Ralph Reader

William Henry Ralph Reader was born on 25 May 1903 in Crewkerne, Somerset, England, the son of a Salvation Army bandmaster. Orphaned by the age of eight, he was raised by aunts and uncles. He joined the Scout movement at eleven and, as a patrol leader in the 2nd Denton and South Heighton Troop in Newhaven, Sussex, began staging Scout shows. His early working life included positions as a delivery boy at a relative's greengrocer's shop in Seaford, a telegram messenger at fourteen, and an office boy at a cement works at fifteen. After a period in Magheramorne, County Antrim, Ireland, he relocated to New York and began his stage career.

Reader arrived in America in 1920, taking on various menial jobs while acting in and directing off-Broadway productions. By the age of twenty-one he had choreographed his first Broadway show, earning notice from The New York Times. His verified Broadway credits span 1924 to 1926 and include the musical Big Boy, the production Innocent, the revue Bad Habits of 1926, and the musical June Days. Returning to England, he went on to produce and choreograph West End productions, with variety performances at Drury Lane and the Hippodrome among his notable credits.

Reader's most enduring contribution to British entertainment grew from his continued involvement with the Scout movement. In 1932 he anonymously staged an all-Scout variety show at the Scala Theatre, London, titled The Gang's All Here, which featured approximately 150 Boy Scouts performing sketches, songs, and dance numbers across three performances. A follow-up production, The Gang Comes Back, played to capacity houses at the Scala the following year. By 1934 the series had acquired the title Gang Show, and Reader publicly acknowledged his role as producer. In 1936 he wrote and directed a dramatic pageant called The Boy Scout, performed by a cast of 1,500 Scouts at the Royal Albert Hall, and that same year wrote and played the lead in a feature film also called The Gang Show, which premiered at the Lyceum Theatre, London, in April 1937. In November 1937, Scout performers became the first amateurs to appear at a Royal Variety Performance, sharing the bill with Gracie Fields, George Formby, and Max Miller.

Reader's prewar Gang Show work brought him into contact with Air Commodore Archibald Boyle, deputy director of RAF Intelligence, who persuaded him to accept a commission as a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. When war broke out, Boyle dispatched Reader to France for undercover intelligence work conducted under the cover of a concert party, Ralph Reader and Ten Blokes from the Gang Show, which recruited former Gang Show members into the RAF. Back in England, Reader was ordered to expand the Gang Shows across RAF stations, a role that simultaneously served morale and allowed him to monitor subversive propaganda. He ultimately raised twenty-four RAF Gang Show units and two WAAF units, comprising nearly four hundred serving personnel in total. These units toured theatres of war stretching from Iceland to Burma, and by 1944 were estimated to have travelled 100,000 miles and entertained 3,500,000 servicemen. Among those who served in the RAF Gang Shows were Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Harry Worth, Dick Emery, and Cardew Robinson. Reader was awarded an MBE in the Military Division in 1943 for his services to the Royal Air Force.

After the war Reader established his own production company, Ralph Reader Limited, reviving productions he had staged before the war. The first postwar Gang Show ran for three weeks at the Blackpool Opera House and broke the theatre's attendance records. From 1950 he produced the London Gang Show, typically staged at the Golders Green Hippodrome, and continued producing the Gang Show annually until 1974, maintaining his association with it until his death. He was appointed CBE in 1957 for services to the Boy Scouts Association and later named Chief Scout's Commissioner. In 1975 he received the Bronze Wolf, the sole distinction awarded by the World Scout Committee for exceptional services to world Scouting. Reader also led community singing at FA Cup Finals and was interviewed twice for the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs, in 1944 and 1961. He was the subject of This Is Your Life in November 1963, when Eamonn Andrews surprised him at the BBC Television Theatre. He published two volumes of autobiography: It's Been Terrific in 1953 and Ralph Reader Remembers in 1974.

Among the songs Reader wrote are "On the Crest of a Wave," "Strollin'," "No Show Like A Gang Show," and "Scout Hymn," along with numerous others composed for Scout Association productions. His film appearances include The Blue Squadron (1934), Limelight (1936), The Gang Show (1937), Splinters in the Air (1937), Derby Day (1952), and These Dangerous Years (1957).

Reader died on 18 May 1982, one week before his seventy-ninth birthday. Following his death, the Ralph Reader Memorial Fund was established to assist deserving members of the Scout and Guide Movements under the age of twenty. In May 1984 the Royal Air Force Gang Show Association unveiled a stone bench in his memory outside the Church of St Clement Danes in the Strand, London. A blue plaque was placed on his birthplace at 12 Court Barton, Crewkerne, in 2000, and a further blue plaque was unveiled on his childhood home in Heighton Road, Denton, Newhaven, in October 2011. The 2nd Denton Scouts bear the name Ralph Reader's Own in his honor.