Cecil Broadhurst, Date of Birth, Date of Death

    

Cecil Broadhurst

Canadian artist

Date of Birth: 08-May-1908

Date of Death: 16-Dec-1981

Profession: actor, songwriter, painter

Nationality: Canada

Zodiac Sign: Taurus


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About Cecil Broadhurst

  • Cecil Arthur Broadhurst (May 8, 1908 - December 16, 1981) was a Canadian artist, songwriter, actor and playwright, who had a passionate interest in and love for all things Western.
  • At age 15 he began his lifelong commitment to painting, studying under LeMoine Fitzgerald and Frank Franz Johnston A.R.C.A.
  • members of Canada's renowned Group of Seven (artists).
  • In 1932 he launched out on his own, but the Great Depression in the 1930s led him to other fields: among them flying as a Bush pilot, radio and theatre, followed by college and a year at the Detroit Art Academy.
  • A Canadian producer asked him to paint a stage set for him, which prompted Broadhurst, a relative of George Broadhurst, New York theatrical producer and founder of New York's famed Broadhurst Theatre, to focus his talents on the theatre and his gift for songwriting.
  • He subsequently wrote over a hundred cowboy songs, including "There'll be a New World Beginning from Tonight" which became an annual fixture as the rousing finale of the hugely popular Christmas concerts of Malcolm Sargent at London's Royal Albert Hall.
  • In 1940 he appeared singing one of his cowboy songs in the movie Susan and God starring Joan Crawford. He put his creative talents at the service of the Moral Re-Armament movement (MRA) (now known as 'Initiatives of Change [1]).
  • In 1951 he wrote and co-starred in the Broadway Production of his musical Jotham Valley (http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=391960).
  • The work was filmed in 1952 in England with at least one member of the Broadway cast.
  • Another of his plays, A Cowboys Christmas was produced in many countries, often as part of MRA campaigns.
  • He returned to painting full-time in the 1960s and quickly established a reputation as one of the West's finest artists at his studio in Arivaca, Arizona.
  • His paintings are in galleries and private collections coast to coast as well as Europe and South America. He said: "Some say the Cowboy is a vanishing species, but in my book he'll be around as long as the paint stays on the canvas".

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