As if last week wasn’t enough in terms of beloved cinematic icons passing away, the sad news broke last night that Norman Wisdom has died at the age of 95.
Wisdom, at least, had a truly good innings, though he suffered several strokes over the last few months before passing in the Abbotswood Nursing Home on the Isle of Man.
The actor’s early life was one of poverty and problems, with his abusive, drunken father abandoning him and his brother when Wisdom was nine and his parents divorced.
Military service proved to be his salvation, with a career in the Merchant Navy and then the army where a natural flair for entertaining others was honed to perfection. Rex Harrison spurred the next stage of his life, encouraging him to pursue performing professionally after watching him work at a Forces show.
Stage time with magician David Nixon would follow, where he developed his best-known comic persona as The Gump, and then a contract with film giants Rank, which put him in 19 movies in the 1950s and ‘60s, where he became a comedy icon for his slapstick work. When Charlie Chaplin labels you his favourite clown, you know you don’t need to listen to the critics.
He proved his naysayers wrong again in 1978 with a BAFTA-scooping dramatic performance as a terminally ill patient in TV play Going Gently. And in 2000 he became Sir Norman Wisdom for his services to the arts.
Trivia lovers will forever remember him as being a huge hit in Albania, where his films were among the only Western entertainment deemed politically acceptable. We have the feeling there will be flags at half-mast all over the country this morning.
The Gump is gone, and the world is less funny today.