Val Stanton

Val Stanton, born Valentine Walter Burch on October 17, 1886, in England, was an actor, vaudeville performer, and athlete who worked under the professional name Val Stanton. He died on January 25, 1967, in Uniondale, New York, at the age of 80. Television personality Steve Allen, whose birth name was Stephen Valentine Allen, was named after Stanton.

Stanton came from a deeply theatrical family. His father, Walter Stanton, was a stage performer known as a rooster chanticleer impersonator nicknamed "The Giant Rooster," and his mother, Annie, performed under the name "Tina Corri" as a male impersonator. His maternal lineage extended into the Corri family of opera singers from Dublin, which included his great-grandfather Haydn Corri, a noted organist, and Haydn's father Domenico Corri, an Italian composer. His cousin Eugene Corri was a prominent boxing referee in London. Walter Stanton tutored both Val and his brother Ernie in the performing arts and also tutored Charlie Chaplin. Stanton began performing at the age of five, and his father wrote a sketch for him called "The Page," which he performed alongside his parents. He also studied stage craft under George Augustus Conquest at the Royal Grecian Theatre in London, and made his first stage appearance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1895.

The Stanton family immigrated to Chicago in 1898, settling there for approximately two years before relocating to New York City. Among Stanton's early acts was a duet with his mother billed as "Tina and Val Corri." Val and his brother Ernie eventually formed a vaudeville comedy team, making their first joint appearance in 1909 in a sketch Val had written called "Who Stole the Shoes?", described as a red-nose variety act in the English music hall tradition. The brothers billed themselves as "The Men Who Laugh and Make the World Laugh With Them" and were also known as "The English Boys from America." They declined individual offers to perform separately, choosing to remain a team. In their act, Ernie played the harmonica while Val played the ukulele. Contemporary accounts described them as "Undoubtedly one of the best comedy talking acts in vaudeville."

In 1925, the Stanton brothers recorded an eight-minute short in London as part of an early Vitaphone project. In 1928, they appeared in two Vitaphone Varieties films produced by Warner Bros.: English as She is Not Spoken and Cut Yourself a Piece of Cake. That same year, Stanton made his Broadway appearance in the musical Billie. His film career spanned several decades and included roles in Stage Struck (1936), Prison Train (1938), and Duke of the Navy (1942), in which he played a character named Sniffy. He also appeared in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Hangover Square (1945), among other productions. In 1940, he served as the uncredited stunt model for Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney's Pinocchio. His collaborators over the course of his career included Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Frank Morgan, Errol Flynn, Ralph Bellamy, and Walt Disney.

Outside of performing, Stanton was an accomplished athlete, primarily in baseball and golf. In his first baseball game in Philadelphia, he batted 1.000 in five at-bats. In 1922, he and his brother Ernie co-founded the National Vaudeville Artists Baseball Club. Ernie served as manager and pitcher, while Val acted as team photographer and occasional substitute player. Babe Ruth and Waite Hoyt were among the club's members and were personal friends of Stanton.

Stanton married his first wife, Jennie McDade, on April 24, 1909, in Brooklyn, New York. The couple had three daughters: Doris, born in 1914; Marjorie, born in 1915; and Virginia, born in 1918. Jennie died in 1920 from influenza at the age of 29. In 1921, his three-year-old daughter Virginia, nicknamed "Mickey Stanton," made newspaper headlines after causing former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to laugh by lifting her skirt to show him her bloomers, an occasion reported as the last time Wilson was seen in public. Stanton relocated to Los Angeles in the late 1920s and remarried a woman named Frances, known by the nickname "Eva," who died on August 23, 1933. He married a third wife, Marie Harrington, the following year. His father Walter lived with him in the late 1930s until Walter's death in 1943.

In 1944, Ernie Stanton died unexpectedly in a restaurant approximately one hour before the brothers were scheduled to perform. Val accompanied his brother in the ambulance and was present when Ernie was pronounced dead. That same evening, Val performed the act alone before a sold-out audience, none of whom were aware of what had occurred. He fainted after the show. Stanton remained in Los Angeles until approximately 1948, after which he returned to New York and lived in Oyster Bay. His daughter Marjorie died in 1952, and his daughter Virginia died in 1966.