Albert Chevalier

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Albert Chevalier
Albert Chevalier
Background information
Birth name	Albert Onesime Britannicus Gwathveoyd Louis Chevalier
Also known as	Albert Knight
Born	March 21, 1861 Notting Hill, London
Died	July 10, 1923 (aged 62)
Genre(s)	Music hall comedy
Occupation(s)	Actor

Albert Onesime Britannicus Gwathveoyd Louis Chevalier (March 21, 1861–July 10, 1923) was an English comedian and actor.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Bibliography 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Early life

Albert Chevalier was born in the Royal Crescent, in London's Notting Hill. The son of a French master at Kensington Grammar School, and a Welsh mother, he showed a keen interest in acting and performed The September Gale in a private family performance, when he was seven. In 1869, Albert premièred in public as Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar, in an amateur performance at the local Cornwall Hall. He joined another local amateur group, the Roscius Dramatic Club at the age of fourteen, adopting the stage name, Albert Knight^[1].

[edit] Career

In 1877, at sixteen, he was engaged as an actor under the Bancrofts in London, and for fourteen years played legitimate parts at the Court Theatre and elsewhere.

In 1891, however, he began a successful music hall career as a singer of coster songs of his own invention, a new type in which he had an immediate success, both in England and America. He subsequently organized an entertainment of his own, with sketches and songs, with which he went on tour, establishing a wide popularity as an original artist in his special line.

Chevalier performed several sentimental songs in his act; the most popular of these was My Old Dutch, about an old man's long happy marriage to his wife. The song's title is based on Cockney rhyming slang: in this case, "Dutch" is a shortening of the phrase "Duchess of Fife" which rhymes with "wife". The singer's "old dutch" is therefore his spouse. Chevalier also starred in a film entitled My Old Dutch. His own old dutch, was his wife, Florrie, the daughter of George Champagne Charlie Leybourne.

Albert died July 10, 1923, and is buried in Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, London, in the same plot as his father-in-law^[2].

[edit] Bibliography

• Before I Forget Albert Chevalier (1902)

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] External links

Albert Chevalier at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
NAME	Chevalier, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Chevalier, Albert Onesime Britannicus Gwathveoyd Louis
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Actor
DATE OF BIRTH	March 21, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH	Notting Hill, London
DATE OF DEATH	July 10, 1923
PLACE OF DEATH