Walter John "Jack" Buchanan (2 April 1891 – 20 October 1957) was a Scottish theatre and film actor, singer, dancer, producer and director. He was known for three decades as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town in the tradition of George Grossmith Jr., and was described by The Times as "the last of the knuts." He is best known in America for his role in the classic Hollywood musical The Band Wagon in 1953.

Biography

Buchanan was born in Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, the son of Walter John Buchanan Sr (d. 1902), auctioneer, and his wife, Patricia, née McWatt (d. 1936). He was educated at the Glasgow Academy.


Early career
After a brief attempt to follow his late father's profession and a failure at acting in Glasgow, he came to London and became a music hall comedian under the name of Chump Buchanan and first appeared on the West End in September 1912 in the comic opera The Grass Widow at the Apollo Theatre. Hardship dogged him for a while before he became famous whilst on tour in Tonight's the Night. He produced and acted in his own plays both in London and New York.

Buchanan's health was not robust, and, to his bitter regret, he was declared unfit for military service in the First World War. He appeared with some success in West End shows during the war, attracting favourable notices as a "knut" in the mould of George Grossmith Jr, and achieved front rank stardom in André Charlot's 1921 revue A to Z, appearing with Gertrude Lawrence. Among his numbers in the show was Ivor Novello's "And Her Mother Came Too", which became Buchanan's signature song. The show transferred successfully to Broadway in 1924. For the rest of the 1920s and 1930s he was famous for "the seemingly lazy but most accomplished grace with which he sang, danced, flirted and joked his way through musical shows.... The tall figure, the elegant gestures, the friendly drawling voice, the general air of having a good time." During the Second World War he starred in his own musical production "It's Time to Dance", whose cast included Fred Emney. The musical show was based on a book by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose, and was staged at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London.


Film career and later years
He made his film debut in the silent cinema, in 1917 and appeared in about three dozen films in his career. In 1938, Buchanan achieved the unusual feat of starring in the London stage musical This'll Make You Whistle while concurrently filming a film version. The film was released while the stage version was still running; thus the two productions competed with each other. Other roles included Monte Carlo (1930), Smash and Grab (1937) and The Gang's All Here (1939). He also produced several films including Happidrome (1943) and The Sky's the Limit (1938), which he also directed. He continued to work on Broadway and the West End and took roles in several Hollywood musicals, including The Band Wagon (1953), his best-known film, in which he plays camp theatre director Jeffrey Cordova opposite Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. He suffered from spinal arthritis, though this didn't stop him from performing several dance numbers with Astaire in Band Wagon.