Strike Me Lucky! Roy Rene—Mo: A Legend Revisited

Australia’s Jewish comedic genius: Roy ‘Mo’ Rene – a book review by Dr Anne Sarzin

During the Depression in Australia and throughout World War Two, a Jewish clown lifted the spirits of thousands of theatregoers with his risqué and ribald performances as Mo, a Chaplinesque working-class tramp.

At a time when hatred of Jews was gaining momentum nationally and internationally, Mo confidently and courageously paraded and caricatured his Jewish identity openly on stages around Australia, Unlike today’s Jewish creatives, he encountered only admiration and adulation, was critically acclaimed and worked in theatres that shook with uproarious laughter.

As a gifted thespian, Mo connected in a visceral way with his audiences who thronged in their thousands to enjoy and applaud his vaudeville acts, and the spectacular revusicals in which he starred, an era he dominated from 1915 to the 1930s. Listeners were also enthralled by his entertaining radio broadcasts in the 1940s and early 1950s. He walked a fine line between propriety and vulgarity, often transgressing acceptable theatre norms to the horror of producers and to the delight of audiences, who identified with his portrayal of the common man. His quips entered contemporary Australian slang; and his renowned character ‘Mo’ was Australia’s first national stage celebrity, known and recognised by fans in cities and towns throughout the country.

Mo’s parents were a Jewish couple Hyam and Amelia van der Sluys, from Holland and England respectively.  Shortly after their marriage in Melbourne, they moved to Hindley Street in Adelaide, where Henry was born on 15 February 1891, the fourth of six children. Henry’s name evolved over the years, reflecting his thespian development from ‘Little Roy’ and ‘Boy Roy’, a 13-year-old soprano singing in Sinbad the Sailor, to the adolescent ‘Roy Rene’, a name referencing a well-known French clown and, finally, his moniker ‘Mo’, which presumably derived from ‘Moses’, appropriate for the colourful and original Jewish characters he portrayed. It seems somewhat unfair to judge the content of his sketches by today’s standards. Certainly, to modern eyes, elements of his stereotypical portraits of Jews would be viewed as degrading and offensive.

Audiences and critics, however, adored him as he ad-libbed an endless stream of witticisms, observations and jokes. The Bulletin enthused, ‘Mr Roy Rene was ludicrously clever from beginning to end’. The celebrated Jewish American comedian Harry Green noted, ‘Mr Roy Rene…is destined to become one of the world’s most famous delineators of the Hebrew on stage’. International film star and comedian Jack Benny, who attended the first night of Mo’s revue Artists and Models in August 1944 at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney said, ‘Mo is a fine comedian’; and renowned actress Dame Sybil Thorndike thought Mo as great if not greater than Charlie Chaplin.

Jon Fabian’s intriguing new biography of Mo, Strike me lucky! Roy Rene—Mo: A legend revisited, will surely revive interest in Mo and serve as a resource for researchers, writers, drama students and theatre buffs interested in the vibrant musical entertainments that preceded the ‘talkies’. His portrait of Mo is well researched, drawing on newspaper reviews and featured quotations from Mo’s ghost-written autobiography, Mo’s Memoirs. Fabian places this great comedic actor within the panorama of evolving Australian theatre history. He claims for Mo a supreme status as the greatest Australian comedic genius of the past century, While his name is memorialised in the annual Mo Awards—a trophy in the form of a statuette of Mo in an iconic pose from the 1920s—established in 1979, as well as in Steve Spears’ play Young Mo re-staged in recent years at Sydney’s Nimrod Theatre, this book will revive interest in the life and times of an original and brilliant theatrical star, a unique character actor with a loyal following across all generations.

While Fabian traces Mo’s life chronologically, at times he weaves into his story the biography of Australian actress, singer and dancer Sadie Gale, who became Mo’s second wife in 1929. From a reader’s perspective, Sadie would be better served had the author chosen to write separate chapters devoted to her fascinating story, from child star to professional singer and dancer, rather than inserting a succession of references to her—some frustratingly brief—throughout the text that, at times, blur the narrative’s clarity.

What emerges from this slender volume is a significant portrait of a Jewish Australian trailblazer in comedic theatre in Australia. Mo had the opportunity to work in theatres on Broadway and in London but chose to remain in the country of his birth. As Fabian notes, ‘Roy was a patriotic Australian. He assisted the war effort [WW2] in any way possible, from raising funds to raising a laugh, boosting the morale of his mob’. His name and his face were everywhere. The September cover of Radio Pictorial 1941 featured a portrait of Mo as Admiral of the Jewish navy, as he appeared in the first performance of 2GB’s Star Parade.

When Mo died on 22 November 1954, aged 62, he was eulogised as the ‘King of Clowns’.  His funeral service was held at the  Sydney Chevra Kadisha in Woollahra and he was buried in the Rookwood cemetery. His son Sam said, ‘Wherever we went dad was mobbed by people. It really was an eye opener.’

Strike Me Lucky! Roy Rene—Mo: A Legend Revisited

Jon Fabian

Arcadia, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2024