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Bernard Archard, star of the TV series 'Spycatcher', has died aged 91 (6 May 2008)
Disillusioned with the experience of regular unemployment as an actor in Britain, in 1959 Bernard Archard booked a seat on the next boat to Canada, with plans to make a new start. But then he was asked to audition for the starring role in Spycatcher, as Lt-Col Oreste Pinto, a wartime Allied counter-espionage expert. The programme, which ran to four series, finally made Archard a star at the age of 43 and he became a prolific character actor in films and on television.
Following his success in Spycatcher, Archard was frequently typecast as policemen, in long-forgotten films such as The Clue of the New Pin (1960), Man Detained (1961), The Silent Playground (1963) and The List of Adrian Messenger (1963). On television, he was HM Inspector of Constabulary on official visits to the police stations in both Z Cars (1965) and its spin-off, Softly Softly (1967).
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Humphrey Lyttelton, broadcaster and jazz musician, has died aged 86 (26 April 2008)
After spending the Second World War as an officer in the Grenadier Guards, Lyttelton became a pioneering figure in the British jazz scene. He formed his first band in 1948 after spending a year with George Webb's Dixielanders, a band that pioneered New Orleans-style jazz in the UK. The Humphrey Lyttelton Band quickly became Britain's leading traditional jazz group, and continental tours gave them a following in Europe.
In 1949, he signed a recording contract with EMI which led to a string of records in the Parlophone Super Rhythm Style series and which have become highly sought after. By the late 1950s he was branching out, enlarging his band and experimenting with mainstream and non-traditional material, and shocking his established fans in the process. In 1959, the band made a successful tour of the United States.
He was a keen amateur calligrapher and birdwatcher, and in 1984 formed his own record label, Calligraph. He composed more than 120 original songs during his career. In 1993 he won the radio industry's highest honour, a Sony Gold Award. He also won lifetime achievement awards at the Post Office British Jazz Awards in 2000, and the inaugural BBC Jazz Awards the following year.
It was in 1972 that, against his better judgement, he took on the chairmanship of Radio Four’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Nobody imagined that his role, somewhat like a naïve and despairing schoolmaster who was forced to read out double entendres that he never understood, would last for the rest of his life. His sharp humour was hilarious and yet without malice.
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Hazel Court, horror actress highly popular for her appearances in Roger Corman's Poe cycle, has died at the age of 82 (16 April 2008)
Hazel Court was born in England in 1926 and became one of the 'Gainsborough girls' at the Gainsborough production company in the 1940s, but significant screen roles were to elude her until her induction into the horror genre, notably in the Hammer Film The Curse Of Frankenstein(1957), where she played the evil count's unwanted suitor. She also played the daughter of Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison (in their first appearance as the Huggetts) and represented the millions of girls who had lost their men in the war.
Though appearing in the horror classic The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), her enduring popularity was initiated by her involvement in Roger Corman's 'Poe cycle' of films. Of these films, Court appeared in The Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963) and The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), in each case starring alongside Vincent Price - and giving him a hard time; Court's 'Poe' roles found her playing conspiring and treacherous women, and at her worst she was at her best...in the eyes of her many fans.
In later years, Court took an interest in painting and the arts, exhibiting in the USA and in Europe.
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Ollie Johnston, leading animator with Walt Disney, has died aged 95 (16 April 2008)
Johnston's first work was as an "in-betweener" - the artist responsible for the drawings that appear between the extremes of an action drawn by an animator - on Mickey's Garden (1935), the second colour Mickey Mouse short. The following year, he was promoted to apprentice animator, working under Fred Moore on such shorts as Pluto's Judgment Day and Mickey's Rival.
Under Moore, Johnston became assistant animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), responsible for drawing the dwarfs (which Thomas was also working on).
By Pinocchio (1940) he had progressed to animator, and supervised the Blue Fairy sequence. The same year he was in charge of the Pastoral Symphony section of Fantasia before joining Thomas, who had done preliminary work on Bambi. As well as the young Bambi segments, Johnston (credited as supervising animator) developed Thumper. Johnston was also responsible for the animation of the young Bambi.
