Comedians who have cited Hay as an influence include Ken Dodd, [43] Eric Morecambe, Tommy Cooper, Harry Worth, [22] Harry Enfield, Jimmy Perry and David Croft. [10] Ronnie Barker also cited Hay as an influence, and in 1976 hosted a documentary on BBC Radio that discussed Hay's life and career. [6] Legacy [ edit ] The Will Hay Appreciation Society's 'Buggleskelly' memorial bench to Will Hay and his co-stars, unveiled on Sunday 14 October 2018 in Cliddesden, Hampshire, the filming location for 'Oh, Mr. Porter!' The Will Hay Appreciation Society' was founded in 2009 by British artist Tom Marshall and aims to preserve Hay's legacy and bring his work to a new generation of fans. As of October 2023, the organisation has over 8000 members. [44] The Will Hay Appreciation Society unveiled a memorial bench to Will Hay, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt in October 2018, in Cliddesden, Hampshire, the filming location for 'Buggleskelly' in Oh, Mr. Porter!. The bench was unveiled by Pete Waterman. [45] Hay decided to become an actor when he was 21 after watching W. C. Fields perform a juggling act in Manchester. In the early years of the twentieth century Hay experienced some moderate success as a stand-up comedian and an after-dinner speaker. [5] Hay's first professional job came when he was offered a contract to perform at a theatre in Belper. [5] In 1914 Hay began working with the impresario Fred Karno who had previously helped Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin achieve success. He worked with Karno for four years. [5] He first performed his schoolmaster character in 1910 which he based upon a colleague of his sister, who was a teaching mistress. [4] The characterisation was initially performed in drag as a schoolmistress, but he transferred the character to a headmaster. [6] a b c d e f g h i j k "Will Hay – Master of Comedy". YouTube. BBC Radio 4. 2 June 1976 . Retrieved 10 May 2017. Hay's work at Gainsborough was his most successful, and source of his reputation as a great comic actor. During this period he became one of the most prolific film stars in Britain. On three occasions, British film exhibitors voted him among the top ten box office stars in an annual poll run by the Motion Picture Herald. He was ranked 8th in 1936, 4th in 1937 and 3rd in 1938. [13]

In 1946 while on holiday, Hay suffered a stroke which left the right side of his body crippled and also affected his speech. He was told by his doctors that he would in all likelihood only make a partial recovery. [5] Following his stroke, he spent time in South Africa on the advice of his doctors, because of the climate. [6] His health had improved slightly by the following year, when he had plans to become a film producer but, in 1947, his friend Marcel Varnel, who had directed many of Hay's films, died in a car accident, and Hay postponed his plans. [5] Death [ edit ]

The film was produced by Gainsborough Pictures, distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and released on 28 August, 1939. Sergeant Dudfoot is talking about his life as a policeman at Turnbotham Round (pronounced Turn Bottom Round) during a radio broadcast. His staff Albert and Harbottle (played by Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott) enter after they have been poaching and Harbottle ruins the broadcast.

Hay, W.T. (1933). "The spot on Saturn". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 94: 85. Bibcode: 1933MNRAS..94...85H. doi: 10.1093/mnras/94.1.85 . Retrieved 11 May 2017.a b "Hay, William Thomson [Will] (1888–1949)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/37522. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Colonel Stephens' New Locomotives". The Colonel Stephens Railway Museum, Tenterden, Kent . Retrieved 13 May 2011. If you think the best Will Hay role isn't at the top, then upvote it so it has the chance to become number one. The greatest Will Hay performances didn't necessarily come from the best movies, but in most cases they go hand in hand. After a celebration in which Harbottle points out that Gladstone is ninety years old and Porter claims it is good for another ninety, the engine explodes. Porter, Harbottle and Albert lower their hats in respect. In the mid-1940s he semi-retired from show business to become a publican with his wife, Joyce Muriel Hazeldine, whom he married in June 1948 and remained married to for 17 years until his death in July 1965. Together, they ran the Swan Inn at Braybrooke (near Market Harborough), followed by the Englishcombe Inn at Bath. Whilst landlord of the Swan Inn, Moffatt became good friends with local musician and actor Jim Dale who would often drink at the pub. [2]Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. PICTURES and PERSONALITIES". The Mercury. Hobart, Tas. 10 April 1937. p.5 National Library of Australia . Retrieved 27 April 2012.

Hay plays Benjamin Stubbins an incompetent solicitor with no clients, plenty of debt and fond of a drink. His daughter lives in a stately home with wealthy in laws who pretend to her that her father is doing well. I founded the Will Hay Appreciation Society in 2009 when writing my university dissertation about Hay and his films. Despite the majority of the film being set in Northern Ireland, none of the filming took place there; the railway station at Buggleskelly was the disused Cliddesden railway station on the Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway, which had closed to goods in 1936. [1] Oh, Mr Porter! was filmed at Cliddesden between May and July 1937. All the interior shots were made at Gainsborough Studios, Shepherds Bush, during the August. [2] The windmill in which Porter and his colleagues are trapped is located at Terling, Essex, [3] and "Gladstone", the ancient steam locomotive, was portrayed by No. 2 Northiam 2-4-0T built by Hawthorn Leslie in 1899 and loaned by the Kent and East Sussex Railway to the film. The engine was returned to the company after completion of the film and remained in service until 1941, when it was scrapped. [4] [5] In March 1952 he was admitted to hospital in Kettering after two weeks of hiccuping. [3] He still made sporadic cinema film appearances in minor parts, the last being in the 1963 film 80,000 Suspects, directed by Val Guest, who was a writer of many of the films that Moffatt starred in with Will Hay and Moore Marriott. [4] Personal life and death [ edit ]The humour of Hay's films has been described as subversive and similar to that of fellow English comedian Frank Randle. His films are often characterised as exhibiting traits of anti-authoritarianism and having a satirical approach towards how authority figures are portrayed. This is notable with Hay himself, who often played an incompetent authority figure who struggled not to be found out, but whose idiocy was discovered by those around him. [11] The film critic Barry Norman included it among his 100 best films of all time, and fellow critic Derek Malcolm also included the film in his Century of Films, describing it as "perfectly representing a certain type of bumbling British humour", [10] despite being directed by a Parisian director.