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TV News Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith, TV reporter and politician has died aged 86 (13 August 2010) Sir Geoffrey was a charismatic television reporter who switched to politics and enjoyed a 41-year career in the Commons. He joined the BBC’s current affairs unit as a producer, and in 1954 went in front of the camera, quickly establishing himself as an accomplished and personable interviewer, appearing five times weekly in the Highlight magazine programme. Highlight earned him a reputation for breaking controversial stories, and this followed him when he moved to the flagship Tonight programme, where his interviews became increasingly political, though never partisan. Shortly before the 1959 general election, Cliff Michelmore, Tonight’s presenter, had a hernia operation and Johnson Smith was promoted to co-host the show for six weeks. His profile was thus at its highest when the election was called, and on October 8 1959 he ousted the Labour member for Holborn and St Pancras South, Lena Jeger, by 656 votes. Arriving at Westminster as a media star, Johnson Smith worked his passage as a backbencher, concentrating his fire on St Pancras’s “Red” Labour council. He successfully promoted a Bill authorising councils to operate a meals-on-wheels service for the elderly. His inexperience did sometimes show, as when he dismissed settlers in East Africa as “clods” . But he was on the fast track, within six months becoming PPS to ministers at the Board of Trade; in 1962 he moved to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. His parliamentary career was interrupted in October 1964 when Lena Jeger, as Labour came to power, had her revenge by 2,756 votes. He briefly returned to television, freelancing for the BBC and Rediffusion’s religious programmes. The following February he was back for the safe seat of East Grinstead, the local association preferring him to the past and future Cabinet minister Geoffrey Rippon. He took the seat by more than 10,000 votes ; he would represent the constituency — redrawn in 1983 as Sussex Wealden — until 2001. more.... Sunday Night at The London Palladium conductor, Jack Parnell has died aged 87 (9 August 2010) Jack Parnell provided the music for shows such as Sunday Night At The London Palladium and wrote the theme tunes to programmes including The Golden Shot during his long spell as musical director at ATV where his Uncle Val was the Managing Director. Parnell led his own band and from 1951 left Ted Heath to lead a 12-piece and then a 16-piece band. With the advent of rock and roll, the fortunes of the big bands declined. Parnell accepted the job of musical director at ATV in 1956, a post he was to hold for 26 years. The company’s flagship show, Sunday Night At The London Palladium, was broadcast live for most of its run, with rehearsals during the day. The tension as transmission time approached was enormous, but Parnell always maintained that shows produced under these stressful conditions came over better than the later, pre-recorded ones. Disasters were sometimes only narrowly avoided, as when the orchestra, accompanying Placido Domingo in a rehearsal of excerpts from Pagliacci, turned the page and found itself playing a soft-shoe shuffle. The library had sent along Harry Secombe’s music by mistake. During his decades at the broadcaster, he worked with legends such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr, Lena Horne and Nat King Cole. He also made series with Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, acted as a panellist on TV talent show New Faces and was musical director for programmes such as The Benny Hill Show and a lavish production of Peter Pan starring Mia Farrow, Sir John Gielgud and Danny Kaye. He also composed signature tunes for programmes such as Family Fortunes. In the late 1970s he began his association with The Muppet Show, for which he conducted the orchestra and frequently appeared on screen. He was instrumental in getting the jazz great Buddy Rich on the show. Parnell retired from ATV in 1982, when it became Central Television, moving to Southwold but continuing to perform with the all-star veterans group Best Of British Jazz with trumpeter Kenny Baker and trombonist Don Lusher. He also played with his small group for weekly shows at the Green Man in Rackheath, Norfolk. more.... Roy Rogers horse fetches $266,500 (17 July 2010) Trigger, the stuffed horse belonging to cowboy actor and singer Roy Rogers, has fetched $266,500 (£174,000) at auction. Christie's auction house, which ran the sale along with Western auctioneer High Noon Americana, said the collection of items related to Rogers' and wife Dale Evan's roles on television and in the movies brought in $2.9 million. Trigger, the palomino horse which Rogers had stuffed after it died in 1965, was bought by rural US cable television station RFD-TV for $266,500, while his saddle fetched $386,500 (£252,000) from a private buyer. Other top sellers included Roy Rogers' 1963 Pontiac Bonneville and the Nellybelle jeep, an iconic emblem on the Roy Rogers Show, which ran on television in the 1950s and 1960s. The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum, which was based in Branson, Missouri was closed in 2009. Roy Rogers died in 1998 at age 86. The more than 300 items included in the sale ran from Roy's sunglasses to a sterling belt buckle to a Roy Rogers directors chair. Avis Scott, BBC television continuity announcer and actress, has died aged 92 (18 June 2010) In March 1954 Avis Scott became a BBC TV in-vision announcer, replacing Noelle Middleton and was immensely popular with viewers. However, her good looks and charm were to be her downfall as in January 1955 she was sacked for being "too glamourous and sexy." She also starred in several movies in the early 50's including Waterfront with Richard Burton and in the West End she was featured in Noel Coward's Present Laughter 1947-1948 as well as Dear Murderer and Lady from Edinburgh, both in 1946. She moved to Hollywood and worked in television until her retirement in the early eighties. Joan Rhodes, music hall artiste who tore up telephone directories, has died aged 89 (3 June 2010) During the mid-1950s, she appeared on television and in variety, tearing up phone books, lifting a steel table in her teeth, bending and breaking iron bars and nails and throwing obese men over her shoulder. Billed as "The Mighty Mannequin", she showed no outward sign of her considerable muscle power: with her 22in waist, she described herself as "an iron girl in a velvet glove", dressing like a showgirl and interspersing her feats with a slightly fey rhyming patter about the drawbacks of being so strong. In 1949 she gained national attention when she appeared in a freak show entitled Would You Believe It? which toured the country. Considerable success in the London music halls and tours of America followed, and she appeared in a number of British summer shows. At Christmas 1958 she performed before the Royal Family at Windsor Castle, where she snapped a 10in nail which the Duke of Edinburgh had been able only to dent. On her way to the Pier Theatre, Shanklin, in 1960, she was stopped by a policeman on the Isle of Wight ferry and asked to explain the presence of several hundred telephone directories in the back of her car. At the height of her fame Joan Rhodes was viewed by the British public with a kind of stupefied fascination. She became the object of music hall jokes and cartoons in Punch. more.... Carol Marsh, actress, has died aged 83 (1 June 2010) Carol Marsh earned her big screen break when she was chosen from more than 3,000 applicants to play Rose, the mousy, wide-eyed waitress in the film noir classic Brighton Rock (1947). After Brighton Rock she dyed her hair platinum for the title role in Alice in Wonderland (1949). In the same year she was in three comedies: Marry Me, Helter Skelter, and The Romantic Age, in which she appeared with Mai Zetterling and Petula Clark. She was the fragile, delicate yet ghoulishly determined Lucy, Christopher Lee's ill-fated victim, in the 1958 Hammer production of Dracula, the first colour version of Bram Stoker's classic. In the 1951 film of Scrooge, with Alistair Sim in the title role, Carol Marsh played the old skinflint's sister Fan, who dies giving birth to his nephew, Fred. Her career continued into the 1960s with films such as Man Accused and parts in television dramas, among them The Adventures of Sir Lancelot and Dixon of Dock Green. In the 1970s she appeared in the record-breaking West End play The Mousetrap. She had made her television debut in 1950 in The Lady's Not For Burning, starring Richard Burton and Alec Clunes. She was Miranda in a children's version of The Tempest, and Alexandra in Little Foxes (both 1951). She featured in the 1959 Trollope serial The Eustace Diamonds, playing Augusta Fawn, and was Mrs Blacklow in the Arnold Bennett serial Lord Raingo of 1966. She was busier on radio, and was a member of the BBC Drama Rep at intervals between 1966 and 1979. more.... Dennis Hopper, iconoclastic actor and director whose film Easy Rider defined the counterculture of the 1960s, has died aged 74 (31 May 2010) Put under contract by Warner Brothers after being spotted on television while still a teenager, he made his film debut in Rebel Without a Cause alongside James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. He played opposite Dean again in Giant (1956) and was strongly influenced by Dean’s brooding style. He always regarded Dean as the most talented and original actor he worked with. They became close friends and Dean’s death in a car crash in 1955 at the age of 24 affected him deeply. Much of his subsequent work was in westerns, from Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) to The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967) Hang ’em High (1968) and True Grit (1969). Dennis Hopper was triumphantly to capture the spirit of the youth revolution of the '60s in the film that became iconic of the spirit of Sixties counter-culture, Easy Rider (1969). As scriptwriter (with Peter Fonda and Terry Southern) actor (with Peter Fonda) and director, of Easy Rider, Hopper was the controlling genius of a film that could so easily have degenerated into chaos as it pursued him and Fonda as a couple of drop-outs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles on a ragged odyssey across America (on the way giving Jack Nicholson his first big screen break). more.... Ray Alan, ventriloquist, has died aged 79 (24 May 2010) Ray Alan was a technically brilliant voice-thrower who, alongside his superbly snobbish, drink-soaked creation Lord Charles, became the most famous ventriloquist in Britain during the Sixties and Seventies. Alan was inspired to create Lord Charles (family motto: Semper Inebriate) in 1960, while watching a drunken aristocrat in the audience at the Satire Club off Jermyn Street. "I saw this chap sitting at a ringside table," Alan recalled, "dinner suit on, delightful young lady with him, and there he was patting her knee and pouring her champagne and saying: 'By Jove, you lovely thing, oh you lovely little thing.' And I thought what a wonderful character. Lord Charles made his first television appearance in 1961 on the BBC pastiche music hall show The Good Old Days. Such was Alan's success with Lord Charles that they appeared together on the programme more frequently than any other act. With his frequent rejoinder "Silly ass", Lord Charles would introduce viewers into the cosy, Wodehouseian world of the peerage. Alan's natural ability quickly helped him take over as the nation's favourite ventriloquist from Peter Brough, whose radio show, Educating Archie, had been a big success in the Fifties. Alan was technically a much better "vent" than Brough, who was well suited to radio in that his lips moved when he did his act – which proved fatal when he attempted to transfer to television. in 1958 he made his television debut on Toytown, alongside the hero of which, Larry The Lamb, Alan introduced a new character reflecting the dawning space age: Mikki the Martian. Though Lord Charles was his star turn throughout the Sixties, Alan also performed in that period with his two best-known characters for children (of which he was particularly proud), a small boy and his pet duck known as Tich and Quackers. more.... Roland Fox, BBC Parliamentary correspondent throughout the 1950s, has died aged 97 (16 May 2010) Roland Fox was a BBC Parliamentary correspondent and only the second to hold the post; he covered the last years of Churchill's premiership and the heated Suez debates, the first televised State Opening of Parliament, and accompanied Harold Macmillan on his "Wind of Change" tour of Africa. There was no guidance, no training and no autocue; he often read straight from his notes on to the air, anticipating the next morning's press by many hours. When Winston Churchill resigned in 1955, there was a newspaper strike, so the story was broken by the BBC's Parliamentary staff. When regular television news bulletins began in July 1954, it often meant a long taxi journey to Alexandra Palace in north London, allowing Fox some time to learn his lines by heart on the way. Later the Westminster studio was adapted for television. On one occasion the studio lights suddenly failed in the middle of Fox's piece. He knew what he wanted to say and gamely continued in total darkness to the end of his live report. He never had any editorial supervision; all that was required, he said, was that he come out on time. more.... Lena Horne, singer, actress, civil rights activist and, eventually, a showbusiness phenomenon has died aged 92 (16 May 2010) Although she did not regard herself as a jazz singer, she had a formidable sense of rhythm and an easy-going style which went well in a jazz context. As a film actress she had notable success in Stormy Weather (in which she sang the title song) and Cabin In The Sky. Her refusal to play demeaning roles, or to allow her light complexion to be darkened with make-up, made enemies in Hollywood but in the long run brought her great public respect. Lena Horne starred on Broadway in Jamaica in 1957. She toured internationally, appearing several times at the London Palladium and the London Casino. She also recorded many albums, ranging from jazz and blues to Rodgers and Hart songs such as The Lady is a Tramp. Altogether she appeared in some 15 films, among them I Dood It (1943) and Ziegfeld Follies (1946). The last, Death of a Gunfighter, came out in 1969, after which she retired to Los Angeles to grow cacti. more.... Dorothy Provine, actress and singer, has died aged 75 (6 May 2010) In 1958, Provine played a female gangster in The Bonnie Parker Story: this was essentially a B-movie and had none of the quality of Bonnie And Clyde (1967), but Provine shone in her role. This was followed by inconsequential parts in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer and Wagon Train, but she played opposite Lou Costello in the comedy, The 30 Foot Bride Of Candy Rock (1959): Provine played the 30 foot bride. Roger Moore and Provine co-starred in a TV series about prospectors, The Alaskans (1959-60). Provine's big break came with another TV series, The Roaring 20s, in which she played the flapper, Pinky Pinkham. This light-hearted escapism about cops, gangsters and showgirls in Chicago in the 1920s was very successful and co-starred Donald May and Gary Vinson. Provine appeared in the comedy extravaganza It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), as Jack Lemmon's wife in Good Neighbour Sam (1964), with Hayley Mills in That Darn Cat! (1965) and she was back to being a flapper in Blake Edwards' The Great Race (1965). Provine was to play the film star, Jean Harlow in Harlow (1965), but, at the last minute, the director Alex Segal decided that Carol Lynley had a greater dramatic range. more.... Tom Fleming, actor and television presenter on important state occasions, has died aged 82 (20 April 2010) For 44 yearsTom Fleming gave a very definite Scottish identity to the BBC's coverage of the Edinburgh Tattoo. His musical voice brought a feeling of home-grown passion to the events on the Esplanade. That voice captured the excitement and solemnity of many occasions, starting with the Queen's Coronation in 1953, when Fleming was outside Westminster Abbey. He also provided the television commentary for the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales and the Queen Mother and numerous other state occasions. Another annual duty was the Ceremony of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London. Fleming was able to find the correct intonation for any event and make it suit the occasion. Fleming was a renowned actor and did prestigious seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company and was closely connected with the epic drama The Three Estates, which he first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in Tyrone Guthrie's celebrated production in 1953. In 1953, he joined the BBC to commentate on the Coronation and proved a natural: unflappable and always ready with some information when things were delayed. In 1956 he gave a sympathetic reading of the title role of Jesus of Nazareth: particularly challenging as it was the first time the face of Christ had been acted on television. The 12-part series, shown over Easter, displayed Fleming's acting skills to excellent effect. One of his more unusual assignments was to front the BBC's coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest from Edinburgh in 1972. Fleming's contribution to outside broadcasts for the BBC was immense. He commentated on two royal weddings and ten funerals, and the enthronement of two Popes and three Archbishops. One of his last broadcasts was on Radio 4 in 2007, when he was in a dramatisation of Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian. more.... Kenneth McKellar, among the most popular of Scotland's singers, has died aged 82 (11 April 2010) He became familiar to English television viewers courtesy of the BBC and The White Heather Club, a hugely popular Scottish country dance and music show which ran from 1958 to 1968 and, at its peak, drew an audience of 10 million. The White Heather Club featured stars such as Andy Stewart, swathed in lace and tartan, singing Donald Where's Your Troosers? and Kenneth McKellar with poignant renderings of Song of the Clyde, Bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle and other stirring numbers. In between, dainty girls in white blouses and laced pumps, and young men with kilts and fixed smiles, would whisk and whoop each other through the Dashing White Sergeant or the Eightsome Reel to the strains of Jimmy Shand and his Band. After abandoning the operatic stage, in 1954 McKellar signed with the Decca record company. Over a period of 25 years he recorded some 45 LPs, ranging from oratorio to Burns songs, achieving massive sales all over the world. During the 1950s McKellar became well-known in Scotland through radio, singing Scottish songs, light opera and popular songs on his own series, A Song For Everyone, for the BBC. At the same time, he began trying his hand as a songwriter and was responsible for such ballads as The Tartan, which has been covered by some 40 artistes and The Royal Mile, which was heard by more than four million people during the televised opening of the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. In 1966 McKellar was chosen to represent Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest, singing A Man Without Love. It was not a happy experience. Despite widespread predictions that he would win, he was placed ninth, a result he attributed to the fact that the Scandinavian nations had "made a mockery of the whole contest" by voting for each other. more.... Sir Alec Bedser, the Surrey and England cricketer, has died aged 91 (5 April 2010) His supreme triumph came in 1953, when his 39 wickets at 17.48 apiece in five Tests enabled England to reclaim the Ashes for the first time since the Bodyline series of 1932-33. The other nine bowlers used by England that summer managed only 52 wickets between them. In the first Test in 1953, at Trent Bridge, on a pitch that was far from vicious, Bedser returned figures of seven for 55 and seven for 45, in the process overhauling Sydney Barnes’s record of 189 Test wickets for England, which had stood since 1914. Later that summer, in which he celebrated his 35th birthday, he established a world record for Test bowling when he surpassed Clarrie Grimmett’s total of 216 Test wickets for Australia. He also became the first England bowler since Barnes to take 100 wickets against Australia. Alec Bedser continued to play for Surrey until 1960, frequently captaining the side in Peter May’s absence. He played a vital part in Surrey’s run of seven consecutive championships from 1952 to 1958, particularly in 1957, when he temporarily recovered full fitness. He served on the England board of selectors from 1961 to 1985, and as chairman from 1968 to 1981. more.... Martin Benson, actor, has died aged 91 (30 March 2010) Benson made his greatest mark during a busy acting career as Kralahome, the Grand Vizier in The King and I, whom he played in the long-running London stage production and then in the 1956 Hollywood film with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. But