User:Tanzi22/ScottandWhalley

Scott and Whaley
Harry Scott (1879-1947) and Eddie Whaley (1886-1961) gained popularity performing their variety act in British music halls, in films and on BBC radio as well touring Europe during the first half of the 20th Century.Whaley played the straight man while Scott performed in 'blackface'.

Whaley was born in Harrington, Delaware,USA at the end of the 19th Century and, orphaned at an early age, worked as a houseboy for a white family. He ran away to New York, where he earned a living by singing on the streets. There he befriended Scott, who originated from Ohio,USA, and together they formed a comic double act, 'Cuthbert and Pussyfoot', with which they toured the United States.

They journeyed together to England in 1909, having accepted an invitation to do an eight week tour starting at the Sheffield Hippodrome. Their London debut was at the Empire Leicester Square in 1910. Their routines, a cross-talking double act and songs-at-the-piano, proved so successful they extended the tour and never returned to America. Harry Scott was a good jazz pianist while Whaley provided vocals. A Radio Review article of 1936 claimed that the duo introduced "ragtime and syncopation to England ".

Scott and Whaley rose to national fame when employed regularly by the BBC in 1933 to appear on the popular radio series Kentucky Minstrels, a blackface minstrel series produced by Harry S. Pepper and broadcast from 1933-1950. The show was an exaggerated depiction of African Americans in the "good ole days" of plantation life in the American Deep South. The main characters were played for many years by Scott and Whaley along with another Afro-American, Isaac "Ike" F. Hatch (c. 1891-1961), a trained vocalist and songwriter and former member of the W. C. Handy Orchestra.

In 1934, Scott and Whaley became the first black performers to star in a British film, 'Kentucky Minstrels', written by Harry S. Pepper and C. Denier Warren and directed by John Baxter. In the film they recreated the roles they had popularised in their long running BBC radio series.An incomplete print, which is missing the Minstrel Show finale, exists in the National Film and Television Archive.

The partnership ended in 1946 but the pair reunited for a final appearance at the Queen's Theatre, Poplar on 19th May 1947. Whaley retired to Brighton, where he opened a guest house; his sons Eddie Jnr and Duncan, went on to become performers in their own right.Scott died one month after their final performance.

Films
Kentucky Minstrels, (Dir.John Baxter, Twickenham Film Studios, 1934); On the Air, ( Dir. Herbert Smith, British Lion Corporation, 1934); Minstrel Days (1934); Pathetone Parade (Dir. Fred Watts, Pathetone, 1936); Shooting Stars (Viking films, 1937); Take Off The Hat (Dir. Eric Humphries, Viking Films, 1938)