Jimmy Jewel
James Arthur Thomas Jewel Marsh, known professionally as Jimmy Jewel, was an English comedian and actor whose long career in stage, radio, television and film productions, included a 32-year partnership with his cousin Ben Warriss.
Career
The son of a comedian and actor who also used the stage name Jimmy Jewel, the younger performer made his stage debut, aged four, in Robinson Crusoe in Barnsley, then worked with his father from the age of ten. He subsequently became stage manager for the family's touring music hall show.When young, Jimmy started his own act. His father initially refused to let him use the stage name Jimmy Jewel, so he performed as Maurice Marsh; the name was chosen because he was often seen doing Maurice Chevalier impressions. He made his first London stage appearance at the Bedford Music Hall, Camden Town in 1925.
Jewel and Warriss
Jewel and Ben Warriss were first cousins and were brought up in the same household, even being born in the same bed. Jewel worked as a solo act until 1934, before forming an enduring double act with Warriss, initially at the Palace Theatre, Newcastle. They toured Australia and America, as well as appearing in the 1946 Royal Variety Performance and five pantomimes for Howard & Wyndham Ltd at the Opera House, Blackpool, Lancashire.The pair had a major success with the BBC radio series Up the Pole, which began in October 1947, and cast them as proprietors of an Arctic trading post. Each episode included a musical interlude, sometimes provided by Julie Andrews, then a child performer. Only one episode is known to survive in the BBC Archives.
The two men were also top of the bill in two London Palladium shows, Gangway and High Time, and made regular television appearances in the 1950s and 1960s. I addition, the duo had the lead roles in the short-lived 1962 comedy series It's a Living.
Post-1966
After splitting from Warriss in 1966, and having done a stint working as a joiner and bricklayer, Jewel appeared in a Comedy Playhouse and two ITV Playhouse productions. He also played a murderous quick-change vaudeville artist in a 1968 episode of The Avengers. He then starred in the sitcom Nearest and Dearest with Hylda Baker, playing bickering brother-and-sister pickle factory owners Eli and Nellie Pledge. The show ran from 1968 to 1973, with a stage version appearing in 1970 and a film in 1972. As their characters hurled insults at each other on screen, the insults would continue off screen as well, as the two performers disliked each other intensely.While Nearest and Dearest was running, Jewel had a regular role in the short-lived 1969 sitcom Thicker Than Water, and made an appearance in the 1970 film The Man Who Had Power Over Women. He then starred in the comedy series Spring & Autumn as retired railway worker Tommy Butler. He also developed a distinguished stage career, initially by playing the jaded tutor, Eddie Waters, in the controversial Trevor Griffiths play Comedians. In addition, he starred in The Sunshine Boys, as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion, and in You Can't Take It with You at the Royal National Theatre.
In the early 1980s, Jewel made appearances in the children's series Worzel Gummidge and two episodes of Play For Today. He then starred in Funny Man, a 1981 series about a family music hall act, based by writer Adele Rose on that of Jewel's own father. In 1984, he played the part of a devoted greenkeeper in the Channel 4 comedy drama Arthur's Hallowed Ground. In 1986, he had a regular role in the BBC crime drama Hideaway.
In the 1990s, then in his eighties, Jewel continued to make appearances in film and television. He appeared as Cannonball Lee, the boxing-loving grandfather of the Kray twins in the 1990 film The Krays, and as fellow Sheffielder Michael Palin's father in American Friends. On television, he appeared in the 1990 ITV play Missing Persons, and also appeared in episodes of One Foot in the Grave and Casualty. His final screen appearance was in a 1993 episode of Lovejoy.