British entertainment legend George Anthony Newley (September 24, 1931 — April 14, 1999) was an immensely talented performer and songwriter, composing Grammy- and Academy Award-winning hits and appearing in dozens of films. His career was filled with strange left turns that serve to explain why he resists being easily defined. A "triple threat" with a beautifully distinctive voice and overenunciated singing style that inspired imitators, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989.

Early Life

Born into poverty in Oswald Street in the East London district of Hackney, his parents Frances Grace "Gracie" Newley and George Kirby were not married, and he was raised mostly by his mother and stepfather, Ronald Gardner. Like many London children during World War II, he was evacuated to the pastoral suburbs in Hertfordshire during the Blitz. Though teachers considered him to be very bright, he dropped out of school at fourteen and went to work at a Fleet Street advertising agency as an office boy. Seeing a Daily Telegraph ad seeking boy actors, he auditioned for an acting school but was hired instead as an office boy as he could not afford the tuition. There he was spotted by a producer who cast him as the lead in a children's film serial The Adventures of Dusty Bates in 1947. On the strength of that performance, he was cast in Peter Ustinov's Vice Versa (1948) followed by his breakout role as the Artful Dodger in David Lean's film of Oliver Twist (1948).

Rising Stardom

Newley transitioned from child star to adult actor during the 1950s through his association with famed producer J. Arthur Rank, for whom he made twenty-seven films in both the UK and the US. These included Highly Dangerous (1950), The Blue Peter (1954), Fire Down Below (1957), How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957), and Idle on Parade (1959), a Cockney spoof on Elvis Presley's military service which inadvertently turned him into a pop star to rival Cliff Richard with the hit single "I've Waited So Long", reaching number three on the UK charts. Subsequent hits included "Personality" followed by two number one hits in 1960, "Why" (originally a US hit for Frankie Avalon) and "Do You Mind?".

In the meantime, Newley became a rising star in musical theatre. He appeared in the revue Cranks starting in 1955, a show that traveled to Broadway for forty performances. He made five appearances on Val Parnell's Saturday Spectacular between 1959 and 1961, a variety show featuring Britain's top talent. Then in late 1960, Newley transitioned from film star and pop vocalist to television star, conceptually creating and playing the lead role in the ATV-produced ITV comedy series The Strange World of Gurney Slade. This was a groundbreaking six-part program that featured a surreal plot based around a character that breaks the fourth wall and leaves the 'show' within the show, creating a meta-drama about the boob tube unlike anything seen on British TV before and pre-empting The Truman Show (1998) by decades. Possibly influenced by US television pioneer Ernie Kovacs' work during the 1950s, Gurney Slade was not a ratings success but it earned Newley a cult status. It proved to be influential to future British comedians and artists, including David Bowie. In a 1973 interview with New Musical Express, Bowie called the series "tremendous", adding "It was the television series that made me want to sing like him, not the records. It was very odd. In fact, The Strange World of Gurney Slade was the reason that I liked Tony Newley."

Enter Leslie Bricusse

In 1961 he met composer Leslie Bricusse, and they collaborated on writing a script, music, and lyrics to the circus-themed stage show Stop the World — I Want to Get Off. Opening first in Manchester and transferring to London's West End at the Queens Theatre in July of that year, it was a commercial success that Newley both directed and starred in, running for 485 performances. The show moved to Broadway in 1962 where it ran for 555 performances and garnered a Tony Award nomination for Newley. He and Briscusse won Song of the Year at the 1963 Grammy Awards for "What Kind of Fool Am I?", the show's closing number. Sammy Davis, Jr. made the song a hit in 1962, with his cover peaking at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has been covered by numerous other artists, including Andy Williams, Shirley Bassey, Perry Como, Connie Francis, and even Clay Aiken. Kermit the Frog performed it on an episode of The Ed Sullivan Show that aired on May 31, 1970. It has been estimated that this one song, written with Bricusse in one afternoon, produced enough royalties to bring Newley a substantial lifelong income. A film adaptation of the play was produced in 1966.

