Billy Halop

Billy Halop Online (http://home.comcast.net/~shelga/index.html). After one experience during a gig there, the comedian Les Dawson refused to play the venue again. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide. Later it was rumoured that a ghost of Sid was in the dressing room he occupied on the night of his death. For the rest of his life, Billy Halop supplemented his nursing income with small TV and movie roles, gaining a measure of latter-day prominence as Archie Bunker's cab-driving pal Bert Munson on the '70s TV series All in the Family. He suffered a heart attack on the opening night of The Mating Season at the Sunderland Empire and died on the way to hospital at the age of 62. John's Hospital in Malibu. He later enjoyed success at the head of casts of TV situation comedies, notably George and the Dragon, Taxi and Bless This House.

In 1960, he married a multiple sclerosis victim, and the nursing skills he learned while taking care of his wife led him to steady work as a registered nurse at St. films all together. Diminishing film work, marital difficulties and a drinking problem eventually ate away at Halop's show business career. James ultimately made 19 Carry On.. A long-standing rivalry between Halop and fellow Dead-Ender Leo Gorcey (both actors wanted to be the leader of the gang) led to Billy's breakaway from the Dead End Kids and its offspring groups, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys, though Halop briefly starred in Universal's "Little Tough Guys" films. After serving in World War II, Halop found that he'd grown too old to be effective in the roles that had brought him fame; at one point he was reduced to starring in a cheap "East Side Kids" imitation at PRC studios, Gas House Kids (1946). star, but he had been dropped after just one film due to a complex contractual embarrassment (he was contracted to the ABC film studio who had never used him). After several years as a well-paid radio juvenile, Billy was cast as Tommy Gordon in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End (1935), where thanks to his previous credentials he was accorded star status. Traveling to Hollywood with the rest of the Dead End Kids when Samuel Goldwyn produced a film version of the play in 1937, Billy had no trouble lining up important roles, specializing in tough kids, bullies and reform school inmates in such major pictures as Dust be My Destiny (1939) and Tom Brown's School Days (1940). It was intended that Ray would become a recurring Carry On..

The original leader of the original "Dead End Kids," American actor Billy Halop came from a theatrical family; his mother was a dancer and his sister Florence Halop was a busy radio actress. When Hancock had Sid dropped from the show, Sid returned to films to become a leading member of the 'Carry On' team, originally to replace Ted Ray who had appeared in Carry On Teacher in 1959. February 11, 1920 - November 9, 1976. The show was one of the most popular comedy series in Britain on both television and radio. In the final series, the show was renamed simply Hancock and Sid was not included in the cast. James was soon getting as many laughs as his partner.

When this was turned into a television series his part was greatly increased to the extent that some viewers considered it to be a double act. In 1954 he began working with Tony Hancock in BBC radio's Hancock's Half Hour playing a character with his own name, who was a criminal who would usually manage to con Tony. In 1956, he co-starred in the science-fiction film Quatermass 2. In the same year he also appeared in Lady Godiva Rides Again and The Galloping Major.

His first major comedy was The Lavender Hill Mob: with Alfie Bass he made up the bullion robbery gang headed by Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway. Initially he worked in repertory before being spotted by the nascent British post-war film industry, making his first appearance in 1947 in the film Night Beat. He came to Britain in 1946 on the back of his service gratuity. During World War II, he was enlisted in an entertainment unit, and subsequently took up acting as a career.

Sid James (Sidney Joel Cohen) was born in Natal in South Africa. Sid James (May 8, 1913 - April 26, 1976) was a film and television actor.