James Bernard Sherry was a musician, singer and clog and step dancer on the professional music hall stage.
James Bernard Sherry (1900-1973) was the third son of James Bernard Sherry and Alice Louise Badley-Truman. He was known as Jim within the family.
Jim began performing with his father (under his stage name of Dan Conroy) from an early age. After only three or four years the First World War broke out and he joined up.
In 1920 he teamed up with his brothers Dan and Harry in an act called Dan Brothers and Sherry. They became a well-known and established act, touring the UK, the Continent and even to South Africa.
By 1926 they were touring with a show called “Contrasts” andin 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”.
Jim was always credited with being the best dancer in the family, and it was from him that Sam Sherry learned much of his material. He is believed to have learned from such greats as Scott and Whaley, Horace Wheatley and Victor Andre
Dan Sherry took up the role of principal comedian with Jim 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 you 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, Palladium, Holborn Empire, the Finsbury Park. 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.
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 and a family revue at the Theatre Royal, Barnsley – “Sherry Go Round” in the spring of 1949, although this appears to have been short-lived. Jim also performed in what was in effect a family pantomime, “Little Red Riding Hood” written by Dan as a vehicle for their performing. Jim retired in about 1953 or 1954.
Jim died in 1973.