Ernie Lotinga

Ernest Lotinga (19 March 1875 – 28 October 1951) was a British comedian and film actor. Lotinga became known for the Josser character whom he portrayed in a series of comedy films during the 1930s.

Biography Lotinga was born in Sunderland into a middle class Jewish family of partly Danish origin. His father was a respected community leader who part-financed the local synagogue. Ernest left school early and moved to London, where he worked as a baker's assistant and was able to watch music hall performances by Dan Leno and others. He began his stage career by performing Leno's sketches, under the stage name Dan Roe (or Roy), and by the late 1890s developed a strong reputation in his own right as a comedic talent. He joined a touring comedy troupe, the Six Brothers Luck, who also included Shaun Glenville, and in 1901 Lotinga married another popular music hall entertainer, the male impersonator Hetty King.

In 1909, after a poorly-received tour of the United States with the Six Brothers Luck, Lotinga left the troupe, and developed his own act as the character Jimmy Josser, an "irreverent everyman". "Josser" was a slang term for a simpleton. He maintained the Josser character in theatre tours over subsequent decades. For several years he toured widely with Hetty King, including visits to entertain troops in France during the First World War, but King's infidelity with the American singer and songwriter Jack Norworth led to the pair's much-publicised divorce in 1917. He was also portrayed, in character, in the final panel of the sculptural frieze by Gilbert Baynes, Drama Through The Ages, on the Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue.

In 1928, Lotinga moved into sound films, at first making a series of shorts for DeForest Phonofilms, and then, from 1931, making feature films. These included Doctor Josser K.C. (1931), Josser in the Army (1932), Josser's Detective Agency (1935), and Love Up the Pole (1936), the last of which featured striptease performer Phyllis Dixey, who later toured with Lotinga.

During the Second World War, he toured and entertained as part of ENSA. Although his style of humour and wordplay became increasingly unfashionable during the 1940s, he continued to perform in theatres as the Josser character. Smith's Wives (1935) Love Up the Pole (1936)