Actor and producer (for both stage and radio).
Born in Stafford, Clewlow claimed in an autobiographical newspaper article that his family had been shoemakers in Stafford since the days of Queen Elizabeth I, and that he was destined for the same work. At age nine, he made an amateur appearance as 'Bones', one of the endmen / cornermen in a blackface minstrel show, which ignited an interest in the stage.
However, he did not approach full-time theatrical work until after he had attended university: he intended to study science but, having spent much of his time producing the university plays, he found himself ineligible for his final exams, and ran away to join the theatre.
He began at a Shakespearean stock season in the Derbyshire town of Ilkeston, first as a stagehand and later as assistant stage manager. The season failed, but the departure of the more experienced actors did give him his stage break. He later toured melodrama on the provincial circuits before landing at Miss Horniman's Gaiety Theatre (a repertory theatre) in Manchester, where he worked under Beniden Payne, who had most recently been director of the Shakespearean Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon.
After a tour of India, China, Japan and the Malay States, he undertook a five-year term at Birmingham Repertory Theatre and engagements as director of the Scottish National Theatre Movement, and as artistic director of the Royal Carl Rosa Opera Company, as well as some stints on the London stage.
He accepted an offer from Allan Wilkie (a British Shakespearean actor best known for his work on the Australian stage), and began a two-and-a-half year stint with the Melbourne Repertory Theatre. When the theatre closed during the depression, he was offered a position with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, for which he had already produced several plays. By the late 1930s, he was Director of Drama and Features.
Source:
'Stars of the Air : The Stage Career of F.D. Clewlow', Kilmore Free Press, 9 November 1944, p.7.
