THE LAST GREAT SHOWMAN
ALL MY SHOWS ARE GREAT: THE LIFE OF LEW GRADE BY LEWIS CHESTER (Aurum £20)
Unless you find accounts of 古代の boardroom 戦う／戦いs, 輸出（する） 取引，協定s and franchise 操作／手術s riveting, biographies of 大君s can be a bore. What makes 吊りくさび Chester's 調書をとる／予約する about the 'stooped and gnome-like' Lew Grade tolerable is that this 'epitome of a bloated 資本主義者' seems like a character invented by W.C. Fields, the 審査する's most irrepressible and magniloquent trickster.
In the manner of Fields as a carnival huckster, Lew used to 布告する: 'All my shows are 広大な／多数の／重要な. Some of them are bad - but they are all 広大な／多数の／重要な.' In what might have been a scene out of the 星／主役にする's 攻撃する，衝突する film Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds fame saw Lew appear to take an 緊急の high-level phone call and step into a 私的な office - except he had 'stepped through a door that led into a wardrobe'.
花冠d in cigar smoke, Lew 持続するd that the torpedo-sized Montecristos gave him energy. 'On one occasion, a short actor in a brown 控訴 walked into his office and Lew absent-mindedly 選ぶd him up and lit him,' says Chester.
You can picture Fields （人命などを）奪う，主張するing a 類似の feat. When his house 燃やすd 負かす／撃墜する, Lew sent his wife 支援する into the inferno to retrieve his box of cigars, and he then stood in the street in his dressing gown, blithely puffing away while talking to the 解雇する／砲火／射撃 旅団 and directing the 操作／手術.
It was another perfect Fields moment when Lew 追加するd to a 'No Smoking 許すd' 調印する the words: 'For Anyone Under 87.' He died in 1998 'at the tragically young age of 91', a beloved show 商売／仕事 legend, 手渡すing out cigars to the last.
'If I can't smoke in heaven then I 簡単に won't go,' Lew 発表するd.
He was born in the Crimea as Lovat Winogradsky. As the ユダヤ人の community was ますます terrorised by Cossacks, the family emigrated to London in 1912.
によれば Chester, it was an しつけ 'tethered の近くに to the poverty line'. Lew's father worked as a trouser-presser in Brick 小道／航路, East London, and Lew began his career in the rag 貿易（する）.
In his spare time he enjoyed 'the toe-新たな展開ing 決まりきった仕事s of the Charleston'. He entered dancing 競争s for cash prizes and in 1926 at the Albert Hall won the 肩書を与える Charleston 支持する／優勝者 of the World. At this point he decided 'the world of entertainment is the world for me'.
Lew became a professional ダンサー, 小旅行するing theatres and cabaret 発生地s with his 'frenzied gyrations'. 法案d as The ダンサー With The Humorous Feet, he earned £27 a week. I wonder if he met Fields, who during the same time was 小旅行するing British and European music halls as an eccentric juggler.
Olga, Lew's mother, however, was not impressed. 'It's no good making money mit your feet. Make money mit your brains.' Lew had always 所有するd a 商売／仕事 mind. Asked at school what was two 加える two, Lew replied: 'Buying or selling?' He 設立する he had a particular knack for spotting talent. As he traipsed around the variety theatres, so he formed a 共同 with Joe Collins, Joan and Jackie's father, 調印 up magicians, acrobats and 成し遂げるing dogs for shows in Morecambe, Birkenhead and Wigan.
During the war, Lew's 軍の career was 簡潔な／要約する. On his first and last day in uniform, he 棒 a motorcycle into a tree, which 原因（となる）d his 膝s to swell up 'to a 脅すing size'.
He was better placed 交渉するing 業績／成果 契約s for the comedians 現れるing from the Services - Harry Secombe, Peter 販売人s and Tony Hancock w ere his （弁護士の）依頼人s. He also 代表するd the Dagenham Girl Pipers and enticed （頭が）ひょいと動く Hope, Louis Armstrong and Edith Piaf to appear on the British 行う／開催する／段階.
He was a happy vulgarian, content to remain an ignoramus. He didn't know his Chekhov from his Ibsen from his Shakespeare, and flummoxed Laurence Olivier by 説: 'Ah 井戸／弁護士席, it's all 衣装, isn't it?' When he 雇うd John Boorman, he 安心させるd the high-brow director by 説: 'I don't even want to see the picture when it's finished.' He was にもかかわらず quick to see the 可能性のある of ITV and produced many programmes for 'the 普通の／平均（する） working-class family's evening'.
Lew Grade getting a kiss from his wife and, 権利, with his dancing partner Anna Roth in 1933
It is to Sir Lew - later Lord Grade of Elstree - that we 借りがある the 165 episodes of Richard Greene as コマドリ Hood; 緊急 区 10 (Lew permitted the scriptwriters 'a 最大限 of five 患者 deaths per year); Gerry Anderson's Stingray, Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds; Jim Henson's The Muppet Show; and 十字路／岐路, made on wobbly 始める，決めるs in Birmingham and 一般に believed to be 'the lowest, feeblest and laziest form of 演劇 ever invented'.
What does it say about Craig Brown and me that we worship it? When Patrick McGoohan 輪郭（を描く）d the 陰謀（を企てる） of The 囚人, Lew said: 'I don't understand one word you're talking about. When can you start?' 生産／産物 開始するd in Portmeirion the に引き続いて Monday.
International acclaim （機の）カム with the casting of Burt Lancaster in Moses The Lawgiver and the casting of everyone from Olivier to Peter Ustinov in Jesus Of Nazareth, for which Lew had an audience with the ローマ法王. 'He's got 広大な／多数の／重要な 教祖的指導力,' said Lew of John Paul II. 'I'd like to 調印する him up.'
When the costs of Zeffirelli's biblical 小型の-series began to 開始する, Lew's ingenious suggestion was to 減ずる the number of disciples to six.
For the film Raise The Titanic, however, he 設立する himself throwing good money after bad. The models were out of 規模 and the special 影響s 戦車／タンク 漏れるd.
'It would have been cheaper to lower the 大西洋,' said Lew, who was out of pocket by £20million when the 災害 epic flopped.
Lew was 追い出すd from his own company in a boardroom クーデター, though selling The Beatles 支援する 目録, which he happened to own, to Michael Jackson for $48million should have 軟化するd the blow.
Except it didn't. Lew had no hobbies, took no holidays and his life was 簡単に 'work, work, work'.
His wife for 50 years, Kathie Moody, said that when she met her 未来 husband: 'I really disliked him.' We don't learn very much more about Lew's 国内の 手はず／準備, except to be told that he'd married chorus girl Kathie 'すぐに after Hitler's army 侵略するd Poland'. If there is a 関係, it escapes me.
During the war, Lew thought about sending his wife and mother to Australia, but settled on Bognor Regis instead. Young Joan and Jacki e Collins went along for company. 'Then a 爆弾 fell on Bognor,' so the womenfolk decamped to Blackpool.
That Luftwaffe 操縦する would have been gutted had he known how 辛うじて he'd 行方不明になるd saving mankind from 王朝, The Bitch, Hollywood Wives and the 残り／休憩（する） of the Collins sisters' pouty effusions. The 惑星 may even have been spared shoulder pads.