He drew the stepsisters in Cinderella (1950); Alice and the King of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (1951); and, two years later, Mr Smee in Peter Pan. After the good fairies in Sleeping Beauty (1959) and 101 Dalmatians, Johnston and Thomas did some of their best work in The Sword in the Stone (1963), for which Johnston was responsible for all the leading characters. The following year Thomas did the dancing penguins in Mary Poppins; Johnston drew the ones who were waiters.
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Willoughby Goddard, versatile actor who deployed his considerable bulk to impressive effect on stage and on film, has died aged 81 (14 April 2008)
Widely remembered for his excessive corpulence on stage and television, Willoughby Goddard spent over 40 years never trying to disguise it. It brought him authority, variety, monotony and joy. Whether he was genial or aggressive, alarming or soothing, he could be cast in all sorts of moods. Sometimes he played up self-consciously to his weightiness; sometimes it hardly mattered. He could play judges, professors, mayors, landlords, managing directors and chairmen; he could also play sundry characters of no importance whatever.
On television he created first a fine impression as Professor Mark Harrison in The Voices; and in the Adventures of William Tell he put the shivers up watchers as the hero's splendidly weighty main protagonist Landberger Gessler.
As Sir Jason Tovey in The Mind of Mr Reeder he was well cast; and as the monstrous Lord Charley, who sought artistic grants from Hattie Jacques as Miss Manger, it was said that “he knew his business”.
With Charlie Drake in Drake's Progress Goddard found a strong sense of fun, and one of his last appearances was as Professor Siblington, last seen watching from the elegant spires of an English college in Porterhouse Blue (1987).
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John Hewer, actor, has died aged 84 (20 March 2008)
The actor John Hewer won worldwide fame playing Captain Birdseye in the long-running fish finger TV commercials.
He played the role from 1967 until the late 1980s. The jovial, bearded naval captain outlasted the Milky Bar Kid and Ronald MacDonald to become the longest running "brand personality" since food advertising began.
Hewer worked his way up to parts in the films The Dark Man (1951, a melodrama in which his taxi-driver character falls victim to Maxwell Reed's seaside murderer) and the thriller Assassin for Hire (1951, as a violinist whose instrument and lessons are paid for by his brother, a professional killer).
He then landed the title role in the BBC children's series The Great Detective (1953), playing it for the first four episodes, with Graham Stark taking over for the final two – curiously, with no explanation for the switch.
At about the same time, Hewer took the role of John Parrish, the bank clerk wrongly suspected of being involved in a heist, in the first episode of the crime series Colonel March of Scotland Yard (1955-56), which starred the horror actor Boris Karloff as an eyepatch-wearing detective investigating eerie cases involving criminals known by names such as the Abominable Snowman and the Missing Link.
During his career, the actor also produced music-hall shows on Southend Pier with the bandleader Henry Hall, and he was hired by Canadian television to host the variety show The Pig and Whistle (1967-77), set in a fictional, traditional English pub and featuring British music-hall entertainment.
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Barry Morse, Actor who found fame as Philip Gerard, police chief in 'The Fugitive' has died aged 89 (5 February 2008)
Barry Morse made his professional début in the People's Theatre production If I Were King while at Rada and finished his time at drama school by taking the title role in Henry V for a Royal Command Performance in front of George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Then, in 1937, he made his first television appearances in some of the BBC's earliest broadcasts. He made his film début as a stooge to Will Hay in the wartime espionage comedy The Goose Steps Out (1942) and followed it with character roles in pictures such as Thunder Rock (1942) and When We Are Married (1943).
Morse's West End début came in School for Slavery (Westminster Theatre, 1942), which he followed with Crisis in Heaven (Lyric Theatre, 1944) directed by John Gielgud. In 1951, Morse, his wife and their two children emigrated to Canada, settling in Toronto when CBC introduced the country's first television service the following year, with Morse working as an actor, producer and director.
Over the years, he won Canada's Best TV Actor award five times, but he was also prolific on radio, most notably acting in and producing the drama series A Touch of Greasepaint (1954-68), a chronicle of actors down the years.
But he became known worldwide through The Fugitive, also directing a 1967 episode, before moving back to London and playing Mr Parminter, the secret service contact issuing assignments to an American government agent played by Gene Barry, in the British series The Adventurer (1972-73).
