Get It On...Bang A Gong...
Ken Richmond has passed away...
WHO?
You could be forgiven for not knowing who he is or the news not being reported much. I'll be honest I did not know who he was either but for a chance mention on a local radio show in London by a presenter up on many things media based, I'd be none the wiser.
There is also a connection with Carl Dane and "Bombardier" Billy Wells(A name that I had vaguely heard of)and Carl Dane.
So what do they all have in common? They all banged a gong...
Anyone who watches an old film produced by the J Arthur Rank company at the cinema and assuming television companies show films from the start will have seen all the above.
How observant am I? I never gave it a thought or studied whether it was the same person at the start of a Rank film, I assumed once the opening was filmed it was just tagged onto all of their studio's output. After all so many studios have kept the same logo for their product over the years although I suppose even those that use drawn or computer graphics change them every so often.
Richmond has talked of how he received a one off payment of £100 for the work and that the gong was a papier mâché mock-up. I have noticed myself that he never actually hits it. Just places his hammer close to it.
He appeared in a lot of films as an extra but was a super-heavyweight freestyle wrestling champion.
He represented England in various Olympic and Commonwealth games during the 1950's taking various medals.
An interesting character, he was awarded a medal windsurfing at the age of 67.
Richmond was still used until Rank announced last year that it was preparing to sell its last remaining film assets.
Some information of the other Rank gong bangers...
Carl Dane, a 6ft 5in former circus strongman, was the first gong-banger. He started in 1932 and was still banging on in 1948. Because of deteriorating film stock, the sequence had to be refilmed every three years.
Billy Wells was a former heavyweight boxer. He was said to have been one of the best fighters of the last century but I suppose it depends on the competition at the time.
I am sure that there are many books full of trivia and a few articles on the net that give much more detail.
Here's a link to one such article.
Ken Richmond
WHO?
You could be forgiven for not knowing who he is or the news not being reported much. I'll be honest I did not know who he was either but for a chance mention on a local radio show in London by a presenter up on many things media based, I'd be none the wiser.
There is also a connection with Carl Dane and "Bombardier" Billy Wells(A name that I had vaguely heard of)and Carl Dane.
So what do they all have in common? They all banged a gong...
Anyone who watches an old film produced by the J Arthur Rank company at the cinema and assuming television companies show films from the start will have seen all the above.
How observant am I? I never gave it a thought or studied whether it was the same person at the start of a Rank film, I assumed once the opening was filmed it was just tagged onto all of their studio's output. After all so many studios have kept the same logo for their product over the years although I suppose even those that use drawn or computer graphics change them every so often.
Richmond has talked of how he received a one off payment of £100 for the work and that the gong was a papier mâché mock-up. I have noticed myself that he never actually hits it. Just places his hammer close to it.
He appeared in a lot of films as an extra but was a super-heavyweight freestyle wrestling champion.
He represented England in various Olympic and Commonwealth games during the 1950's taking various medals.
An interesting character, he was awarded a medal windsurfing at the age of 67.
Richmond was still used until Rank announced last year that it was preparing to sell its last remaining film assets.
Some information of the other Rank gong bangers...
Carl Dane, a 6ft 5in former circus strongman, was the first gong-banger. He started in 1932 and was still banging on in 1948. Because of deteriorating film stock, the sequence had to be refilmed every three years.
Billy Wells was a former heavyweight boxer. He was said to have been one of the best fighters of the last century but I suppose it depends on the competition at the time.
I am sure that there are many books full of trivia and a few articles on the net that give much more detail.
Here's a link to one such article.
Ken Richmond
posted by The Great Gildersleeve | 11:07 am
2 Comments:
That's a good pub quiz question Gildy! I shall store it for the occasion :-)
P.S. Again...posts appearing...I definitely looked here on Tuesday and there was no new post!
Hello Span,
Do you think posts disappear whilst they are being edited? So that if you look they are not accessable?
You might have them stumped with a question about Ken as probably many will automatically think of Billy Wells.
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