Lew grade biography of albert

Lew Grade is probably the closest the British television industry has ever come to having a genuine showbusiness mogul. A flamboyant and canny operator, for a quarter of a century he was the best-known figure in independent television, and certainly one of the most powerful.

Born Louis Winogradsky in Tokmak in the Ukraine, his birth date is generally given as Christmas Day 1906, although some official records actually have it as 23 January of that year.

Lew grade biography of albert

He and his younger brother Boris came to London in 1912 to escape the anti-Jewish pogroms still rampaging through Tsarist Russia. After leaving school at 14, he entered show business as a dancer, a career that took off after he won a Charleston contest at the Royal Albert Hall in 1926.

For the next few years, Lew Grade (as he now was) toured the variety and cabaret circuits, his trademark routine being an ultra-fast Charleston danced on a small oval table, before deciding to turn an occasional sideline into a career, setting up a t