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Issue 10 - March 2005 Magazine Articles.
A REVELATION
Well, that was the first line of a newspaper clipping that my aunt dug out some fifteen years ago. When I read on, the article said "A man who made millions laugh has died practically unsung in hospital at Redruth." Only two mourners attended his funeral, a neighbour and the village shopkeeper. I filed this among my genealogy papers, noting that Syd Crossley, who died in 1960, was a cousin of my father with whom the family had lost contact. It seemed that although he had married twice, he had no children, so there that line of the family came to an end. Later, a friend of mine on holiday in the area, discovered that "Crossley Cottage" at Troon near Cambourne still existed, although the occupiers had no idea why it was so-called. Syd had lived in that cottage from 1948; his second wife died there in 1955 and Syd continued to live there until his death. Joining the RFVM Club revived my interest in Syd Crossley's background in entertainment and films and I have found that he appeared in over 100 films. Although in the great majority of these he played "bit parts", he was performing in the company of big names of the screen. Syd was born 18th November 1885 in London and began a stage career at the age of 14, singing comedy songs. His early life is unclear, but he worked his way up to become a popular favourite as a music-hall comedian, where he was billed as 'The Long Comic' as he was a 6'-2" gangling man. He took the adventurous step of going to the USA and tried his hand in American vaudeville and comedies during the 1920s before a visit to Hollywood. There, Syd spent time under director Hal Roach where he and Stan Laurel were a pair But 1927 was not a fortuitous year for Syd when in Hal Roach's Duck Soup Oliver Hardy appeared. Laurel and Hardy bedded down as tramps in a vacant house and this turned out to be the prototype Laurel and Hardy comedy. Having deprived the world of 'Laurel and Crossley', Syd returned to England in 1929, where he played film roles up to 1941, often as butlers and similar characters and gave yeoman support to most of the British Cinema's comedy stars of the period. He toured the Middle East with ENSA in World War II and was awarded a certificate of merit by the Variety Artists Federation on its golden jubilee; he was No.47 on the Federation's books. Syd's earliest recorded performance in film was in 1923 in Cecil B de Mille's The Three Ages in which Buster Keaton made an entrance on a dinosaur. Those were the days of black and white silent films and he next appeared in Fools in the Desert (1925) before going to Hollywood. In 1925 he appeared as a tramp in North Star, in which Clark Gable, having dropped out of school to join a touring theatre company, had a small part at the age of 24. In 1927 Paramount released Red Hair, a silent romance with Clara Bow - the original 'It' girl who epitomized the liberated flappers in the 1920s. This film did have some colour and was able to show that Clara Bow really did have red hair. Syd was Clara's barber. A year later she was the highest paid movie star of the time, at $35,000 a week. Mascot Pictures released Atlantic in 1929 (aka Disaster in the Atlantic) starring Madeleine Carroll. In case you've not guessed from the date, this was a fiction about an unsinkable liner with inadequate lifeboats and icebergs ahead. Syd played the wireless operator. A pretty important part, I'd say. This was probably Sid's first sound-movie. In 1932 the British film High Society (not a musical) starred Florence
Desmond. Syd played Simeon, the butler. This was followed by Those Were
the Days(1933), a farce starring Will Hay as a Victorian magistrate
and John Mills at the tender age of 26. Then in 1935 The Ghost Goes
West, a fantasy comedy with Robert Donat, in which a ghost haunts a
Scottish castle transported to Florida. In Queen of Hearts (1936) starring
Gracie Fields, Syd played a policeman One film that caught my eye was Fangs of the Wild (1928) directed by Jerome Storm. Top of the credits is Ranger, the German shepherd dog, followed by Dorothy Kitchen, Sam Nelson, Tom Lingham and Nancy Drexel. Syd played Rufe Anderson, whose unwelcome advances to a hill farmer's daughter are foiled time and again by the invincible Ranger. This production had remakes in 1939 and 1954. The fact of the matter is that with my choice so great, but Syd's parts so small, I still haven't ordered my first video to see Syd in action, but eventually I shall have to take the plunge - unless you have one in your attic? 
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