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Allan Melvin, character actor has died aged 84 (24 January 2008)
While working at a job in the sound effects department of NBC Radio, Melvin did a nightclub act and appeared and won on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio show. While appearing on Broadway in Stalag 17, he got his break into television by getting the role of Cpl. Henshaw on the popular The Phil Silvers Show program. TV fans of this era usually best remember his role as Henshaw, Sergeant Bilko's right hand man on that show.
During this period, in addition to his role on The Phil Silvers Show, Melvin was often cast in slightly loud, occasionally abrasive, but generally friendly second banana roles. Melvin was also adept at "tough guy" roles; in an example of his range as an actor, one episode of Sergeant Bilko featured Melvin doing a recognizable impersonation of Humphrey Bogart.
The jowly, jovial Melvin spent decades playing a series of sidekicks, second bananas and lovable lugs, including Archie Bunker's friend Barney Hefner on "All in the Family". But his place in pop culture will be fixed as butcher and bowler Sam Franklin, the love interest of Brady family maid Alice Nelson, who was played by Ann B. Davis. Melvin played the role from 1970 to 1973.
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British actress Pat Kirkwood, star of stage and screen, has died aged of 86 (26 December 2007)
Pat Kirkwood's career spanned more than six decades and she played the lead roles in the West End shows of Noel Coward, Cole Porter and Leonard Bernstein. After appearing in a talent contest on the Isle of Man she was invited to an audition with the BBC in Manchester She made her professional debut, aged 14, as a singer on the BBC radio programme The Children's Hour.
A year later, in April 1936, she made her first stage appearance at the Royal Hippodrome, Salford, billed as The Schoolgirl Songstress.
The following year she starred in her debut film - Save a Little Sunshine.
After the success of the revue Black Velvet at the London Hippodrome in 1939 she was hailed as "Britain's first wartime star".
She became the first female to have her own television series with The Pat Kirkwood Show in 1954 and also appeared in various TV plays. In Our Marie (1953) she played the music hall star Marie Lloyd; she also appeared in Pygmalion (1956) and The Great Little Tilley (1956) as another music hall star, Vesta Tilley, which was directed by Hubert Gregg and subsequently became the film After The Ball (1957). In 1953, she was reunited with George Formby on the panel of What's My Line but was seen on screen feeding Formby questions to ask the contestants
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Anton Rogers, stage and screen actor, has died aged 74 (3 December 2007)
Anton Rogers was a member of the helicopter crew that provided the focus for the BBC comedy series The Sky Larks (1958). During the 1960s and early 1970s Rodgers secured fairly regular employment as a guest star in Lew Grade's contemporary thriller series, including Danger Man (1964-65), The Saint (1967) and The Champions (1968).
He was a Scotland Yard detective who teams up with astrologer Anoushka Hempel in the light-hearted series Zodiac (1974), another policeman in the comic mystery series Murder Most English (1977), Lillie Langry's weak-willed spouse who has to turn a blind eye while she conducts an affair with the Prince of Wales, in Lillie (1978) and a country practice vet in Noah's Ark (1997).
Few of his TV series attained the status of true classics, though Fresh Fields and May to December scored well in the ratings. Fresh Fields was sufficiently popular for Thames Television to reunite Rodgers and Julia McKenzie in their old roles of William and Hester Fields, in a new setting, in French Fields (1989-91)
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Verity Lambert, the television and film producer, has died aged 71 (24 November 2007)
In 1956 she landed her first job in television, as a £7-a-week secretary in Granada's press office. Sacked after six months, she moved to ABC Television where she became production assistant to the drama director Ted Kotcheff and worked on the production of the Armchair Theatre series, overseen by the company's new head of drama, Sydney Newman.
As production assistant in a "live" gallery, Lambert had to take over as studio director in November 1958 when one of the actors died on the set of the play Underground, just before a scene in which he was supposed to appear. Meanwhile Kotcheff used a commercial break to reorganise the cast and cover the loss.
At the age of 28, she became the youngest producer at the BBC and the drama department's only woman producer when Doctor Who began the day after President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.
After 18 months Lambert moved on to produce the first eight episodes of the twice-weekly serial The Newcomers (1965-69), about a London family adapting to life in a small East Anglian town, and then supervised production on Adam Adamant Lives! (1966-67).
