Early Life and Childhood Career
Eric Morecambe was born as John Eric Bartholomew to George and Sadie Bartholomew. Sadie was determined to see her only child make a success of his life, and took work as a waitress to raise funds for his dancing lessons. He didn't enjoy these lessons at the time, although they were to come in handy during his later life. During this period, Eric Bartholomew won numerous talent contests, most notably in Hoylake in 1940, the prize for which was an audition with Jack Hylton. Also present was another young talent named Ernest Wiseman, already a familiar voice from Arthur Askey's radio series Band Waggon. This was the first meeting of what was to become one of the United Kingdom's most loved comedy partnerships, although it was to be a further two years before they would team up. Three months after the audition, Hylton invited Eric to join a revue called Youth Takes a Bow at the Nottingham Empire, where once more he encountered Ernie. The two soon became very close friends, and with Sadie's encouragement started to develop a double act. In 1940, Eric left school at the age of 14.
When the two were eventually allowed to perform their double act on stage (in addition to their solo spots), Hylton was impressed enough to make it a regular feature in the revue. However, the duo split when they began their National Service during World War II. Wise served in the Merchant Navy. Morecambe was a Bevin Boy: conscripted to work in a coal mine in Accrington from May 1944. He was invalided out 11 months later because of a heart defect.
Read more about this topic: Eric Morecambe
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, childhood and/or career:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought;... he grew tremulous and ... crying with a loud voice, “This is indeed Life itself!” turned suddenly to regard his beloved:MShe was dead!”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
““Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)