TV
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Rolf
Harris, entertainer and artist has died aged 93 (24 May
2023)
Between
1953, when he was signed by the BBC to perform
with a puppet called Fuzz in the children’s
TV series Jigsaw, and 2012, when he was honoured
with a Bafta fellowship, he was rarely off UK
screens, in shows such as Hey Presto, It’s
Rolf! (1966), The Rolf Harris Show (1967-72),
Rolf on Saturday OK? (1977-80), Rolf’s
Cartoon Club (1989-93), Animal Hospital
(1994-2004) and Rolf on Art (2001-04). He was one
of the handful of entertainers who was often
professionally identified by his first name
alone. In 1952 Harris travelled to London to go
to art school. His BBC television debut on Jigsaw
was followed by Whirligig, on which his character
Willoughby came to life on a drawing board. He
was also developing his musical skills by playing
a piano accordion at a London club for expat
antipodeans called Down Under and writing songs,
one of which was Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.
This calypso tune about an Aussie stockman on his
deathbed became a No 1 hit in Australia and
reached the British Top 10 in 1960. more.... |
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Dennis
Lotis, Big band crooner, of the 1950s has died
aged 97 (12th February 2023)
In 1957 Dennis
Lotis played his first Royal Variety Show.
Lotis’s career flourished and included
appearances on the BBC’s first attempt at a
pop show, Six-Five Special and, in 1958, on the
first edition of the BBC’s Black and White
Minstrel Show.
Lotis also turned his hand to film and theatre
before fading from view as tastes changed in the
60s. more.... |
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Leslie Phillips,
actor and director, has died aged 98 (8th
November 2022)
Leslie Phillips was one of the most
successful light comedians in the post-war West
End theatre, but he was most enduringly known as
the skirt-chasing “silly ass” in the
Doctor and Carry On films of the 1960s. Although
with his twitching moustache, roving eye, leering
looks and air of cheerful mischief, he became a
leading exponent of light-hearted lechery, his
brand of suave geniality could also strike a
sinister note.
He played his first BBC television lead in 1952
in My Wife Jacqueline (opposite Joy Shelton), a
pioneering but mediocre (he said) sitcom about
married life, broadcast live from Lime Grove in
six 30-minute episodes.
He became a national Sunday lunchtime institution
on BBC Radio’s The Navy Lark, in which he
appeared as a hopeless lieutenant on HMS
Troutbridge – alongside Stephen Murray, Jon
Pertwee, Tenniel Evans, Heather Chasen and Ronnie
Barker – between 1959 and 1977.
Phillips was also a familiar face on television,
with roles including the local Mr Fixit opposite
John Gielgud in John Mortimer’s
Summer’s Lease (1989); a judge in The Trials
of Oz (1991); Lord Lane in the drama-documentary
Who Bombed Birmingham? (1990); appearances in the
Chancer series (1990-91) and, a decade later, in
Midsomer Murders, Marple and The Catherine Tate
Show.
more.... |
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Frank
Williams, actor, has died aged 90. (26 June
2022)
Frank Williams was best known as the Rev Timothy
Farthing in Dad's Army, one of the BBC's most
popular TV series. Although this mild-mannered
vicar was a bit of a joke and a ditherer,
Williams himself was a deeply religious man, an
Anglican churchgoer.
On TV, he popped up first as a dying patient in
Emergency Ward 10 and then, crucially, as Captain
Pocket in The Army Game (1957-60), a Granada TV
comedy series starring Bernard Bresslaw, Bill
Fraser and Alfie Bass, set in an army surplus
depot and transit camp at Nether Hopping,
somewhere in Warwickshire.
In this period he also played stooge characters
in several Norman Wisdom films including The
Square Peg. (1958). He joined the Dad’s Army
cast which ran from 1968 to 1977. Apart from Ian
Lavender as the "stupid boy" Pike,
Williams was the youngest member of the cast. It
amused him that, having once donned the dog
collar, he progressed on other screen outings
through the clerical ranks: as an archdeacon in
the final episode of the BBC’s 1987 Vanity
Fair serialisation, then as a bishop in You Rang,
My Lord? a comedy series set in the 1920s that
ran for three years from 1990, written by the
Dad’s Army team of Jimmy Perry and David
Croft. more.... |
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Denise
Bryer, actor who voiced children's TV characters
including Little Weed and Noddy, has died aged 93 (16 October
2021)
As well as
children’s TV characters, Denise Bryer was
in scores of BBC radio dramas and commercials for
products ranging from Colgate toothpaste to PG
Tips.
She was an actor whose voice, rather than face,
was known to several generations of young
television viewers. She brought to life animated
characters such as Little Weed in The Flkowerpot
Men, Noddy, Kiki the frog in Hector's House and
the villainous Zelda in the producer Gerry
Anderson's sci-fi series Terrahawks.
Bryer always said she was happier behind a
microphone than in front of a camera. From 1947,
she was in scores of plays with BBC radio’s
drama company, displaying a special talent for
playing old ladies and young boys.
It was no surprise when she was picked to voice
the title character in The Adventures of Noddy
(1955-56), a puppet series – and the first
to feature Enid Blyton's character, taken by the
friendly gnome Big Ears to live in Toyland. The
"parp-parp" sound of the horn from
Noddy’s little car announced his arrival,
along with the jingle of the bell on his hat.
Anderson and the director of photography Arthur
Provis were among the owners of Pentagon Films,
which then hired Bryer to voice a 1956 Kellogg's
Sugar Ricicles commercial featuring Noddy.
When the pair formed AP Films, its first
production was the 52-episode marionette series
The Adventures of Twizzle (1957-58), created by
Roberta Leigh. Bryer was cast as the feline
friend of the title character, voiced by Nancy
Nevinson.
She was back with Anderson for his western saga
Four Feather Falls (1959-60). Her then husband,
Nicholas Parsons, played Sheriff Tex Tucker, who
had a talking dog and horse, and she voiced
several characters – Martha "Ma"
Jones, the store owner, Little Jake, the town's
only child, and Makooya, a little boy. more.... |
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Una
Stubbs, actor whose long, eclectic career ranged
from Shakespeare to Sherlock has died aged 84 (12 August
2021)
In 1955 Una
Stubbs was "the Dairy Box girl" in an
early TV ad, her breathy, adenoidal voice
instantly memorable. She was also dancing at the
London Palladium, and in 1956 appeared in both
ITV's Cool for Cats, the first-ever teen pop
music show, with the Dougie Squires dancers.
She was best known as Cliff Richard’s
girlfriend in two high-spirited pop musical
movies – Summer Holiday (1963) and Wonderful
Life (1964) – and as Alf Garnett’s
daughter, Rita Rawlins, married to a socialist
layabout (Anthony Booth, Cherie Blair’s
father and so Tony’s father-in-law), in
Johnny Speight’s classic TV series Till
Death Us Do Part (1965-75) and in episodes of its
1980s sequel, In Sickness and in Health.
Her place in popular television culture was
sealed in the next few years as she appeared in
Fawlty Towers; as the ferocious Aunt Sally in
Worzel Gummidge (1979-81); and as team captain in
the television show, Give Us a Clue.
After many years on the Stage during the 1990s
and 2000s, her television career remained
eclectic, as she popped up in EastEnders as
Caroline Bishop in 2006, and in various episodes
of Benidorm, Midsomer Murders and The Durrells.
From 2010 onwards she was busy as Mrs Hudson in
Sherlock. more.... |
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Frank
Windsor, actor, has died aged 92 (2nd
October 2020)
Frank Windsor
was, as DS John Watt, one of the longest-serving
coppers on the TV beat – in Z Cars and its
BBC sequels and spin-offs from 1962 right through
to 1978.
