- Karno was the founder and head of The Karno Company, a famous leading British comedy theatrical touring company in the early Twentieth Century. His players included Charles Chaplin, his brother Syd Chaplin, and Stan Laurel.
- Father of Fred Karno Jr..
- Karno worked in a factory at the age of fourteen, then as a plumber and circus acrobat. By the 1890's, he performed silent pantomime in music halls.
- In 1929 briefly worked in Hollywood for Hal Roach before returning to England.
- Originated and polished up many classic gags of silent slapstick, such as the 'custard pie in the face' routine.
- After his production company went out of business, he became co-proprietor of an off-license (wine and beer shop) in Lilliput, Dorset.
- Among the music hall comedians who worked for him were Charlie Chaplin and his understudy, Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later adopted the name of Stan Laurel. These were alumni of his comedy companies all of whom trained at his headquarters, The Fun Factory, in Vaughan Road, Camberwell.
- On 27 May 1927 his wife Edith, from whom he had been separated since 1904, died in her sleep of diabetes. Karno then was able to marry his long-time partner, Marie Moore.
- A chance encounter at a gymnasium led to Karno taking up acrobatics, and around 1882 Karno joined forces with an older performer called Olvene, and ran away with the circus. He subsequently worked as a solo acrobat and as part of a troupe called The Four Aubreys.
- Frederick John Westcott was best known by his stage name Fred Karno. He was an English theatre impresario of the British music hall.
- Karno's comedy companies were the basis of a trilogy of novels by Chris England.
- Karno spent his last years in southwest England in the village of Lilliput, Dorset, as a part-owner of an off-licence, and died there in 1941 from diabetes, aged 75.
- Karno's houseboat, the Astoria, on the River Thames at Hampton, Middlesex, is now used as a recording studio by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour.
- Karno's fame was that his name became associated with any chaotic situation, and the disorganised volunteer soldiers of the Great War labelled themselves "Fred Karno's Army", a phrase still occasionally used in the UK to refer to a chaotic group or organisation. The phrase was also adapted into a trench song in the First World War, to the tune of the hymn "The Church's One Foundation".[4] In the Second World War it was adapted as the Anthem of the Guinea Pig Club, the first line becoming "We are McIndoe's Army ...". The song also features in the musical comedy film Oh! What a Lovely War (1969).
- As a comedian of slapstick he is credited with popularising the custard-pie-in-the-face gag. During the 1890s, in order to circumvent stage censorship, Karno developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue.
- Karno's role in Charlie Chaplin's rise to fame was highlighted in the biopic Chaplin (1992), where Karno was played by British actor John Thaw. The film included a brief routine based on Karno's sketch Mumming Birds.
- As a young man he had busked at Molesey near Tagg's Island on London's River Thames and in 1912 he leased the island and the existing hotel. He demolished the original hotel and hired architect Frank Matcham to build The Karsino. With the advent of cinema, the music hall's popularity declined and as a result of this decline, Karno went bankrupt in 1927.
- On his return to Britain in 1930, Karno launched a show called Laffs which was later licensed by George Black (producer) as the basis of shows for the newly formed Crazy Gang (comedy group). He later helped to write and produce several short films, some of which starred members of the Gang.
- Karno went to the US in September 1929, and was hired by the Hal Roach Studios as a writer-director, thanks to the support of one of his former protégés, Stan Laurel. However, his stay at the studio was brief and unsuccessful. Hal Roach later claimed that Karno's main abilities were as a producer, although in reality Karno appears to have been the victim of cost cutting at the studio following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. He left the studio in February 1930 and returned to England later that Spring.
- Karno's reputation and legacy was significantly tarnished by a salacious biography: Master of Mirth and Tears (1971) by J. P. Gallagher, but this text has now been largely discredited by the 2021 biography by David B Crump: Fred Karno, the Legend Behind the Laught.
- Karno was also an innovator: he brought slapstick circus comedy to the music hall and developed possibly the first use of the revolve in Britain, bought together troupes of comics and in so doing developed sketch comedy; he was instrumental in establishing copyright protections for stage productions against the threat from film; and was a pioneer of adding musical accompaniment to stage slapstick.
- On 30 September 2012, the Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America unveiled a commemorative blue plaque to Karno at his former studios at 38 Southwell Road, Camberwell, in south London.
- Many of his comics subsequently worked in film and used Karno material throughout their work. Film producer Hal Roach stated: "Fred Karno is not only a genius, he is the man who originated slapstick comedy. We in Hollywood owe much to him.".
- Karno was hugely influential on comedy - not least in recruiting and training a generation of comics who went on to fame and fortune in their own right, notably: Stan Laurel, Charlie Chaplin, Will Hay, Fred Kitchen (entertainer), Syd Walker, Sydney Chaplin, Eric Campbell (actor), Sandy Powell (comedian), Max Miller (comedian), Frank Randle, Billie Ritchie, Billy Bennett (comedian), Walter Groves, Billy Reeves, Jimmy Nervo, of Nervo and Knox, and many more. These comedians were the backbone of British variety throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and many were recruited by fledgling studios in Hollywood as the cream of physical slapstick comedy.
- His father was a cabinet maker, although Karno's first career was as a plumber's apprentice.
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