Tribute to Bernard Spear
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About Me
- Ron Goldstein
- Born in 1923. Army service covered at BBC WW2 ARCHIVES and duplicated on Ron Goldsteins Army Album. My Album, Page by Page, is on show at Rons ACTUAL Army Album .(The original document and my illustrated memoirs are now held at the Imperial War Museum, Cat.No.20177). In addition to Computing, my other, earlier, hobby is Numismatics and my Blog site is: A poor man's guide to Ancient Coins or have a look at:Peter's Weborama 2006 and visit my potted history entitled: Ron's Coin Collection. Finally,I can also be found at "The Gang of 4s" own World War 2 Blog Site :2ndWW and at the WW2 Forum ww2talk My e-mail is ron_goldsteinATbtopenworld.com (replace the AT with the @ sign)
1 comment:
On the 28th May 2003 Monty Meth wrote the following comment to the Times: Your obituary of Bernard Spear (May 23) justly paid tribute to his long and successful career on stage and screen, but his success almost certainly stemmed from his roots in the Jewish East End from which he drew his artistic strength, ideas and ability to play so many roles with conviction and humour.
Not that there was much laughter in his early life, living first in Hoxton and then moving to Teesdale Street in Bethnal Green, the heart of the prewar tailoring sweatshops, where unemployment and slum dwellings with no baths were the prevalent features.
Teesdale Street was on the fringe of the area where Mosley´s Fascists held their street-corner meetings every Friday evening, and Bernard was among those young Jewish lads who played their part in the anti-Fascist struggles of the 1930s before joining the Forces in 1939.
Along with the award-winning film director Lewis Gilbert, Bernard was an outstanding member of the Cambridge and Bethnal Green Boys Club – the first Jewish club in the East End to open its doors to all faiths in an attempt to stem the advance of Mosley´s blackshirts – and he never forgot those early days, coming back each year to the reunion dinner where he was always billed as Bernard Spear sending everyone home with racy Jewish jokes that he rattled off rapidly, which we could never recall because we were so engulfed in laughter.
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