He trained for the stage in London at the Central
School of Speech and Drama, still situated in
those days, the early 1950s, at the Royal Albert
Hall and toured in Britain and India with the
Elizabethan Theatre Company
His first foray into television saw him playing
the Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria in a BBC Sunday
Night Theatre play of 1955 and, in 1957, the
Duke of Norfolk in a television version of Robert
Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, three
years before it became a West End hit.
Windsor’s experience in Shakespeare made him
well qualified to play the Earl of Warwick and
Sir Walter Blunt, among other characters, in the
landmark BBC series of Shakespeare histories, An
Age of Kings (1960). more.... |
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Leslie
Randall, actor, writer and comedian, has died
aged 95 (July 2020)
Leslie Randall was best known for
the TV show Joan and Leslie, ITV’s first
sitcom, which began in 1955. He had a mammoth
62-year career in the business.
Although he got a taste for acting while serving
in the RAF, his first professional appearance as
a comedian was on television in the BBC’s New
To You talent showcase. This led to standup
tour dates at Val Parnell’s Moss Empires
variety theatres.
In 1951 he married Joan Reynolds, whom he met in
repertory at Darlington. They shared their big
break in 1955 starring in Joan and Leslie,
which ran until 1958. The couple also appeared in
a long-running series of TV adverts for Fairy
Snow. more.... |
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Heather
Chasen, actress, has died aged 92. (22
May 2020)
Heather
Chasen spent a year (1958-59) in the role of
Mollie Ralston in the Agatha Christie whodunnit
The Mousetrap (Ambassadors theatre, London) and
many West End roles followed.
She played more than 20 characters – most of
the female parts – throughout the 18-year
run of the BBC radio sitcom The Navy Lark
(1959-77), set on board the Royal Navy frigate
HMS Troutbridge. With adept changes of voice,
Chasen’s roles included Ramona Povey, the
wife of Richard Caldicot’s commander; Miss
Simpkins, assistant to the Sea Lord; and Wren
Chasen, alongside Leslie Phillips and Jon Pertwee
as, respectively, the sub-lieutenant and chief
petty officer perpetually trying to get the
vessel out of the trouble they had personally
created.
Chasen appeared on television in Crossroads for a
four-year run (1982-86) as Valerie.
She had runs as Helen Baker in the Francis
Durbridge thriller The World of Tim Frazer
(1960), Caroline Kerr (1968-69) in the BBC soap
The Newcomers, Isabel Neal in the afternoon
serial Marked Personal (1973-74), Mary Queen of
Scots in the children’s adventure A
Traveller in Time (1978) and Aunt Rachel in Young
Sherlock: The Mystery of the Manor House (1982),
as well as playing Margaret Thatcher in the
drama-documentary Who Bombed Birmingham? (1990). more.... |
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Andrée
Melly, the actress, died on 31st January 2020
aged 87 (27 February 2020)
Andrée Melly was born on 15 September 1932 in
Liverpool, and was educated in Liverpool and in
Switzerland. Her mother and father were Edith and
Francis Melly and her brother was jazz legend,
George Melly.
Andrée began her career at the New Theatre,
Bromley alongside such stars as Robin Bailey,
Leslie Phillips and Arthur Lowe. Moira Lister had
played Tony's girlfriend in the first series
of Hancock's Half Hour', and Andrée took
over for the second and third series, appearing
in a total of 32 episodes.
Perhaps most noticeable about her first three
appearances in the series was that she played
alongside Harry Secombe, while Hancock was
absent. She was (re)introduced into the series
when Hancock and Bill smuggled her back to East
Cheam from Paris, where they had ended up after
setting out for Southend!
In the early years of the long-running BBC radio
comedy 'Just a Minute' she was a
regular panellist. Along with Sheila Hancock, she
was one of the most regular female contestants,
appearing in fifty-four episodes between 1967 and
1976. In 1972, she chaired an episode. She was
the first panellist to win points for talking for
the prescribed 60 seconds without hesitation,
repetition or deviation.
She also appeared in several episodes of
the 'Benny Hill Show'. She continued to
appear on British television until 1991.
She was the last surviving regular cast member of
Hancock's Half Hour. more.... |
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Michael
Medwin, actor, has died aged 96 (26
February 2020)
Michael Medwin was born in London in 1923, he was
made an OBE for services to drama in 2005.
He trained at the Italia Conti stage school in
London and made his film debut as a radio
operator in 1946's Piccadilly Incident.
He made his television debut as a boxer in Kid
Flanagan (1948). In The Army Game (1957-58), he
was Springer, the ringleader to four privates who
regard national service as a licence for anarchy.
In the five decades that followed, he appeared in
such films as A Hill in Korea, Doctor at Large,
Carry On Nurse and The Longest Day.
Often cast as cockney spivs at the start of his
career, he moved on to authority figures like the
doctor who treats Connery's James Bond in 1983's
Never Say Never Again.
He also played the nephew of Albert Finney's
title character in Scrooge, despite being 12
years Finney's senior. Alongside Finney, he also
produced such films as Lindsay Anderson's If....,
O Lucky Man! and Charlie Bubbles. more.... |
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Pearl
Carr, singer, has died aged 98 (16
February 2020)
The young Pearl was put into one of CB
Cochran’s shows and then joined the Three in
Harmony singing group, who appeared in Best Bib
And Tucker with Tommy Trinder at the London
Palladium in 1942.
She sang with Cyril
Stapleton and his Orchestra and then joined a
vocal quartet, the Keynotes, for whom she was the
lead singer in 1946. The Keynotes were regular
guests on two radio shows, Take It From Here and
Breakfast With (Bernard) Braden.
Teddy Johnson had worked as a drummer and DJ, and
then had a hit single with Beloved, Be Faithful
in 1950. When he appeared on the BBC radio show
Black Magic, hosted by the bandleader Stanley
Black, Carr was asked to sing with him. The
partnership worked well, although they had no
plans at the time to repeat it. However, by 1952
they were dating and they started appearing on
the same shows, performing separate acts and
coming together for Idle Gossip and Shadow Dance,
which Johnson would sing while Carr danced.
They were also regulars on the Winifred Atwell
Show on TV (1956-57), as well as on Big Night Out
and Blackpool Night Out and the new
children’s series Crackerjack, and they
hosted shows for Radio Luxembourg, advertised as
Mr and Mrs Music.
The couple represented the UK in 1959 at the
Eurovision Song Contest with the song ‘Sing
little birdy’ and finished 2nd with the
“Sing, Little Birdie”. The song peaked
at No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart. more.... |
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Actor,
comedian and broadcaster Nicholas Parsons has
died aged 96 (28th January 2020)
After several years working in radio variety,
Parsons’ breakthrough came in 1956 on
independent television when he was asked to play
straight man to droll comedian Arthur Haynes. The
show, with scripts supplied by Johnny Speight,
who went on to pen Till Death Us Do Part, was a
resounding success and Parsons’ partnership
with Haynes lasted 10 years, during which time
they enjoyed a season at the London Palladium and
appeared six times on The Ed Sullivan Show in
America.
During this period he was a regular face on
British television comedy and variety shows, even
providing the voice of Sheriff Tex Tucker in the
Gerry Anderson TV puppet series Four Feather
Falls (1960). He also began to appear in British
film comedies, cast mainly as amiable posh twits
or sundry ineffective lower-order government
officials in the likes of Carlton-Browne of the
F.O. (1959) with Peter Sellers and Terry Thomas,
Doctor in Love (1960), Carry on Regardless (1961)
and Murder Ahoy (1964), featuring Margaret
Rutherford as Miss Marple. more....