on starting out in films it was his hard face, elegantly tailored figure and mastery of foreign accents that earned him a natural place on the wrong side of the law; it was said he was first choice for a role if Herbert Lom was unavailable. After the war Benson decided against returning to a 10s-a-week job in pharmacy and quickly found work in The Adventures of PC 49 (1949); I'll Get You for This (1951); Wide Boy (1952); Escape by Night (1953); Soho Incident (1957); and Assassin For Hire (1958). He stayed on in Hollywood after The King and I but was unimpressed at being cast in 23 Paces to Baker Street, which placed Sherlock Holmes's house on the edge of the Thames, and returned home to appear in Interpol, The Flesh is Weak, Istanbul and many more in the burgeoning world of British television. From 1958 he spent an enjoyable two years in Sword of Freedom as the murderous Duke de Medici, opposite the dashing Edmund Purdom as a painter and swordsman in 15th-century Florence. He was an impressive resident defence counsel in The Verdict is Yours. He also could be regularly spotted in episodes of The Saint, The Troubleshooters, The Champions, The Bill and Last of the Summer Wine. more.... Harry Carpenter, sports journalist and boxing commentator, has died aged 84 (22 March 2010) For millions of television viewers, Harry Carpenter's boxing match commentary was an essential ringside ingredient. After wartime service in the Royal Navy as a Morse code operator, he worked on several newspapers before joining the Daily Mail as boxing columnist. In 1949, Carpenter offered his services to the BBC as a boxing commentator, but because there was no relevant footage to hand at his audition, he had to provide a commentary for a football match instead. He heard nothing for months, until the head of outside broadcasts, Peter Dimmock, phoned him to ask whether he could fill in as commentator for an amateur boxing night. Harry Carpenter proved himself adept at commentating on a host of other sporting events, but it was always boxing with which he was most closely associated. His first fight commentary for the BBC was in 1949 and in the next decade, he was responsible for the first live commentary from behind the Iron Curtain in 1957 and the first via satellite from the United States. For much of the 1970s and 80s, Carpenter co-hosted the Sports Personality of the Year programme, having first contributed in 1958. He was "flattered and pleased" that he was asked to pay tribute to the Sports Personality of the Century, Muhammad Ali. more.... Davy Crockett actor, Fess Parker, has died aged 85 (19 March 2010) Fess Parker, the Texas-born actor, became a star of early television playing American frontier folk hero Davy Crockett and later portrayed Daniel Boone. His role as Crockett made him a household name in the mid-1950s and inspired a generation of young American baby boomers to don his trademark coonskin cap. His life changed at the age of 29, in 1954, when Walt Disney hired him to star in a three-episode miniseries about Crockett, the "King of the Wild Frontier" whose life became an American folk legend. The three episodes were enormously popular with viewers, catching the Walt Disney Co by surprise and spawning one of TV's first pop culture frenzies – inspiring the sale of coonskin caps, buckskin clothes, toy rifles, books and other memorabilia. The show's theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," which recounted that the hero "kilt him a bear when he was only three," went to the top of the pop charts and stayed there for 13 weeks. Although the series was meant to end with Crockett's death at the Alamo, its unexpected success prompted Disney to crank out two more episodes and a feature film. Parker returned to the frontier in 1964 as the star of "Daniel Boone", a hit NBC series about another early American folk hero and adventurer that ran until 1970. more.... Peter Graves, actor, has died aged 83 (16 March 2010) Peter Graves appeared in a multitude of films and television shows during a career which spanned nearly 60 years, but will be remembered principally for his roles as a spymaster in the TV series Mission: Impossible and as a pilot in the spoof disaster movie Airplane! Peter's elder brother was James Arness, who found fame as Matt Dillon in the television series Gunsmoke; and when Peter followed him to Hollywood he decided to call himself Graves – the surname of his maternal grandfather – to avoid any confusion. He first came to public attention in the 1950s television series Fury, about the adventures of a boy and his horse, and in 1953 won plaudits for his portrayal of a Nazi spy in Billy Wilder's prisoner-of-war drama Stalag 17. In 1955 he appeared in John Ford's The Long Gray Line; Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter; and Otto Preminger's The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell. Graves's television appearances included Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988), and Fantasy Island (1978-83). He also presented a number of programmes about science and, for the Arts and Entertainment Network's Biography series, was narrator on programmes about the lives of famous figures such as Winston Churchill and Sophia Loren. more.... Paddie O'Neil, comedy actress and singer, has died aged 83 (11 March 2010) Paddie O'Neil was a supremely versatile comedy actress and singer with a career spanning five decades; she often appeared in shows that featured her husband, the theatrical all-rounder Alfred Marks. In the late 1940s she met Marks, an up-and-coming comedian, when they both appeared in a summer show in Brighton. In 1950 the BBC, which was trying to find a successful comedy format for its fledgling television service, starred them in a sketch series, Don't Look Now, with a young Ian Carmichael. The following year, Paddie O'Neil made her first movie, 'Penny Points to Paradise', a low-budget comedy that was one of Peter Sellers's earliest films. By now Marks and she had fallen in love and they were married in the West London synagogue. They scored their first major television success with Alfred Marks Time (1956-59). Each week, Paddie O'Neil sang a duet with Ray Ellington, who had become well-known for his appearances on BBC Radio's The Goon Show. Marks and O'Neil were again teamed for Val Parnell's spectacular London Palladium pantomime Humpty Dumpty (1959-60), with Harry Secombe in the title role. They played the King and Queen of Hearts. Paddie O'Neil appeared in her second feature film in 1965: The Early Bird, starring Norman Wisdom. Other movies followed: The Adding Machine (1969); Fanny Hill (1983); and The Little Match Girl (1987). more.... Malcolm Vaughan, singer who fell foul of the BBC but sold half a million records as a result has died aged 81 (25 February 2010) In October 1956, Malcolm Vaughan was due to appear on BBC TV's Off The Record to promote his new release, "St. Therese Of The Roses". The invitation was withdrawn a few days later after a BBC committee had determined that the record was unsuitable for broadcast because "the lyric is contrary both to Roman Catholic doctrine and to Protestant sentiment." The resulting controversy helped to sell records, and with airplay on Radio Luxembourg the sugary wedding song climbed to No 3, stayed on the charts for five months and sold half a million copies. Early in his career Vaughan appeared, using his real name Malcolm Thomas, as the voice of Dennis the Dachshund in a television production of Larry The Lamb. Vaughan had many hits in the 1950s with "To Be Loved", "More Than Ever (Come Prima)" and "Wait For Me", and sang the theme song from the Kenneth More film about the sinking of the Titanic, A Night To Remember (1958). Strangely, Vaughan did not make an album until Hello in September 1959. Vaughan worked as a double act with Kenneth Earle throughout the 1960s but they never realised their ambition of making comedy films like Morecambe and Wise. It would have been better for Vaughan's career if he had continued making records and capturing the same market as Matt Monro. The duo split up in 1972 with Earle becoming an agent and Vaughan touring in productions of The Good Old Days. more.... Lionel Jeffries, character actor, screenwriter and director, has died aged 83 (20 February 2010) As an actor, the bald, bewhiskered Jeffries showed a facial mobility and excellent comic delivery that turned him into one of the best-known bumbling figures in British cinema; and however brief his appearances, he was always an asset in films that ranged from The Colditz Story and The Quatermass Xperiment to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Trials of Oscar Wilde. Jeffries won his first West End engagement, as Major ATM Broke-Smith in Dorothy and Campbell Christie's Carrington VC (1953), with Alec Clunes in the title role. The following season saw him on the London stage as The Father in Peter Hall's production of Lorca's Blood Wedding and The Doctor in Jean Giraudoux's The Enchanted, both at the Arts Theatre. Jeffries was soon attracted to the cinema, starting his film career in Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1949). But he made his first real impression as one of the prisoners-of-war in Guy Hamilton's The Colditz Story (1954). In one year alone he acted in nine different films. In 1955 he was a great success in Windfall, and there followed a plethora of successful cameo roles in which he proved capable of summoning up both dry comedy and menace. Among them were an inquisitive reporter in the Quatermass Xperiment (1955); Gelignite Joe, a diamond robber whose schoolgirl niece contrived for him to impersonate a new headmistress in Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957); and a sailor charged with trying to prevent the ship's captain from knowing about all the livestock being carried on board in Up the Creek (1958). Other parts included Major Proudfoot in Law and Disorder (1958); an army adjutant trying to impose regulations on Anthony Newley's conscripted pop singer in Idol on Parade (1959); and a prison officer attempting to discipline Peter Sellers and Bernard Cribbins in Two-Way Stretch (1960). Jeffries continued in this vein for another two decades, samples being The Hellions (1961); The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963); First Men in the Moon (1964); You Must be Joking! (1965); Rocket to the Moon (1967); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), in which he played Grandpa Potts; and The Prisoner of Zenda (1978). In all he appeared in 70 films between 1949 and 1988. But it was as the director of The Railway Children, one of the most enchanting films ever made for young people, that Jeffries left his mark on the history of cinema. Jeffries's script and direction, along with the acting of Bernard Cribbins, Dinah Sheridan and Jenny Agutter and the homely tone of the whole enterprise, earned the film its place as a minor classic. With this success behind him, Jeffries was inspired him to make more films in the genre, coming up with The Amazing Mr Blunden (set in 1918, it has a widow and her two children living in a country house haunted by the friendly Mr Blunden); Wombling Free (1977) and The Water Babies (1978). None of these, though, rivalled the warmth, simplicity, charm, and eye for period detail that distinguished The Railway Children. more.... Kathryn Grayson, soprano and familiar star of MGM musicals, has died aged 88 (20 February 2010) She appeared in 20 films, all but three for MGM – but only one, the 1952 remake of Show Boat, was a big hit. Cast opposite Gene Kelly in Thousands Cheer (1943) and Anchors Aweigh (1945), she displayed a winsome charm. Early co-stars were June Allyson in Two Sisters from Boston (1946) and Frank Sinatra in Anchors Aweigh, It Happened in Brooklyn (1947) and The Kissing Bandit (1948), a pseudo-Mexican extravaganza that failed at the box office. MGM then cast her opposite Mario Lanza, a podgy and then unknown tenor of whom some hopes were entertained. They made two films together – That Midnight Kiss (1948) and The Toast of New Orleans (1950). Kathryn Grayson's career benefited in tandem with Mario Lanza's; hence Grounds for Marriage (1951), a comedy with Van Johnson about a prima donna who makes a play for her ex-husband. This afforded a rare on-screen chance to show her operatic form, though she was vocally and dramatically miscast in excerpts from Carmen and the film was released only as the second half of a double-bill. Shrewdly typecast in Showboat as the pretty but simpering "belle of the Cotton Blossom", she was backed by outstanding production values and strong performances from Howard Keel and Ava Gardner. Her last three films for MGM, all with Howard Keel, contained her best work. Show Boat, Lovely to Look At (a 1952 remake of Roberta, with music by Jerome Kern) and Kiss Me Kate, the 1953 3-D version of the Cole Porter musical based on The Taming of the Shrew, were well within her vocal range. In the last, in particular, as Shakespeare's shrewish Kate, she demonstrated the long-awaited germs of an acting talent. more.... Cy Grant, the Guyanese actor, singer and writer who was the first black person to be seen regularly on British TV, has died at the age of 90 (16 February 2010) Cy Grant served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and qualified as a barrister before turning to acting. He became best known for his role singing 'Topical Calypsos' on the BBC's daily topical programme, Tonight. It made him a household name but he left after two and a half years to avoid being typecast. He went on to star in the award-winning TV drama Home of the Brave in 1957 and played the lead in Othello at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester in 1965 at a time when white actors were routinely "blacked up" for the part. He returned to the Bar briefly in 1972 but left after six months. Two years later, he helped create the Drum Arts Centre in London - which was considered to be hugely important in the development of black theatre. He went on to set up multi-cultural festivals across England in the 1980s. Alongside his acting and activism work, he recorded five albums, having performed Caribbean folk songs and calypso across the world. Two of his best known singles are King Cricket and The Constantine Calypso, in celebration of Garfield Sobers and Learie Constantine, two of the West Indies' most famous cricketers. He also recorded many shows for radio and wrote several books including a collection of poems. more.... Margaret Dale, ballet choreographer and TV producer, has died aged 87 (9 February 2010) Margaret Dale was a Sadler's Wells Ballet dancer who became Britain's most distinguished producer of ballet for television, making more than 60 programmes in an era that is often considered ballet's golden age. The invitation to create six little ballets for children's television led, in 1954, to her decision to train as a BBC producer. There she invited Kenneth MacMillan to create a half-hour ballet for television. This was 'Turned Out Proud', for the weekly 'Music at Ten' slot, and she and MacMillan sifted through the corporation's record collection to create a musical score. Although the BBC's music controller was "bewildered" by the result, and the Musicians' Union protested at the use of recorded material, Margaret Dale used these concerns to ask for, and be granted, permission to use live music for MacMillan's much darker and more ambitious Sadler's Wells ballet, 'House of Birds', transmitted live in 1956. She also set up a studio session with the Bolshoi Ballet in the lakeside act of 'Swan Lake' during their famous 1956 debut tour to London. This attracted 12 million viewers, and was the first of several television films she made during visits to London by the Bolshoi and the Kirov. Margaret Dale also adapted many classic ballets for television, starting in 1957 with 'Coppelia', starring Nadia Nerina. Others included Giselle, Ashton's 'La fille mal gardée' and John Cranko's 'Onegin', whose 37-minute abridgement in 1966 was thought by some to be better than the stage version. more.... Sir John Dankworth, pioneer of modern jazz has died aged 82 (7 February 2010) Johnny Dankworth, was a leading composer of film music, a tireless champion of musical education, regardless of genre, and a superb instrumentalist in his own right. In 1950 Dankworth formed his first band, the Johnny Dankworth Seven, containing some of Britain's leading young soloists. The style was neatly arranged bebop, inspired by Miles Davis's band of the time. Although this enterprise almost collapsed in its early days, a modest growth in the audience for modern jazz allowed it to gain a foothold. Within a year, the Seven, and Dankworth himself, figured among the winners in the annual polls conducted by the music press. In 1951, the Seven appeared in one of the two inaugural jazz concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. In the same year the Seven recruited a young and totally inexperienced singer, Cleo Laine. Dankworth broke up the Seven in 1953 and launched his first big band, consisting of eight brass, five saxophones, rhythm section and three vocalists. In the mid-1950s the orchestra had a long-running radio series in which Dankworth made a point of introducing guests from other musical genres. These were mainly classical virtuosi, such as the clarinettist Jack Brymer and violinist Kenneth Essex. In 1960 Dankworth gave up full-time bandleading in order to concentrate on composition. He composed and conducted the music for Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (Reisz, 1960) and The Criminal (Joseph Losey, 1960). So successful were these, and so distinctive the music, that the Dankworth sound became inseparably linked with the new wave of British cinema in the 1960s. Among the best known are The Servant (Losey, 1963), Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965), Modesty Blaise (Losey 1966) and Morgan, A Suitable Case For Treatment (Reisz, 1966). To these were added television themes such as The Avengers (1961) and Tomorrow's World (1966), as well as an endless stream of advertising commercials. John Dankworth and Cleo Laine were married in 1958 and their careers were intertwined thereafter. more.... Ian Carmichael, the actor, has died aged 89 (7 February 2010) Ian Carmichael personified the affable, archetypal silly ass Englishman in scores of revues, light comedies, films and television programmes. To his wide-eyed boyish grin, bemused courtesy and trusting manner, Carmichael brought an invaluably comic air of innocence to bear on his thousand and one misfortunes. His old-world manners were his technical lifeline, and the lightness of his touch on stage and screen ensured the effect of often-thin material. In sometimes brilliant London stage shows in the early Fifties which satirised the fashions and foibles of the day, Carmichael’s timing and gravely expressive features enriched scores of sketches as a polite and easily embarrassed Englishman, trying to change his clothes discreetly, for example, or to assemble a recalcitrant deck chair. It was the film version of his first straight stage success, Simon and Laura (1955) which established Carmichael on the screen. The following year his portrayal of an artful conscripted dodger in the Boultings’ comedy Private’s Progress endeared him to everyone who had ever been called up. Few comedians knew how to look more comically, humanly afraid. His apprehensive subaltern - standing rigidly to attention on the parade ground as an offstage sergeant barked a string of commands which he knew he would never be able, as expected, to repeat to his platoon - was a model of silent, facial panic. The character returned, fleetingly, in I’m All Right, Jack (1959). In this picture he had just been demobilised and, in looking for work, became caught in a wrangle between capitalists and trades unionists from which he emerged, inadvertently, triumphant. But it is probably his portrayals on television of PG Wodehouse's dithering Bertie Wooster and Dorothy L Sayers's elegant Lord Peter Wimsey which underlined his gifts as an exponent of the light English comedy of manners to greatest effect. Carmichael also directed several light entertainment television series such as Mr Pastry’s Progress, It’s A Small World and We Beg To Differ. more.... Pernell Roberts, actor who starred as Adam Cartwright in Bonanza, has died aged 81 (27 January 2010) Pernell Roberts was the last of the original stars from Bonanza, the US television series that took the western to a huge mainstream international audience of all ages and both sexes, with its focus on family values and moral dilemmas. One of the most successful television series ever, it originally ran from 1959 to 1973 in the US, opened in the UK on ITV in 1960. Roberts played Adam Cartwright, the introspective, eldest son of a rancher, Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene). Ben had been married and widowed three times, which explained why he had produced three such different sons. The others were big, awkward, loveable Hoss (Dan Blocker) and the handsome, young ladies’ man Little Joe (Michael Landon). But Roberts grew dissatisfied with the series. He had been an acclaimed Shakespearean stage actor and found the production line of television "banal". The stories did indeed get repetitive. Characters were repeatedly victims of prejudice and were accused of things they did not do. The Cartwrights were against violence, but killed dozens, possibly hundreds of villains, against their will. Roberts quit in 1965, but failed to build on the success of Bonanza before effectively re-emerging as the star of the MASH spin-off Trapper John MD (1979-86). more.... British actress Jean Simmons dies aged 80 (23 January 2010) Simmons, who was born in London, made her film debut in the 1944 British production Give Us the Moon after being spotted by Val Guest, the director. Several minor films followed before David Lean, the British director, gave the actress her breakthrough role of Estella, companion to the reclusive Miss Havisham in the 1946 Great Expectations. That was followed by the Black Narcissus and Olivier’s Oscar-winning Hamlet in 1948, for which Simmons was nominated as best supporting actress. Simmons left Britain for Hollywood in 1950, accompanied by the actor Stewart Granger, her future husband. She then starred in Young Bess, where she played the young Queen Elizabeth I, The Robe, The Actress, The Egyptian and Desiree in which, in 1954, she played the title role opposite Brando’s Napoleon. The pair teamed again in 1955 for Guys and Dolls. Her other notable films included Elmer Gantry, with Burt Lancaster; Until They Sail, with Paul Newman; The Big Country with co-star Gregory Peck; Spartacus, also starring Kirk Douglas; This Earth Is Mine with Rock Hudson; All the Way Home with Robert Preston; Mister Buddwing, alongside James Garner; and Rough Night in Jericho with Dean Martin. During the '80s she won an Emmy Award for her role in the miniseries, The Thorn Birds and then she also appeared on television shows including Murder, She Wrote, In the Heat of the Night and Xena: Warrior Princess. more.... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1878829.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7000653.ece Bill McLaren, Rugby union broadcaster, has died aged 86 (20 January 2010) Bill McLaren spent 50 years commentating on rugby union matches for BBC radio and television. In this role his powerful Scottish tones, memorable turns of phrase, dedication to research and rigid impartiality proved an awesome combination, enhancing the broadcast experience for millions of listeners and viewers throughout club and international seasons. In 1948 he was selected for the final trial to represent the Scottish national team but was unable to compete, having been given a diagnosis of tuberculosis. When he recovered he worked for three years as a reporter on the Hawick Express, all the while maintaining his strong interest in rugby. Unbeknown to him, a colleague with BBC connections wrote to a friend in London recommending McLaren’s services as a rugby commentator. On the strength of this McLaren was offered a commentary test. He was characteristically reluctant to accept the challenge but eventually agreed, making his debut on the Scottish Home Service in January 1952 for the South of Scotland versus South Africa game. This led, in 1953, to his national radio debut covering the Scotland v Wales international. In 1962 he switched to television. McLaren’s day job was to supervise sport and teach PE in Hawick’s five primary schools. He filled this role from the early 1950s until 1987, and was proud to have taught several of Scotland’s future international players in their youth. more.... Donald Pickering, actor, has died aged 76 (15 January 2010) Donald Pickering made his stage debut in 1951 in George Devine's production of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors at the Old Vic School Theatre in London alongside Prunella Scales, Joan Plowright and Patrick Wymark. He made his first television appearance in 1956 in an edition of ITV's Television Playhouse. Often cast in the role of a suave authority figure, government minister or a high-ranking military officer, Pickering made his debut in Dr Who in 1964 when he played Eyesen in the story The Keys of Marinus alongside the first Doctor, William Hartnell. Pickering's other television roles includes appearances in dramas such as The House of Eliott, All Creatures Great and Small, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Professionals, Tales of the Unexpected, Crown Court, The Pallisers and The Saint. His comedy appearances included roles in Yes, Prime Minister, Lovejoy and The Brittas Empire. In 1980 he played Doctor Watson for 23 episodes in Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. more.... George Cowling, the nation's first on-screen weather man, has died aged 89 (28 December 2009) George Cowling secured his place in history on January 11 1954, when he ventured before the BBC cameras to become the BBC's on-screen weatherman. From 1949, the BBC had carried weather maps at the end of the evening's programmes, during which an off-screen announcer read a script supplied by the Meteorological Office. The introduction of an on-screen forecaster was a big step for both organisations. Studio facilities and technology available to the forecasters were extremely primitive and provided little in comparison to the vast quantities of instantly-accessible data churned out by today's hi-tech instruments, many of them in orbit above the Earth. In the early-1950s television programmes began at 8pm, and the new weather feature was tacked on to beginning of the schedule. Part of the brief was to look back at the previous day's forecast, assess how accurate it had been, and, if necessary, to try to explain what had gone wrong. Thus Cowling and his colleagues began to talk at 7.55pm, and had four-and-a-half minutes to fill before the continuity announcer took over to introduce the evening's entertainment. While the viewer might have considered the slot brief, more than four minutes represented a real challenge for an inexperienced broadcaster to fill fluently without a script. Cowling himself noted later that to fill the time "unprompted, before critical millions, could only spell one thing: unhappiness". Cowling joined the Met office, then part of the Ministry of Defence, aged 19, and worked through the war as a weather forecaster for the RAF, stationed initially in Yorkshire, and then on the Continent. After 15 years with the Met, he was transferred to the London Weather Centre where he coped successfully with the exacting requirements of his new television job before promotion took him, in February 1957, to RAF Bomber Command. Subsequent postings included Singapore, Malta, Bahrain and Germany. He also taught at the Met Office College and was principal forecaster at Heathrow. more.... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6970848.ece Gene Barry, actor, has died aged 90 (12 December 2009) In 1951, Gene Barry landed a film contract with Paramount at 1,000 dollars a week and made his big-screen debut as a nuclear physicist in The Atomic City (1952). He was a scientist again in his best-remembered film role, as Dr Clayton Forrester, in The War of the Worlds (1953). But television became the medium in which Barry made his mark. Following his appearance in an episode of the suspense series The Clock (1950), he worked his way up the cast list, via programmes such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), to play the PE teacher Gene Talbot during the run of the sitcom Our Miss Brooks (1955-6). Then came the title role of the suave, dapper, Arizona gambler-lawman, with a black derby, pinstriped suit, gold vest and a sword disguised as a gold-tipped cane, in the Western series Bat Masterson (1958-61). Masterson, "the fastest cane in the West", who also carried a gun, was a 19th-century former Dodge City sheriff – and the character established Barry's line in debonair roles. As the suave and witty Los Angeles Chief of Detectives in Burke's Law, Gene Barry brought to television screens a policeman who turned up to crime scenes in style, sitting in the comfortably upholstered rear of a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. The millionaire Amos Burke was also seen at home, in his luxurious mansion, where a string of beautiful women visited the eligible bachelor. Burke's Law (1963-65) was the tongue-in-cheek antithesis of established American crime dramas such as Dragnet, with its mundane but eminently watchable police procedurals, and The Untouchables, which presented a weekly bloodbath of murders and massacres. Following Burke's Law, he was cast as the snappily dressed publishing tycoon Glenn Howard in The Name of the Game (1968-71), a lavishly made series that rotated Barry, Tony Franciosa (as a journalist) and Robert Stack (as a senior editor) in a three-weekly cycle of stories. When leading roles dried up, Barry made guest appearances in programmes such as Fantasy Island (1978, 1981), The Twilight Zone (1987) and Murder, She Wrote (1989). more.... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6953791.ece Richard Todd, actor, has died aged 90 (5 December 2009) Todd was one of the first British officers to land in Normandy in advance of the main D-Day landings and went on to become Britain's highest-earning matinee idol of the post-war years; his most memorable role was that of Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC, in The Dam Busters (1955), a film he carried with the help of Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis. Todd made his screen debut in For Them That Trespass (1948) and triumphing in The Hasty Heart, Todd travelled to Hollywood to appear as a bridegroom with a murky past in King Vidor's Lightning Strikes Twice (1950), then starred as Marlene Dietrich's former lover – and a murder suspect – in Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950). There followed an orgy of swashbuckling heroics in Disney's The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953) and Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue (1954), all of which served only to prove that Todd was no Errol Flynn. His role as Peter Marshall in A Man Called Peter persuaded Henry Koster to cast Todd in his Virgin Queen (1955) as a roguish Sir Walter Raleigh, whose dalliance with lady-in-waiting Joan Collins angers Elizabeth I (Bette Davis). Koster then cast him in D-Day, the Sixth of June the following year. The Dam Busters (1954) marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the director Michael Anderson. Todd went on to appear in Anderson's Yangtse Incident (1956) as the commander of a crippled frigate breaking a Chinese blockade, and in the Hitchcock-style Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958) he played the mysterious stranger claiming to be the late brother of the heiress Kimberley Prescott (Anne Baxter). He returned as a wing commander (this time named Kendall) for their last film together, Operation Crossbow (1965). Todd made his television debut in 1953, as Heathcliff in a BBC adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Later, Todd appeared in such series as Virtual Murder; Silent Witness; Holby City; Murder, She Wrote; and in the Doctor Who story Kinda in 1982. He was General Benjamin Cutler in the television miniseries Jenny's War (1985), and played Lord Roberts of Kandahar in the miniseries Sherlock Holmes and the Incident at Victoria Falls (1992, featuring Christopher Lee as Sherlock Holmes and Patrick Macnee as Dr Watson). more.... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1834671.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6944417.ece Timothy Bateson, character actor, has died aged 83 (27 November 2009) Bateson established his reputation as a fine character actor in 1955 with the single, incomprehensible speech of the pathetic Lucky in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The young actor had learned his craft carrying spears and having one-line parts at Stratford and the Old Vic while drawing inspiration, when appropriate, from the touching comedy of Miles Malleson. He went with the productions of Antony and Cleopatra and Caesar and Cleopatra which Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh took to New York. Although Bateson preferred the theatre, he continued to take film work, playing Coker in Vice Versa (1948); Dr Cook in White Corridors (1951); and the ostler in Olivier's Richard III. More work came with the growth of television. He was Lord Shoreby in The Black Arrow (1958); Guppy in Bleak House (1959); and Tappertit in Barnaby Rudge (1960). There were occasional roles in The Saint; Dr Finlay's Casebook; The Avengers; Doctor at Large; Please Sir; Last of the Summer Wine; Hi-De-Hi!; and Midsomer Murders. more.... Max Robertson, writer, broadcaster and sports commentator, has died aged 94 (20 November 2009) Max Robertson was the first presenter of Panorama, of BBC Television's antiques quiz show Going for a Song, and was a commentator at the Queen's Coronation in 1953; but he was best known as the "other voice of Wimbledon", alongside the television pundit Dan Maskell. Robertson covered every Wimbledon final for the BBC from 1946 to 1986 and transformed the art of tennis broadcasting for radio. He delighted audiences by being able to describe with riveting exactness every stroke that was being played, conjuring up a dynamic mental picture of what was taking place on court. Following service during the War, he began doing outside broadcasts, initially for the BBC European Service then, from 1949, for Outside Broadcasts. He was chosen to do the commentary for the first postwar Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1948 and covered summer and winter Olympiads. He also covered the royal tour of Canada in 1951 when the young Princess Elizabeth deputised for her father who was too ill to travel. Robertson established a reputation as a jack-of-all-trades. In addition to his outside broadcasts for radio, he was in increasing demand for television, working on children's programmes, sports broadcasts and conducting interviews. During the Coronation he was to be seen on the Victoria Embankment alongside three cameras, shouting against the full-throated cheering of thousands of schoolchildren as the Queen passed by. He became caught up - briefly - in BBC current affairs broadcasting when, in 1953, he was appointed to present the new flagship programme Panorama. This was, originally, a fortnightly "magazine" programme with the presenter holding the fort while roving interviewers made their contributions. After Malcolm Muggeridge took over as studio anchor man, Robertson continued to file items on such varied matters as myxomatosis in rabbits, horror comics and rag-and-bone men. In 1954 he turned freelance. As well as his tennis commentaries, he covered swimming and athletics for television and commentated on summer and winter Olympiads until 1968. more.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2009/nov/20/max-robertson-obituary http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6928732.ece Harry Alan Towers, prolific radio, television and film producer and screenwriter, died in August aged 88 (4 November 2009) In 1944 Towers was head of the RAF's Radio Unit, making programmes for the Forces Service; there he introduced Richard Murdoch to Kenneth Horne, and the outcome was the long-running BBC comedy series Much-Binding-In-The-Marsh. In 1956 his company, Towers of London, hired Marius Goring to impersonate The Scarlet Pimpernel for a series filmed at Elstree studios. Between 1957 and 1959 Towers masterminded two co-productions with a Stateside company, Ziv TV: Martin Kane, Private Investigator in which William Gargan played the American gumshoe seconded to Scotland Yard, and Dial 999, with Robert Beatty's RCMP detective seconded to the Yard. Towers graduated to the cinema in the '60s. Edgar Wallace's hero Commissioner Sanders was played by Richard Todd twice, in Death Drums Along The River (1963) and Coast Of Skeletons (1964), while Sax Rohmer's fiendish oriental villain Fu Manchu was splendidly interpreted by Christopher Lee in five movies between 1965 and 1970. There followed two comedy adventures, Our Man In Marrakesh (1966) and Jules Verne's Rocket To The-Moon (1967), loaded with bankable stars like Terry-Thomas; and Sumuru, with Shirley Eaton the eponymous "female Fu Manchu". more.... Sir Ludovic Kennedy, television presenter, author and campaigner, has died aged 89 (20 October 2009) When the Independent Television network was established in 1955, Kennedy was engaged as a presenter in a magazine programme called Sunday Afternoon. The programme was short lived but launched Kennedy on his television career. A year later he was called in at short notice by ITN to stand in for Robin Day, who had been struck down with flu, and was invited to stay. One critic described him as reading the news "as though it were a letter to faraway relative whom he wished to interest", an attractive and comfortable style which soon caught the attention of other television producers. His star rose in the Sixties and Seventies, when he presented This Week, then Panorama and later Midweek and Tonight. During the 1950s, Kennedy developed political ambitions and in 1956 he stood as Liberal candidate in the Rochdale by-election. Though Labour won the seat, he won the largest Liberal vote at any election for two decades. He contested the seat again in the general election of 1959 and was again narrowly beaten. From 1961 onwards, Kennedy published a steady stream of books about crime, the law and miscarriages of justice. He believed the main culprit in nearly all these cases to have been the "extremely childish" British system of adversarial justice in which "each side does its best to vanquish the other and truth falls by the wayside". He campaigned for many years for the establishment of a Ministry of Justice and a change to a system more like the French inquisitorial system in which a juge d'instruction battles away to find out the truth. Kennedy combined his laconic, humorous style with a rage for justice that made him a formidable investigator. He specialised in ferreting out truth, pursuing almost-lost causes and bringing to light what seemed to him to be miscarriages of justice. Some of his television exposés were followed up with books, of which the most famous were to do with the execution of Timothy Evans (the man hanged in 1951 for murders which, it later transpired, had been carried out by John Christie), the framing of Stephen Ward in the Profumo case and, with The Airman and The Carpenter (1985), the electrocution in America of Bruno Hauptmann, the man accused, probably falsely, of being the kidnapper and murderer of the Lindbergh baby. More recently, Kennedy campaigned for the release of the Birmingham Six and other IRA suspects who, it is now recognised, had been the victims of serious injustices. Following his mother's death (in 1977 after many months of bedridden misery) he became an active and public supporter of voluntary euthanasia. more.... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1805650.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6880951.ece Ian Wallace, opera singer and 'My Music' panellist on radio, has died aged 90 (14 October 2009) He ranged from singer, character actor, comedian, compère and clown to radio and television panellist, scriptwriter and pantomime king. What made Wallace a household name was the endearing way he had with silly songs about animals, especially one about an amorous hippopotamus with a chorus which went: "Mud, mud, glorious mud". First broadcast on a Henry Hall Guest Night in 1952, the song virtually became Wallace's signature tune. Whether in classical opera, musical comedy, plays, films, television, radio or on the concert platform, Wallace's readiness to perform on all kinds of occasion brought him an exceptional range of admirers. Apart from opera, his dramatic credits included Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream; César in a West End musical version of Marcel Pagnol's Fanny (Drury Lane); and the Emperor of China in Cole Porter's Aladdin (Coliseum). Wallace was also a regular on the Radio 4 panel game My Music and other quiz shows on radio and television in which he would, sitting down, suddenly break into snatches of opera. With his unpretentious affability he could always put audiences at ease. Wallace made his Italian operatic debut as Massetto in Don Giovanni at Parma (1950); and was La Cenerentola at Rome (1955), and Dr Bartolo in Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Venice (1956). From 1965, his regular appearances for Scottish Opera included Leporello in Don Giovanni, Pistola in Falstaff and the Duke of Plaza Toro in The Gondoliers. For the Welsh National Opera (1967) he sang Don Pasquale and for Glyndebourne Touring Opera (1968) Dr Dulcamara in L'Elisir D'Amore. more.... Barry Letts, actor, director and producer, has died aged 84 (13 October 2009) A pioneer of British television, Barry Letts served the medium for more than half a century. As an actor, he was rarely off screen in the embryonic days of television drama. Later, as a producer and director, his early-evening dramas commanded large and loyal family audiences. But it was through his work on Doctor Who that he secured his place in TV history. His earliest screen role, as a Welsh seaman, came in Ealing Studios' San Demetrio, London (1943), a naval adventure. After the war he began to appear on stage, TV and in film, with featured roles in Scott of the Antarctic (1948), The Cruel Sea (1952) and Reach for the Sky (1956). His TV debut came in Gunpowder Guy (1950), a one-off on BBC children's television. Patrick Troughton starred as Guy Fawkes, Letts was a fellow conspirator and it was broadcast live from Lime Grove, west London. Letts said his understanding of the demands placed on a producer stemmed from his appearances in early Sunday evening serials, such as The Black Arrow (1958) and the second world war drama The Silver Sword (1957). Children's TV productions included The Gordon Honour (1956), which traced two feuding families down the ages, and The Man from the Moors (1955), as Charles Dickens. For older viewers, he played Lewis Carroll in Nom-de-Plume (1956), a series in which the identity of each episode's subject was revealed only at its end, and?Colonel Herncastle?in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1959), again with Troughton. The mid-50s saw him telling 15-minute stories to camera that he had written, and by 1963 he was reading the Epilogue. more.... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6889546.ece John Hart, actor who played television's 'other' Lone Ranger has died aged 91 (11 October 2009) Destined to go down in history as television's "other" Lone Ranger, playing the masked man riding his trusty white horse Silver for 52 episodes, John Hart stepped into the role in 1952 when Clayton Moore was replaced amid reports that the original star had walked out in a pay dispute. However, television viewers were not so accepting of the "new" Lone Ranger, who brought them rushing to the small screen with his shout of "Hi-yo, Silver!" and his native American companion Tonto (Jay Silverheels) on horseback by his side. Eventually, in 1954, American television executives brought back Moore, who continued in the role until The Lone Ranger ended in 1957 after an eight-year run, denying that his departure had been caused by disagreements over money. Despite this disappointment, Hart went on to other starring roles on screen. First, he played the hero of the title in the 15-part cinema serial Adventures of Captain Africa, Mighty Jungle Avenger! (1955). Then, he was seen on television, also as the title character – an 18th-century fur trader in New York's Hudson Valley during the French and Indian War – in 39 episodes of Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957). Again, he had a native American companion, this time Chingachgook, played by the horror film star Lon Chaney, Jr. more.... Felix Bowness, actor and warm-up man, has died aged 87 (7 October 2009) Felix Bowness died on September 13th. He was best known as the jockey Fred Quilly in the 1980s television sitcom Hi-De-Hi! He worked in radio during the 1950s and began his radio career, billed as That Irresponsible Young Man, in 1950 on Variety Bandbox, followed by Workers' Playtime (1953-59) and Mid-day Music Hall (1954). For BBC TV, he was in the sitcom Hugh and I (1964), with Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd, and The Benny Hill Show (1965), in Hill's pre-smut days. Bowness was also in Frankie Howerd's 1966 BBC series. He was the BBC's most prolific "warm-up" man, working on The Morecambe and Wise Show and some 3,000 editions of Wogan. He was cast in Jimmy Perry and David Croft's Hi-De-Hi! in 1980, and went on to appear in their You Rang, M'Lord, and in Oh, Doctor Beeching! by Croft and Richard Spendlove. more.... Ray Barrett, Australian actor, has died aged 82 (11 September 2009) Aussie actors don't come much tougher than Ray Barrett. His heavy build, steely eyes and pockmarked, though handsome, face became well known to British television viewers in the 1960s, mainly as Peter Thornton, a hardnosed, globe-trotting field agent for a multinational oil company in The Troubleshooters (1965-72). By 1955, having moved to Sydney, he was getting roles on radio and became adept at changing his accent to suit the parts, which later became handy for voiceover work. But in 1958 he decided to try his luck in Britain, though it took him two years to find work as an actor. His career in Britain began with the lead as a detective sergeant in an episode of Armchair Mystery Theatre (1960) and, in the same year, he joined his fellow Australian Charles Tingwell in several episodes of the medical soap opera Emergency-Ward 10. Mainly playing British characters, with only a smidgen of an Aussie accent, Barrett's often unsmiling face was seen in series such as The Avengers, The Saint and Doctor Who, as well as seven episodes of the espionage drama Ghost Squad (1963-64). From 1963 to 1964, he provided the American voice for the irascible, disabled Commander Sam Shore in Stingray, the Supermarionation futuristic sub-aquatic puppet series made by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson that preceded Thunderbirds. Each episode began with Barrett announcing: "Stand by for action! We are about to launch – Stingray! Anything can happen in the next half hour." Barrett was then called upon to voice Tracy (and the villainous The Hood) in Thunderbirds on television as well as the feature film Thunderbirds Are GO (1966). But it was The Troubleshooters that gave him his highest profile, instantly from the all-action title sequence with Barrett in a speedboat. more.... Keith Waterhouse, playwright, novelist and newspaper columnist has died aged 80 (5 September 2009) Keith Waterhouse's collaboration with Willis Hall was one of the most enduring and distinctive dramatic partnerships in the history of theatre, films and television. After two years' National Service in the RAF, he was hired by the Yorkshire Evening Post in Leeds before he joined the Mirror, for which he was a correspondent in the United States and the Soviet Union. He was also invited to write speeches for the Labour leaders Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson. Meanwhile, he embarked on a career as an author which would see him produce some 60 books during his career. In 1956 he produced a history of the Café Royal, and the following year he published There Is A Happy Land and in 1959 Waterhouse published Billy Liar, one of the great comic novels of the 20th century. The book caught the public's imagination with its portrait of a cheeky north country lad trying to bring some fun into his drab life as an undertaker's assistant by engaging in fantasies that embarrassed and dismayed his family. Waterhouse's collaboration with Willis Hall produced a rich seam of material. Celebration (Nottingham Playhouse and Duchess, 1961) evoked the manners of a proletarian northern family, first at a wedding reception and then at a funeral. England Our England (Prince's), with music by Dudley Moore, was a satirical revue in the spirit of the mocking television programme That Was the Week That Was, to which the duo also contributed. They followed up with a wryly amusing double bill, Squat Betty and The Sponge Room (Royal Court 1962), and then All Things Bright and Beautiful (Bristol Old Vic), which extracted slightly indignant fun from a family being moved from a condemned house to a block of flats. more.... Neville King, ventriloquist, has died (28 August 2009) As a ventriloquist, Neville King was a master of his art, and his dummy "Grandad" epitomized the mischievious twinkle eyed pensioner whom we all love, or have loved at some time in our lives. Turning professional in 1963, his first summer season was on the Isle of Man followed by seasons in Blackpool, Bournemouth, Bridlington, Scarborough, Torquay, Eastbourne, and Paignton. In 1964 Neville joined the worlds longest running Musical, "The Black & White Minstrel Show", with whom he remained for 11 years, 3 of which were at the Victoria Palace, London. He also did a season in Malta and a very long, record breaking, tour of Australia whilst with the Show. In 1965 he was chosen to appear before Her Majesty the Queen & the Duke of Edinburgh in the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium. In 1967 he again appeared at the Palladium, this time in front of Princess Margaret at a Royal Gala. Neville entertained the troops for Combined Services Entertainments in Ireland, South America, Cyprus, Germany, Salalah and Masirah. He also entertained UN troops in Holland & Belgium. He did 5 World Tours, including a tour of Canada, with the London Palladium Show. He also worked in Salisbury, Johannesburg, Tangier, Malta, Tasmania and more recently at the famed "Sporting Club" in Monte Carlo. Scots variety star Margo Henderson has died aged 80 (28 August 2009) Margo Henderson died of a broken heart - just nine days after her beloved husband in July 2009. Margo Henderson and Sam Kemp, who worked as a stage double act during the 1950s and 1960s, were devoted to each other. Margo and musician Sam met 61 years ago on the Glasgow stage circuit, when she was 19 and a budding solo performer. Musician and singer Sam was around 10 years older. They married and were soon working together as Kemp and Henderson. During their theatre careers, the couple played dozens of venues throughout Scotland. Margo also enjoyed success in London, with a regular bill in the Five Past Eight Show at the Alhambra Theatre, before being signed for a slot alongside the Black and White Minstrel Show in the 1960s. more.... http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/obituaries/display.var.2519932.0.an_appreciation_margo_henderson_sam_kemp.php John Bentley, movie, television and soap opera star has died aged 92 (17 August 2009) Handsome, British stage actor John Bentley entered London's film industry in 1946, where he was immediately put to work grinding out inexpensive detective melodramas. He was seen as radio hero Paul Temple in an entertaining Boy's-Own-Adventure film series, then starred as John Creasey's gentleman sleuth "The Toff" in a brace of second features. Occasionally, Bentley ventured into "A"-picture territory, notably the 1956 Errol Flynn vehicle Istanbul (1956). In 1957, John Bentley starred as Inspector John Derek in the Kenya-filmed TV detective series African Patrol. He went on to play Hugh Mortimer from 1965 through 1977, becoming a favorite of housewives everywhere in the soap opera "Crossroads." The soap achieved its highest ratings ever during the 1975 wedding episode where Bentley's character married the Crossroad's Motel matriarch, Meg Richardson played by soap legend Noele Gordon. 18 million viewers watched the on-screen wedding and Bentley's popularity soared. In 1977, in true soap opera style, Bentley's character was killed off in a terrorist plot that Bentley himself described as "ridiculous." more.... Virginia Carroll, film actress, has died aged 95 (5 August 2009) Virginia Carroll rode into film history in a series of Westerns during a career in which she accumulated more than 85 on-screen credits. But as in the cases of so many of her film contemporaries – among them Dorothy Revier, Muriel Evans, Madge Bellamy and Nell O'Day – the female leads in these films often brought little attention or hopes of further screen work outside the Western genre. Throughout the 1940s Virginia Carroll rode the range with a plethora of Western cowboy leads, including Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, often cast as the love interest held captive by cattle rustlers, an embittered lawman or a band of "Red Indians". She had parts in popular television shows such as The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Roy Rogers Show, Dragnet and Perry Mason before retiring in 1959. more.... Dallas McKennon, actor and character artist has died aged 89 (29 July 2009) McKennon was best known for his extensive work over half a century as a character artist for the Walt Disney Studios; his distinctive voice can be heard in such animated classics as The Lady and the Tramp (1955), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), Mary Poppins (1964) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). McKennon was also a prolific contributor to Disneyland Records, appearing on numerous recordings over many years. Away from Disney, he voiced many other famous cartoon characters for Tex Avery and Walter Lantz, as well as appearing on-screen in a variety of films and television shows, including Dragnet, Lawman, Gunsmoke and The Untouchables. During the 1960s and 1970s, he provided the original voice of Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's Frosties ("they're g-r-r-r-r-r-eat!"); Corny the Rooster for Kellogg's Cornflakes; and Snap, Crackle, and Pop for Kellogg's Rice Krispies. McKennon quickly became a fixture at Walter Lantz's production company which distributed animated features through Universal Studios; he was the voice of Buzz Buzzard in Lantz's Woody Woodpecker shorts between 1951 and 1972. In Lady and the Tramp he voiced the Hyena, Toughy, Professor and Pedro. He voiced the Owl in Sleeping Beauty (1959), and the Fox, Hounds, the Penguin, the Hunting Horse, the Carousel Guard and various news reporters in Mary Poppins. On-screen, McKennon played Cincinnatus, the local store keeper opposite Fess Parker in Daniel Boone, which ran for six years. He played opposite Fred MacMurray in Good Day for a Hanging (1959); was the projectionist in the Vincent Price horror film The Tingler (1959). more.... Harry Towb, actor, has died aged 83 (27 July 2009) One of the actor's biggest stage roles was in the National Theatre production of Brighton Beach Memoirs. He also performed in Little Shop of Horrors, Barmitzvah Boy, Death of a Salesman and The Mandate. With the Royal Shakespeare Company Mr Towb helped bring Sherlock Holmes and Travesties to Broadway. And back in his home town he most recently played Tiresias in Antigone at the Waterfront Hall, Belfast. At Dublin's Abbey Theatre his plays included Philadelphia Here I Come, The Rivals and The Importance Of Being Earnest. Elsewhere Mr Towb's numerous television credits include Z Cars, The Avengers, Home James, Moll Flanders, Heartbeat, Casualty, and The Bill. He also took roles in the films The 39 Steps, Patton, Digby the Biggest Dog in the World, Carry On at Your Convenience, and The Most Fertile Man In Ireland. During the Fifties he had TV parts in 'The Teckman Biography', Sherlock Holmes, Billy Bunter, Joan and Leslie, The Army Game, The Vise, Dial 999 and The Third Man amongst many others. more.... Patrick Dowling, TV writer, producer and director, has died aged 89 (25 July 2009) As a writer, a producer and a director, Patrick Dowling was responsible for some of BBC television’s most enchanting output for young viewers, from the 1960s to the 1980s. With Vision on (1964-76) and Take Hart (1977-83), he cemented the reputation of the endearing artist Tony Hart (obituary, January 18, 2009), and introduced Peter Lord and David Sproxton (later to form Aardman Animations and to win an Oscar) to the screen with their plasticine Morph. Dowling also created one of television’s most engaging oddities, The Adventure Game (1980-86). It was set on the planet Arg, and audiences and the participating celebrities were confronted with such oddities as an elderly retainer who could only hear when wearing his spectacles, a backwards-talking Australian and an angry aspidistra plant. His BBC career began in 1955, as production assistant and floor manager, initially for the writer-producer Dorothea Brooking. He also composed the music for The Balloon and the Baron, a “new fairytale” by Brooking, shown on Boxing Day 1960. He began directing with The Cabin in the Clearing (1959), a children’s western serial. Working with a Computer (1965) was a prophetic, educational series. In 1968 he made Price to Pay (1968), a vehicle for Alan Price. In 1964 he created the pioneering programme for which he became best known, Vision on, for deaf children. more.... John Ryan, the creator of Captain Pugwash has died aged 88 (24 July 2009) The cartoonist and animator invented the hapless pirate in 1950 and the character first appeared as a strip in the comic The Eagle. He went on to be the star of two animated television series which Mr Ryan produced using a unique live animation technique, moving the characters and sets by hidden levers. His other characters included Harris Tweed, Special Agent, Sir Prancelot and Mary Mungo & Midge. John Ryan used his talent for caricatures to supplement his teaching income and created his famous pirate and his ship The Black Pig. Captain Pugwash strips were published in several magazines and the first Pugwash book came out in 1957. In that year Mr Ryan was commissioned by the BBC to create the first animated series. The characters and sets for each scene of the five-minute episodes were created using cardboard cut outs and filmed moving in real time, with Mr Ryan and his wife Priscilla pulling the levers. The voice-over by the actor Peter Hawkins was recorded at the same time as the animation. The series was revived in 1974 for a colour edition, still keeping its distinctive look. Other programmes by John Ryan Studios filmed using the same animation technique were Mary Mungo & Midge (1969) and The Adventures of Sir Prancelot (1971-72) and he also made Ark Stories for ITV in 1981. He drew for numerous newspapers and magazines and in later years toured the country’s schools, libraries and book fairs giving talks about his artwork. more.... Karl Malden, Method actor whose distinctive but homely features effectively consigned him to a lifetime in supporting roles, has died aged 97 (2 July 2009) Malden's early film career made little impression. His first appearance was in They Knew What They Wanted (1940) and, until the film of A Streetcar Named Desire, he played only bit parts, albeit in films of some renown, such as Kazan's Boomerang (1947), The Gunfighter (1950) by Henry King, and Lewis Milestone's war epic Halls of Montezuma (1951). Streetcar put him on the map, though not always one on which he would like to be recognised. In King Vidor's Ruby Gentry (1953), he played the first of several betrayed husbands - the man whom Jennifer Jones marries to spite her old flame Charlton Heston. Outrageously melodramatic, it is now a cult classic - unlike Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), a tacky 3-D remake of the Edgar Allan Poe story, with Malden in the role (originally played by Bela Lugosi) of a mad psychiatrist, who hypnotises an ape to do his dirty work. The detective role in Hitchcock's I Confess (1953) was also thankless, as Malden played second fiddle to Montgomery Clift's Catholic priest, who is suspected of murder but bound by the confessional not to reveal the killer's identity. The mid-1950s were Malden's best years, embracing not only On the Waterfront and Baby Doll, but Fear Strikes Out (1957), a harrowing biopic of the baseball player Jim Piersall (Anthony Perkins), whose confidence was sapped by his father's driving ambition. At this time, Malden also ventured into direction. He made one film - the 1957 Korean War courtroom drama Time Limit, starring Richard Widmark and Richard Basehart - although Malden did not appear in it himself. It was politely received. He also handled some scenes, uncredited, for a western, The Hanging Tree (1959), in which he played the villain, when the director Delmer Daves fell sick. more.... Gale Storm, has died aged 87. She was one of the biggest stars on American television in the 1950s, famous for her wholesome appearance and chirpy personality (30 June 2009) Before landing the starring role in My Little Margie in 1952, Gale Storm had appeared in several B-films opposite such stars as Roy Rogers, Eddie Albert and Jackie Cooper. After her last television series, The Gale Storm Show, ended in 1960, she went on to a successful singing career while continuing to make occasional television appearances. She was often cast in westerns as the girl the cowboy left behind, and appeared in such B-movies as The Dude Goes West with Albert, The Kid from Texas with Audie Murphy and The Texas Rangers with George Montgomery. With her film roles diminishing in the early 1950s, Gale Storm followed the path of many fading Hollywood stars of the day and moved to television. The sitcom My Little Margie debuted on CBS as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy in 1952. It quickly became an audience favourite and moved to its own slot that autumn. The year after My Little Margie ended its 126-episode run in 1955, she moved on to The Gale Storm Show, which lasted until 1960. In this she played Susanna Pomeroy, a troublemaking social director on a luxury liner. Having taken vocal lessons, she sang on her second series, and three of her records became best sellers: I Hear You Knocking, Teenage Prayer and Dark Moon. She subsequently appeared only sporadically on television, taking guest roles in such programmes as Burke's Law, The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. more.... Steve Race, the musician and broadcaster has died aged 88 (23 June 2009) Steve Race became a familiar face on television in the 1950s and went on to host the popular Radio 4 panel game My Music, which ran from 1967 until 1994; he subsequently set a regular crossword for The Daily Telegraph. His first job was as a pianist with Harry Leader's band, and he went on to play with the bands of Lew Stone and Cyril Stapleton, and to arrange for the Ted Heath band and Judy Garland. Race first came to notice on BBC children's television in 1953, in the magazine programme Whirligig, a miscellany of items that introduced a generation of postwar children to puppet favourites such as Hank the cowboy and Mr Turnip. In 1955 Race became light music adviser to Associated Rediffusion, remaining in the post until 1960, when he went on to conduct for many television series, including the Tony Hancock and Peter Sellers shows. Race enjoyed nine weeks of chart fame in 1963 with his catchy rendition of Pied Piper (The Beeje), which reached number 29. In 1962 and 1963 Race won awards for his commercial jingles for ITV. The most lucrative was the one for Birds Eye frozen peas: "Sweet as the moment when the pod went pop". He also won an Ivor Novello Award for his composition Nicola (named after his daughter). In 1965, aged 44, he suffered a heart attack, but it did little to halt his prodigious work rate. Immaculately dressed and sporting a distinguished white beard, Race - although a somewhat shy man - was always confident and assured in front of a microphone or a camera. 