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Frank Cox, versatile artist who, with his brother, was a stalwart of the variety scene, has died aged 86 (22 November 2007)
Frank Cox was the identical twin of Fred Cox who, as the Cox Twins, were one of British variety's most enduring acts. Stalwarts of the RAF gang shows during the Second World War, they played four instruments, sang, tap-danced and performed acrobatics.
After the war and until their retirement in 2000 they were regulars at the London Palladium, notably supporting Johnny Ray, starred in summer seasons and pantomimes and made several films, including the 1972 version of Alice in Wonderland with Peter Sellers, in which they appeared as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The twins had irresistible, ebullient personalities. Sporting huge black frizzy hairstyles, they wore brightly coloured garish suits (complete with red or yellow socks) and were liable to burst into song at the drop of a hat. They were virtually impossible to tell apart and in conversation one twin would start a sentence while the other would finish it. In the 1960s they complicated matters further by getting married on the same day to the variety artistes Estelle and Pauline Miles, who were also identical twins.
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Moira Lister, actress who excelled in sparkling comedy roles ranging from Shakespeare to the moderns, has died aged 84 (29 October 2007)
As an actress, Moira Lister was once compared to the American comedienne Lucille Ball, because of her way of turning glamorous women into witty commentators on life. Whether it was in a play, musical, film or television drama or even as a guest on such TV shows as What's My Line?, Call My Bluff and Life Begins at Forty, she stood apart with her slim figure, bright blue eyes and delicate, upper-class voice. She was an accomplished actress whose regal bearing found her often cast in patrician roles, though she also had a splendid sense of humour and a versatility that ranged from acclaimed performances in Shakespearean tragedy to her award-winning display of farcical expertise in Move Over, Mrs Markham.
In 1954, Moira first teamed up with Tony Hancock in the second series of "Star Bill". She was brought into "Star Bill" to replace Hancock's previous lady foil of the first series, Geraldine McEwan. With considerable film experience behind her, Moira's strong personality proved her to be an ideal match for Hancock.
Her distinctive, husky voice made Lister a radio stalwart in such series as Simon and Laura and A Life of Bliss, and in South Africa her radio roles included the leading parts in Rain, The Deep Blue Sea (she had earlier played a supporting role in the film version) and The Millionairess. On television, she was a sparkling critic of record releases in Juke Box Jury, and she was a guest on such shows as Danger Man, Call My Bluff and The Avengers.
For three years, 1967-69, she starred in her own series, A Very Merry Widow. In 1971 she was the subject of This Is Your Life, and her autobiography, A Very Merry Moira, was published in 1969.
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Deborah Kerr, star of From Here To Eternity, has died aged 86 (19 October 2007)
Deborah Kerr was the unfadingly ladylike and prototypical English rose whose red-haired, angular beauty and self-possessed femininity distinguished more than 50 films in four decades of cinema. She made serenity dramatic; and though her poise might be ruffled at critical moments in scenes of passion (most famously exemplified by her encounter on the beach with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity in 1953), her well-bred airs and social graces made her a model of British womanhood in Hollywood. Her best-known film was probably The King and I, in which she played a haughty governess opposite Yul Brynner's Siamese monarch; and her principal problem as an accomplished actress was to convince Hollywood of her sensual potential. Although she herself was a more spirited, relaxed and informal person than her image on the screen suggested, producers were reluctant to cast her in passionate roles.
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  Loss-making Sooty up for sale after losing his magic (5 October 20067)
Sooty is going on sale. TV rights to the mischevious puppet bear, who never speaks, are being sold by his owners Hit Entertainment. The puppet, famous for his magic tricks and water pistol, has been on British TV since the Fifties, alongside his friends Sweep the squeaky dog and Soo the panda. Hit Entertainment, which also produces Bob the Builder, Pingu and Thomas the Tank Engine, is said to have lost money after buying it in 1996 for £1.4 million from presenter Matthew Corbett. A new series of Sooty was cancelled by ITV last year. more....
Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died aged 84 (23 September 2007)
Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said. A French Jew, Marceau survived the Holocaust and also worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children. His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. Marceau, in turn, inspired countless young performers. Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."
In 1949 Marceau's newly formed mime troupe was the only one of its kind in Europe. But it was only after a hugely successful tour across the United States in the mid-1950s that Marceau received the acclaim that would make him an international star.