In 1963, Newley and Bricusse collaborated with composer John Barry to write the theme song to the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964). When Barry played his composition for them, after hearing the first three notes, both men reportedly looked at each other and belted out "...wider than a mile!" to the melody of "Moon River", the hit theme song from Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Barry did not find humor in their reaction, but worked with them anyway. Newley recorded a demo version of the song that everyone considered to be "creepy", and Shirley Bassey was chosen by Barry to record the song for the film. The single released on United Artists records ended up selling over a million copies in the US, reaching number one in Japan, number four in Australia, and breaking the Top Ten in numerous European countries.

Building from these successes, Newley and Bricusse wrote another circus-themed musical in 1964 entitled The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd. The play was not as successful in the UK as their previous effort, but made a tour of the US later that year where its cozy sentiment was more warmly received. It featured the song "Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)", which was a hit for Tony Bennett reaching number 33 on the US pop singles chart. Bennett made the song one of his staples, performing it in concert until his retirement at the age of 95. Several other songs from the show achieved popularity, including "A Wonderful Day Like Today", "The Joker", "This Dream", and the Nina Simone hit "Feeling Good". Over 200 different recordings have been made of the play's music.

Career Peak and Disaster

From there the pair worked together on the 1967 Hollywood musical comedy Doctor Dolittle, with Bricusse adapting the screenplay from numerous novels written by Hugh Lofting about the character. Newley played a starring role in the film alongside actors Rex Harrison, Samantha Eggar and Richard Attenborough. Despite being both a box office and critical flop, the film was nominated for nine Academy Awards due to intense lobbying from 20th Century Fox studios. It won Oscars® for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song, "Talk to the Animals".

Newley's fame in the UK was immense, and he turned down the leading roles in director Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) with that lead going to Albert Finney, as well as Lewis Gilbert's Alfie (1966) that ultimately featured Michael Caine. He was such a huge star by the end of the 1960s that he was offered the chance to make any film he wanted. The result was the X-rated and calamitous Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969) which Newley wrote, directed and starred in alongside his wife Joan Collins. The autobiographical musical sex comedy was a vanity project which sabotaged his marriage and his career. New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby wrote that Newley "so over extends and overexposes himself that the movie comes to look like an act of professional suicide ... The movie is as self-indulgent as a burp. It's also as pretentious as its form ... The movie is not so free and loose as it is simply out of control." You can read JD's review of the film here on E2 for an overview of the plot.

Then in 1971, Newley and Bricusse were asked to write the musical score for the motion picture Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which became one of the top five grossing motion pictures of that year. They won an Academy Award for Best Scoring: Adaptation and Original Song Score for their work on the film. It featured "The Candy Man" which became another top ten hit for Sammy Davis, Jr., and "Pure Imagination" performed by actor Gene Wilder in the movie's titular role. That performance became so affectionately associated with Wilder over the years that upon his death in 2016, it was prominently featured in tributes to his memory across television, radio, and social media. The song was also reprised in the prequel film Wonka (2023) where it was sung by actor Timothée Chalamet playing the title role.

Simultaneously that year, Newley took the director's chair for the Hollywood film Summertree starring Michael Douglas and produced by Kirk Douglas. A drama about the Vietnam War, the elder Douglas bought the film rights to the play after the younger Douglas was fired from the lead role in the Broadway production.

Career Decline

Working stateside led Newley to become a British tax exile in the early 1970s, moving to Florida and working extensively as a resort performer in Vegas and the Catskills Borscht Belt. He was considered by some to be among the top five cabaret acts in America during that decade, and in 1977 was awarded "Male Star of the Year" at the sixth annual Las Vegas Awards ceremony.

In 1975, Newley starred in the title role of Michael Tuchner's film Mister Quilp, an uninspiring musical adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens for which he composed several songs. That same year he played the lead in the aptly named It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time alongside Stefanie Powers and Isaac Hayes. He also made occasional appearances on TV talk shows and as a guest panelist on the game show Hollywood Squares. Newley tried throughout the 1980s and 1990s to stage a comeback but kept striking out. His attempt to return to Broadway with a musical about Charlie Chaplin in 1983 opened in L.A. but never made it to New York, losing $4 million. He played the Mad Hatter in Irwin Allen's TV adaptation of Alice in Wonderland in 1985. He was diagnosed with cancer that year and returned to the UK to live with his mother Gracie in Surrey, where he recovered after having a kidney removed. Having beaten cancer (or so he thought), he went back to work recording songs from several musicals, and performing small roles or voice acting in various made-for-television movies and low-budget films.

