It’s hard to imagine that a well-known clown, an icon of the silver screen, and Southend, could all be connected - but they are.

The clown (pictured above) was famous variety star Bob Pender, who not only came to Southend to open a novelty joke shop in his later years, and even died here. And he helped launch the career of one of the most famous film stars who ever lived: none other than Cary Grant.

Bob Pender was for many years famed for being the Drury Lane clown. He appeared regularly at the prestigious London theatre in pantos and shows. But he was also known for leading a troupe of acrobats and entertainers known as The Pender Troupe which toured all over the world.

It was this troupe that a young Cary Grant - then just plain old Archie Leach from Bristol - ran away to join when he was 14.

It’s often written that Grant ran off to join the circus as a boy, but in reality it was far more of a professional theatrical troupe than a circus Young Archie was determined to be an actor and when he saw the troupe perform he was mesmerised. In his autobiography, published in a series of American magazines in 1963, Grant recalls how he wrote a letter to Pender, pretending that it had come from his father.

“Before I knew it I was writing a letter to Mr Pender purportedly from my own father. I enclosed a snapshot and, since I was tall for my age and thought I looked older, conveniently neglected to explain that I was not yet 14, and therefore not legally allowed to leave school.

“You wouldn’t believe it, but in no time at all, although it seemed weeks to a fellow with a surreptitious eye on his father’s mailbox, back came an answer from Bob Pender suggesting to my father that his promising-looking son Archibald should go to Norwich, where the troupe was performing, for an interview. And what’s more, he enclosed the railway fare!

“Never was there such inner excitement. Of joy, disbelief, fear, confidence and indecision. In the secrecy of my room I could neither sleep or sit. I packed and unpacked and after hours of coin spinning and head scratching found myself quietly leaving the house in the middle of the night and walking the deserted streets toward the railway station where, dizzy at my own daring, I waited for an early morning train. To Norwich. And adventure.”

Grant continued: “I can’t remember anything about the journey. I was probably trying to figure out what my father would try to figure out. He and I often awoke and left the house at different hours without seeing each other. So it might be quite some time before I would be missed.

“After travelling for at least four hours I arrived at about 10am and went directly to the theatre where, putting his troupe through their morning limbering-up exercises, I found Bob Pender.

“He was a stocky, strongly built, likeable man of about 42 who had been renowned as the great Drury Lane clown.

“I suspected that he suspected that Archie and Elias James Leach were the same correspondent, but he introduced me to his kind wife Margaret, a well-known dancer whom he’d met when she was ballet mistress at the Folies-Bergere in Paris, and they questioned me about my birth certificate, which I said was home. Which was true. It was.”

After looking at the young before in front of them, Bob and Margaret agreed that - if it was still all right with his father - they would apprentice him to their troupe.

“They gave me a short handwritten contract stipulating that I as to receive my keep and ten shillings pocket money weekly. And hallelujah, I was an actor,” Grant recalls in his autobiography.

“Over the years I’ve signed many lengthy, involved typed contracts calling for me to earn great sums of money, but no employment contract since has ever matched the thrill of that one sheet of ordinary notepaper stating that I was to have the opportunity of learning a profession that appealed to me more than any other in the world.”

Bob took Archie under his wing and eventually (with the genuine blessing of Archie’s father) took him to America and taught him singing, dancing and stilt-walking.

They sailed on the SS Olympic ship to the states and made waves with the show in New York.

When Pender came back to England, Archie wanted to stay as he was having such a great time. He would soon go off to Hollywood - with Bob’s blessing - and become Cary Grant.

Bob, whose real name was Robert Lomas, did well for himself too, although he was never anywhere near as as successful as his protege.

When he retired as a performer he came to Southend to open his own shop.

This was in 1924 and Bob had recently returned from a stilt-walking tour of America.

But now his sights were set on the business world and making the joke shop, located within the Victoria Arcade in Queen’s Road, a success.

And by all accounts it was. The shop sold newspapers, sweets, tobacco, joke sets, funny masks, and comedy heads for carnivals. “Bob is only just starting to disseminate his humour, at the same time advertising his new business,” wrote one Southend commentator at the time.

“One of his advertising jokes is The Simplified Coat Hanger. Southenders will receive, with Bob Pender’s compliments, a ‘small packet containing a hanger, described as the most universally used coat hanger in the world’. Made of the finest drawn steel wire by automatic machinery, it can be attached wherever needed. The packet contains just a nail.

“Bob is quite happy in his new business, he cracks jokes with customers and occasionally takes a morning off to take part in his favourite sport, which he describes as ‘shooting mussels when the tide is out and filleting whelks’.”

Many wondered if Cary Grant would ever be seen Southend, visiting his old friend in his shop. Perhaps he did, but we will never know for sure.

Entertainment journalist Herbert Harris one wrote about the connection between the two men for the Picturegoer magazine: “Cary has never forgotten his old friends and when he comes to London again soon, he will probably earmark a space in his diary to Bob Pender’s troupe of acrobats, stilt-walkers and knockabouts.

“Bob Pender is as proud of Cary Grant’s rise to fame as anybody. He claims to have set the star on the road to the bright lights, and when I last met Bob before the war, in the novelty shop which he ran in Victoria Arcade, Southend-on-Sea, the famous ex-Drury Lane clown was wondering if Cary Grant, the lad he took to America, would drop in and see him when he next came to England.”

Bob Pender remained in Southend until he died in autumn of 1939. Records list his age as 66 but he could have been 68.

Cary Grant, of course, went onto become a superstar in Hollywood.

He married five times and starred in films including To Catch a Thief, North By Northwest, The Philadelphia Story and Charade.

He died in 1986 aged 82.