Marceau performed tirelessly around the world until late in life, never losing his agility, never going out of style. In one of his most poignant and philosophical acts, "Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death," he wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes.
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Peter Graham Scott, award winning film and TV producer and director, has died aged 83 (11 August 2007)
Scott was the producer behind many classic television series of the 1960s and 1970s including The Avengers, The Prisoner, The Troubleshooters and The Onedin Line; he was also a talented director in television and films.
An energetic perfectionist, Scott was one of the pioneers of television drama, joining the BBC as a trainee after the war before moving to ITV when it launched in 1955. Scott had cut his teeth with Associated-Rediffusion during ITV's early years, directing, in Battle of Britain Week 1956, an acclaimed live production of Richard Hillary's Second World War classic The Last Enemy.
Scott secured, for cash, the television rights to The Quare Fellow after an evening's heavy drinking with Brendan Behan in a London pub; it was broadcast live in November 1958, one of many plays Scott produced and directed during what he considered "the best years of ITV".
Scott had begun his career as a film editor on Brighton Rock (1947), starring Richard Attenborough, and later worked on other films such as The Perfect Woman and Landfall (both 1949), Shadow Of The Eagle (1950), The Small Miracle (1951) and River Beat (1954). As a writer, Scott scripted Sing Along With Me (1952), which he also directed, The Big Chance (1957) and, in 1979, the ITV serial Kidnapped, which he also produced. His producing credits also included The Citadel (1960), The Curse Of King Tutenkhamun's Tomb (1980), Arch Of Triumph and Jenny's War (both 1985).
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Peter Tuddenham, actor, has died aged 88 (9 August 2007)
Peter Tuddenham's earliest television appearances included parts in Clara, The Maid of Durham: Or Home Sweet Home (1955) and the BBC's "Musical Playhouse" Ivor Novello productions The Dancing Years (as Franzel, 1959) and Perchance To Dream (as Lord Failsham, 1959). He also had several roles in soap opera, on radio in Mrs Dale's Diary (as Dr Mitchell, who famously once sat on Mrs Freeman's cat) and Waggoners' Walk, and as George Banham in ITV's East Anglian vets serial Weavers Green (1966).
On television, Tuddenham was a regular as the pub landlord in Backs to the Land (1977-78) and as William in Double First (1988). He also guest-starred as priests in the sitcom Nearest and Dearest (1968) and the P.D. James thriller A Mind To Murder (1995), and played doctors in Quiller (1975), The Lost Boys (1978) and Nanny (1981, 1982) and an auctioneer in Lovejoy (1986).
At the age of 60, after spending more than half his adult life as an actor, Peter Tuddenham became most familiar to television viewers as the voices of three computers in the cult science-fiction serial Blakes 7.
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Phil Drabble, 'One Man and His Dog' presenter, has died aged 93 (1 August 2007)
A countryman through and through, the writer and naturalist Phil Drabble shared his love of nature and rural ways in dozens of books but, most famously, as the original presenter of One Man and His Dog, which provided the spectacle of working sheepdogs demonstrating their skills at rounding up flocks in lush, green fields and meadows, moving them around fences, gates and enclosures while following their handlers' whistles and commands.
He had made his radio début with a feature on the Black Country's bull-rings and bull-stakes for the BBC Midland Region in 1947. He continued to make contributions for the next 13 years, especially to the rural programme Countrylover, before presenting its successors, Countryside and In the Country, himself.
Drabble's television baptism came in 1952, when he was invited to show off his tame badger for a live broadcast and he was soon in demand for children's programmes. Then, in 1961, he left his day job to pursue writing and broadcasting full time and, three years later, began a weekly column in the Birmingham Evening Mail that ran until 1990.
One Man and His Dog, screened on BBC2, brought him national fame, as well as more television work, beginning with the rural magazine programme Country Game (1976-79), presented by Julian Pettifer, then Angela Rippon, with Drabble as a contributor.
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Ivor Emmanuel, welsh actor and Singer, has died aged 80 (23 July 2007)
Ivor Emmanuel was renowned for his rendition of Welsh song Men of Harlech in the classic film Zulu.
He was born in 1927, in Pontrhydyfen, near Port Talbot, the same village as fellow actor Richard Burton.
The Hollywood star helped give him his theatrical break, and he became a popular TV name in the 1950s.