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Christopher
Beeny, known for roles in Upstairs, Downstairs
and BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, has died
at the age of 78 (7th
January 2020)
The
London-born actor had his first taste of the
spotlight aged six when he danced for the Ballet
Rambert, and went on to land his first role in
1953 with The Long Memory.
He was also one of the first British soap stars,
nabbing the part of Lenny Grove in the 1950s BBC
series The Grove Family.
He gained notice when he appeared in the highly
successful period drama Upstairs, Downstairs
(1971–75) as the footman Edward Barnes. He
appeared as Geoffrey in the single mother sitcom
Miss Jones and Son (1977–78), as Tony in the
remake of The Rag Trade (1977–78) and
co-starring (as Billy Henshaw) with Thora Hird in
a further sitcom, In Loving Memory.
In 2001 he made a guest appearance in Last of the
Summer Wine, something which he repeated numerous
times until 2009 when he joined the cast as a
regular character. He appeared originally as the
character Herman Teasdale, who later became
Morton Beamish.
In 2006, he played a cameo role in Emmerdale.
Coincidentally, he played the cousin of the
character Noreen Bell, who had been played by his
Upstairs, Downstairs colleague Jenny Tomasin.
Beeny also played cameo roles in BBC TV's Sense
& Sensibility and ITV's series Honest. |
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Actor
Elizabeth Sellars has died aged 98 (6th
January 2020)
Elizabeth
Sellars had a fulfilling career on television and
on stage, and took leading roles in low-budget
British thrillers, as well as supporting roles to
bigger stars in bigger pictures, in the 1950s and
60s.She emerged at a rich time for British
television drama, often appearing on the
BBC’s Sunday Night Theatre (1951-59) and
ITV’s Play of the Week (1959-67). In the
theatre, she had long runs in West End
productions, and was one of the stars at
Stratford-upon-Avon during Peter Hall’s
first season as artistic director of the newly
formed Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1960-61.
more.... |
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Dame June
Whitfield, comedy actor, has died aged 93 (29
December 2018)
On radio June Whitfield became a national
favourite playing the eternal fiancée Eth,
coaxing her dozy Ron Glum (played by Dick
Bentley) towards the altar in the Frank
Muir-Denis Norden 1950s radio series 'Take It
From Here' (in the portion of the show known as
"The Glums"), and began her association
with Roy Hudd in 'The News Huddlines' in 1984,
which lasted into the new century.
On Television June became a regular on Arthur
Askey’s 'Before Your Very Eyes' in 1956,
then played his wife in the 'Arthur Askey Show'
in 1961. She also appeared in the 'Tony Hancock
Show', the comic’s first series for ITV, and
when he moved back to the BBC in 1961 she went
with him. She went on to perform a long running
double-act as the long-suffering wife of
overgrown boy scout Terry Scott in the archetypal
suburban sitcom 'Happy Ever After' (1974-78) and
its follow-up 'Terry And June', which ran from
1979 until 1987 when it was axed by the BBC as
out-of-touch in the age of
"alternative” comedy".
She later captivated a new generation as Jennifer
Saunders’s vague but sometimes acerbic
mother in 'Absolutely Fabulous'. more.... |
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Richard
Baker, former BBC newsreader and presenter dies
aged 93 (17
November 2018)
Richard Baker served on a minesweeper with the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the Second
World War, attached to the supply convoys to
Russia.
A keen amateur dramatist, Baker resumed his
education after the war and joined the BBC in
1950 as a radio presenter.
His voice introduced the first news bulletin
broadcast on BBC television in 1954 but it was a
year before he was actually seen on screen, going
on to become one of the most familiar faces on
TV. In 1969 he was narrator of the BBC children's
series, Mary, Mungo & Midge, which ran for 13
episodes, and he later narrated another
children's series, Teddy Edward, made three guest
appearances on Monty Python's Flying Circus and
was a regular on the panel game, Face the Music.
In 1982, he decided to leave the TV news desk but
his voice continued to be heard on BBC radio
where he presented, among other programmes; Start
the Week, These You Have Loved and Your Hundred
Best Tunes.
For many years he fronted the Last Night of the
Proms from the Royal Albert Hall, resplendent on
a balcony festooned with streamers. more.... |
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Babs
Beverley, member of the Beverley Sisters,has died
aged 91 (28 October 2018)
The first broadcasts by the Beverley Sisters were
on wartime radio shows. When the BBC’s
television service reopened after the war, they
were featured almost daily.
Their first television series, in 1947, was
called Three Little Girls on View. Rebranded as
Those Beverley Sisters, it ran for a further
seven years.
Following their TV success, the Beverley Sisters
were not short of offers for summer seasons at
seaside theatres and seasonal pantomimes. There
were spells at Blackpool, Great Yarmouth and
Bournemouth. When they were booked to appear in
Cinderella in Liverpool in 1956, the script was
adapted so they could play a trio of principal
boys.
The Beverley Sisters appeared at the Royal
Variety Performance five times, beginning in 1952
and ending 50 years later for the Queen’s
golden jubilee celebrations. In later years they
supported ex-service personnel charities, notably
the Burma Star Association. All three were made
MBE in 2006. more.... |
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Ray
Galton, comedy script writer, has died aged 88 (5th
October 2018)
Ray Galton joined up with Alan Simpson when, as
boys, they had both suffered from tuberculosis
and met in the same sanitorium. The two boys
found they were on the same wavelength and teamed
up to become writing partners. Together they
created Hancock’s Half Hour – on radio
and later on television – for Tony Hancock,
a programme that, in 1954 was one of the first
"situation comedies", based on
characters and experiences rather than on gags.
For seven years, Galton and Simpson wrote every
word uttered by Hancock, a difficult and touchy
man who embraced the illusion that he could do
better than his writers, and parted company with
them. His career never fully recovered.
Galton and his writing partner, now part of
Associated London Scripts, a co-operative
writers’ agency, along with Spike Milligan,
Eric Sykes and Howerd, were rescued by the BBC TV
series Comedy Playhouse, a vehicle for individual
plays. They contributed number four, The Offer,
featuring an old rag-and-bone man and his deluded
and snobbish son. Both writers thought these
characters too good to waste and saw the comic
possibilities of a series. It became Steptoe and
Son, a TV programme that drew audiences as high
as 28 million. They also wrote for the comedians
Frankie Howerd and Les Dawson, and lived a
Rolls-Royce lifestyle far removed from their
working-class roots. more.... |
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Denis
Norden, comedy writer and TV presenter, has died
aged 96 (18 September 2018)
In 1942, Norden joined the RAF. He became a radio
operator and also wrote stage shows to entertain
the troops: one of them benefited from the
talents of the servicemen Eric Sykes and Bill
Fraser. While in northern Germany, Norden
encountered the horrors of the recently liberated
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
On demob in 1945 he started to write gags for
variety comedians, including Nat Mills and Bobby
and Issy Bonn.
Norden met Muir in 1947, when both were working
for a script-writing agency run by a top comedy
writer of the day, Ted Kavanagh. Norden was
providing material for a young Australian comic,
Dick Bentley, and Muir was writing for
handle-bar-moustached Jimmy Edwards. A BBC radio
producer, Charles Maxwell, suggested that the two
young writers team up to work on Take It from
Here, starring Edwards, Bentley and Joy Nichols
(later replaced by June Whitfield).
Norden and Muir moved into TV with several
successful shows – Whack-O!, for example,
also starring Edwards as the charlatan headmaster
with a traditional faith in the value of caning
(1956-60, with a colour TV revival in 1971-72)
– and worked as joint consultants to the BBC
TV light entertainment department (1960-64).
