Born
(Alfred Hawthorn Hill) in
Southampton, Hampshire,
England, 21 January 1925.
Died in Teddington, London, 19
April 1992.
Never married.
Benny
Hill was born in Southampton in
the south of England in 1925. His family was lower middle
class, Hill's father being the
manager of a medical appliance company.
Hill was attracted early to the stage and saw many live stage
shows at the two variety
theatres in Southhampton. Hill
saw army service in the later
years of World War II and it was
there that he began to perform
as a comedian. After
demobilisation, Hill began
working in variety theatre where
he slowly learned his craft. In
1956 Hill starred in the feature
film comedy Who Done It ?(Ealing
Studio). Hill starred as a
hapless,
bungling private detective. The
film was only mildly funny
although Hill did display touches of the
comic slapstick and
characterisation that were to
become part of his genius.
However the film was only
moderately successful and did
nothing to further Hill's
career.
Instead it was in the new medium
of television that Hill was to shine. Hill's career as a
British comedian fits between
that of earlier figures such as
Tony Hancock and later
performers such as Frankie
Howerd. Whereas Hancock
established his definitive comic
persona in radio and then
extended this to television,
Hill was in effect created by
television. Yet Hill was also
the most traditional of
comedians and his programs had
strong roots in variety theatre,
revolving around comic songs,
routines and sketches rather
than an on-going comic
characterisation and situation.
And although Hill had his own
show on the BBC as early as
1955, his career was actually
launched by the 1960s vogue for
comedy on British television.
Other British comedians such as
Ken Dodd, Charlie Drake and
Frankie Howard were also to gain
their own shows around the same
time but none had the comic
genius and stamina of Hill.
Part of this genius lay in his
writing. Hill wrote all his own
material, a gruelling task which
explains the relatively small
number of programs produced.
Indeed under his later contract
with Thames Television, Hill was
given full control of his
program such that he could
undertake a program when, in his
opinion, he had accumulated
enough comic material. Hill also
had a hand in producing some of
the offshoots of The Benny Hill
Show such as the 1970 half-hour
silent film Eddie in August.
Although all his material was
original, Hill nevertheless owed
a comic debt to U.S. entertainer,
Red Skelton. Like Skelton, Hill worked in broad strokes and
sometimes in pantomime with a
series of recurring comic
personae. Hill even adopted
Skelton's departing line from
the latter's show that ran on
network television from 1951 to
1971: "Good night, God
bless." However, Hill was
without Skelton's often-maudlin
sentimentality, substituting
instead a ribald energy and
gusto. Equally though, Hill's
humour was very much in a broad
English vaudeville and stage
tradition. The socialist writer,
George Orwell once drew
attention to the kind of humour
embodied in the English seaside
postcard--henpecked and shrunken
older men and randy young men,
both attracted to beautiful
young women with large breasts
and frequently tearing or
missing some of their underwear
and an older, fatter and
unattractive mother--and some of
this also fed into Hill's
television comedy just as it was
to feed into the Carry On
feature films.
While Hill's publicity often
portrayed him as a kind of
playboy who liked to surround himself with
beautiful, leggy showgirls, this
was an extension of his television
persona and had nothing to do
with his private life. In fact Hill
never married and lived alone in
what would have been a lonely life
had it not been for the heavy
work demands imposed by the
television show.
Hill's humour with its smut and
double-entendres was never
entirely acceptable to the moral
standards of some and his sexism
made him seem increasingly
old-fashioned. The forces of
political correctness finally
had their way in 1989 when
Thames Television canceled the
program due not to only
complaints about its smuttiness
but also because its
old-fashioned sexism had become
increasingly intolerable. Thames
finally sacked Hill. In his last
television appearance, in 1991
he appeared as himself, the
subject of the BBC arts
documentary series, Omnibus.
Although over the last three
years of his life, Hill was to
talk in interviews about a
comeback, it was the end of his
career. He died alone in
hospital, suffering from a chest
complaint, in 1992. Benny Hill
once told an interviewer that,
like Van Gogh, he would be
appreciated in 100 years time.
The statement implied that he
was not recognised as a great
comedian and was belied by the
enormous international
popularity of his program and by
the fact that in the 1970s and
1980s he was several times voted
the Funniest Man in the World by
the British television audience.
-Albert Moran