He will probably be best remembered for 1964's Zulu, showing the British Army, many of them Welsh, defying an attack at Rorke's Drift in South Africa. Roles on Broadway followed and he made guest appearances on shows such as Morecombe and Wise and Benny Hill. leading role in the Welsh language music programme Gwlad y Gan (Land of Song) in the late 1950s helped give him a large following.
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  Frank Maher, Film and TV stuntman, has died aged 78 (20 July 2007)
As a stunt performer and co-ordinator in swashbuckling feature films and 1960s television adventure series, Frank Maher made his career out of being other people - notably "doubling" for Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster in the cinema and Patrick McGoohan and Roger Moore on the small screen. His move into television came with The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-59), one of ITV's early adventure series, based on the folk legend, filmed at Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames, in Surrey, and starring Richard Greene in the title role. The programme was made by technicians who had a background in the film industry, so it was natural that some of those who had worked with them would be given a chance in the burgeoning new medium. All the fight sequences were carefully planned and written down before they were shot and the close-in, one-on-one sword fights were recreated, with weapons copied from those of the time preserved in museums.
Maher subsequently acted and did stunt work in programmes such as Man in a Suitcase (1968), The Champions (1969), Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969), The Persuaders! (with Roger Moore again, 1971) and Space 1999 (1976), before working as stunt co-ordinator on the first two series (1978-79) of the science-fiction serial Blakes 7, created by Terry Nation, who invented the Daleks in Doctor Who. Maher also did some work on the cult heist film The Italian Job (starring Michael Caine, 1969) after a stunt company was fired during shooting.
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George Melly the jazz singer, author and raconteur has died aged 80 (5 June 2007)
Melly leched, drank and blasphemed his way around the clubs and pubs of the British Isles and provided pleasure to the public for five decades. His involvement in jazz was born out of a romantic nostalgia for a golden age of brothel music. Appearing in the 1950s with Mick Mulligan’s Magnolia band and later for nearly three decades with John Chilton’s Feetwarmers, "Good time George" followed a well-established routine of singing numbers from the 1920s (his foremost influences being Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton) interspersed with camp asides and bawdy anecdotes.
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  Alan Chivers, one of BBC television’s leading outside broadcast producers has died aged 89 (5 June 2007)
Chivers was responsible for events from the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 to the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. During the 1966 World Cup in England he was the executive producer of the BBC/ITV consortium responsible for the TV coverage. By 1948 he was involved in the early TV outside broadcasts, first at Alexandra Palace and then at Wembley, in the years when new standards of programming, engineering and invention were set. There was a brief flirtation with ITV in 1959 when he helped to launch World of Sport, ITV’s answer to the BBC’s Grandstand, but he returned to the BBC in 1962, as a producer, then a senior producer and, for an unhappy spell, as head of events.
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Gordon Scott, Tarzan actor, has died aged 79 (9 May 2007)
Gordon Scott played a string of classic heroes in the 1950s and 1960s including Samson, Hercules, Goliath, Zorro and Buffalo Bill in films where the heroes relied largely on their own strength and agility, rather than superpowers or an arsenal of military hardware. But for many who grew up in the 1950s Scott's defining role was as Tarzan.
His physique enabled him to play the role of Tarzan in six films between 1955 and 1960. His Tarzan was a barrel-chested, very physical, slightly dim manifestation, though the earlier films still managed to present him as a jungle version on the average suburban American of the time, with wife Jane, son Boy and family pet Cheeta.
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Dick Vosburgh, comedy writer, lyricist, broadcaster and film buff, has died aged 78 (21 April 2007)
Dick Vosburgh was an immensely talented writer, broadcaster and lyricist who provided material for virtually every leading comic performer in the UK, plus such American superstars as Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Carol Channing and Peggy Lee. Vosburgh's quick wit and invention put him much in demand as a gag writer, and stars for whom he provided sitcoms and sketches included Stanley Baxter, Frankie Howerd, Bob Monkhouse, John Cleese, Ronnie Corbett, Lenny Henry and Roy Hudd. He contributed to film scripts for Frankie Howerd (Up Pompeii and Up the Chastity Belt) and Bob Hope (Call Me Bwana), as well as Carry On Nurse.