Norden and Muir moved into TV with several
successful shows – Whack-O!, for example,
also starring Edwards as the charlatan headmaster
with a traditional faith in the value of caning
(1956-60, with a colour TV revival in 1971-72)
– and worked as joint consultants to the BBC
TV light entertainment department (1960-64). more.... |
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Teddy
Johnson, singer, has died aged 98 (6 June
2018)
The British entry has finished second in the
Eurovision song contest 15 times. The first of
these was in 1959 when Sing, Little Birdie was
performed by the husband-and-wife duo Pearl Carr
and Teddy Johnson. In addition to his singing
career as a soloist and with his wife, Johnson
was a well-known radio personality on Radio
Luxembourg and the BBC, and an occasional actor.
After the war he joined the resident band at the
Locarno dance hall in Streatham, south London,
and broadcast as a singer with the bandleader
Jack Payne. Johnson worked with several more
dance bands before he was hired in 1948 as chief
announcer for the English language programmes of
Radio Luxembourg.
In 1950, Johnson briefly presented the record
request show Housewives’ Choice until BBC
managers deemed him be too informal.
He had more luck as compere of the radio variety
show Black Magic, which also featured Carr, an
established singer and member of the vocal group
the Keynotes. This was the start of their long
professional and personal collaboration. They
toured together in variety shows during the 1950s
and were regular guests on the BBC
children’s programme Crackerjack. The couple
married in 1955. more.... |
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Peter
Byrne, actor who played Andy Crawford in Dixon of
Dock Green, has died aged 90 (14 May
2018)
Peter Byrne had joined Dixon of Dock Green at its
inception, as a wet-behind-the-ears police
constable. PC George Dixon had previously
featured in The Blue Lamp, the most popular film
in British cinemas in 1950. Although the
character was shot dead little more than 20
minutes in, he was brought back to life in a 1952
stage version of The Blue Lamp that featured
Gordon Harker as Dixon, Byrne as PC Andy Crawford
and Warner as Chief Inspector Cherry. Ted Willis,
co-writer of both the film and play, then turned
it into the television series, with Warner as
star and Byrne reprising his stage role.
In later years, Crawford married Dixon’s
daughter, Mary (played successively by Billie
Whitelaw, Jeanette Hutchinson and Anna Dawson),
and moved to CID, rising to the rank of detective
inspector, and gradually did more of the legwork
for Dixon – astonishingly, Warner was 80 by
the time the programme finally ended in 1976.
He had a guest role in a 1981 episode of the TV
sci-fi serial Blake’s 7 as Justin, a
scientist who genetically engineers animals as
slaves for humans, and a run in the sitcom Bread
as Derek (1988-91), a widower who befriends
Nellie Boswell (Jean Boht). He played an ageing
Tony Blair relocating to the Middle East in the
satirical 2006 series Time Trumpet, set 25 years
in the future, and appeared in episodes of
Doctors (2006) and Holby City (2006 and 2012). more.... |
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Ronald
Chesney, harmonica player and comedy writer, has
died aged 97 (23 April 2018)
On leaving school at 16, Ronald Chesney became a
professional harmonica player.
Exempted from serving in the forces during the
second world war after having a TB-infected
kidney removed, Chesney played his part by
teaching musical skills to the troops and other
listeners in the radio programme Let’s Play
the Mouth-Organ (1940). His own eponymously
titled show followed in 1941 and 1947, along with
long runs in the radio series Variety Band-Box
(1944-51) and Workers’ Playtime (1949-56).
While providing musical interludes with his
"talking harmonica" during the entire
run of the radio comedy Educating Archie
(1950-60), featuring the ventriloquist Peter
Brough and his doll, Chesney met Ronald Wolfe,
who joined the show as a scriptwriter in 1955.
They teamed up and, with Marty Feldman, wrote for
the final two series, as well as a TV version
(1958-59).
When Feldman left to team up with Barry Took,
Chesney and Wolfe continued together –
Chesney giving up his career as a harmonica
player – and created the 1961 radio sitcom
It’s a Deal, starring Sid James as a
bungling property developer.
The Rag Trade then began 20 years of hit comedies
for the pair on television. more.... |
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Zena
Skinner, TV cook and author, has died aged 91 (4 April
2018)
Zena Skinner presented the popular BBC show
'Cookery Club' and had a television career that
spanned nearly 30 years. She made her first
appearance on 'Cookery Club' in 1959, showing
viewers how to make brandy snaps.
She went on to present many programmes for the
BBC, including 'Town And Around', 'Ask Zena
Skinner' and 'Bon Appétit'. She even appeared on
the BBC children's television show 'Crackerjack'.
She was a regular contributor to the Radio Times
and wrote several cookery books. Meanwhile she
was brand ambassador for Tupperware, which
distributed her cookery leaflets with women's
magazines. Her popularity was in large part due
to the fact that compared to other TV cooks of
the time, Skinner's style was down-to-earth and
accessible. more.... |
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Bill
Maynard, comedy actor, has died aged 89 (30
March 2018)
In 1949, Bill Maynard appeared in talent shows
for Bryan Michie and Carrol Levis as well as in
an Opportunity Knocks! stage production and in
1953 he made his first TV appearance on the BBC
show Face the Music.
He worked in local repertory companies and then
went to Butlins holiday camp, Skegness, where he
met the comedy actor Terry Scott. Maynard and
Scott became stars when the BBC gave the pair
their own television show, 'Great Scott,
It’s Maynard' (1955), a sitcom in which
their characters shared a flat. Maynard also had
his own series, 'Mostly Maynard', but that proved
less successful and his desire to switch to
acting led to the break-up of the partnership
with Scott.
In the 60s and 70s he found work in TV series
such as Till Death Do Us Part (1969 and 1972), Up
Pompeii (1970), Coronation Street (1970) and Love
Thy Neighbour (1973). The Carry On films kept him
occupied throughout the 70s, along with, on TV,
Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggitt! (1974) and The
Life of Riley (1975). more.... |
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Katie
Boyle, actress and presenter, has died aged 91 (20 March
2018)
A love of cinema pushed Boyle from an early
modelling career towards the film world. As
Catherine Carleton she played school secretary
Miss Weston in the comedy Old Mother Riley
Headmistress (1950), with music-hall stars Arthur
Lucan and Kitty McShane.
Boyle also danced in the chorus at the Theatre
Royal, Windsor, in the pantomime Dick Whittington
(1949-50), starring Paul Scofield and Geraldine
McEwen. Although she acted in another film, The
House in the Square (1951), she then became a
full-time model, still as Catherine Carleton,
with catwalk jobs and work for Vogue.
Her growing fame led the BBC producer Richard
Afton to feature Boyle in the "Beauty
Spot" on his variety show Quite Contrary
(1953). After one programme, he made her its
presenter.
This introduction to television led to an
appearance in the 1954 Royal Variety Performance
and a return to acting. Billed as Catherine
Boyle, she was in several films as well as a
string of television plays.
She landed the starring role in the BBC adventure
serial Golden Girl (1960). As Katie Johnson, she
was the secretary who through an unexpected
inheritance becomes the world’s richest
woman.
However, the Eurovision Song Contest brought
Boyle fame in her own right and she left acting
behind. She presented the ITV advertising
magazine Mayfair Merry-go-round and, over the
years, was a panellist on Juke Box Jury
(1960-1965), Call My Bluff (1967-1970),
Punchlines (1981-1983), Blankety Blank
(1979-1985) and the English, American and Italian
versions of What’s My Line? She hosted her
own BBC Radio 2 show, Katie & Friends in
1990. more.... |
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Peter
Wyngarde, actor famous as the suave television
sleuth Jason King, has died aged "around
90" (18 January 2018)
Following the
War, Peter Wyngarde, who had endured the Japanese
internment camp Lunghua due to his British
diplomat father visiting China at the time that
the Japanese invaded, returned to London and
claimed to have read law at Oxford, but there is
no record of him having studied there in the
postwar years. His first acting credit was as a
policeman at the Buxton Playhouse in May 1946,
making nonsense of the 1933 birth date he
claimed.
