Max Wall, last of the protean master-clowns of music hall, died early yesterday after a fall as he left his favourite restaurant, Simpson’s in the Strand.
He fractured his skull and did not regain consciousness. He was 82. ‘I suppose he had a nice ending, dining with friends and telling showbusiness stories,’ said his agent, Joan Pritchard.
Max Wall died, not in obscurity as he had feared, but after a long Indian summer of fame during which critics applied the praise he had always craved ‘genius’.
The star, who in the 1930s played golf with King Edward VIII, still lived in the one-bedroom south London council flat for which he had paid £10 a week before his comeback in the 1970s as an actor mesmeric in Beckett and Pinter.
On doctor’s advice, he had not for several years performed as the double-jointed and mournful Professor Wallofski, an act which led him to be compared as a clown to Grock and Dan Leno.
His death prompted homage from his profession, but also yielded an ironic example of ‘the comedy of incongruity’, as Wall used to define his art. Charlie Chester, the comedian, said: ‘He had a chip on his shoulder. He always blamed his mother for not giving him the right education to be an RAF officer.’
Wall listed his education as ‘private’, a euphemism for non-existent. His grandmother was a music hall dancer, his father a ‘Scottish eccentric dancer and comic singer’. His childhood was in the halls. His professional stage debut was at 14 in Mother Goose.
His first variety billing was as Max Wall and his Independent Legs. He was a stage star in the 1930s, and a radio star in the 1940s and 1950s. But publicity over a marital break-up got him blacked by producers for 15 years.
Ernie Wise, who first worked with him in the Jack Hylton band in 1939, said: ‘Max was a melancholy type of comedian, more depressive than optimistic. He didn’t suffer fools gladly.’
Mr Chester said: ‘He was a brilliant comic, but he was not a loveable man. He could be very aggressive. But he was one of the last great music hall comics.’
Frankie Howerd said: ‘Max was one of the great music hall acts I used to watch and hero-worship. I found him extremely kind.’
Wall once said: ‘When I go on stage, I am entering the lion’s den and I have to win. I just tell them, you may not think a lot of me but you are looking at a genius and you are going to find that out.’
He was married and divorced three times. One of his great later sadnesses was his estrangement from five children by his first marriage. His agent said his son Meredith was at his bedside after the independent legs had failed him yesterday.
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