In 1953 he wrote his first radio show, Breakfast with Braden, starring the Canadian humorist Bernard Braden.
From writing for radio programmes, including over 50 editions of The Show Band Show, he moved into television, and his credits over the following decades would fill several pages. They included Alfred Marks Time (1956), Bresslaw and Friends (1961), The Stanley Baxter Show (1963) and Frost Over Europe (1967), starring David Frost, which won the Golden Rose at Montreux.
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  BBC to open up archive for trial (19 April 2007)
The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK.
Full-length programmes, as well as scripts and notes, will be available for download from the BBC's website.
The pilot is part of the BBC's plans to eventually offer more than a million hours of TV and radio from its archive.
He said the corporation's end ambition was "one day enabling any viewer to access any BBC programme ever broadcast via their television", and highlighted the need to bridge the divide between TV and content with online connections.
The archive trial will make available 1,000 hours of content drawn from a mix of genres to a closed number of people. About 50 hours - of both TV and radio programmes - will be available in an open environment for general access.
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Terry Hall, ventriloquist, has died aged 80 (11 April 2007)
Terry Hall entertained the baby-boom generation as the creator and sidekick of Lenny the Lion. Traditionally, these sidekicks had been boy puppets, such as Arthur Worsley with Charlie Brown and Peter Brough with Archie Andrews, but Hall took advantage of the booming television medium in the 1950s to tweak the format.
Making their BBC debut in 1956 alongside Eric Syke, Hall and Lenny were an instant hit with children, who were captivated by the idea of a talking lion that was, by turns, cowardly, bashful and generally unleonine, and whose catchphrase - "Aw, don't embawass me!" - became one of the best-known on the air. Hall was invited to guest-star on the legendary Ed Sullivan Show in the United States (1958) and returned home to take his puppet to two more popular programmes, Lenny's Den (1959-61) and Pops and Lenny (1962-63).
The Beatles made one of their earliest television appearances in a May 1963 episode of Pops and Lenny, singing their first No 1 single, "From Me To You", and "Please Please Me", as well as joining Hall and his puppet for a song titled "After You've Gone".
The pair remained popular in summer seasons and pantomimes on stage and as guest stars in television variety programmes including Big Night Out (1965), David Nixon's Comedy Bandbox (1966) and The Blackpool Show (1966).
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George Sewell, the actor, has died aged 82 (5 April 2007)
George Sewell had one of the best-known faces in Britain, thanks to dozens of appearances on television and in films. With his sandblasted features and shifty, haunted looks, Sewell was as at home playing shady villains as he was in police and thriller roles, which dated from the early 1960s, when he appeared in series such as Z-Cars, to the 1990s comedy The Detectives.
He appeared as Detective Chief Inspector Alan Craven in 25 episodes of Special Branch, a 1970s television drama series made by Euston Films in which he was cast opposite Patrick Mower as Haggerty. At the height of his Special Branch fame, his appearance on This Is Your Life topped the television ratings in December 1973.
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Dame Vera Lynn celebrates 90th Birthday (20 March 2007)
Lords and ladies turned out to pay their respects to Britain's Forces' Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, who has just celebrated her 90th birthday. The House of Lords hosted a special party sponsored by the Royal British Legion in the first of half-a-dozen parties for a woman whose singing inspired the nation during the darkest days of war.
As one of the guests told her: "You put a smile on everybody's face, even in those terrible times. Our wireless was always on."
A sprightly Dame Vera, who said she felt like she was aged 60, was in chatty mood as she mingled with her friends. Even now she is engaged in charity work for many causes, not simply those involving ex-servicemen.
She said: "I don't know where the years have gone. It is amazing what you can do for others. It is up to everybody to utilise whatever talents they have to use to help others inasmuch as they can. I hope I have spent my life well. I tried to do what I could to help others."
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Betty Hutton, the original "Blonde Bombshell" has died aged 86 (14 March 2007)
She was once described as "the noisiest girl in Hollywood". The actress and singer made her name in the 1940s in a series of hectic musical comedies, including The Fleet's In and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, but was probably best remembered for her starring role in Annie Get Your Gun in 1940 in which she starred opposite Howard Keel.
She followed it later that year with Let's Dance, in which she starred opposite Fred Astaire. It flopped.