He supported Alec Guinness’s Hamlet at the
New theatre in London in 1951, then played the
soldier Dunois to Siobhán McKenna’s Saint
Joan at the Arts in 1954. He appeared opposite
Vivien Leigh in Duel of Angels at the Apollo in
1958, and said that the highlight of his career,
at the Bristol Old Vic in 1959, had been playing
Cyrano de Bergerac.
His burgeoning TV career brought him lead roles
as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities (1957),
Long John Silver in The Adventures of Ben Gunn
(1958) and the title role in Rupert of Hentzau
(1964). His appearance in The Avengers (1966),
inducting Diana Rigg into the Hellfire Club, is
well remembered.In The Innocents (1961), he did
not have a single word of dialogue; his only film
lead was as a psychology professor in a horror
film, Night of the Eagle (1962). more.... |
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Jack
Good, the man who put pop music on television,
has died aged 86 (29 September 2017)
IIt was in 1957 that the BBC decided to abandon
the “Toddlers’ Truce”, which
required television to shut down for an hour each
day between 6pm and 7pm to give mums time to put
their young children to bed.
Jack Good was the producer who persuaded the BBC
to accept the idea of a Saturday night TV pop
show called Six-Five Special and then filled the
studio floor with young listeners, creating the
atmosphere of a teenage hop as they jived to the
Vipers or Tommy Steele.
In 1958 he was on his way to ITV, where Cliff
Richard was booked for Oh Boy!, as were Marty
Wilde, Billy Fury. The show was recorded at
Hackney Empire every Saturday morning and
transmitted that evening, competing directly
against Six-Five Special, which it swiftly
rendered obsolete.
Oh Boy! lasted a year. Good followed it in 1959
with Boy Meets Girls, also for ITV, in which
Marty Wilde and the Vernons Girls were the
featured performers. In turn that show was
succeeded in 1960 by the Good-produced Wham!,
whose guests included Fury, Joe Brown and Jess
Conrad. more.... |
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Sir Bruce
Forsyth, entertainer who began his career in
variety and became an enduringly popular TV host
has died aged 89 (18 August
2017)
Bruce Forsyth made his BBC television debut in
1939 on the Jasmine Bligh talent show. He later
launched his career as Boy Bruce, the Mighty
Atom, at the Theatre Royal, Bilston, in
Staffordshire, in 1942, wearing a satin suit made
by his mother and playing the accordion, ukulele
and banjo.
Forsyth led a busy and sometimes complicated
private life with a penchant for showgirls,
singers and beauty queens, made his Windmill
theatre debut in 1953, performing impressions of
Tommy Cooper.
During a summer season at Babbacombe in Devon in
1957, another dance act recommended Bruce to
their agent, Billy Marsh, and this led to a
booking on a television show, New Look, followed
by the breakthrough Sunday Night at the London
Palladium in September 1958; in black and white,
and always broadcast “live” on ATV,
Forsyth demonstrated his genius for improvisation
and ad-libbing as he shuffled and chivvied the
audience participants in physical competitions
and word games in the show’s Beat the Clock
segment.
He displayed a true vaudevillian’s talent
for catchphrases; as Tommy Trinder (whom he
succeeded on Sunday Night at the London
Palladium) had “You lucky people”, or
Arthur Askey “I thank-yeaow”, so
Forsyth patented “I’m in charge”
at the Palladium followed by “Nice to see
you … to see you, nice!” and
“Didn’t he do well?” on The
Generation Game.
more.... |
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Ty
Hardin, actor who starred as Bronco Layne, has
died aged 87 (3rd August 2017)
Ty Hardin was a blond beefcake actor who appeared
in films such as Battle of the Bulge (1965) and
Custer of the West (1967), after making his name
on television as Bronco Layne in the popular
Western series Bronco.
Broadcast by the BBC from 1958 to 1962, Bronco,
in which Hardin played a former Confederate
captain and adept horseman roaming the Old West
and meeting such characters as Wild Bill Hickock,
Billy the Kid and Jesse James, was an instant
hit.
Hardin’s appeal for women viewers was
obvious, and the catchy theme tune embedded
itself in the British psyche. The most popular of
several parodies, commencing “Bronco,
Bronco, tearing across the dotted line” was
a reference to a shiny, abrasive lavatory paper
of the day. more.... |
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Sir Roger
Moore, illustrious actor who starred as Ivanhoe
in the 1950s TV series, has died aged 89 (22nd May
2017)
Roger Moore was born in London. Tagging along
with friends in 1945 to auditions for film
extras, Moore was picked to appear in a
non-speaking role as a legionnaire in Caesar and
Cleopatra, starring Vivien Leigh and Claude
Rains. After three years in the army, Moore
returned to acting, landing small roles in
theatre and film, and moved to New York City in
1953 with his second wife, the singer Dorothy
Squires and began getting acting work on US
television. Returning to Britain, he took the
lead in the 1958 television adventure series
adapted from Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe.
Other regular TV roles of increasing size
followed, including two western series, The
Alaskans and Maverick, before Moore finally
became a bona fide star, playing the
crime-fighter and playboy Simon Templar in the
popular television crime series The Saint.
Two years after The Saint ended, Moore was cast
once more as a playboy adventurer in The
Persuaders!, in which he was teamed with Tony
Curtis. The odd-couple pairing (Moore, as Lord
Brett Sinclair, was dapper; Curtis, playing Danny
Wilde, was a ruffian) and the action staged in
glamorous locations made the series a hit. more.... |
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Moray
Watson, actor, has died aged 88 (3 May
2017)
Following repertory theatre in Nottingham,
Leatherhead and Liverpool, the West End beckoned.
Moray Watson made his debut in Small Hotel (St
Martin’s Theatre, 1955), then was seen as
the novel-writing butler, Trevor Sellers, in the
comedy The Grass Is Greener (St Martin’s,
1958). He reprised the character in the film
version two years later, alongside Cary Grant,
Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum. Then came rare
starring roles, in The Bad Soldier Smith
(Westminster Theatre, 1960-61) and The Public Eye
(Broadway, 1963-4).
After his introduction to television audiences as
assistant control engineer Peter Marsh in the
landmark sci-fi serial The Quatermass Experiment
(1953), Watson switched to soap opera, spending a
year (1962-3) in the women’s magazine serial
Compact as art editor Richard Lowe, then
returning for the last month of its run in 1965.
He was cast to type in war films such as The
Valiant (1962), Operation Crossbow (1965) and The
Sea Wolves (1980) but was better utilised on
television. His dozens of character roles
included Godfrey Cass in Silas Marner (1964),
Barrington Erle in the first series (1974) of The
Pallisers, Angus Kinloch in Quiller (1975), Chief
Constable Chubb in Murder Most English (1977), Mr
Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1980), Judge
Frobisher (1978-88) in Rumpole of the Bailey and
Wordsworth, the butler, in the sitcom Union
Castle (1982). more.... |
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Veteran
Saturday Club presenter Brian Matthew has died
aged 88 (8 April 2017)
Brian Matthew was born to musical parents in
Coventry in September 1928, it is unsurprising
that he blossomed on the radio music scene,
capturing the attention of BBC producers after
his first appearance on the new 'Saturday Skiffle
Club' - later renamed 'Saturday Club' - in 1957.