When Newley directed a West End revival of Stop the World in 1989, it hadn't aged well and closed after 52 performances. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame that year. In 1992 he had a final triumph onstage back in the West End in Bricusse's play Scrooge: The Musical, which opened in London and toured several British cities including Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol. He made a rare New York nightclub appearance in 1996 where he summarized the previous two decades of his life by stating, "I went to Vegas for 22 years, married some absolutely charming women and gave them all my money. That's why I'm here." In 1998 he joined the cast of the BBC soap opera Eastenders for what was meant to be a recurring role as a shifty car salesman, but withdrew after a few months when his health began to fail again.

Personal Life

Newley's maternal grandmother, Frances Grace Morris, was Jewish. He was married and divorced three times, and had numerous affairs. His first wife (1956-1963) was British actress Ann Lynn who was prominent during the British New Wave of the 1960s. They had a son together who died in infancy due to birth defects. In 1963 he married actress Joan Collins, becoming her third husband until their divorce in 1970, and with whom he had two children. His third wife (1971-1989) was a former flight attendant named Dareth Rich, with whom he also had a daughter and a son. During the production of Gurney Slade in 1960, he began a relationship with actress Anneke Wills, then 17, and she reports that they lived together for a period. The two had a daughter out of wedlock, but sadly she died in an automobile accident before ever learning the identity of her father. It's not known how many extra-marital dalliances Newley had in total, but his need for love and acceptance seemed boundless.

In the 1970s, Newley hired a private detective to locate his father George Kirby with the hope of reuniting him with his mother. He bought them a house in Beverly Hills, California, but other than a brief exchange of correspondence, the reunion never came to pass. The house was later sold or leased to Sammy Davis, Jr. and can reportedly be seen in one episode of the original TV series Charlie's Angels.

Actor Paul Newman taught Newley how to ice skate.

Death

In 1997 Newley's renal cancer returned, spreading to his liver and lungs. He passed away in April 1999 at his home in Jensen Beach, Florida with his companion Gina Fratini at his side. His final performance, as a wily priest in Episode 8 of Jimmy McGovern's second BBC series of The Lakes (1999) showed what a significant acting career he might have had if he had not been stretched in so many different directions by the extraordinary range of his talents.

Analysis

Biographers have observed that all of Newley's performative creations were an examination of his own emotional life disguised as social commentary, and share a common theme expressing his unhappiness and dissatisfaction. In an obituary, Nigel Fountain of The Guardian wrote, "As in character, so in real life, Newley saw himself as a sort of artful dodger, a street-boy who knew his way around. It was a protective skin for a man who was at ease only in his own creative world — though paradoxically that world was fueled by his own real circumstances". Of his marriages, Collins once said that his love for her had been "as shallow as a pan of water", and that he was interested only in his own emotions, his writing, and teenagers. Personally, I feel like Newley's whole life was defined by his trauma as a poor, neglected street kid, and he spent it in a never-ending pursuit of the self-esteem and acceptance that he lacked in childhood. In so many ways, Newley's life and career were a "rags to riches" Hollywood trope, full of comedy and tragedy that ended as sadly as it began. It's the kind of story that someone would surely want to make a biopic of, had Newley not already done so himself many times over.

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/apr/16/guardianobituaries1
https://www.masterworksbroadway.com/artist/anthony-newley/
https://tims.blackcat.nl/messages/anthony_newley.htm
https://www.songhall.org/profile/Anthony_Newley
https://www.mtishows.com/people/anthony-newley
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/how-anthony-newley-torpedoed-his-brilliant-career/
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/remembering-the-debut-album-david-bowie-tried-to-forget-40257/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0627969/trivia/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Newley

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