THE LION COMIQUE OF 276 CARLTON AVE (1930)
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The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
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Fred Roberts was known in the “seventies” as one of the great comic singers of the variety show. He sang the topical and comic songs that were then popular, often making them well-known himself.
Brought over from London by the legendary Harrigan & Hart, Roberts had been known in the English music halls as a “Lion Comique” – a music hall character that was the heart throb of the Victorian era, holding the same cult status as today’s boy bands.
According to The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class and Conflict, the songs the lions comiques sang were “hymns of praise to the virtues of idleness, womanising and drinking.” In Roberts’ songs, he “deliberately distorted social reality for amusement and escapism.”
One critic in the late 19th century remarked that the Lions Comiques were “men who set women just a little higher than their bottle.”
Roberts was to be Harrigan & Hart’s answer to the popularity of the famous impresario, Tony Pastor. He soon had a string of hits that were “hummed and whistled around the town” from the 1870s through to the early 20th century when he retired.
Roberts’ first song, “Oh, Fred, Tell Them to Stop,” was such a huge hit that he decided to stay in the U.S. and become a citizen. Roberts went on to have many more now-forgotten hits, with such anachronistic titles as “Whoa, Emma,” “Dear Little Innocent Things They Are,” “Swell of the Day,” and “It Makes No Difference What You Were, It’s What You Are To-day.”
Roberts, along with his wife, finally retired from the stage in 1901, settling in comfortably at 1032 Bedford Avenue (in the liquor trade), then 683 Park Place (working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard), followed finally by 276 Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn (where, at 72 in 1930, he was a stock clerk in the Sewer Department).
The Lion Comique’s last engagement was at Keith’s Theatre on Union Square. Roberts quit the stage likely because the profession was not kind to the aging actor. He ended up, though, working for the City in a civil service position, where he was still working when he passed in September of 1930.
To listen to Fred’s first song in the States, “Oh, Fred Tell Them to Stop!,” on WNYC from a 1949 radio show (skip to 9:05).
And, of course, feel free to sing along with the lyrics!
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