He originally found employment as a news reader
for the BBC Home Service, studying under the
veteran broadcaster, John Snagge. He moved to the
Light Programme and presented the occasional
programme such as 'Housewives’ Choice' and
was the announcer for the comedy programmes,
'Take It From Here' and 'Hancock’s Half
Hour'.
His talents in front of a camera saw him take on
television roles during the 1960s - including
hosting shows 'Thank Your Lucky Stars' and
'Swinging UK' - before he cemented himself as a
much-loved regular radio presenter.
And it was his 27-year stint as presenter of the
Saturday morning show, 'Sounds Of The 60s', which
kept him firmly in the hearts of radio listeners
all the way into the 2000s. His broadcasting
career spanned almost 70 years, but to many Brian
Matthew's name will always be synonymous with the
sounds of the 60s.. more.... |
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Alan
Simpson, scriptwriter, has died aged 87 (8 February
2017)
Alan Simpson was half of one of Britain's most
successful comedy writing partnerships. Simpson,
it is always said, patiently banged away at a
manual typewriter while his partner, Ray Galton,
strode up and down the room declaiming ideas or
dialogue. They made an odd couple, but it worked.
Together they wrote the scripts for Tony
Hancock's radio and TV shows, and for many comedy
plays, and they created Steptoe and Son, which
ran for eight series.
With Ray Galton, in 1951 he supplied the
well-known comic Derek Roy with jokes at five
shillings a go for his Happy Go Lucky radio
programme, after which the duo were put on the
show's payroll at eight guineas a week. They
ended up writing all the shows, an hour once a
fortnight, for 20 guineas each.
They knew they had "arrived" when
Hancock offered them 25 guineas. The comedian had
made a name for himself in the BBC shows
Educating Archie and Kaleidoscope and in 1954 he
was given his own radio series, Hancock’s
Half Hour, in which he played an exaggerated
version of himself. Galton and Simpson wrote the
scripts, establishing a form of comedy based on
character and situation, rather than sketches and
gags. They continued to script the show when it
was adapted for television in 1956, altogether
writing 160 radio and TV programmes for Hancock
between 1954 and 1961. more.... |
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Desmond
Carrington, actor and disc jockey, has died aged
90 (1 February
2017)
Desmond Carrington was a unique radio phenomenon:
a veteran DJ for BBC Radio 2 whose weekly show of
classical and popular music was broadcast from
his home – a farm in Perthshire – using
his personal collection of some 80,000 CDs, LPs
and 78s.
Called up for second world war service in 1943,
he joined the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent
Regiment and was sent to India. Later posted to
Colombo, where he joined Radio SEAC, and
discovered that radio was a natural medium for
him.
On demob, he became a member of the BBC Drama
Repertory Company, and was an independent
producer for Radio Luxembourg as well as the BBC.
He also began to appear on TV, including in a
very lucrative Daz commercial.
It was this growing experience of TV, together
with his good looks, that landed him the part of
Dr Chris Anderson, the new house physician at the
fictional Oxbridge General hospital, in Emergency
– Ward 10, a year after the series started
in 1957. His original contract was for three
weeks; he stayed for more than 200 episodes. more.... |
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Barbara
Hale, actress, Della Street in Perry Mason, has
died aged 94 (27 January 2017)
Barbara Hale was best known as Della Street, the
super-reliable secretary of Perry Mason (Raymond
Burr), the criminal defence attorney in the
popular CBS television series (1957-66), a role
for which she won a best supporting actress Emmy;
two decades later, the pair reunited to make more
than two dozen television movies for NBC.
After appearing in such films as The First Yank
in Tokyo (1945), The Boy With the Green Hair
(1948), The Window (1949) and The Clay Pigeon
(1949), Hale delivered perhaps her most notable
movie performance in the Columbia sequel Jolson
Sings Again (1949), playing a nurse and the
singer's new wife.
Hale then appeared often as the female lead in a
number of top-level movies, including Lorna Doone
(1951) with Richard Greene, The First Time (1952)
with Robert Cummings, Seminole (1953) with Rock
Hudson and Hugh O’Brian, The Lone Hand
(1953) and The Oklahoman (1957) with Joel McCrea,
A Lion Is in the Streets (1953) with James
Cagney, 7th Cavalry (1956) with Randolph Scott
and The Houston Story (1956) with Gene Barry.
After the Perry Mason series ended, Hale appeared
in the star-studded Airport (1970), in the
lamentable The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) and
alongside her son in the John Milius surfing
picture Big Wednesday (1978). She also played
Katt's mom on a 1982 episode of The Greatest
American Hero. more.... |
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Sabrina
(Norma Ann Sykes), glamour model and actress, has
died aged 80 (24 November 2016)
In 1955 Sabrina was chosen to play a dumb blonde
sidekick in Arthur Askey's new television series,
Before Your Very Eyes (BBC 1952–56, ITV
1956–58) which soon made her a household
name.
She made her motion-picture debut in Stock Car,
in 1955. She then appeared in a small role in the
1956 film, Ramsbottom Rides Again. In her third
movie, Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957) she had
a non-speaking role in which, despite sharing
equal billing with the star Alastair Sim on
posters and appearing in many publicity stills in
school uniform, she was required only to sit up
in bed wearing a nightdress, reading a book
whilst the action took place around her.
Other TV appearances included Double Your Money
(1955), Make Mine a Million (1959), Tarzan
(1967), This Is Your Life - (Arthur Askey, 1974).
more.... |
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Hugh
O'Brian, actor who played Wyatt Earp, has died
aged 91 (5 September 2016)
Hugh O’Brian was one of the first American
actors to achieve television celebrity in 1950s
Britain as the marshal of Dodge City in The Life
and Legend of Wyatt Earp.
More than 200 black-and-white episodes of the
series were shown on the fledgling ITV network
between 1956 and 1962. Handsome and square-jawed,
O’Brian landed the starring title role
because he resembled the real Wyatt Earp
(1848-1929) as a young lawman in late
19th-century Kansas and later in Tombstone,
Arizona.
It was the first television western to be aimed
specifically at adults. Series appealing to
children such as The Cisco Kid and The Lone
Ranger had been scheduled for late afternoon
slots. Inspired by the legendary events of the
real-life frontier marshal, Earp played in
after-dinner prime time and transformed
O’Brian into one of television’s first
sex symbols.
O'Brian was a one of the founders of the
Thalians, a show-business charitable organization
formed in 1955 to raise money for children with
mental health problems. In 1964, he established
the Hugh O'Brian Acting Awards competition at
UCLA. more.... |
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Sir
Antony Jay, writer, broadcaster and director, has
died aged 86 (23 August
2016)
After National Service in the Royal Signals,
Antony Jay joined BBC Television in 1955, and was
a member of the team that launched the current
affairs programme Tonight, which he edited from
1962 to 1963. After a further year as head of
Television Talk Features, he left the BBC to work
as a freelance writer and producer.
From 1981, Jay was co-author, with Jonathan Lynn,
of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, the
political comedies which kept the nation laughing
through the Thatcherite 1980s. Yes, Minister ran
for three series, before the advancement of Jim
Hacker’s career (due to his valiant defiance
of a new Euro directive redefining the British
banger as an “emulsified offal tube”),
led to its relaunch as Yes, Prime Minister, with
the same cast (Sir Humphrey promoted to Cabinet
Secretary), in 1986. The series ran until 1988.
However, not many, perhaps, were aware that the
serial was commissioned with a serious political
purpose: to popularise public choice theory. It
is because it succeeded spectacularly that Jay
received a knighthood in 1988.
