Tom Walls

Tom Kirby Walls (18 February 1883 – 27 November 1949) was an English stage and film actor, producer and director, best known for presenting and co-starring in the Aldwych farces in the 1920s and for starring in and directing the film adaptations of those plays in the 1930s.

Walls spent his early years as an actor, from 1905, mostly in musical comedy, touring the British provinces, North America and Australia and in the West End. He specialised in comic character roles, typically flirtatious middle aged men. In 1922 he went into management in partnership with the comic actor Leslie Henson. They had an early success in the West End with a long-running farce, Tons of Money, after which Walls commissioned and staged a series of farces at the Aldwych Theatre that ran almost continuously over the next decade. He and his co-star Ralph Lynn were among the most popular British actors of their time.

In addition to his work in the theatre, Walls directed and acted in more than forty films between 1930 and 1949. Some of these were screen versions of the successful stage plays, others were specially-written comedies on similar lines, and there were also serious films, particularly later in Walls's career.

Away from acting, Walls's passion was horse racing. He set up stables at his home in Surrey and trained about 150 winners, including April the Fifth, his 1932 Derby winner.

Walls was born in Kingsthorpe, Northampton, the son of John William Walls, a plumber and builder, and his wife, Ellen, née Brewer. He was educated at Northampton County School, after which he tried a variety of jobs, working in Canada for a year and, on his return, joining the Metropolitan Police.

In 1905 Walls embarked on a stage career. His first engagement was as member of a seafront Pierrot troupe in Brighton. He played in pantomime in Aladdin at Glasgow in the 1905–06 season, under the management of Robert Courtneidge. He performed in a concert party and in musical comedy, touring the British provinces and North America as the Jester in The Scarlet Mysteries. In 1907 he made his West End debut, playing Ensign Ruffler in Sir Roger de Coverley at the Empire, Leicester Square.

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