English-born variety performer, author, actor, manager.
The son of a Cockney plasterer, Charles Norman emigrated to Australia with his family shortly after the First World War. In his late teens, he began appearing on the amateur variety stage as a singer and comedian, and later teamed up with Chick Arnold as a patter and song-and-dance duo. One of their first big breaks as professional variety performers was with Harry Clay. Norman and Arnold stayed on Clay's Sydney and N.S.W. circuits for some three years in the mid-1920s.
In the mid to late 1920s, Arnold and Norman temporarily went their separate ways, with Norman appearing as a solo comedian and actor in musical comedies for Fullers' Theatres and later with J.C. Williamson's, including its Tivoli Celebrity Vaudeville operations. He reunited with Chick Arnold for a period of time in the 1930s when the pair met up in London. In 1937, Norman joined forces with Garnet Carroll and Sir Benjamin Fuller to form Savoy Theatres. As one of the company's directors, he helped reproduce a number of the old Fuller-Ward musical comedies. In 1948, he also joined a company formed by American comedian/entrepreneur Will Mahoney, at the Cremorne Theatre, Brisbane.
Charles Norman's career on the Australian vaudeville stage continued well into his later years. As an actor, he was mostly associated with musical comedies. In variety, he worked alongside many of the leading performers of his era, including Roy Rene, George Wallace, Jim Gerald, and George Sorlie. In 1984, he published a book of memoirs and historical insights titled When Vaudeville Was King: A Soft Shoe Stroll Down Forget-Me-Not Lane.
