Anthony Newley

At 67 years old, Anthony Newley has this physical status:

Newley followed Dusty Bates with an appearance as Dick Bultitude in Peter Ustinov's Vice Versa (1948). One of the stars of the film was Kay Walsh, whose ex-husband David Lean was about to direct a screen version of Oliver Twist. Walsh rang Lean and told him, "I've found your Artful Dodger". During the 1950s, Newley made twenty-seven movies for J. Arthur Rank, many of them in the United States, "comfortably transitioning from child to adult actor". At this time he also performed national service. During the decade, Newley appeared in many British radio programmes, including as Cyril in Floggits, which starred Elsie and Doris Waters, and also "became increasingly involved with the theatre."

Newley starred in the 1958 film No Time to Die (also known as Tank Force). The following year, "[a] turning point came with a literally star-making role in the low-budget musical film", Idol on Parade. Newley was cast as a rock singer called up for national service in a story which was somewhat inspired by Elvis Presley, who had recently been drafted for army service in the United States. The performance cemented Newley's position as a leading man. The film also launched his career as a pop singer, with the song "I've Waited So Long" - which featured in the soundtrack - reaching number 3 in the UK charts. This was quickly followed by his number 6 hit "Personality" and then two number 1 hits in early 1960: "Why" (originally a 1959 US hit for Frankie Avalon) and "Do You Mind?" (written by Lionel Bart).

The ATV series The Strange World of Gurney Slade (1960) starred Newley, who was also its creator. A comedy series of six half-hour programmes, it develops from a premise established in the opening scene, Newley's character escapes from a television programme which is Gurney Slade itself. Now considered ahead of its time, the series was quickly moved from a peak-time slot.

His career both as a singer and a songwriter quickly went from strength to strength. In 1963, Newley won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year for having penned "What Kind of Fool Am I?". That year he also had a hit comedy album called Fool Britannia!, the result of improvisational satires of the British Profumo scandal of the time by a team of Newley, his then wife Joan Collins, and Peter Sellers. It peaked at number 10 in the UK Albums Chart in October 1963. Newley sang "Gonna Build a Mountain", "Once in a Lifetime", "On a Wonderful Day Like Today", "Who Can I Turn To?," "The Joker," and comic novelty songs such as "That Noise", "The Oompa-Loompa Song" and his version of "Pop Goes the Weasel". Newley also released a successful rendition of "Strawberry Fair", featuring his trademark cockney accent.

Among the many hit songs Newley wrote for others made hits are "Goldfinger" (the title song of the James Bond film, Goldfinger, music by John Barry), and "Feeling Good", which became a hit for Nina Simone and the rock band Muse, as well as a signature song for singer Michael Bublé. His compositions have been recorded by artists as diverse as Harry Connick, Jr. and Mariah Carey. Some of the many ballads he wrote, usually with Leslie Bricusse, became signature hits for Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley Bassey and Tony Bennett. The two men referred to themselves as the team of "Brickman and Newburg", with "Newburg" concentrating mainly on the music and "Brickman" on the lyrics. Ian Fraser often devised their arrangements.

Despite the fact that such compositions as "What Kind of Fool Am I?" and "The Candy Man" (a US Number One single for Sammy Davis Jr. and the Mike Curb Congregation in 1972) became international hits, Newley had less chart success in the United States as a recording artist, charting on the Billboard Hot 100 with four singles from 1960 to 1962, none reaching higher than number 67. However, he later had a number 12 hit on the Adult Contemporary charts in 1976 with "Teach the Children".

Throughout the 1960s, Newley enjoyed sustained success on London's West End theatre, on Broadway, in Hollywood films, and on British and American television. He and Bricusse also wrote musicals. Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, in which Newley also performed, earned him nomination for a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. A hit in London and on Broadway, it was made into a film version in 1966, in which Newley was unable to star owing to a schedule conflict. The other musicals for which he co-wrote music and lyrics with Bricusse included The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd (1965) and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), based on the children's book by Roald Dahl.

Newley played Matthew Mugg in the original Doctor Dolittle (1967), a difficult experience in part because of the hostility he endured from the lead actor, Rex Harrison, and he also played the repressed English businessman opposite Sandy Dennis in the original Sweet November (1968). He hosted Lucille Ball's character on a whirlwind tour of London in Lucy in London (1966). He performed in the autobiographical, Fellini-esque and X-rated Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969), which he also directed and co-wrote with Herman Raucher. The film is "a surrealist sex-drenched disaster that could only ever have been made in the more free-wheeling Sixties", and starred his then-wife, Joan Collins, who said that his self-serving behaviour prompted her to get a divorce.

Newley also directed the 1971 film Summertree, starring Michael Douglas and Brenda Vaccaro. He appeared as Quilp in Mister Quilp (1975) (based on Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop), for which he composed some songs ('Love Has the Longest Memory of All'). His last feature role, in the cast of the long-running British TV soap opera EastEnders, was to have been a regular role, but Newley had to withdraw after a few months when his health began to fail.

Newley's contributions to Christmas music are highlighted by his rendition of the "Coventry Carol" which appears on many anthologies. He also wrote and recorded a novelty Christmas song called "Santa Claus is Elvis", and recorded an album of spoken poetry.

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