Claude Hulbert

Claude Hulbert

Claude Noel Hulbert (25 December 1900 – 23 January 1964) was a British comic actor. He was the younger brother of Jack Hulbert. Like his brother, he was Cambridge educated and was a member of the Footlights comedy club as an undergraduate.

His subsequent career was less successful than his brother's. He began by supporting the Aldwych farceurs before being handed his first lead in a weak B-film with Renee Houston and Binnie Barnes, Their Night Out (1933). His most successful solo film of the mid-1930s being Hello Sweetheart (1935), like most of Hulbert's starring comedies, however, its ambition was strictly small-scale; it seemed that British studios simply didn't see him as a major star. His flagging career was helped with Wolf's Clothing (1936), which starred him as a dithering diplomat, and Honeymoon-Merry-Go-Round (1940), where he played a bumbling bridegroom who unintentionally becomes an ice-hockey star.

He became a very capable partner for Will Hay after the comedian decided he wanted to do without his famous "stooges", Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt. Hay's two films with Hulbert, The Ghost of St Michael's (1941) and My Learned Friend (1943), were the most successful of his later vehicles. Claude's film appearances, though, became scarcer as the 1940s wore on. His films, however, were, at best, modest and moderate, sadly lacking in budget, ambition and spark.

Hulbert died in a hospital in Sydney, Australia, whilst ashore from a world cruise with his family.