'My Music', while pioneered on radio, made a successful transfer to television bringing out the best (and worst, when it came to puns) from the comic writers Denis Norden and Frank Muir, and their fellow-panellists John Amis and Ian Wallace. Neither Race nor Wallace missed a single episode of more than 520 that were broadcast. more.... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1715941.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6564110.ece Tenniel Evans, Taffy Goldstein in 'The Navy Lark', has died aged 82 (17 June 2009) On screen, Tenniel Evans was one of those character actors with a face recognisable in dozens of television programmes but whose name was less familiar. He played doctors, police officers, judges and vicars, and even went on to be become a priest himself. But it was out of vision, acting a look-out in the long-running BBC radio comedy The Navy Lark (1959-77), that Evans could claim to be "recognised". As Taffy Goldstein, alongside Ronnie Barker as Johnson, he was one of the two Able Seamen among an inept crew aboard HMS Troutbridge, a frigate refitted to house undesirable elements of the Royal Navy. He made his television début as a policeman in an episode of No Hiding Place (1960), before acting Jonathan Kail, alongside Geraldine McEwan and Jeremy Brett, in an ITV adaptation of Tess (1960, based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles). For 45 years, Evans worked solidly in character parts on television, flitting from one popular programme to another - and even playing Hitler in The Roads to Freedom (1970). Occasionally, the actor found regular roles, such as John, one of the solicitor siblings, in the legal drama The Sullavan Brothers (1964-65), Sergeant Bluett in the sitcom My Brother's Keeper (1975-76), Geoff Barratt in the final series of the post-war comedy-drama Shine on Harvey Moon (1985), Teddy Haslam in the zoo vet drama One by One (1987) and Sir Edward Parkinson-Lewis in September Song (1994). He also took over from the late Patrick Troughton the role of Perce, grandfather of Ashley (Nicholas Lyndhurst), in the sitcom The Two of Us (1987-90). more.... Terence Alexander, actor, has died aged aged 86 (3 June 2009) Terence Alexander played gentlemen and rogues, combining the two in his most famous role, Charlie Hungerford in the television detective series Bergerac. He began his successful television career in the 1950s and subsequently appeared in many series, including The Forsyte Saga, the Les Dawson and Dick Emery shows, Terry and June, and The New Statesman. His radio work included several plays as well as the series Law and Disorder and The Toff. Alexander’s numerous films included the comedies The Square Peg (1958), with Norman Wisdom, and Carry On Regardless (1961). He also appeared in the epic Waterloo (1970) and the thriller The Day Of The Jackal (1974). But probably his best film role was as an ex-officer turned bank robber in the comedy adventure The League Of Gentlemen (1960). He performed in many West End comedies and farces, including Fringe Benefits (Whitehall, 1976) and Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus (Nottingham Playhouse, 1980). With John Nettles in the title role, Alexander brought humour and suavity to Bergerac as the detective’s millionaire ex-father-in-law. His lightness of touch was perfect for the slim, silver-haired Charlie, constantly puffing a cigar and often in a flap. more.... Vivian Cox, film producer and schoolmaster, has died aged 93 (2 June 2009) Viv Cox’s career in films began after demobilisation in 1946. After working with Sydney, Muriel and Betty Box at Shepherd’s Bush Studios, he became associate producer to Betty Box and then producer at Pinewood Studios. Among his early films were So Long at the Fair (with Jean Simmons and Dirk Bogarde, 1950), Father Brown (with Alec Guinness, 1954) and Bachelor of Hearts (with Hardy Kruger and Sylvia Syms, scripted by Cox’s friends Leslie Bricusse and Frederic Raphael, 1958). From 1959 to 1967 Cox worked as an independent producer and screenwriter for Rank Studios, producing such titles as Watch Your Stern (with Spike Milligan, Leslie Phillips, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Connor, 1960) and We Joined the Navy (with Kenneth More, 1962). Between 1960 and 1976 Cox produced all the stage shows for the annual Royal Command Film Performance and hosted the royal party. In 1967 Cox returned to his first profession and his alma mater, teaching English, French and Drama at Cranleigh School. A gifted and inspiring teacher, he taught for eight years, during which he also directed several plays, including Hassan with Juliet Stephenson. From 1975 until his retirement in 1982 he worked with Sir Bernard Miles as administrator at London’s Mermaid Theatre. more.... Australian actor Charles 'Bud' Tingwell has died aged 86 (15 May 2009) Outside of Australia he was probably best known for his role as a high court lawyer in the cult 1997 comedy The Castle, but locally he was the face of many roles spanning a 50-year career, from television to the stage and the silver screen. Tingwell acted in his first movie in 1946 and appeared in over 100 films during his long career, which included a 17-year stint working in Britain. He moved to England in 1956 where he carved out a career as a 'London Aussie', appearing as an Australian surgeon in Emergency – Ward 10, and as Inspector Craddock in four of the Miss Marple films alongside Dame Margaret Rutherford. He also voiced the character of Mr Bennet in Catweazle as well as characters in The Thunderbirds. After returning to Australia with his wife and two children in 1973, Tingwell settled in Melbourne and began his long foray in the local entertainment industry. He had a long-standing role on the police TV drama Homicide and also appeared in the cult TV show Prisoner: Cell Block H, and later enjoyed a recurring role on Neighbours. Tingwell played many small roles in scores of Australian films including Breaker Morant, Puberty Blues and the mini-series All The Rivers Run. more.... Laurence Payne, actor, has died aged 89 (4 May 2009) The screen and stage actor Laurence Payne made his biggest impression as the titular detective in Sexton Blake, a children’s television series which is fondly recalled by a generation of now middle-aged viewers. The series, which ran from 1967 to 1971, went out in a tea-time slot. Payne made his television debut in the Adrian Brunel play Till Tomorrow (1948). He played Captain Bluntschli in an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man (1952) and Troilus in The Face of Love (1954), a modern and comic version of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. His first film was the Ealing Studios drama Train of Events (1949), directed by Charles Crichton, but – apart from an appearance as Joseph in the opening scenes of the biblical epic Ben-Hur (1959) – most of his screen work was on television. Payne played D’Artagnan in a BBC’s The Three Musketeers (1954); Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice (1955); Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (1955); Philip Truscott in the sci-fi serial The Trollenberg Terror (1956-57, before reprising the role in the 1958 film); King Magnus in The Apple Cart (1962); Colonel Andrev in the Balkans-set political thriller The Midnight Men (1964); Lieutenant Rinaldi in A Farewell to Arms (1966); Capulet in Romeo and Juliet (1976); and Weaver in Psy-Warriors (a 1981 “Play for Today” written by David Leland and directed by Alan Clarke). Payne also had three roles in Doctor Who over the years: Johnny Ringo in the wild west story “The Gunfighters” (1966); Morix in “The Leisure Hive” (1980) and Dastari in “The Two Doctors” (1985). Payne also wrote crime novels, including The Nose on My Face (1961), Birds in the Belfry (1966) and Spy for Sale (1969). more.... Ken Annakin, film director whose hits included the Huggetts saga, has died aged 94 (25 April 2009) The director Ken Annakin was one of the British cinema’s most stalwart craftsmen. Able to turn his hand equally to domestic comedies, war epics, family fare for Walt Disney and big-budget spectaculars, he was a reliable purveyor of screen entertainment — as he once put it: “I make films for audiences.” He had his biggest commercial success in the 1960s with Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, a rumbustious comedy built around the 1910 London-to-Paris air race. In 1946 he joined Gainsborough Studios under Sydney Box and the following year made his first feature, Holiday Camp, a comedy-drama notable for launching the Huggetts, a warm-hearted working-class family headed by Kathleen Harrison and Jack Warner. Annakin’s sympathetic and unpatronising treatment of ordinary people was rare in the British cinema of those days. With the teenage Petula Clark joining the cast as their youngest daughter, the Huggetts appeared in three further films, all directed by Annakin, Here Come the Huggetts, Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad. They were conceived as a series and in many ways the Huggett saga anticipated television soap opera, albeit on a cosier level. By the early 1950s Annakin had emerged as an efficient all-rounder, tackling anything from the Malayan emergency in The Planter’s Wife to Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat and another Greene story, Loser Takes All. He also began an association with the Disney studio that yielded four films, from Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952) to the children’s classic Swiss Family Robinson (1960), which starred John Mills. more.... Peter Rogers, 'Carry On' producer, has died aged 95 (16 April 2009) Peter Rogers dreamt up the Carry On comedies and went on to produce the entire Carry On oeuvre, from Carry On Sergeant (1958) to Carry on Emmanuelle (1978). Some time after Rogers had established himself as a producer, working with the director Gerald Thomas, he obtained an RF Delderfield script, The Bull Boys – a serious piece about the effect of army conscription on a pair of ballet dancers. To avoid any audience irreverence he had it rewritten by Norman Hudis as a comedy: Carry On Sergeant. The film, which starred William Hartnell and a youthful Bob Monkhouse, with Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Connor as three hapless army privates, was shot quickly on a budget of under £75,000. The critical response was lukewarm. The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "a conventional farce, in which all the characters come from stock". Yet Carry On Sergeant became an unlikely success - hitting No 3 in the UK box-office charts for 1958, behind Dunkirk and Bridge On the River Kwai, so Rogers decided to make another. Carry On Nurse, also starring Williams, Hawtree and Connors, topped the box office charts in 1959. Over the next 20 years the formula was applied to many institutions – hospital, police, school – and to locations as exotic as the Wild West, the Khyber Pass and Ancient Egypt. The routine was simple enough. Rogers would think up the title in his bathtub, then summon the scriptwriter. In the mid-1950s, working with Gerald Thomas, Rogers went on to produce children's films in which he was able to indulge his love of animals. These included The Gay Dog (1954), Circus Friends (1956) and The Dog and the Diamonds (1953), which won the Venice Film Festival Award in the same year. He also wrote and produced the thriller Time Lock (1957). During the Carry On years, Rogers continued to produce other comedies, such as the spicily titled Please Turn Over and Watch Your Stern and also produced the television series Ivanhoe, with Roger Moore, and the film version of the Sid James sitcom Bless This House. more.... Edward Judd, versatile character actor, has died aged 76 (14 April 2009) Stardom came to the actor Edward Judd in cult sci-fi films of the 1960s, sandwiched between his roles in soap operas and other character parts on the small screen. By the time he found himself catapulted to international fame, he had already appeared as a regular in Britain's first daily television serial, Sixpenny Corner (1955), playing Denis Boyes, one of the community living around a garage run by the newly-wed Nortons in the fictional rural town of Springwood. The soap was written by Hazel Adair, who was later to create the longer-running Crossroads. His first starring role in a film, as a hard-drinking newspaper reporter redeeming himself in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, was not so far removed from the everyday life of soaps, where the ordinary encounters the extraordinary. In the 1961 black-and-white feature - directed by Val Guest, following his earlier Quatermass pictures - Judd is seen as the fictional Daily Express journalist Peter Stenning, who stumbles on the revelation that American and Soviet nuclear tests have knocked the Earth off its axis, sending it heading for the sun and causing floods and fires. Judd gained repertory theatre experience in Windsor and Nottingham, before his brooding good looks led him to further screen roles as an adult. On television, he took 11 different bit-parts in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1957) and appeared in other swashbucklers such as Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Robin Hood and William Tell (all 1958). Later came roles as Gavin Grant in the espionage drama series Intrigue (1966) and the crippled Uncle Russell in Alan Plater's adaptation of Flambards (1979). He also started low down the cast list in films, in pictures that included Carry on Sergeant (1958), I Was Monty's Double (1958) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960). But after his sci-fi successes, Judd was cast in supporting roles, such as Oswald in O Lucky Man! (1973), the director Lindsay Anderson's anti-capitalist, surrealist musical. more.... Huw Thomas, ITN news presenter, has died aged 81 (3 April 2009) When ITN News started in September 1955, an exciting new format was created with two people for the Six O’Clock News who were referred to as “newscasters” rather than “newsreaders”. The implication was that they had a very definite input into the news coverage. Huw Thomas fitted well into this bright, professional line-up: he had a touch of Welsh panache, he was articulate, handsome, invariably polite but with a dogged questioning manner that ensured that questions were answered and not skated around. In 1956 Thomas answered an advertisement for the new Independent Television’s news programme which was to be produced through Independent Television News (ITN). The less formal style of ITN made an immediate impact and was considered more colourful and “viewer friendly” than the BBC’s more traditional presentation. Thomas and his colleagues questioned correspondents and politicians live, and this added to the up-to-the-minute feel of the news coverage. The newscasters were encouraged to create an on-screen personality, and this suited the eloquent Thomas. He had a debonair and gracious on-screen personality, with a fine voice and black swept-back hair. At one stage he was receiving sacks of fan letters and became something of a cult figure. He responded to the challenge of altered schedules and hastily organised live interviews with relish. The value of his legal training was apparent in his questioning, which was always sound, courteous and to the point. more.... Derek Benfield, actor and the author of more than 30 plays, has died aged 82 (31 March 2009) In recent years he was most familiar to television viewers in the role of Patricia Routledge's long-suffering husband in the BBC detective series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, in which she stars as a fussing, somewhat self-righteous private eye in Yorkshire. Benfield also had a long-running part in one of the most popular television series of the 1970s. The Brothers concerned a warring family, the Hammonds, which owned a haulage firm, and Benfield played the company's foreman, Bill Riley. Benfield's first television appearance was in the BBC serial Return to the Lost Planet, after which he had roles in popular programmes such as Emergency Ward Ten, Z Cars, and Dixon of Dock Green (for which he also wrote four scripts). There were parts in dramas such as Great Expectations and The Knowledge before he became a regular in the cult children's science fiction drama Timeslip, broadcast in 1970-71. As a writer, Benfield specialised in farce, and plays such as The Post Horn Gallop and Wild Goose Chase (which chart the exploits of the eccentric Lord and Lady Elrood) have proved popular with amateur dramatic societies. His play Beyond a Joke was staged with Arthur Lowe in the leading role, and Bedside Manners starred John Inman and later Tim Brooke-Taylor. Touch and Go was translated into French by Marc Camoletti and ran for a year in his theatre in Paris; last Christmas it had a successful run at the Mill at Sonning. more.... Tim Brinton, ITN newscaster who became a robustly right-wing Conservative MP, has died aged 79 (30 March 2009) Tim Brinton joined the BBC in 1951 as a radio announcer, mainly on overseas programmes. From 1957 he was head of English programmes at Radio Hong Kong. He switched to ITN's high-profile team of presenters in 1959. His greatest moment came the following February when he broke into Right of Reply to announce Princess Margaret's engagement. Brinton, a professionally-trained actor who had left ITN to go freelance in 1962, became almost as well known playing a newsreader as he had been as the genuine article. His film credits included Information Received (1961), Allez France (1964), Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), Man at the Top (1973) and Carry On Emmanuelle (1978). Among television dramas in which he appeared were Dixon of Dock Green, Knocker, The Power Game and The Avengers. In 1971 Brinton took over as anchor of Southern Television's Scene South-East. he was a committed Tory who had campaigned for the former Home Secretary Henry Brooke in Hampstead. He was elected to Kent County Council in 1974, and prior to the 1979 election was selected to fight the Labour-held marginal of Gravesend; he captured it with the handsome majority of 9,346, and in 1983 was re-elected for the redrawn constituency of Gravesham. At Westminster Brinton became a founder-member of the education select committee, defending independent schools and complaining that children were swapping school meal vouchers for Mars bars and chips. He was also vice-chairman of the Conservative backbench media committee. more.... Edmund Hockridge, singer and actor, has died aged 89 (17 March 2009) With his rugged looks and strong baritone voice the Canadian-born singer Edmund Hockridge was one of the West End’s biggest stars in the 1950s. He played leading roles in a string of popular musicals including Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Can Can and The Pajama Game and had recording hits with songs such as Young and Foolish, No Other Love, The Fountains of Rome and More than Ever. A song from The Pajama Game, Hey There, gave him his biggest record hit and became his signature tune. Immensely popular with British audiences, Hockridge eventually made his home in the UK and for more than 40 years topped bills around the country in musicals, variety, radio and TV shows. He often worked with the Glen Miller Band and the Canadian band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces led by Robert Farnon. He sang and produced more than 400 shows with the BBC Forces Network and as the war ended he sang with big bands such as Geraldo’s. Throughout the 1950s he recorded a host of show tune LPs and was a frequent guest star on television. He appeared in early editions of The Benny Hill Show as well as Sunday Night at the London Palladium and he starred in a six-month, sell-out variety season again at the Palladium. In 1953 he was in the Royal Variety Show along with stars such as Max Bygraves and Tommy Cooper and the same year he was Canada’s representative in the Westminster Abbey choir at the Coronation. He made his film debut in 1944 with a brief appearance in Starlight Serenade but he had more substantial roles in the 1950s in films such as For Better, for Worse (1954), the romantic drama starring Dirk Bogarde, and King’s Rhapsody (1955), co-starring with Anna Neagle and Errol Flynn. more.... Ali Bongo, magician, has died aged 79 (9 March 