Queer Places:
6 Arundel Terrace, Brighton BN2 1GA, UK
Denville Hall, 62 Duck's Hill Rd, London, Northwood HA6 2SB, UK
Douglas
Coy Byng (17 March 1893 – 24 August 1987) was an English comic singer and
songwriter in West End theatre, revue and cabaret. A former lover of
Noël Coward, he was an actor, pantomime dame and cabaret performer. Byng, whose stage career lasted 72 years, lived in Arundel Terrace and was outrageous to the end, having seen Brighton become Britain’s leading gay resort.
Billed as "Bawdy but
British", Byng was famous for his female impersonations. His songs are full of
sexual innuendo and double entendres. An openly gay performer, Byng was noted
for his camp performances in the music halls and in cabaret.[1]
Byng made a large number of recordings, many of which have been transferred to
CD. Byng was also a noted pantomime dame and appeared in over 30 pantomimes.
Byng was born 17 March 1893 in Basford, Nottinghamshire. His father was a
bank manager and his mother was a former school teacher. They did not
encourage his early theatrical leanings, and when he was ten, they sent him to
live in Germany with his elder brother, who owned a lace factory there. Byng
studied music and German, but following the trade of his brother he
concentrated on fashion. After his return to Britain, he worked for the
costume designer Charles Alias in London.[2]
In 1914 Byng answered an advertisement for a light comedian for a seaside
concert party and made his first appearance on stage at Hastings. At the age
of 21, playing a middle-aged diplomat, he toured more than a hundred towns in
the musical comedy The Girl in the Taxi. He continued his theatre work
throughout the war, playing character parts in touring comedies and eventually
achieving a juvenile lead in 1920. In the 1920s he took to pantomime, playing
the Grand Vizier in Aladdin at the London Palladium in 1921, and in
1924 creating the first of his many pantomime dames as Eliza in Dick
Whittington and His Cat at the New Theatre Oxford.[2]
paul tanqueray (1905-1991) ‘douglas byng’ 1934
In 1925 Byng appeared at the London Pavilion in C. B. Cochran's revue On
with the Dance, written by
Noël Coward. Byng
remained with Cochran for five years in a succession of revues. During this
period he opened his own nightclub in central London, where he first performed
the cabaret drag songs for which he is best remembered, described by the
critic Sheridan Morley as "a curious mixture of sophistication, schoolboy
humour and double entendre."[2]
An example is his Mexican Minnie:
- Come where the heat from the sun's burning rays
Gets you so gaga
you tear off your stays!
I'm Mexican Minnie, all jolly and ginny
I
loll in the mountains all day.
Though I'm well off the map, I'm just
covered in slap,
Luring brigands to come and play ha'penny nap.
But
they get very reckless, and will stay to breakfast
Then go off refusing
to pay.
I say, "Well you can go,
"I'm sick of the gang, so
"You shan't see my tango today!"[3]
Byng's skill in performance was said to vanquish prudery, but in reality
his material was never crude. His famous numbers included: "Sex Appeal Sarah",
"Milly the Messy Old Mermaid" and "The Lass who Leaned against the Tower of
Pisa". His "Doris, the Goddess of Wind" was revived in
Alan Bennett's 2010
play The Habit of Art.[4]
In 1931 Byng appeared in cabaret at the Club Lido, in New York, and had a
great success.[2]
He pursued his career of revue, cabaret and pantomime in London throughout the
1930s, and was the first cabaret artiste to have his name in neon lights in
the West End.[2]
In 1938 he played his favourite role in a musical, Prince Zorpan, in an
adaptation of Emmerich Kálmán's Maritza. Byng wrote all his own words
for the piece and also some extra music. In one scene he impersonated a lady
violinist, singing "I'm the pest of Budapest that turned the Danube so blue"[2]
in which The Times said he shone intensely.[5]
During the Second World War, Byng was busy in musicals and variety, as well
as cabaret and entertaining the troops. Afterwards he appeared in more
comedies and farces, the best remembered being Georges Feydeau's Hotel
Paradiso in 1956 with
Alec Guinness at the Winter Garden Theatre in London, reprised in a 1966
film version in which he also appeared. He also turned up sporadically on
television, notably in Alan Melville's series Before the Fringe in the
1960s when he sang, or rather recited, some of the old revue songs.
Byng never really retired from the stage and was working in his late
eighties. His career was revived when he made a guest appearance on the BBC's
Parkinson show in 1977 with Carol Channing.
In the last years of his life he briefly teamed up with another veteran
variety artiste, Billy Milton, in the touring revue Those Thirties Memories,
directed by Patrick Newley. He made his last appearance in 1987 in a one-man
show at the National Theatre in London at the age of 93.[1]
He also wrote an autobiography, As You Were (1970). He features
prominently in Patrick Newley's autobiographical memoir
The Krays and Bette
Davis (2005).
Byng finally moved to Denville Hall, the Actors' Charitable Trust home in
Northwood, Middlesex, England. He composed his own epitaph:
- So here you are, old Douglas, a derelict at last.
Before your eyes
what visions rise of your vermilion past.
Mad revelry beneath the
stars, hot clasping by the lake.
You need not sigh, you can't deny,
you've had your bit of cake.
He died 24 August 1987 aged 94. His ashes were scattered outside his former
home in Arundel Terrace, Brighton. A Brighton bus is named after him.
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