Leslie Henson

Leslie Lincoln Henson (3 August 1891 – 2 December 1957) was an English comedian, actor, producer for films and theatre, and film director. He initially worked in silent films and Edwardian musical comedy and became a popular music hall comedian who enjoyed a long stage career. He was famous for his bulging eyes, malleable face and raspy voice and helped to form the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) during the Second World War.

Born in Notting Hill, London, Henson became interested in the theatre from an early age, writing and producing theatrical pieces while at school. He studied with "the Cairns–James School of Musical and Dramatic Art as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of 19. His first West End role was in Nicely, Thanks! (1912) and he later starred in several hit West End Edwardian musical comedies, including To-Night's the Night (1915) and Yes, Uncle! (1917). After briefly serving with the Royal Flying Corps, he was released from active service by the British government to help run a concert party called "The Gaieties", which provided entertainment for the troops during World War I. After the war, he returned to the West End, playing in Kissing Time (1919) and a series of musical comedies and farces throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

At the start of World War II, together with Basil Dean, he helped to form ENSA, with which he entertained British troops abroad. Henson's postwar stage success continued in revues, musicals and plays, including a West End adaptation of The Diary of a Nobody in 1955. Henson's film career was intermittent, and he made 14 films from 1916 to 1956. The most notable of these was Tons of Money in 1924, which introduced the popular Aldwych farces to British cinema audiences. In 1956, Henson's friend Bobby Hullett died in circumstances that struck him as suspicious. Henson anonymously notified the police that her doctor, John Bodkin Adams, should be investigated. Adams was subsequently tried for a different murder but acquitted.

Family and death

Henson was married three times, in each case to an actress:

* Marjorie Kate Farewell "Madge" Saunders, daughter of Edward Henry Master Saunders and Ellen Lucie Margaret White (died 1967), whom he married at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, Marylebone, London in 1919

* Gladys Gunn, in 1926

* Harriet "Billie" Dell, in 1944

He had two sons: one with Gladys – Joe, a farmer (born 1932), and one with Harriet – Nicky, an actor (born 1945). Joe founded Cotswold Farm Park; his son, Adam Henson, runs the park and is a TV presenter. Nicky's sons with ex-wife Una Stubbs are composers Christian and Joseph, and another son with wife Marguerite Porter is Keaton, a musician and artist.

Henson died at his home in Harrow Weald, Middlesex, in 1957, aged 66. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.

Bobby Hullett's death

On 23 July 1956, while in Dublin performing, Henson heard that his close friend Bobby Hullett had died in Eastbourne. Henson was suspicious because Hullett's husband had died just four months earlier and that Dr John Bodkin Adams had treated both of them. He telephoned the Eastbourne police anonymously to warn them of his fears, instigating an investigation into the death of Hullett. After Adams was acquitted in 1957 of the murder of another patient, Edith Alice Morrell, he was never tried for Hullett's murder. The Home Office pathologist at the time, Dr Francis Camps, noted 163 suspicious deaths among Adams's patients between 1946 and 1956.