Leslie Sarony

Sarony was born in Surbiton, Surrey, England,[1] the son of William Henry Frye, alias William Rawstorne Frye, an Irish-born artist and photographer, and his wife, Mary Sarony, who was born in New York City.[2] He was christened as Leslie Legge Tate Frye at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Twickenham, on 5 May 1898.[3]

He began his stage career aged 14, with the group Park Eton's Boys.[1] In 1913 he appeared in the revue, Hello Tango.[1]

In World War I, Sarony served (as Private Leslie Sarony Frye) in the London Scottish Regiment and the Royal Army Medical Corps in France and Salonika,[1] and was awarded the Silver War Badge.[4]

His stage credits after the war include revues, pantomimes and musicals, including the London productions of Show Boat and Rio Rita.[1]

Sarony became well known in the 1920s and 1930s as a variety artist and radio performer. In 1928, he made a short film in the Phonofilm sound-on-film system, Hot Water and Vegetabuel. In this film he sang, interspersed with his comic patter, the two eponymous songs – the first as a typical Cockney geezer outside a pub, the second (still outside the pub) as a less typical vegetable rights campaigner ("Don't be cruel to a vegetabuel").

He went on to make recordings of novelty songs, such as "He Played his Ukulele as the Ship Went Down",[5][6] including several with Jack Hylton and his Orchestra. He teamed up with Leslie Holmes in 1933 under the name 'The Two Leslies'.[1] The partnership lasted until 1946.[1] Their recorded output included such numbers as "I'm a Little Prairie Flower".

His 1929 song "Jollity Farm", was recorded by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band on their 1967 album Gorilla.[7]

Sarony continued to perform into his eighties, moving on to television and films.[1] In the 1970s, he appeared in hit programmes including the Harry Worth Show, Crossroads, Z-Cars, The Good Old Days, and The Liberace Show, as well as the sitcom Nearest and Dearest. In 1975 he appeared in "Ringer", the first episode of hard-hitting police drama The Sweeney, in which he played a police informant known as 'Soldier'.

He took over from Bert Palmer as the senile Uncle Stavely ("I heard that! Pardon?") in the fourth and final series of I Didn't Know You Cared in 1979. In 1983 Sarony appeared as one of a number of elderly insurance clerks in The Crimson Permanent Assurance segment of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

He died in London, aged 88.[1] His sons are: Neville Sarony QC, a prominent practising barrister and author (The Dharma Expedient) in Hong Kong; Peter Sarony, a successful gunsmith with a business in London; and Paul Sarony, an independent film producer (Mrs Brown, Hideous Kinky, Shine).

• Aunt Sally (1933)
• Soldiers of the King (1933)
• Where's George? (1935)
• Sunshine Ahead (1936)
• When You Come Home (1948)
• Game for Three Losers (1965)
• It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet (1977)
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)

• "Don't Be Cruel to a Vegetabuel" (1928)
• "Don't Do That to the Poor Puss Cat" (1928)
• "Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors" (1928, featured in Jeeves and Wooster)
• "I Lift Up My Finger (and I Say 'Tweet Tweet')" (1929, featured in Jeeves and Wooster and in Mother Riley Meets the Vampire)
• "Jollity Farm" (1929)
• "Mucking About the Garden" (1929)
• "The Alpine Milkman" (1930)
• "Gorgonzola" (1930)
• "Icicle Joe the Eskimo" (1931)
• "Rhymes" (1931)
• "Jolly Good Company" (A-side Eclipse record No. 122, copyright Campbell, Connelly & Co)
• "Let's Sing the Song Father Used to Sing" (B-side Eclipse record No. 122, copyright Campbell, Connelly & Co)
• "Ain't It Grand to Be Bloomin' Well Dead" (1932)
• "Wheezy Anna" (1933)
• "Coom Pretty One" (1934)
• "I Took My Harp to a Party" (Carter-Gay) A-side Rex 8063 A (B-side "Why Build a Wall 'Round a Graveyard?") (Sarony) (1934)
• "The Old Sow (Susannah's a Funniful Man)" (1935)
• "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line" (1939)
• "The Flirtation Waltz" (1952)

"Bunkey-doodle-I-doh" was the B-side of "Jollity Farm" by the International Novelty Orchestra on Zonophone 5513 (pressing no. 30-2138). "Jollity Farm" was pressing no. 30-2139.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Leslie Sarony

• Leslie Sarony at IMDb
• Leslie Sarony at the Internet Broadway Database
• Hot Water and Vegetabuel at screenonline
• Jollity Farm on YouTube