2009) Ali Bongo, real name William Wallace, was a hard-working stage magician with a prodigious talent for inventing tricks; although he eventually became the inspiration for the outlandish magician-detective Adam Klaus in the BBC's Jonathan Creek, Ali spent most of his career in television behind the scenes, devising routines for performers such as David Nixon and Paul Daniels. Having played the part of a wizard called Ali Bongo in a village hall pantomime, he borrowed the name for his stage act. On stage Bongo always claimed himself to be of "Pongolian" descent, but the character he created was no doubt partly inspired by his Indian upbringing. He wore brightly-coloured clothing, spoke in a ringing Asian accent, and tore through his act at a frantic pace, with a litany of endearingly absurd catchphrases - "hokus-pokus fishbones chokus" or "uju buju suck another juju" - thrown in for good measure. After National Service, Bongo became a manager at the magic department of Hamleys in Regent Street. When eventually he left the store to become a full-time professional, he came to the attention of David Nixon, a likeable and witty magician with his own show at the BBC. By the 1950s Ali was working as a magician in variety theatres and clubs throughout the country. Billed as "The Shriek of Araby", he wore outrageously colourful costumes and his act was a combination of brilliantly mimed, zany comedy with expertly performed magic tricks. Casseroles of fire turned into colourful displays of doves and silks, bouquets of flowers changed colour, ladies were sawn in half and he involved his audiences with hilarious mind-reading feats. Impressed by Bongo's ingenuity and grasp of stage technique, Nixon employed him as an adviser on David Nixon's Magic Box until 1971, when Bongo was given his own slot on the children's entertainment series Zokko. His reputation grew and in 1972 he was voted Magic Circle Magician of the Year. But he continued to be employed as an adviser on such television shows as Tarot Ace of Wands, Doctor Who, The Tomorrow People, and later worked with Nixon's successor at the BBC, Paul Daniels, with whom he was to remain a close friend. In 2008 he was elected president of the Magic Circle and remained a frequent visitor to its premises near Euston, helping to run the Young Magicians' Club where he passed on the tricks of his trade to the next generation of performers. more.... Joan Turner, comedienne and popular entertainer, has died aged 86 (5 March 2009) At the height of her fame in the 1960s Joan Turner was widely regarded as one of Britain’s most brilliant comediennes. Famed for her soprano voice and biting wit, she was billed as "the voice of an angel - the wit of the Devil" and was regularly seen on popular television shows, at the London Palladium and at nightclubs in New York and Las Vegas. Critics were quick to compare her to Gracie Fields, and her voice, like that of Fields, did have an astonishing range. She was set for international stardom, but, prey to drink and gambling problems, she proved too erratic and undisciplined to maintain a successful career, and her eventual decline was pitiful. She made her debut at the Finsbury Empire as a singing comedienne, billed as "The Wacky Warbler", and later played all the leading music halls around the country. For four years she specialised in the title role of Aladdin in the Lew Grade pantomime and on one memorable occasion slipped unannounced into the long-running Crazy Gang show at the Victoria Palace and stopped the show. By now a headliner in variety she was quickly snapped up by television and made regular appearances as a guest star on shows with Dickie Henderson and Harry Secombe and in 1954 was chosen for the Royal Variety Performance, where she sang with Eric Robinson and his Orchestra. In the same year she opened with Jimmy Edwards and Tony Hancock in the revue Talk of the Town (Adelphi Theatre), which ran for a record 656 performances. At the end of the 1950s she had written and compiled a one-woman show, An Evening with Joan Turner, running at two hours and in which she did more than 20 impressions. In the early 1970s she surprised her critics by giving an exceptional performance in the lead role in The Killing of Sister George which toured, and she made several comedy recordings, the best of which was The World of Joan Turner. It was not enough, however, to support her lavish lifestyle, and in 1977 she was declared bankrupt. "I couldn’t stop gambling," she admitted. "The more I lost the more I wanted to win it all back." more.... Tony Osborne, composer and arranger, has died aged 86 (3 March 2009) Osborne's first job was a trumpeter and relief pianist with Cyril Stapleton, and then with Frank Weir, Carroll Gibbons and Ambrose. He played in the BBC Orchestra for the comedy successes, The Goon Show and Take It From Here. Soon Osborne was working for the major companies of the day, notably with EMI, and he formed his own band, the Brass Hats, for weekly appearances on the BBC TV teenage show, Six-Five Special. When that was superseded by Juke Box Jury in 1959, Osborne wrote and recorded the theme song, "Juke Box Fury", under the name of Ozzie Warlock and the Wizards. When Osborne fell out with the show's producer, Russell Turner, Turner replaced his tune with John Barry's "Hit And Miss", which began Barry's run of success. In 1960, the American star Connie Francis recorded in England and Osborne wrote and conducted the arrangement for her million-selling "Mama", which was sung in Italian. Among his arrangements were "Sisters" for the Beverley Sisters, "Out Of Town" for Max Bygraves, "Love Is" for Alma Cogan, "Little Donkey" for Nina and Frederik, and "Say It With Flowers" with Dorothy Squires and Russ Conway. Around the late 1950s, Osborne began recording under his own name, favouring place names for his instrumental titles – the best known are "The Lights Of Lisbon", "The Man From Marseilles", "The Windows Of Paris", which became the theme music for the BBC drivetime programme, Roundabout and was recorded by Bing Crosby, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and "The Man From Madrid", a Top 50 entry in 1961. He also had a chart hit with "The Shepherd's Song" in 1973. more.... Dilys Laye, actress known for comic roles in the Carry On films, has died aged 74 (20 February 2009) Dilys Laye was one of Britain’s most experienced comedy actresses, best known for her appearances in the Carry On films. But she was equally adept in straight roles, notably with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she was a seasoned musical star, having appeared in the original Broadway production of Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend, opposite Julie Andrews. Her gift for comedy was noticed during the early 1950s when she began appearing in a series of then hugely popular intimate West End revues, including High Spirits, For Amusement Only and Intimacy at 8.30 in which she starred alongside such performers as Ian Carmichael and Cyril Ritchard. She made her Broadway debut in 1954 as Dulcie in The Boy Friend after which she returned to Britain to play in both West End and provincial theatre comedies and musicals. In 1957 she played Mrs Herbert in the film Doctor at Large, opposite Dirk Bogarde and James Roberston Justice. In the 1960s she had established herself as a leading comedy actress on television, appearing regularly in series such as the BBC’s Comedy Playhouse. In 1967 she had a small role in Charlie Chaplin’s romantic comedy film A Countess from Hong Kong. For much of her career the theatre remained her first love and she showed her versatility as an actress when she joined the RSC in the 1970s playing roles such as Maria in Twelfth Night and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. She frequently played leading roles in musical comedy and in recent years had topped the bill in touring productions of Sweeney Todd, The Pirates of Penzance, Fiddler on the Roof and 42nd Street. Trevor Nunn cast her as Mrs Pearce in the 2007 Drury Lane revival of My Fair Lady. In 1981 she wrote and appeared in the ITV sitcom Chintz, which also starred Michele Dotrice. Laye almost never stopped working and had been seen on television in recent years in Midsomer Murders, Holby City and EastEnders, in which she played Maxine Palmer. more.... Shirley Jean Rickert, 'Our Gang' member, has died aged 82 (20 February 2009) Shirley Jean Rickert was to a legion of Depression Era fans the cute girl with the platinum blonde curls in the Our Gang comedies filmed during the early 1930s. Shirley was five when she made her Our Gang debut in Helping Grandma (1931), appearing with Jackie Cooper, Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins, Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Dorothy deBorba, Allen "Farina" Hoskins and Norman "Chubby" Chaney. After a dozen or so Our Gang shorts, Shirley left the troupe to play Tomboy Taylor in the rival Mickey McGuire comedy series, with Mickey Rooney in the title role. Certain that her daughter was a star in the making, Shirley's mother negotiated her way out of the series contract after Shirley had made just five short films in 1934. Fame eluded her. By the mid-1930s, she was reduced to playing a series of bit parts. During the war years she was briefly under contract with Columbia Pictures, then worked as an uncredited dancer in a number of film musicals, including The Pirate (1948) with Gene Kelly; Royal Wedding (1951), starring Fred Astaire; and Singin' in the Rain (1952). When the old Our Gang comedies resurfaced in television syndication across America in the mid-1950s as The Little Rascals, Shirley Jean Rickert found herself a new generation of fans. more....   Richard Coleman, Actor, has died aged 79 (14 February 2009) Richard Coleman made his big-screen début as a naval officer in Yangtse Incident: the Story of HMS Amethyst (1957) and landed similar roles in Girls at Sea (1958) and The Navy Lark (based on the BBC radio sitcom, 1958). He also played the baddie Metellus in the biblical epic Ben-Hur (1959). But it was in television that the actor's future lay. He had regular roles as Nick Allardyce in The Adventures of Ben Gunn (1958), a six-part serial by R.F. Delderfield featuring characters from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, the minstrel Alan-a-Dale in episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1958-60) and Jack Royston in the soap opera Weavers Green (1966), set around a Norfolk country vet's practice. Coleman also took one-off character roles in many popular television series, including Dixon of Dock Green (1963, 1964), No Hiding Place (1964, 1965), The Avengers (1966), Z Cars (1973), George and Mildred (1977) and Surgical Spirit (1991). In the 1970s, Coleman was one of the best-known faces on television, starring with Wendy Craig in two archetypal sitcoms of domestic mayhem. Coleman joined her in thesitcom ...And Mother Makes Three, in which Craig played a dithering young widow, Sally Harrison, trying to hold down a job while bringing up her two sons, with some assistance from her Auntie Flo and in the follow up series ...And Mother Makes Five (1974-6). Both series were created by the writer Richard Waring and followed his previous sitcom, Not in Front of the Children, which starred Wendy Craig in another family saga. more....   Stewart Morris, BBC light entertainment producer, has died aged 79 (9 February 2009) In 1958, the TV producer Jack Good was producing the very exciting rock ’n’ roll show, Oh Boy! for ITV, and the BBC wanted something similar. Stewart Morris was recruited to produce their reply, Drumbeat. Morris favoured a studio production over a theatre audience, but otherwise the shows were identical. Many of the performers were the same but Morris made Adam Faith a star and established John Barry as the leader of a rhythm combo, the John Barry Seven. The visiting Americans were Paul Anka and the Poni-Tails. “Drumbeat made me a star in Scotland,” the singer Vince Eager said, “as they didn’t have ITV there and had never seen anything like it.” Drumbeat only ran for six months, but Morris had shown his capabilities and he was then entrusted with Juke Box Jury. This was hardly demanding work and hardly a TV format – four panellists listening to the latest releases and commenting on them – but it had a popular host, David Jacobs, and high viewing figures. In January 1967, Morris produced The Rolf Harris Show in which Harris sang, joked, painted and played ethnic Australian instruments. Harris was born on the same day as Morris and they referred to each other as twins. During the first season, Sandie Shaw sang the potential UK entries for the Eurovision Song Contest, and the public voted for “Puppet On A String”, which led to the UK’s first victory in the contest. The following year, Morris produced the live TV broadcast of the contest from the Royal Albert Hall and also produced the Royal Variety Performance from the London Palladium. In 1976, he produced the first live broadcast of a Royal Variety Performance. When BBC2 started in 1964, Morris was put in charge of the Saturday afternoon alternative to sport on BBC1 and ITV. Open House was fronted by Gay Byrne and featured such American stars as Gene Pitney, the Supremes and the Beach Boys. In 1986, Morris produced his biggest spectacle: the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, which involved over 10,000 sportsmen and musicians. Morris retired from the BBC in 1992. He then produced a Royal Gala for the 50th anniversary of VE Day for Carlton TV in 1995 and four series of Barrymore with Michael Barrymore for LWT from 1992 to 1995. more.... Ingemar Johansson, the Swedish heavyweight boxer has died aged 76 (2 February 2009) Ingemar Johansson caused a sensation by destroying Floyd Patterson inside three rounds to win the world title in June 1959; the American was floored seven times before Johansson became the first European to capture the sport's richest prize since Italy's Primo Carnera 25 years earlier. An intelligent fighter blessed with sound boxing skills, Johansson also possessed a thunderous punch in his right hand which the press dubbed "Ingo's Bingo", although the colourful Swede preferred to call it "Thor's Hammer". This was the punch that earned him the Scandinavian and European crowns before his remarkable win over Patterson. Yet Johansson's reign proved brief. Patterson gained his revenge by stopping him in five rounds in the return bout 12 months later and the Swede also lost their third and final encounter in March 1961. Although this trilogy of fights ended Johansson's days as a world title contender, he emerged from them £1.5m the richer. more.... Tony Hart, Artist and TV presenter, has died aged 83 (18 January 2009) Tony Hart was an iconic and much-loved figure for millions of budding young artists who tuned into his BBC art shows for nearly 50 years. He received two Bafta awards, won a lifetime achievement award in 1998, gave a TV platform to Morph - the clay character with the incoherent babble - and also created the original design for the Blue Peter badge. Hart graduated in 1950 and soon became a freelance artist. His career did not take off immediately, and he later admitted to drawing murals on restaurant walls in exchange for meals. But it would not take long for him to move into television. He met a BBC children's TV producer at a party in 1952 and, following an interview, demonstrated his talents by drawing a fish on a napkin. He became resident artist on Saturday Special, subsequently appearing on Playbox and Titch and Quackers. In 1964, he fronted Vision On, which was intended for deaf children, and by the time Take Hart arrived in 1978, colour television gave his programmes added punch. His kindly, avuncular manner was a key feature of the programmes, and advances in technology allowed his remarkable range of ideas to bear full fruit. Hartbeat (1985-1994) often attracted 5.4 million viewers and Hart received between 6,000 and 8,000 drawings and paintings through the post every week - the best of them would be pinned to the walls of his studio. His career continued with his final series, Smart Hart, where he shared the studio with a young Kirsten O'Brien, and that kept him in work until his retirement in 2001. more.... Author and dramatist Sir John Mortimer has died aged 85 (16 January 2009) Sir John Mortimer made his radio debut in 1955 when he adapted his own novel, 'Like Men Betrayed' for the BBC Light Programme. But he made his debut as a playwright with 'The Dock Brief', starring Michael Hordern as a hapless barrister, first broadcast in 1957 on BBC Radio's Third Programme, later televised with the same cast and subsequently presented in a double bill with 'What Shall We Tell Caroline?' at the Lyric Hammersmith in April 1958, before transferring to the Garrick Theatre. His play, 'A Voyage Round My Father', given its first radio broadcast in 1963, is autobiographical, recounting his experiences as a young barrister and his relationship with his blind father. It was memorably televised by BBC Television in 1969 with Mark Dignam in the title role. In a slightly longer version the play later became a stage success. In 1981 it was remade by Thames Television with Sir Laurence Olivier as the father and Alan Bates as young Mortimer. Mortimer is best remembered for creating a barrister named Horace Rumpole, whose speciality was defending those accused of crime in London's Old Bailey. Mortimer created Rumpole for 'Rumpole of the Bailey', a 1975 contribution to the BBCs 'Play For Today' anthology series. Played with gusto by Leo McKern, the character proved popular, and was developed into a Rumpole of the Bailey television series for Thames Television and a series of books (all written by Mortimer). more.... Patrick McGoohan, actor in the television series The Prisoner, has died aged 80 (15 January 2009) After a few minor stage roles in the West End, McGoohan was signed by Rank at a time when the British film industry was flourishing. His clipped, almost metallic delivery in the manner of Olivier’s Richard III, and the persistent stare, made him an ideal movie actor. Among his early films were No Life for Ruth, Dr Syn, Three Lives of Thomasina and All Night Long. Possibly his most memorable role of the period was a villain at the wheel in a taut thriller called Hell Drivers that co-starred the also emerging Stanley Baker and Herbert Lom. The TV series Danger Man followed in 1959 after a troubled Rank failed to renew his contract along with other players. Ever the prickly perfectionist, McGoohan quickly found fault with the early scripts and came close to losing the part because of his demands. He insisted that John Drake should never carry a gun, although he was permitted to wrestle one away from a baddie occasionally, and all women were to be treated with strict courtesy. At different times McGoohan turned down the chance to play James Bond and also the Saint (he said they were immoral) because of the sex and violence content. But he collected his share of accolades. He won a TV Actor of the Year award for his performance in The Greatest Man in the World, and in 1959 the Critics Award for Best Actor of the Year on stage when he played the title role in Ibsen’s verse drama Brand, as the religious bigot who finally destroys himself. He moved behind the camera directing several episodes of his friend Peter Falk’s long-running TV detective series Columbo, although he did appear in several, picking up a pair of Emmy Awards. He starred in another TV series, Rafferty, a tailor-made role about a rebellious, irascible doctor, and he returned to Britain occasionally for TV appearances. Among them a remake of Jamaica Inn with Jane Seymour, and Hugh Whitemore’s The Best of Friends in which he played George Bernard Shaw. But it is for The Prisoner and its infuriating, fascinating mystery that he will be remembered most. As he once said in exasperation: “Will I never escape it? I am a prisoner of The Prisoner.” more.... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1380371.