Daniel Conroy Sherr, known as “Dan”, musician, singer, dancer and professional music hall artiste.
Daniel Conroy Sherry was born on 21st August 1897, the first child of James Bernard Sherry and Alice Louise Bradley-Truman.
Dan began performing with his father (under his stage name of Dan Conroy) when he was about 13. A 1914 playbill shows him performing with his younger brother Harry as “The Dancing Wonders”. When the First World War broke out he joined the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.
After being invalided out of the army in about 1917, he continued as a solo artiste, acting, singing, dancing and playing the piano. He appears to have performed in what were in reality concert parties, one being known as “Fred Clements’ Arcadia Entertainers”. He was also a prolific writer, and wrote over a hundred compositions.
However in 1920 he teamed up with his brothers Jim (James Bernard Sherry jnr) and Harry (Henry Bradley Sherry) in an act called Dan Brothers and Sherry. They became a well-known and established act, touring the UK, the Continent and even South Africa.
By 1926 they were touring with a show called “Contrasts” and in September 1928, decided to purchase the rights to the show and run it as a family, which, after a phase as “New Contrasts” became “A Sherry Cocktail”.
Dan Sherry took up the role of principal comedian with Jim Sherry as straight man and Harry Sherry playing the character parts. Peter and Sam joined them as a speciality dancing act, and three of their sisters did a musical dancing and singing act. Wherever they went business was phenomenal and it seemed that the act was going places and that they were going to be rich. Unfortunately the talkies came in and within a short time, where they had been playing to good audiences, they found they were playing to mediocre business.
Happily at that point the family was ‘discovered’ by George Black who ran the Palladium and the big theatre circuit in those days.
He thought that they were quite unique and decided he would like to put the family into a show so ‘A Sherry Cocktail’ was disbanded, and the family formed a show called ‘Pageant on Parade’ where they were known as the “Straight 8 Sherry Family” Unfortunately the show was not a success, and the result was an argument with George Black , who was perhaps the most powerful man in Theatre Land in those days, as a result the “The Five Sherry Brothers“ act was formed and became one of the best-known music hall acts of the 1930s Palladium, Holborn Empire, the Finsbury Park.
The act was a great success for many years, although bookings became more and more difficult to get in the late 1930’s. Then the Second War War intervened. Sam, as the youngest, was called up first and after him Peter. Then Harry died and that was the end of the Five Sherry Brothers although Dan and Jim continued to run a road show during the war.
After the war, Dan and Jim continued to perform, often in company with Sam and Peter who were by this time back working as a duo. They had various acts such as “This is the Show” in
the summer of 1946 and “Mine’s a Sherry” from about October 1946 to the summer of 1948. In the spring of 1949 they teamed up with Peter and Sam for a family revue at the Theatre Royal, Barnsley – “Sherry Go Round” although this appears to have been shortlived. Dan also wrote what was in effect a family pantomime, “Little Red Riding Hood” as a vehicle for their performing. Dan retired in about 1953 or 1954, however he continued to undertake occasional performances, appearing in a pantomime in Huddersfield as late as 1955.
Dan died in 1971.