Ralph Lynn

Ralph Lynn

Ralph Clifford Lynn (8 March 1882 – 8 August 1962) was an English actor who had a six-decade career and is best remembered for playing comedy parts in the Aldwych farces first on stage and then in film.

Lynn became an actor at the age of 18 and very soon began to be cast in knut or "silly ass" roles. He played such parts as a supporting actor for more than two decades until 1922, when he was cast in the lead of a new West End farce, Tons of Money, in which he achieved immediate stardom. After the success of this play, its co-producer, the actor-manager Tom Walls, leased the Aldwych Theatre in London, where for the next ten years he and Lynn co-starred in a series of successful farces, most of which were written for them by Ben Travers.

Many of the Aldwych farces were made into films starring Lynn and Walls, and the two were ranked among the most popular British film actors of the 1930s. He continued his stage career during and after the Second World War, scoring another hit in London and on tour with Is your Honeymoon Really Necessary? (1944). He continued to play in both new works by Travers and others, and in revivals of his earlier successes, and made his last London appearance in 1958.