Ben Travers
Ben Travers was an English playwright born on November 12, 1886, in Hendon, Middlesex. Educated at Charterhouse School, he initially pursued a career in business but ultimately found his calling in theater after working at the John Lane Company. His military service during World War I in the Royal Navy Air Service and later the Royal Air Force marked a significant period in his life before he turned to writing plays. Travers gained prominence for his farces, particularly during his time with London's Aldwych Theatre from 1925 to 1933, where he produced a series of successful works that showcased physical comedy and the everyday struggles of ordinary characters in absurd situations. His plays, such as "A Cuckoo in the Nest," were later adapted into films, further solidifying his influence. Even into his later years, Travers continued to write and adapt his works for television, emphasizing dialogue over physicality. He received several accolades for his contributions to theater, including a CBE in 1976. Travers passed away on December 12, 1980, leaving behind a legacy of humorous and imaginative theatrical works.
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Ben Travers
- Born: November 12, 1886
- Birthplace: Hendon, Middlesex, England
- Died: December 18, 1980
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Ben Travers was born in Hendon, Middlesex, England, on November 12, 1886. He was educated at the Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey, England. He attempted to work in business after his schooling but did not take well to commercial pursuits. Finally, he began work with the John Lane Company, a publishing firm. In World War I, Travers joined the Royal Navy Air Service, and then the Royal Air Force.
After the war, Travers tried writing for the theater. His first play, The Dippers, was produced in 1922. Beginning in 1925, Travers wrote a series of very popular farces for London’s Aldwych Theatre, which came to be known as the Aldwych Farces. He wrote these plays quickly, remarking in interviews that the Aldwych director and actor, Tom Walls, would often ask him to write a new play as soon as Walls felt the current one was beginning to lag in ticket sales. This period of activity lasted until 1933. The farces proved very successful and brought considerable fame to the actors for whom Travers wrote, including Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn, and J. Robertson Hare. Walls profited in particular and directed the farces with the Aldwych actors for the Gaumont-British film company. For instance, Travers’s play A Cuckoo in the Nest, produced in 1925, was adapted into a film released in 1933.
Although he wrote many successful plays after this, the Aldwych period is the time in Travers’s career which is most often mentioned in biographical discussions. However, Travers also wrote other original screenplays and kept writing new works throughout the next decades. He remained active for most of his life. In 1970, at the age of eighty-three, he adapted several of his Aldwych Farces for television production by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Although his original stage works relied heavily on physical comedy, he rewrote them to emphasize dialogue, feeling that verbal wit would work better on television than the energetic physical action which succeeded on stage. When he was ninety, he wrote a comedy of manners, Hammersmith.
Many of Travers’s plays are noted for their highly imaginative plot events which happen to characters who seem to be ordinary people. The characters are not meant to be wildly funny in themselves, but rather to be amusing in the ways they attempt to maintain a sense of normalcy in very abnormal situations. Travers’s stage plays generally relied heavily on physical comedy which required a good sense of timing by actors and directors, but his screenplays tended toward more verbal humor, for he found the stage presence of the comic actors did not “translate” well to the screen.
In 1976, Travers was awarded a Special Standard Drama Award for his lifelong service to the theater, and on Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday in that year he was awarded the title of Commander of the British Empire (CBE). Although most respected for his humorous theatrical work, Travers also published novels and works of nonfiction, including two autobiographies and a book about the game of cricket. Travers died on December 12, 1980.