Jay also wrote the BBC TV documentaries Royal
Family and Elizabeth R, for which he was
appointed CVO in 1993 for personal services to
the Royal Family. more.... |
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Brian
Rix, Lord Rix, brilliant comic actor, manager and
dedicated campaigner for people with learning
disabilities, has died aged 92 (20 August
2016)
Brian Rix devoted his life almost equally to
stage farce – as one of the most brilliant
comic actors in the postwar years – and to
campaigning for people with learning
disabilities. He was successful at both. In the
theatre, both in management and on stage, his
name became synonymous with the “Whitehall
farces”, named after the London venue and
with plotlines usually involving a lie, a comic
deception and someone being caught with his
trousers around his ankles. Rix also ran
repertory companies and presented more than 90
farces on television in the 1960s – to huge
audiences – starring the big names of the
day, such as Dora Bryan, Sid James, Sheila
Hancock and John Le Mesurier.
In 1952 Reluctant Heroes became one of the first
West End plays to be partly televised. As a
result, there were huge queues outside the
Whitehall. Rix negotiated a contract with the BBC
that lasted 17 years. The TV work included a
number of Sunday Night Theatre productions under
the Brian Rix Presents banner in the late 50s and
early 60s.
Management was the art that mattered to him. For
years he put on and appeared in the most noted
farces of the West End, including Dry Rot by John
Chapman, who had understudied him in Reluctant
Heroes. Rix also appeared in the film of Dry Rot
(1956), one of 11 film credits.
In 1949 he had married the actor Elspet Gray; the
first of their four children, Shelley, was born
with Down’s syndrome.
He threw himself into fundraising for learning
disability charities, and in 1978 he began the
Let’s Go! TV programmes for people with
learning disabilities – he made 40 of them.
In 1979 a job advert in the Guardian caught
Rix’s eye, for the position of Mencap’s
secretary general. He applied and was initially
turned down, but was later accepted and started
work in 1980. more.... |
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Sylvia
Peters, actress and BBC continuity announcer, has
died aged 90 (26 July 2016)
Sylvia Peters, who has died aged 90, was one of
the faces of BBC Television during the 1950s;
having introduced the historic broadcast of the
Queen’s Coronation in 1953, she later helped
to teach the Queen the skills she needed for the
annual royal Christmas message.
As well as becoming the youngest of three
in-vision announcers (Mary Malcolm and McDonald
Hobley were the others), she presented Come
Dancing between 1954 and 1958. She also fronted
the BBC Television programme For Deaf Children in
1956. With her refined accent and crisp, elegant
manner, she became one of Britain’s first
big television stars.
The turning point for television came in 1953
with the Coronation. At 10?am on Coronation Day,
Sylvia Peters went on the air live and continued
to provide linking material until 11.30 that
night.
In 1954, Peters was chosen to host Come Dancing
and was also the compere for Television Dancing
Club, which featured the bandleader Victor
Silvester.
After leaving the staff of the BBC in 1958, she
became a freelance, and covered such events as
Lady's Day at Royal Ascot and Come Dancing, and
made less frequent appearances on screen and
fronted Jim’s Inn, an advertisement magazine
for the ITV.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/07/29/sylvia-peters-bbc-television-presenter--obituary/
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/29/sylvia-peters-obituary |
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William
Lucas, television actor, has died aged 91 (8 July
2016)
William Lucas' big television break came with the
part of the blackmailing car dealer Reg Dorking
in Portrait of Alison (1955), a crime thriller
serial written by Francis Durbridge.
He was a regular as David Graham in The Strange
World of Planet X (1956), Charlton Bradbury in
The Crime of the Century (1956-57), Jim Pereira
in the second series (1958) of the hotel saga The
Royalty, Jonathan Briggs in the serialisation of
Frank Tilsley’s novel Champion Road (1958)
and Durea in the London underworld thriller Solo
for Canary (1958).
He starred in The Infamous John Friend (1959), in
the title role of the smuggler and spy for
Napoleon, and was Detective Inspector Mitchell in
the crime dramas The Days of Vengeance (1960) and
Flower of Evil (1961), and Eddie Prior in the
thriller serial The Prior Commitment (1969).
He even took the title role in a TV production of
Rigoletto (1958), recalling: “Happily, the
singing was dubbed.” more.... |
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Ray
Lakeland, outside broadcasting pioneer, has died
aged 95 (8 July 2016)
After the war Ray lakeland joined the British
Forces Network, and on demobilisation transferred
to BBC North, initially as a freelance reporter.
He joined its radio studios in Newcastle
full-time in 1947.
It was with his move to television in 1956 that
Ray found his natural creative home, producing a
wide range of programmes, including the first
televised coverage of the launching of a liner
– RMS Windsor Castle, named in 1959 by the
Queen Mother – a broadcast from Blackpool
illuminations, the BBC’s first pop
programme, Six-Five Special, and the ballroom
contest Come Dancing.
He is perhaps best remembered for his innovative
coverage of the 1960 Grand National, for which he
developed the system, still used today, of
attaching a camera to the top of a vehicle to
keep pace with the runners and riders and give
viewers a greater sense of the speed and noise of
the race. more.... |
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Noel
Neill, actress, has died aged 95 (5 July
2016)
Neill was the original big screen Lois Lane, the
crack investigative reporter on the Metropolis
Daily Planet who never quite figures out that
that the “Man of Steel” who keeps
rescuing her from the jaws of death – or
worse – is really her slightly nerdy
colleague Clark Kent. She took the role in two
movie serials and 78 episodes of the hit
television series, between 1948 and 1958.
Neill remained with Superman until the programme
was cancelled in 1958 after Reeves’s death.
Her last film role was in Lawless Rider (1954),
and she played in many of the early TV programmes
that were extensions of the B-movie and serial
factories, including The Lone Ranger and The
Cisco Kid. more.... |
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Gordon
Murray, producer and puppeteer, has died aged 95 (1 July
2016)
Gordon Murray created Camberwick Green, Chigley
and Trumpton, three of the best-loved series for
younger children on BBC Television, first
screened in the 1960s.
In 1953 he launched his own professional puppet
company, Murray Marionettes in Broadstairs.
Audiences were disappointingly small but he
invited Freda Lingstrom, head of BBC
children’s television, to see the show and
so impressed her that she offered him a job
pulling the strings of Spotty Dog in a new series
for toddlers called The Woodentops.
In 1955, Murray took a BBC production course and
was officially taken on as a contract producer in
children’s television. As well as The
Woodentops he worked on The Flowerpot Men before
creating a television version of the radio series
Toytown.
Initially his shows were broadcast live, but
Murray became frustrated by the hazards of live
transmission and he developed his own film studio
to record his films. In 1958 he created The
Rubovian Legends, an early collaboration with
Bura and Hardwick.
Murray devised new puppet techniques for
television, wrote scripts, built puppets and
trained a team of puppeteers to use rod and glove
puppets as well as marionettes worked by strings.
He worked with John Ryan on the popular Captain
Pugwash series, and also produced the Sketch Club
series with the artist Adrian Hill. more.... |
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Ronnie
Corbett, comedian, has died aged 85 (1 April
2016)
Ronnie Corbett achieved such fame as one of the
Two Ronnies that his solo career was often
eclipsed; as his fans knew well, he worked on his
own for many years, exploiting to the full both
his lack of height – he was only 5ft 1in
– and his undoubted talent as a comic
performer.
After National Service with the RAF, Corbett
moved to London, he endured eight lean years,
taking occasional engagements but mostly living
on his earnings as a caretaker, house-sitter,
tennis-court superintendent and advertising
salesman.
For some years he lived in grimy digs, working in
nightclubs or on the halls, and teamed up with
Anne Hart, a singer whom he met at a club, who
became his stooge and whom he later married.
He appeared with Eamonn Andrews on the children's
TV programme, Crackerjack, as its resident
comedian for many episodes.
