Tony Award-winning comic Barry Humphries, internationally renowned for his garish stage persona Dame Edna Everage, a condescending and imperfectly-veiled snob whose evolving character has delighted audiences more than seven decades, has died. He was 89.
His dying in the Sydney healthcare facility, where he expended a number of times with difficulties subsequent hip operation, was confirmed by his family.
“He was fully himself until the incredibly close, never getting rid of his fantastic brain, his one of a kind wit and generosity of spirit,” a spouse and children statement stated.
”With above 70 several years on the phase, he was an entertainer to his core, touring up until eventually the past year of his lifetime and preparing additional exhibits that will regrettably never ever be,” they included.
Humphries had lived in London for decades and returned to native Australia in December for Christmas.
He advised The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper very last month that his physiotherapy experienced been “agony” pursuing his slide and hip replacement.
“It was the most absurd factor, like all domestic incidents are. I was achieving for a book, my foot bought caught on a rug or something, and down I went,” Humphries stated of his tumble.
Humphries has remained an active entertainer, touring Britain past 12 months with his a person-person show “The Gentleman Powering the Mask.”
The character of Dame Edna began as a dowdy Mrs. Norm Everage, who to start with took to the phase in Humphries’ hometown of Melbourne in the mid-1950s. She reflected a postwar suburban inertia and cultural blandness that Humphries observed stifling.
Edna is one of Humphries’ a number of enduring figures. The up coming most famed is Sir Les Patterson, an ever-drunk, disheveled and lecherous Australian cultural attache.
Patterson mirrored a notion of Australia as a Western cultural wasteland that drove Humphries together with quite a few main Australian intellectuals to London.
Humphries, a law school dropout, observed important achievements as an actor, author and entertainer in Britain in the 1970s, but the United States was an ambition that he located stubbornly elusive.
A significant level in the United States was a Tony Award in 2000 for his Broadway display “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paid out tribute to the celebrated comic.
“For 89 many years, Barry Humphries entertained us as a result of a galaxy of personas, from Dame Edna to Sandy Stone,” Albanese tweeted, referring to the melancholic and rambling Stone, 1 of Humphries most enduring figures. “But the brightest star in that galaxy was usually Barry. A good wit, satirist, author and an complete one particular-of-kind, he was both equally gifted and a present.”
British comedian Ricky Gervais tweeted: “Farewell, Barry Humphries, you comedy genius.”
Piers Morgan, British tv individuality, tweeted: “One of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”
“A wondrously intelligent, entertaining, daring, provocative, mischievous comedy Genius,” Morgan extra.
The multi-gifted Humphries was also a revered character actor with many phase and display credits, an writer of novels and an autobiography, and an accomplished landscape painter.
John Barry Humphries was born in Melbourne on Feb. 17, 1934. His mothers and fathers had been comfy, loving and strait-laced, and should have questioned about their eldest son, whom they known as Sunny Sam. His mom applied to explain to him to end drawing attention to himself.
Prior to he’d finished at the prestigious Melbourne Grammar Faculty, Humphries was far more fascinated in artwork and secondhand bookshops than soccer. At 16, his preferred creator was Kafka and later on mentioned he “felt a tiny foreign.”
He used two several years at Melbourne University, in which he embraced Dadaism — the subversive, anarchic and absurdist European artwork motion.
His contributions bundled “Pus In Boots,” water resistant rubber boots filled with custard, and, on the performance artwork facet, having on a tram with an evidently blind accomplice whom Humphries would kick in the shins whilst yelling “Get out of my way, you disgusting blind man or woman.”
In 1959, he settled in London and was shortly doing work in Peter Cook’s comedy location The Establishment. He performed Sowerberry in the authentic London production of “Oliver!” in 1960 and recurring the part on Broadway. He appeared with Spike Milligan and William Rushton in “Treasure Island.”
Humphries, with New Zealand artist Nicholas Garland, produced the Barry McKenzie comic strip for the satirical magazine Non-public Eye in 1964.
When the strips arrived out as a ebook, the Australian government banned it since it “relied on indecency for its humor.” Humphries professed delight at the publicity and implored authorities not to carry the ban.
By then Humphries’ consuming was out of manage. In Melbourne in late 1970, he was billed with becoming drunk and disorderly. He eventually admitted himself to a hospital specialising in alcoholism for the remedy that would convert him into a lifelong abstainer.
In 1972 arrived the to start with Barry McKenzie film — financially supported by the Australian govt, inspite of the previously ban. It was savaged by the critics, mainly since they trembled at what the world’s initially movie to function beer induced vomiting would do to Australia’s graphic overseas.
But it was a well-known results and a sequel two many years afterwards involved then Key Minister Gough Whitlam knighting Edna, who was McKenzie’s aunt.
Married 4 instances, he is survived by his spouse Lizzie Spender, four young children and 10 grandchildren.
