Douglas Byng

Douglas Coy Byng was born on 17 March 1893 in Basford, Nottinghamshire, England, the son of a bank manager and a former schoolteacher whose maiden name was Coy. His parents did not support his early interest in the theatre, and at the age of ten they sent him to live in Germany with his elder brother, who operated a lace factory there. During that period Byng studied music and German and turned his attention to fashion. Upon returning to Britain, he worked in London for the costume designer Charles Alias.

Byng made his stage debut in 1914 after answering an advertisement for a light comedian in a seaside concert party, first appearing at Hastings. At twenty-one he toured more than a hundred towns playing a middle-aged diplomat in the musical comedy The Girl in the Taxi. He continued performing throughout the First World War in touring comedies, eventually earning a juvenile lead by 1920.

In the 1920s Byng moved into pantomime, playing the Grand Vizier in Aladdin at the London Palladium in 1921. In 1924 he created the first of his many pantomime dame roles, playing Eliza in Dick Whittington and His Cat at the New Theatre Oxford, and he would go on to appear in more than thirty pantomimes over the course of his career. In 1925 he appeared at the London Pavilion in C. B. Cochran's revue On with the Dance, written by Noël Coward, and he remained with Cochran for five years in a succession of revues. During this period he opened his own nightclub, The Kinde Dragon, off St Martin's Lane in central London, where he first performed the cabaret drag songs for which he became best known. Critic Sheridan Morley described these songs as a curious mixture of sophistication, schoolboy humour, and double entendre. His celebrated numbers included Sex Appeal Sarah, Milly the Messy Old Mermaid, and The Lass who Leaned against the Tower of Pisa. Billed as Bawdy but British, Byng was widely recognized for his female impersonations and camp performances in music halls and cabaret. He continually negotiated with the BBC over which of his double entendres he would be permitted to broadcast.

In 1931 Byng appeared in cabaret at the Club Lido in New York to considerable success. Throughout the 1930s he pursued revue, cabaret, and pantomime in London and became the first cabaret artist to have his name displayed in neon lights in the West End. In the Cole Porter revue Hi Diddle Diddle in 1934, he was the first performer to sing Miss Otis Regrets. In 1938 he played what he considered his favourite musical role, Prince Zorpan, in an adaptation of Emmerich Kálmán's Maritza, for which he wrote his own lyrics and contributed additional music. During the Second World War, Byng performed in musicals, variety, cabaret, and troop entertainment.

Among his most noted postwar stage appearances was Georges Feydeau's farce Hotel Paradiso in 1956, performed with Alec Guinness at the Winter Garden Theatre in London. Byng reprised his role in a 1966 film version of the production. In 1957 he brought Hotel Paradiso to Broadway, marking his sole credited Broadway appearance. He also appeared sporadically on British television, notably in Alan Melville's series Before the Fringe in the 1960s. His song Doris, the Goddess of Wind was revived in Alan Bennett's 2010 play The Habit of Art. Byng made a large number of recordings throughout his career, many of which were later transferred to CD.

Byng never fully retired from performing. In 1977 his career received renewed attention when he made a guest appearance on the BBC's Parkinson show alongside Carol Channing. In his later years he briefly teamed with fellow variety veteran Billy Milton in the touring revue Those Thirties Memories, directed by Patrick Newley. He wrote an autobiography, As You Were, published in 1970, and features prominently in Patrick Newley's memoir The Krays and Bette Davis, published in 2005. At the age of 93, Byng made his final appearance in a one-man show at the National Theatre in London in 1987. He spent his last years at Denville Hall, the Actors' Charitable Trust home in Northwood, Middlesex, and died on 24 August 1987 at the age of 94. His ashes were scattered outside his former home on Arundel Terrace in Brighton.