George Rollit

Allardyce Nicoll, English Drama 1900-1930, lists also by Rollit The Money Makers (1904, and as Money For Nothing 1918), My Friend The Devil (1907) and Robbed (1917). He also wrote many songs for musical shows and for the comedian Arthur Roberts (Nottingham Journal, 3 March 1933). George Rollit, 4 Randolph Crescent, W9 wrote a letter published in The Stage, 9 March 1933, supporting the idea of a matinée in favour of the Valentine Pension Memorial Fund. The 1939 Register shows George Rollit, born 16 August 1871, unmarried, ‘retired’, living at the same address with, among others, Olivia Burleigh, born 7 June 1897, unmarried, an actress. Despite that biographical information no record has been found of Rollit’s birth or death. Benny Green wrote in the Daily Mirror, 10 February 1979: ‘The sad thing about [writers and musicians] like [George] Everard and [George] Rollit and George and Thomas] Le Brunn is that although they were responsible for some of the most famous and best-loved verse which exists in the English language, they were members of a profession which countenanced highway robbery. In the days of the music hall, that golden time when everyone loved everyone else, the songwriters were the victims of a ruthless showbiz system which bought a song outright for a pittance … what is the point of digging up all this ancient history? The answer is that it is not so ancient after all, for this reason: when a writer dies, his work remains the exclusive property of his descendants for fifty years after his death. But suppose nobody knows when the date of death was? That is precisely the position this very moment with songs like “Oh, Mr. Porter.” Are they somebody's property or are they not? Nobody knows, because nobody knows when Thomas Le Brunn died, or George Everard, or George Rollit, or many other music hall lions’.