A miner at 14, how Harry Lauder became a darling of Hollywood
ment. Before the week was out the miner was booked for 300 consecutive weeks.” Aged 30, he had made it.
His famous character – kilted, bandy-legged, sentimental, with an eye for a bonnie lass and a wee dram and carrying a knobbly stick
– made Scottish culture, or caricature, known the world over.
In 1907, Harry undertook the first of 22 tours of the
United States. He
With his wife Anne made the first of his 600 recordings in 1902 for The Gramophone Company. Radio was another lucrative medium for Sir Harry – he was once paid £12,000 for one broadcast featuring three of his songs. By the time First World War broke out, Sir Harry was an international star. He sang for the troops, raised funds for the war and soldiers’ charities and formed the Harry Lauder Recruiting Pipe
Band which toured Scotland and England. Reports say he convinced more than 12,000 men to enlist.
But then tragedy struck when John – a Captain in the 8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders – was killed in action in 1916, in Pozieres, northern France. Sir Harry was told John was shot by a German sniper. Devastated, Harry wrote it had felt like “everything had come to an end” and “the board of life was black and blank”.
Anne convinced Harry he should go back on stage, as those who worked on his show relied on him.
Three days later, he was back performing. He broke down when he sang The Laddies Who Fought and Won, about boys coming home from the conflict. Archie Foley, a Harry Lauder historian said: “As the curtains closed, he fainted.”
During this 1917 tour, he went to the French war cemetery where John was buried. He wrote: “As I lay there on that brown mound, all that he had been, and all that he had meant to me and to his mother came rushing back, opening anew my wounds of grief.
“I thought of him as a baby, and as a wee laddie beginning to run around and talk to us. I thought of the friends that we had been, he and I. Such chums we were, always.” Despite his heartache,
Harry kept performing and established the Harry Lauder Million Pound Fund to help the war injured. Anne died in 1927.
From 1932, Sir Harry settled in what became known as Lauder Hall near Strathaven, South Lanarkshire.
He formally retired in 1935, but during the Second World War he did radio broadcasts and entertained the troops. He died in 1950, aged 79, but his legacy lives on to this day.