Hove Vat (Sussex)

Sussex Hotel, 17 St Catherine’s Terrace, Hove.

Blaster Tubby Edlin.

Hove Vat (Sussex)

The Sussex Hotel opened for business on 19 October 1855.

The Edlin family had purchased the hotel by 1926, when it submitted plans to Hove Council to convert the upper part of the premises into flats. Initially this was turned down but the plans were passed at the third attempt in June 1926.

Blaster Tubby Edlin occupied one of the flats. He was a well-known comedian, having taken part in George Albert Smith’s early films filmed in St Ann’s Well Gardens before it became a public park. Tubby Edlin became famous when he starred in the stage play Alf’s Button based on the novel by Bill Darlington at the Duke of York Theatre in London. The play was about a soldier in World War I who found a button made from a torch, based on Aladdin’s lamp.  In 1929 Tubby Edlin starred in the ‘talkie’ film version of the play. The film was pleasant but forgettable laugher notable for its fantasy sequences done in the early pastel Pathe color process. A kindle version of the film can be bought from Amazon for 77p.

Here is a short performance by Tubby Edlin with thanks to British Pathe:.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/a-scene-from-london-calling-duke-of-yorks-theatre

Edlin regularly appeared at the London Hippodrome, where he was renowned for wearing a melancholy expression while seeming to be in the last stages of depression. He was popularly known as Queen Mary’s jester because he was one of the few actors able to make her laugh and bring tears to her eyes.