Holloway, Stanley

Stanley Holloway (1890-1982) made over 50 films, but he loved performing in the theatre and the comic monologues, for which he was so well known, were first introduced into a Co-Optimists' stage show in 1929. He began his career working in concert parties where he was spotted by Leslie Henson who organised Holloway's first west-end appearance in a Co-Optimists' show. His most notable post-war parts were as the first gravedigger in Olivier's Hamlet film; on stage as Bottom in the Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in film and on stage as Eliza Doolittle's father in My Fair Lady. Holloway's long career spans encompasses the music hall tradition and the cinema of the 1960s.

From the guide to the Stanley Holloway Archive, 1890-1994, (V&A Department of Theatre and Performance)