But Corbett's big chance came when he was spotted
by David Frost at Winston's, Danny La Rue's West
End night club, and cast in his BBC show The
Frost Report (1966-67), followed by Frost on
Sunday for ITV (1968-69).
It was with Frost that he first teamed up with
Ronnie Barker. Television extended Corbett’s
appeal. Although he had become a star in his own
right before meeting Ronnie Barker, The Two
Ronnies (1971-1987) remained the zenith of a
television career that lasted more than 40 years.
more.... |
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Adrienne
Corri, actress, has died aged 85 (28 March
2016)
Adrienne Corri was an actor of considerable range
and versatility whose career ranged from the high
– with Shakespearean roles alongside Ralph
Richardson and Alec Guinness – to the
decidedly low, including appearances in many
quota quickies and low-budget horror movies that
showcased her striking red-haired beauty.
Among her dozens of television parts were Milady
de Winter in the BBC series of The Three
Musketeers (1954) and various appearances in
episodes of ABC’s Armchair Theatre
(1956-60). She featured in several BBC Plays of
the Month, in one of which she was Violet in
George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman
(1968), alongside Maggie Smith, and she played
Olivia in ITV’s Twelfth Night (1969). In
Measure for Measure (1979) she was the
cheroot-smoking bawdy-house keeper Mistress
Overdone, and she was last seen in two episodes
of Lovejoy (1992). more.... |
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Robert
Horton, star of the Wagon Train western series,
has died aged 91 (20 March 2016)
Robert Horton won legions of female fans in the
role of frontier scout Flint McCullough on Wagon
Train (1957-65), a television western series that
became a massive hit on both sides of the
Atlantic.
In 1945 a chance encounter with a talent scout
led to an uncredited part in the Second World War
film A Walk in the Sun. After taking a degree in
Theatre Arts at the University of California, Los
Angeles, he appeared in (among others) Apache War
Smoke (1952) and on television shows such as The
Lone Ranger and The Public Defender before
winning his part on Wagon Train.
The role turned him into an international idol
and he was especially popular in Britain, where
Wagon Train was shown on ITV’s Monday
teatime slot. When he appeared at the London
Palladium, a reviewer reported that he had drawn
“squeals and shrieks’’ from his
mainly female audience. more.... |
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Cliff
Michelmore, television and radio broadcaster, has
died aged 96 (17 March
2016)
Cliff Michelmore was one of the most familiar
faces on British television in the 1950s and
1960s, notably as presenter of Tonight, which ran
for some 1,800 editions between 1957 and 1965. In
the late 1950s and early 1960s he was appearing
in as many as 300 programmes a year and on screen
he invariably appeared confident, calm, unhurried
and unflappable.
In 1935 he joined the RAF and underwent initial
training at RAF Halton, in Buckinghamshire.
Having survived the war and on the strength of
having done some radio commentaries on
inter-service games, he was sent to Hamburg as
Officer Commanding Royal Airforce Element, the
British Forces Network in Germany. His rank was,
by now, squadron leader.
When the regular Hamburg presenter of Two-Way
Family Favourites, the Sunday lunchtime link
between the forces in Germany and their families
in Britain, was taken ill, Michelmore was drafted
in to replace him. Before the programme began he
used to chat on the closed line to the presenter
at the London end, Jean Metcalfe, in whom he
detected a distinctly flirtatious tone. She
helped him through the early programmes, and
when, in the spring of 1949, he came to London
and met her, romance immediately blossomed. They
married in 1950.
Michelmore’s breakthrough to evening
television came in 1955 when Donald Baverstock
asked him to join his topical programme
Highlight, which pioneered a grittier style of
interviewing. Michelmore also worked for Panorama
and as a reporter on Saturday Sport. He had
therefore served a thorough apprenticeship by
time he was offered his big chance on Tonight.
In no time, Michelmore was rivalling Richard
Dimbleby as the BBC’s leading current
affairs specialist, less heavyweight no doubt,
but still scrupulously well informed, and a good
deal less pompous. more.... |
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Sylvia
Anderson, co-creator of Thunderbirds, has died
aged 88 (16 March 2016)
With her then husband, Gerry, Sylvia Anderson
brought to television some of the best-loved
children’s puppet series of the 1960s,
remembered for their groundbreaking animation and
spectacular special effects. While he produced
the programmes, she was responsible for character
development, storylines, costume design,
providing voices and directing other voice
actors’ dialogue. Her most famous creation
was Lady Penelope, International Rescue’s
London agent in Thunderbirds (1965-66), whom she
gave “not only the daring and panache of a
secret agent, but also the poise of a cool and
beautiful aristocrat”.
They had established AP Films in 1957, with
Sylvia as a company director and production
assistant, and were commissioned by ITV to make
The Adventures of Twizzle (1957-59), from Roberta
Leigh’s children’s stories, followed by
the first run of Leigh’s Torchy the Battery
Boy (1958-59). Both featured traditional
marionettes, but Gerry devised innovative filming
and puppetry techniques.
Sylvia and Gerry married in 1960 while making the
western puppet series Four Feather Falls.
Supermarionation began with Supercar (1961-62)
and Fireball XL5 (1962-63), then Stingray, the
Andersons’ first effort to be filmed in
colour. more.... |
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Vlasta
Dalibor, puppeteer, has died aged 94 (21
February 2016)
Vlasta Dalibor, who has died aged 94, was the
co-creator, with her husband Jan, of the
unmelodious porcine puppets Pinky and Perky.
The couple began performing during the 1956
summer season at Heysham, for £25 a week. Trevor
Hill (producer of The Sooty Show) saw them there
and gave them their own BBC television series,
featuring the pigs in both string and glove
puppet form, manipulated by Jan and Vlasta.
Their debut was in “Pinky and Perky’s
Pop Parade” in October 1958, set in the
mythical radio station POP (later “PPC
TV”), with Roger Moffat as the station
announcer.
The BBC granted the Dalibors the light
entertainment slot before the six o’clock
news, and grown-up audiences warmed to the
pigs’ gently subversive humour and
high-pitched renditions of speeded-up pop songs
(with opening theme We Belong Together).
Pinky and Perky joined The Beatles and Marlene
Dietrich onstage for the 1963 Royal Variety
performance, and the following year they appeared
in America on The Ed Sullivan Show alongside
Morecambe and Wise.
In 1968 the Dalibors accepted an offer from
Thames Television, but in the event only two more
series made it to air, though they were
frequently repeated. The Dalibors retired from
the small screen in 1973. more.... |
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Conrad
Phillips, stage and screen actor, has died aged
90 (13 January
2016)
One of ITV’s first action heroes, notable
for his expertise with a crossbow, was William
Tell, played by Conrad Phillips. Swashbucklers
were hugely popular in ITV’s early years and
William Tell (1958-59), set in 14th-century
Switzerland under the tyrannical rule of Emperor
Rudolph of Austria, was one of the most memorable
series.
He had worked in repertory theatre, and acted in
more than 30 films, including The Battle of the
River Plate (1956), Sons and Lovers (1960) and
Heavens Above! (1963). Phillips was often cast as
police officers and military types.
The role of Tell came after the actor made guest
appearances in other swashbuckling television
series, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1956), The
Count of Monte Cristo (1956), The Adventures of
Robin Hood (1957) and The Buccaneers (1957).
Apart from the detectives he played in the crime
dramas Silent Evidence (1962) and A Game of
Murder (1966), most of his subsequent television
roles were one-offs. However, Phillips had runs
as Robert Malcolm in the final year of the BBC
soap opera The Newcomers (1969) and the NY
Estates managing director Christopher Meadows in
Emmerdale Farm (on and off between 1981 and
1986). more.... |
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