44]
Hill's estate wasprobated at £7,548,192, equivalent to £19,700,000 in 2023.[45] Hiswill, written thirty years earlier, left most of his estate to his parents, who had predeceased him; ultimately, Hill's estate was divided among his seven nieces and nephews.[46]
During the night of 4 October 1992, following speculation that Hill had been buried with a large amount of gold and jewellery,grave robbers exhumed and broke open Hill's coffin. The coffin was reburied and covered with a thick concrete slab.[47]
"He was a God of British comedy. It's a real skill to make the whole world laugh like he did."
In 1998,Channel 4 featured Hill in one of itsHeroes of Comedy programmes. In 2002,D. J. Taylor ofThe Independent ranked him the third greatest British comedian of the 20th century, after Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.[48]
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On 28 December 2006, Channel 4 broadcast the documentary,Is Benny Hill Still Funny?. The programme featured an audience that comprised across-section of young adults who had little or no knowledge of Hill, to discover whether his comedy was valid to a generation that enjoyed the likes ofLittle Britain,The Catherine Tate Show andBorat. The participants favourably rated a 30-minute compilation that included examples of Hill's humour from his BBC and ITV shows.[49]
In November 2021,That's TV announced thatThe Benny Hill Show would feature in its Christmas schedule, alongside other ITV programmes, such asBeadle's About andKenny Everett's New Year Specials. In addition to operating a number of local television channels on Freeview, That's TV had another national slot on channel 65, meaning that Hill's show would be seen in full, nationwide on British television, for the first time in nearly 20 years.[50][51][52]
On 18 April 1992 Alfred Hawthorne Hill, aged 68, passed away, alone in his flat.
Benny Hill... was found dead at his home in London last night... Police broke into his flat in Twickenham Road, Teddington, at 8pm".
