Jerry Desmonde Movies and Career Information

Jerry Desmonde (20 July 1908 - 11 February 1967) was an English stage musical, film, and television actor principally in comedies and drama. He is probably best known as a straight man to Norman Wisdom. Jerry is sometimes credited as Jerry Desmond. Jerry Desmonde was born James Robert Sadler in Linthorpe, Middlesbrough into a family of music hall performers who toured the halls in Scotland, North East England, and Yorkshire. Sadler first appeared on stage at the age of eleven and later became part of his family's act The Four Sadlers. He built a career as a song and dance man in musical theatre and later toured parts of the United States in 1927-1928 with Beatrice Lillie and Noel Coward in the two-act revue This Year of Grace. By 1934 he had married Peggy Duncan and they toured as a double act called Peg and Jerry, largely in Scotland. In the 1940s, Desmonde was briefly a straight man for Scottish comedian Dave Willis and in 1942 he was invited to be straight man for stage comedian Sid Field becoming one of the most celebrated comedy teams ever to appear on stage. They appeared together on stage in three very successful revues, Strike a New Note (1943) and Strike it Again (1944)