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5518785.ece Edmund Purdom, British character actor famed for his roles in The Student Prince and The Egyptian, has died aged 84 (5 January 2009) Edmund Purdom made his acting debut in repertory in 1945, aged 21. Six years later, he appeared with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh on Broadway in alternating performances of Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra, playing respectively a Persian and Thyreus. One of his first film roles was in Joseph Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar (1953) as Strato, the young servant of Brutus (James Mason). It was the sad fate of the actor Edmund Purdom that the best known of his films, The Student Prince (1954), is remembered more for the star who wasn't in it. After the temperamental tenor Mario Lanza was fired from the film, the non-singing unknown Purdom replaced him. Luckily for MGM, Lanza had recorded the songs for the CinemaScope production before shooting began. Thus his voice is heard bellowing incongruously out of the slender frame of Purdom. Purdom's reputation as a surrogate is underlined by the fact that he got his first chance of stardom when he replaced Marlon Brando in The Egyptian (1954) after Brando wisely cried off, preferring to play Napoleon in Desirée instead. By the end of the 1950s, like a number of stars for whom Hollywood work had dried up, Purdom went to Italy and into rubbishy costume melodramas such as Herod the Great (1959), The Cossacks, Salambo (both 1960), Suleiman the Conqueror and Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile (both 1961). This stream of Italian films was interrupted by some British television work and, in 1964, two films made in England, The Beauty Jungle, revealing the seedier side of beauty contests, and The Yellow Rolls-Royce. more.... US singer Eartha Kitt has died aged 81 (26 December 2008) American singer, dancer and actress Eartha Kitt has died at the age 81. She was one of the few artists to be nominated in the Tony, Grammy and Emmy award categories and was a stalwart of the Manhattan cabaret scene. Her break came at 16 when she got a job as a dancer with a professional troupe touring Europe. She later sang in Paris nightclubs and appeared in several films in the 1950s. Her lithe, feline movements, the bewitchingly provocative glances from her wide-set eyes and her unique vocal style – girlishly husky with an effective use of vibrato – were truly incomparable. Initially her image was that of a gold-digger, epitomised by such hits as "Just An Old-Fashioned Girl", "Santa Baby" and "I Want to Be Evil", but other best-selling records testify to her versatility – the seductive "Jonny", her wry "Dinner for One Please, James", a vitriolic "The Heel" and, in one of her most persuasive and touching recordings, the pathos of "The Day That the Circus Left Town". Besides stage and cabaret, she also had a film, theatre and television career, delighting a new generation when she played Catwoman in the series Batman. Kitt was blacklisted in the US in the late 1960s after speaking out against the Vietnam War at a White House function. However, she returned triumphantly to New York's Broadway in a 1978 production, Timbuktu!, and continued to perform regularly in theatre shows and concert halls. From the 1980s onwards she appeared in numerous films, and her 1984 hit Where Is My Man found her another generation of night club fans. more.... Jack Douglas, actor and comedian, has died aged 81 (19 December 2008) A permanent fixture in the final eight Carry On comedy films, Jack Douglas is best remembered for the twitching character he usually portrayed, complete with flat cap, spectacles and workman's overalls, and the one-word catchphrase: "Phwaay!" The character, known as Alf Ippititimus, was created on stage two decades earlier and became a staple of his act. His break as a performer came while he was directing Dick Whittington (1948-49) at the Kingston Empire in Surrey. He was persuaded to step in after the comedian Joe Baker's straight man was taken ill. As a result, the pair formed a double-act and, in addition to their stage appearances across Britain and in Australia, they were seen regularly during the first year of the children's television programme Crackerjack (1955-56). He made his film début in the RAF comedy Nearly a Nasty Accident, starring Jimmy Edwards, in 1961. As well as appearing with the Carry On team in their forays into television, Carry On Christmas (1972) and Carry On Laughing (1975), Douglas performed on the small screen in many entertainment programmes. Having earned a reputation as a brilliant stooge, Douglas worked occasionally with Bruce Forsyth and Benny Hill, and, for 12 years, with Des O’Connor. He and O’Connor topped the bill in numerous summer seasons: they appeared in more than 50 TV specials and were the unexpected hit of the Royal Variety Show in 1969. The following year they appeared in America on The Ed Sullivan Show. more.... Van Johnson, actor who rode his luck to become a major Hollywood star before fading from view, has died aged 92 (15 December 2008) After graduating, he worked for a time in an office, but his sights were always set on a career in showbusiness. He took dancing, singing and acting lessons and managed to land small roles in such Broadway shows as Entre Nous (1935) and New Faces (1936). In the late 1930s, he also appeared in a couple of Rodgers and Hart shows – Too Many Girls and Pal Joey. In Too Many Girls he had the lead role, but when it was filmed in 1940, he was unknown in Hollywood and was given only a one-line part. Nevertheless, it was his screen debut. With war stories dominating Hollywood productions, he became renowned as the boy-next-door turned sailor, soldier or airman. He made his mark in A Guy Named Joe (1943), as a pilot steered towards grieving Irene Dunne by the spirit of her dead lover, played by Spencer Tracy. A Guy Named Joe was a big hit, so Van Johnson was co-starred with Irene Dunne again in a schmaltzy wartime drama The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) before being cast in a musical, Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), with June Allyson and Gloria De Haven. As a GI (of which he had no personal experience), he was seen in such films as Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944), Battleground (1949) and Go for Broke! (1951). When he was not winning the war, he was the romantic foil for swimmer Esther Williams in the musicals Thrill of a Romance (1945), Easy to Wed (1946), The Duchess of Idaho (1950) and Easy to Love (1953). None of his later films was distinguished. They included the romantic melodramas Action of the Tiger (1958), with Martine Carol, and Subway in the Sky (1959) with Hildegarde Neff, and the Resistance thriller, The Enemy General (1960). For a time, he switched to the theatre, appearing in Damn Yankees on tour, Bye Bye Birdie in repertory, The Music Man in London and La Cage aux Folles, replacing Gene Barry in one of the lead roles. Subsequently his screen appearances became increasingly infrequent. He forsook Hollywood and began appearing in international co-productions, such as La Battaglia d'Inghilterra and Il Prezzo del Potere (both 1969) and a steady stream of television films. His last Hollywood film was a cameo in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). more.... Beverly Garland, B-movie and television actress, has died aged 82 (13 December 2008) Beverly Garland did battle with some of the most ludicrous monsters in cinematic history as the star of 1950s B-movies such as 'Swamp Women' and 'It Conquered the World'. She later went on to play Fred MacMurray's wife in 'My Three Sons', one of the longest-running situation comedies on American television. In 1955 she was nominated for an Emmy for her performance as a leukaemia patient in the medical drama 'Medic', and by the mid-1960s she had left the world of horror and sci-fi to play Bing Crosby's onscreen wife on the short-lived 'Bing Crosby Show'. She also appeared in a string of successful television shows, such as 'Perry Mason', 'Gunsmoke' and 'Rawhide'. She was best known, however, for her role as Fred MacMurray's wife Barbara in the 1960s hit 'My Three Sons'. In 2001 she faced Anne Robinson on the American version of The Weakest Link, after which she observed of the show's inquisitor: "She's more venomous than Joan Crawford, Faye Dunaway and Miriam Hopkins combined." more.... Oliver Postgate, Bagpuss and Ivor Creator, has died aged 83 (9 December 2008) Oliver Postgate's work was both whimsical and matter-of-fact, magical and mundane. He went into partnership with Peter Firmin, forming the production company Smallfilms. It was just that; a two-man operation making short animated films from a makeshift studio in a disused cowshed in Kent. They started in 1959 with Ivor the Engine, a series for ITV about a little Welsh steam engine who wanted to sing in a choir. Early films like Ivor the Engine relied on cardboard cut outs. Ivor was followed in the early 1960s by the sagas of Noggin the Nog for the BBC. His adventures were sometimes alarming, sometimes charming, and eventually ran to five series. In 1963 they branched out into stop-motion puppet animation, first with the Pingwings and then with the Pogles. The arrival of colour television spurred the team to new heights of invention. Their work took on a decidedly surreal edge with the Clangers, pink creatures with pointed noses who lived on a blue moon with a friendly soup dragon, and spoke in whistles. Postgate and another actor did their voices with Swanee whistles, after Postgate had painstakingly written out every word of the script. The Clangers were perhaps Postgate and Firmin's finest achievement though not, apparently, their most popular. From 1974, that honour went to Bagpuss, a pink and white striped cat, who presided over a shop dedicated to mending broken articles. In 1998 (by which time the Bagpuss generation had reached their 20s and early 30s) the programme was voted the best children's series ever in a television poll. Oliver Postgate made his last film in 1987, complaining that children's television commissioners were no longer interested in what he had to offer. With his story-telling skills, his love of found objects and mechanical improvisation, his funny voices and air of eccentricity, the man himself gave a good imitation of everyone's favourite uncle. And his creations live on, at once surreal and comforting. more.... http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/ Reg Varney, gifted comic actor from the East End, has died aged 92 (17 November 2008) In 1950 Varney made his film debut in Miss Robin Hood. By the late Fifties, with halls closing as television spread, Varney was working only twenty weeks a year. Even a praised Touchstone in a Bernard Miles production of As You Like It at the Mermaid did not yield better work. He was on the point of throwing it in, perhaps to run a pub, when he saw the progress Benny Hill was making on television. Ronald Chesney, the harmonica player showed him a script which he had written with Ronald Wolfe. This was The Rag Trade, a situation comedy set in the dressmaking workshop of Fenner Fashions. The show was taped on Sundays allowing the producers the pick of actors on the West End stage, who would not have been available for work during the week. The star-studded cast included Miriam Karlin, Peter Jones, Sheila Hancock and Barbara Windsor. Varney was aware that he was the only performer without West End acting experience and worked hard to make up for it. At read-throughs of the script his performance would give the writers cause for concern. But on the day of recording, he would know his lines and the comic potential of the episode better than anyone. He moved on to his own show, The Valiant Varneys, which ran for a year from 1964, and the next year starred in Joey Boy, a comedy feature film about the Army. He appeared in The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery in 1966. Between 1967 and 1969 he played an affluent fitter in the sitcom Beggar My Neighbour, in which he co-starred with Pat Coombs, Peter Jones and June Whitfield. But it was the television comedy On the Buses, written by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, that made Varney a household name. Screened from 1969 until 1973, the series revolved around a bus driver's capers with his conductor, played by Bob Grant, their home life, and their efforts to put one over on the bus depot's lugubrious Inspector Blakey (Stephen Lewis). Varney also starred in three On the Buses feature films, made by Hammer: On the Buses (1971), Mutiny On the Buses (1972) and Holiday On the Buses (1973). But when he finally left the role for good, his career suffered. more.... Pat Moss, showjumper turned rally driver, has died aged 73 (13 November 2008) Pat Moss was a leading showjumper who later caught the automotive bug and went on to become a trailblazing women's rally driver. She won the European Ladies' Championship five times, and in 1960 she and her co-driver, Anne Wisdom, won the daunting Liège-Rome-Liège rally, the first time a major international rally had been won by an all-female crew. As an eight-year-old she won many pony events, competing against her brother, and both were presented to King George VI after winning the Victor Ludorum at the 1945 Windsor Cup horse trials. In 1950 she was victorious at the Horse of the Year Show, and three years later she was presented to the Queen after winning the Queen Elizabeth Cup at White City. She went on to make the UK showjumping team. Moss had her first driving lesson, courtesy of her brother Stirling, in a Willys jeep when she was seven, but in 1952, when she was about to turn 18, Stirling's manager, Ken Gregory, took her on a small rally. She was his navigator and they got lost on their way to the start. Despite this less than propitious beginning to her rally career, by 1954 she had graduated, via a Morris Minor convertible, which she admitted she thrashed, to a Triumph TR2. In March 1955 she was invited to drive a works MG TF on the RAC Rally and success there led to rides for MG in a works Magnette, then with an Austin Westminster in 1956 and a Morris Minor in 1957. In 1960 she won the Liège-Rome-Liège rally outright in the Healey. A tough and fast competitor, Moss blazed a trail for women competitors and achieved many strong results, including second on the 1961 RAC, third on the 1962 East African Safari Rally despite a collision with an antelope, and victories on the Tulip Rally and the Rally Deutschland. In the Dutch event she scored the Mini Cooper's first international victory. She would also win the European Ladies' Championship on four more occasions, adding 1960, 1962, 1964 and 1965 to that 1958 success. A switch to Ford for 1963 brought the ladies' prize on the Tulip and Acropolis rallies and, following her marriage, she drove Saabs successfully with Liz Nystrom as her navigator until a move to Lancia for 1967. In 1968 she took a Fulvia to victory on the Sestrières Rally and finished sixth, the highest-placed Lancia, on the 1969 Monte Carlo Rally. more.... Russ Hamilton, one of the UK’s first international pop stars, has died aged 76 (16 October 2008) Russ Hamiltion whose real name was Ronnie Hulme scored Top 10 hits in Britain and the United States in the late 1950s. Ronnie was born in Liverpool and became a Butlin’s Redcoat at its Clacton camp. His big break came when he was in a Redcoat troupe which recorded at Oriole’s London studio. He also recorded two of his own songs. The result was the 1957 single, We Will Make Love, with the poignant lines: “When the sun takes the place of the moon in the sky, we'll go on a journey, you and I, to a far distant land, where our dreams were planned, in the clouds up above we will make love.” Oriole released it as a single, under the name Russ Hamilton. It reached number two in the UK chart, selling a million for a gold disc. The flip-side, Rainbow, was a US number four. Russ was in huge demand for a while, appearing alongside major stars such as Perry Como but the following single, Wedding Ring, only scraped into the UK Top 20. After that the hits dried up, but Russ continued to record fine songs for a several years and then settled in a flat in Buckley, North Wales, occasionally complaining that he had seen very little of the money he had earned for others. more.... Peter Copley, versatile theatrical actor, has died aged 93 (14 October 2008) Having been trained at the the Old Vic Theatre School, Peter Copley first appeared as the Gaoler in The Winter’s Tale at the Old Vic in 1932. Playing in 16 Old Vic revivals in five years, he moved to the Edinburgh Festival as the Fencing Master in the opera Ariadne auf Naxos, he felt again on home ground. He was an expert at swordplay. It had been his custom to supervise fencing at the Old Vic, and he rarely missed a chance to direct duels in, say, Olivier’s Richard III and Henry IV. In 1963 he was called to the Bar at Middle Temple, but nothing could deter him from acting. He went on to appear in all kinds of drama, ancient and modern, in the West End and the provinces, even into old age. With his gleaming eyes, distinctive voice and irresistible presence his assumptions as lawyers, schoolmasters, diplomats, priests and other sticklers for verbal precision made Copley invaluable. His television appearances in the '50s and '60s included parts in 'Fabian of the Yard', Sunday Night Theatre', 'No Hiding Place', 'Maigret', 'Danger Man' and 'The Saint'. more.... Nadia Nerina, prima ballerina, has died aged 80 (13 October 2008) For nearly a quarter of a century Nadia Nerina was one of the most popular ballerinas of her time, largely as a leading dancer with the Royal Ballet but also in guest appearances for many other companies, and on concert tours. Her special gifts were immortalised in the role of Lise which Frederick Ashton created for her in his production of La Fille mal gardée. He made such dazzling use of her virtuoso technique, with its speed and lightness, that when first given in 1960 he was asked whether he thought anyone else would be able to dance it. Rudolf Nureyev danced in the Royal Ballet’s Giselle and inserted a series of entrechats-six, which shocked many dancers and fans. In amusing retaliation, Nerina one night, knowing that Nureyev was in the audience, substituted 32 entrechats-six (not usually a woman’s step) for her featured 32 fouettés in the “Black Swan” sequence. Nureyev must have taken it well because a little later he danced with her in the Laurencia pas de six which he mounted for television — a medium in which Nerina had been one of dance’s pioneers, appearing in six programmes between 1957 and 1965. more.... Paul Newman, Oscar-winning Hollywood actor, has died aged 83 (28 September 2008) Paul Newman was a Hollywood actor of true star quality, who remained at the top of his profession for more than 40 years. As an actor he had a commanding presence, dominating the screen by force of personality. It earned him a stream of Oscar nominations in such films as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Absence of Malice (1981) and The Verdict (1982). He was unsuccessful, however, each time and it was not until 1986 that he was finally named best actor at the seventh attempt in The Color of Money — a sequel to The Hustler, for which many felt that he should have won 25 years earlier. He made his screen debut in 1954 in The Silver Chalice — a Biblical epic that proved a commercial disaster. That Warner Bros, to whom he was under contract at the time, did not ditch him was probably due to his striking physical resemblance to Marlon Brando, then at the peak of his powers. In the late 1950s, for Warner Bros and on loan to other studios, Newman made a number of now largely forgotten melodramas. In Arthur Penn’s first film, The Left Handed Gun (1958), he played Billy the Kid as a precursor of the “crazy, mixed-up kids” then being portrayed by James Dean. Audiences shunned it. From this period of his career, only Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) made money, though Tennessee Williams regarded it as a travesty of his play. Highlights of the middle section of Newman’s career were the two tongue-in-cheek pictures he made with Robert Redford under director George Roy Hill, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and the Oscar-winning The Sting (1973). Both sophisticated entertainments, they were not among his most demanding work, but were undeniably crowd-pleasers. So, too, was The Towering Inferno (1974), in which he played the architect of a doomed skyscraper. Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict (1982), in which he was an “ambulance chaser” — a seedy lawyer who latches onto accident victims as potential clients — was notably intelligent and also a box-office hit. After winning an Oscar for The Color of Money in 1986, Newman was able to be more selective about the scripts that came his way. more.... David Jones, theatre, television and film director has died aged 74 (24 September 2008) David Jones was a theatre, television and occasional film director who cut his teeth on the BBC’s Monitor programme and had a long association with the Royal Shakespeare Company before moving to the United States, where he did most of his later work. During National Service he was a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and in 1958 he joined BBC Television. He had expected to work on the early-evening magazine Tonight, but was diverted by Grace Wyndham Goldie, the formidable talks executive, to help on “a little programme about the arts”, though she warned him it might be short-lived. In the event Monitor became a television landmark, taking the arts seriously while making them accessible to a wide audience. Under the tough yet avuncular and relentlessly enthusiastic Huw Wheldon it became an unofficial film school, nurturing the talents of not only Jones but also John Schlesinger, Ken Russell and, later, Melvyn Bragg. Although still in his early twenties when he joined Monitor, Jones was entrusted with some of the more important assignments and with his literary background was a natural choice for tackling writers. In 1958 he went to Cambridge to make a film about the usually camera-shy E. M. Forster on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Jones not only directed the film but also interviewed Forster in his rooms at King’s College. Among Jones’s other subjects were Lawrence Durrell, Frank O’Connor, the Irish writer, and George Chapman, the Welsh painter. In 1962 Jones succeeded Humphrey Burton as Monitor’s editor. more.... Michael Pate, Australian actor, writer and director, has died aged 88 (20 September 2008) After serving in the Australian Army's entertainment unit during the Second World War, during which he served as compere for the touring performances of Gracie Fields, he began to act in films, and in 1950 he supported Tommy Trinder and Chips Rafferty in Bitter Springs. Telling of the conflict between settlers and Aborigines, it was the last (and least successful) of the three films made in Australia by Ealing Studios after the war. Pate also acted in a stage version of Charlotte Hastings' thriller, Bonaventure (1950), and he made his Hollywood debut when Universal asked him to repeat his role in Douglas Sirk's enjoyably melodramatic screen version of the play, retitled Thunder on the Hill (1951) and starring Claudette Colbert as a nun turned sleuth, proving the innocence of convicted murderer Ann Blyth. Pate remained in the USA for several years, appearing in more than 200 films and TV shows. He was Flavius to Marlon Brando's Marc Antony in Julius Caesar (1953), played a droll Sir Locksley in Danny Kaye's funniest comedy, The Court Jester (1955), and was frequently cast as a Native American in such films as Hondo (1953) and The Great Sioux Massacre (1965) and countless television westerns including Maverick, Laramie, Have Gun – Will Travel, Gunsmoke and a memorable episode of Rawhide in which he saved the stars, Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood, from being flogged while tied to tree trunks. more.... Lita Roza, Sultry interpreter of romantic ballads, has died aged 82 (15 August 2008) The public know the Liverpool singer Lita Roza for one song above all others, the children's novelty "How Much is That Doggie in the Window?" However, that doggie was her bête noire: she was talked into recording the song and did not consider it representative of her work. There were few to rival her real talent as a sultry and sophisticated interpreter of romantic ballads. In 1951, Roza recorded "Allentown Jail" with the Ted Heath band. Although record sales were not then collated, it was undoubtedly her first hit, as the song rose high in the sheet-music charts. After "Allentown Jail", her A&R man, Dick Rowe, asked her to sing "How Much is That Doggie in the Window?" and Roza replied, "I'm not recording that, it's rubbish." She recalled, "He said, 'It'll be a big hit, please do it, Lita.' I said that I would sing it once and once only and then I would never sing it again, and I haven't. The only time you'll hear it is on that record." Even when the record was No 1, no one could persuade Lita to perform her hit, but it did lead to her recording several unsuitable songs. She was appreciated as much for her stunning looks as for her voice and she topped the Melody Maker poll for Favourite Female Vocalist from 1951 to 1955, and a similar one in the New Musical Express from 1952 to 1955. In 1954, Roza left the Ted Heath band and started working as a solo act: "I would be singing with pit orchestras, who were usually dreadful," she said. "It was like going to the knacker's yard although I always carried my own pianist." In 1955, Lita had hits with two songs she liked – "Hey There" and "Jimmy Unknown" – and then sang "A Tear Fell" on a charity single for the Lord's Taverners Association, which made No 2. She recorded albums of standards, Listening in the Afterhours (1955) and Love is the Answer (1956). She had recorded another fine album, Me On a Carousel, for Pye in 1958, as well as a stream of variable singles, the better ones including "Volare" and "I Could Have Danced All Night". After leaving Pye in 1960, Roza recorded only sporadically. more.... Sir Bill Cotton, TV light entertainment producer, has died aged 80 (12 August 2008) William Frederick Cotton, known early in his career as Bill Cotton Junior, was born on April 23 1928 with showbiz in his blood. He was the younger son of the bandleader Billy Cotton. According to Bill, his father's musical talent was limited to "waving his arms about" in front of the band (he never learned to read music). But his extrovert personality and ability to spot winning performers made him a variety icon. His famous introductory shout of "Wakey wakey!" was said to have originated when he had to rouse the band for their Sunday morning radio show after a hard week on the road. Billy's relationship with his sons was complicated and ambiguous. He was proud of Bill junior's success in the BBC but simultaneously afraid that it might threaten his own standing. Despite this, he was happy to have Bill junior as producer of his TV show, while the younger Cotton freely acknowledged the debt he owed to his father's career and influence. Cotton junior joined the BBC as a light entertainment producer in 1956. After early successes with Six Five Special and the discovery of Tommy Steele, he was asked to produce his father's show. He was extremely reluctant to take on this task. He knew – none better – how difficult Cotton senior could be and dreaded the almost inevitable public rows. Father and son reached a working agreement: they might have their differences backstage, but never in front of performers or crew. His name was associated with a string of variety and comedy successes. Among the many artists who owed their promotion up the rungs of the TV ladder to him were Tommy Steele, Russ Conway, Michael Parkinson, Dave Allen, Bruce Forsyth, Des O'Connor and Cilla Black. Cotton's broadcasting philosophy was simple. He believed his job, both as Head of Light Entertainment and later as controller of BBC1, was to maximise the audience for the BBC channels by providing them with comedy and entertainment programmes of the highest quality. In this way the crucial business of maintaining audience parity with the ITV opposition would be secured, and the future of the licence fee made safe. more.... Jill Adams, actress billed as 'Britain's Monroe', has died aged 78 (6 August 2008) A tall, striking blonde, Jill Adams provided good humour and a welcome touch of glamour to several films from the mid-Fifties. At the start of her film career, she was publicised as "Britain's Marilyn Monroe". It was hardly an accurate description, but the former model Adams made a stunning cover girl, featuring on the cover of the popular weekly Picturegoer twice, in 1954 and 1955, and she played in over 20 films in the space of a decade. In 1953 she began taking bit roles in movies – dancing with Nigel Patrick in Forbidden Cargo (1953), appearing in the Arthur Askey comedy The Love Match (1954), and in Doctor at Sea (1955) with Dirk Bogarde. The James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli is credited with having discovered her when she played a bit part in his production The Black Knight (1954), and she was soon playing larger roles, notable among which were her fine comic performance in the Launder-Gilliat black comedy The Green Man (1956), with Alastair Sim and George Cole, and her glamorous depiction of the "girl upstairs" in the comedy about barristers, Brothers in Law (1957), her role a deliberate echo of Monroe's in The Seven Year Itch. She had one of her first substantial roles in the sprightly "B" movie One Jump Ahead (1955), in a rare villainous portrayal as a murderess who was once an old flame of a reporter (Paul Carpenter) who is usually "one jump ahead" of the police. Adams was one of Rex Harrison's seven wives in the sophisticated comedy The Constant Husband (1955). At the peak of her acting career in 1957, Adams married Peter Haigh, the debonair presenter of radio's Movie-Go-Round and the founding co-presenter (with Derek Bond) of Picture Parade, a weekly television movie magazine that would evolve into the show presented for many years by Barry Norman. Adams appeared in The Scamp (1957), and was given star billing in an Australian movie, Dust in the Sun (1958), but it had limited distribution. In 1960/61 she featured in a television series, The Flying Doctor, based on the real-life activities of the Royal Flying Doctor Service serving the Australian outback. more.... Hugh Lloyd, comedy actor, has died aged 85 (15 July 2008) Hugh Lloyd began his association with Tony Hancock when he was offered several "one-liners" in the radio show Hancock's Half Hour in 1954. After joining Hancock on a tour of Cyprus, Malta and Tripoli, entertaining the troops there, Lloyd and Hancock became close friends. On their return to Britain Hancock offered Lloyd much larger parts in the television version of Hancock's Half Hour in 1956. Lloyd played "the patient in the next bed" in one of Hancock's best-known episodes "The Blood Donor". He went on to co-star in over 30 sketches including "The Librarian", "The Lift" and "The Reunion". Lloyd stopped working with Hancock in the late 1950s, although he did appear as Ted (one half of a Punch and Judy act) in Hancock's film The Punch and Judy Man in 1963. In 1962 Hugh Lloyd starred in his own series opposite Terry Scott. Lloyd and Scott first met during the war and worked together in variety shows in the early 1950s. They reformed their partnership for the long-running situation comedy Hugh and I, which both maintained was based on exaggerated versions of themselves. Lloyd reprised the type of character he had played with Hancock; lugubrious, meek and constantly under attack from the bludgeoning Scott. In 1969 he returned to situation comedy in the bizarre BBC series The Gnomes of Dulwich. Lloyd, again paired with Scott, played a bearded "fishing gnome". He spent most of each episode sitting perfectly still in front of a plastic garden pond. As usual, Scott played the belligerent, argumentative lead with Lloyd as his morose, deadpan foil. Hugh Lloyd was appointed MBE in 2006. more.... Veteran character actor Tony Melody has died aged 85 (9 July 2008) Tony Melody became a household name in some of Britain's best loved and longest running comedies and soaps. He started out as a singer with the Northern Dance Orchestra and later became a household name with character and comedy cameos. His breakthrough came during the heyday of radio comedy, in The Clitheroe Kid, the long-running show (1957-72) starring the diminutive, Lancashire-born, former music-hall performer Jimmy Clitheroe in the guise of a naughty schoolboy. Melody played Mr Higginbottom, a 6ft 4in taxi driver and Jimmy's arch-enemy, and he joined Clitheroe in the television version, Just Jimmy between 1964 and 1966. Later he moved to play more television parts such as in Steptoe and Son (teaching a young Harold Steptoe how to dance), Coronation Street, Heartbeat (helping Greengrass steal a train), Casualty, Emmerdale, City Central, Where the Heart Is and Last of the Summer Wine. One of his biggest breaks came when he appeared in the film Yanks alongside Richard Gere. more.... Sir Charles Wheeler, distinguished BBC foreign correspondent, has died aged 85 (5 July 2008) His first job was on the tabloid Daily Sketch, where his principal task was to rip news-agency reports from teleprinters and rush them to the editors' desks. In 1943 he joined the Royal Marines and, because he spoke fluent German, was soon recruited by the special intelligence unit formed by Ian Fleming (later the creator of James Bond), playing an important role in the preparations for the D-Day landings. In the aftermath of the Allied victory he was assigned to Berlin, where his job was to make sure that German officers with technical know-how, such as U-boat commanders, did not end up in the Soviet zone. In 1947 he joined the BBC Overseas Service as a sub-editor on the Latin American desk and after three years he was given his first reporting assignment, as a correspondent for the German service in Berlin. In 1956 he moved to television as a producer on Panorama, the long-running current affairs programme. It was the golden age for that old BBC warhorse, and Wheeler found himself a member of a classic company which included such figures as Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day, Ludovic Kennedy and Woodrow Wyatt. One of his earliest successes on Panorama was to get a camera into Hungary to cover the ill-fated anti-Soviet uprising, sending the film back to London every day through Austria. His place, of course, at that time was behind the camera rather than in front of it — and it was probably in part a desire to reverse that position which led Wheeler in 1958 to apply for a post with BBC News. His principal work there was for radio — television stories outside Europe at that stage had to be filmed, placed in a canister and then flown home. But the BBC’s new South Asia correspondent soon proved himself a master of words, always taking great pains, quite incapable of writing a dull script and rather tending to show up his lazier colleagues on programmes such as From Our Own Correspondent. more.... Sooty changes hands (27 June 2008) Sooty, the silent puppet bear with a penchant for magic tricks and water pistols, has been sold to his presenter, who plans to bring the children's TV character back in a new series. Richard Cadell, who has presented the TV show featuring the much loved children's character for 10 years, has teamed up with his brother to buy the rights to Sooty and his friends Sweep, the squeaking grey dog, and Soo the panda. The deal is believed to be worth almost £1m. Sooty has featured on British TV since the 1950s, first appearing on the BBC under the watch of Harry Corbett, who had bought the puppet on Blackpool pier to amuse his son Matthew. The show moved to ITV in 1968 and Matthew later succeeded as presenter more.... Cyd Charisse, one of the leading dancers at MGM in the heyday of the Hollywood musical, has died aged 87 (18 June 2008) She regularly partnered Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire on screen and was famous for the length and shapeliness of her legs, which were insured in her prime for $10 million. They were so long and lissom that they gave the impression of a woman over six foot tall, though in fact she was a surprisingly petite 5ft 6in. Astaire, with whom she starred in The Band Wagon (1953) and Silk Stockings (1957), paid her perhaps the ultimate, if grammatically suspect, compliment: "That Cyd! When you've danced with her you stay danced with." Her classical ballet training distinguished her from the other MGM danseuses of the 1940s and 1950s. It lent her a touch of class, even when playing ladies of easy virtue in the ballet sequences from Singin' in the Rain (1952) and The Band Wagon. She could not carry a note, however, and if her films called for even a few vocal bars, she was generally dubbed. One exception was an extraordinary number set in a male gymnasium in It's Always Fair Weather (1955), where her toneless voice could be heard piping "You've got me on the ropes." Nor could she act. Throughout her career with MGM, the studio made loyal efforts to cast her in straight acting roles, but the results were mostly lamentable. Cyd Charisse's on-screen magic evaporated whenever she opened her mouth. So when the golden age of the Hollywood musical came to an end in the late 1960s, she was forced back on her weakest suit. She continued to make films until 1980 but few tapped her dancing talents and most were Euro pot-boilers ecxposing her rudimentary acting skills. In later years, she had more success in cabaret with her second husband, singer Tony Martin. more....   80 years of BBC shows to go online (11 June 2008) Every TV and radio programme ever made by the BBC could be placed online as part of an ambitious project unveiled today. The scheme will see a webpage created for nearly every programme broadcast on BBC radio and TV in the past 80 years. Initially, pages will contain information, clips and links about the show, but it is hoped that whole programmes will eventually be made available as part of a massive internet archive. This will either be via the seven-day catch-up service iPlayer or as a new online archive service. It is unclear whether the archive service will be free. The new details were revealed by Jana Bennett, director of BBC vision, at the Banff television festival in Canada. However, a number of episodes from shows including Hancock's Half Hour, Doctor Who, Steptoe and Son and the Goon Show have been lost. During the Seventies many tapes were destroyed or taped over to make space in the BBC's storage facilities or because they were considered a fire risk. Others, such as the Quatermass series, were broadcast live and not recorded. Ms Bennett said: "Eventually we will produce pages for programming stretching back over nearly 80 years - featuring all the information we have on the richest TV and radio archive in the world. The BBC is committed to releasing the public value in that archive." more.... Jonathan Routh, broadcaster, artist and author has died aged 80 (6 June 2008) Jonathan Routh became Britain's first television prankster in 1960 when he co-starred in Candid Camera, the hidden camera show that became an ITV staple for the next seven years; he also wrote The Good Loo Guide (1968) and later became a prolific, albeit eccentric, painter. For two years he presented Candid Microphone on Radio Luxembourg, and in 1957 Routh set up as a professional part-time hoaxer with an advertisement in The Times reading: "Practical joker with wide experience of British public's sad gullibility organises, leads, and guarantees success of large-scale hoaxes." By then he had already caused consternation by leaving a pair of shoes daily in Kensington public library, taking a grand piano for a ride on the Tube, and sending himself through the post to Wandsworth covered in two pounds worth of stamps. In Candid Camera, Routh's hidden lens recorded the chaos resulting from carefully-planned comedy situations – for example, his search for Little Louis, a performing flea accidentally mislaid in a London taxi. Although Routh had imported the Candid Camera format from America, there was something essentially British about it. At its heart lay practical joking which, although often cruel, had been a national sport in the leisured days of the 18th and 19th centuries. With the comedian Bob Monkhouse as host, Candid Camera made Routh a cult television figure as the deadpan agent provocateur with the hangdog aspect, iron nerve and beetle brows who preyed on the unsuspecting. Viewers sent in up to 1,000 ideas for hoaxes a week, most taken in good part by the unfortunate victims. more.... Nat Temple, clarinettist and dance-band leader who frequently appeared on radio and television has died aged 94 (5 June 2008) Nat temple was one of the best-known bandleaders of the post-war period, particularly celebrated for his work in radio and television; he was also an exceptionally gifted clarinettist, whose talent received far less recognition than it deserved. He turned professional at 16, joining the band led by the singer and comedian Sam Costa. In 1940 Temple joined the Grenadier Guards and played with service bands for the rest of the war, including periods in North Africa and Italy. While still in the Army he contrived to play from time to time, and even record, with numerous other bands. A chance meeting with the Canadian actor and comedian Bernard Braden led to Temple's becoming musical director of a new, "oddball" radio show, Breakfast With Braden. This was followed by the late-night Bedtime With Braden, which gained a sizeable cult following. Temple was cast as the bumbling bandleader, a part he played so convincingly that he got taken on in the same role by other shows – Michael Bentine's Round The Bend, Dick Emery's Emery At Large and Peter Ustinov's In All Directions. From these, Temple graduated to children's television, acting as genial music-master for Jack In The Box, Telebox and, most famously, Crackerjack, with Eamonn Andrews. more.... Bo Diddley, rock’n’roll singer and songwriter, has died aged 79 (3 June 2008) Bo Diddley's first single I’m a Man became a hit on the R&B chart in 1955. It was not exactly blues or even R&B — although it owed an allegiance to both — but represented a new kind of guitar-based rock’n’roll which was earthy, basic, unrefined, jive-talking — and decidedly funky. A second single, Diddley Daddy, followed it up the charts and in November that year he became the first black artist to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. He had been asked to perform Sixteen Tons, a song by the country singer Tennessee Ernie Ford. Once the cameras were rolling, he instead strummed the raucous riff from his signature tune, Bo Diddley. The show went out live and a furious Sullivan could do nothing. Diddley was banned from appearing on the show again but he didn’t care. The row had already made his reputation as a rock’n’roll pioneer. Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry aside, arguably none of the first generation of American rock’n’rollers had a greater impact on the subsequent course of popular music. Along with Berry, Diddley was also one of the first black performers to “cross over” and enjoy success in the predominantly white pop chart of the time. Among the classic singles to his name, all driven by the primitive but irresistible beat he likened to a freight train, were Diddy Wah Diddy, Who Do You Love?, Mona, You Can’t Judge a Book by Looking at its Cover, Road Runner and Say Man more....   News Archive - Click here

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