In 1948 Betty Hutton visited Britain for the premiere of her film Dream Girl. When she appeared at the London Palladium, critics described her as "a big strong, lively girl, always eager to please" but complained that her voice was so loud "she deafened the first two rows of the auditorium".
In 1952, after learning a trapeze act for her performance in Cecil B De Mille's Greatest Show On Earth, Betty Hutton left Paramount Studios and returned to The London Palladium. Hutton's show remained essentially the same although, having learned the trapeze, she now included some aerial acrobatics in her act.
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Ray Evans, the Oscar-winning lyricist, has died aged 92 (23 February 2007)
Ray Evans wrote the words to such familiar songs as Que Sera, Sera - which was a hit for Doris Day - and Mona Lisa, which was very nearly not a hit for Nat "King" Cole.
With his songwriting partner Jay Livingston, Evans wrote Mona Lisa in 1950 for an Alan Ladd film called Captain Carey, USA; the planned title for the song - Prima Donna - was changed at the suggestion of Evans's wife, who preferred Mona Lisa.
They won their first Oscar for best song with Buttons And Bows, from the comedy Western 'The Paleface' (1948); the jaunty number was introduced by Bob Hope who, as the cowardly dentist "Painless" Peter Potter, sang it to Jane Russell; later Dinah Shore had a hit with it.
In later years Evans and Livingston wrote theme music for long-running television series, including Bonanza and Mr Ed. Jay Livingston died in 2001.
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Derek Waring, actor, has died aged 79 (23 February 2007)
Derek Waring was born Derek Barton Chapple in Mill Hill, north London, in 1927, the son of Wing Cdr Harry Barton Chapple, an electrical engineer who assisted John Logie Baird in his early television experiments. (Derek's elder brother, Richard, went on to become a sitcom writer and BBC script editor, under the name Richard Waring.)
On television, Waring appeared in episodes of early ITV series such as The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1957), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1957, 1958), Ivanhoe (1958), William Tell (1959) and No Hiding Place (1959), and was even seen modelling men's spring fashions in Flair, a 1959 advertising magazine - a type of programming finally banned three years later. He was marrried to Dame Dorothy Tutin.
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  BFI archives to be free to public (23 February 2007)
Items from the BFI archive will be made available free of charge
Britain's national film and television archive is to be opened up in order for it to be accessed by the public.
Visitors to the British Film Institute (BFI), which is in London, will be able to choose items from the collection and watch them free of charge.
Items range from footage of the Queen's coronation to early scenes from long-running soap Coronation Street
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The original Mr. Turnip is coming up for auction! (9 February 2007)
On March 15th 2007 Vectis Auctions - the world's largest toy auctioneer - will be auctioning the Joy Laurey Collection including the original Mr Turnip puppet prop together with associated ephemera including several lots relating to Twizzle. Including the Gerry Anderson and Joy Laurey original A.P.Films hand written signed contract, 1957, plus other agreements between A.P Films and the Laurey Puppet Company detailing the contract concerning the making of Twizzle.
Also original film scripts by Mary Lee, hand coloured photostats from the books by Roberta Leigh, finely painted in gonache, used by Joy Laurey to create puppet personas for the TV series, christmas cards, post cards - many signed, original BBC TV Whirligig scripts, photographs, scrapbooks etc.
Vectis website
Frankie Laine, singer, has died aged 93 (8 February 2007)
Frankie Laine was the most successful of the black-influenced white singers who came to prominence in the post-war era belting out blues in American nightclubs; he became one of the country's biggest stars, with a string of more than 70 hits and international sales of more than 250 million.
Laine's soulful, masculine style and highly emotional delivery dealt a blow to the gentler crooning styles of the day and paved the way for later blues and rock and roll artists such as Johnnie Ray and Elvis Presley.
From the 1950s Laine enjoyed a second career recording versions of the title songs of Hollywood and television Westerns such as Gunfight At OK Corral; 3:10 To Yuma; Bullwhip; Champion the Wonder Horse and Rawhide.
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Les Henry, Harmonica player and comedian who contributed 'Cedric' to the Three Monarchs' has died aged 86. (26 January 2007)
Les Henry was “Cedric”, the lugubrious comic turn in the Three Monarchs, the hugely popular harmonica-playing trio who topped variety bills in Britain from the 1950s to the 1970s.
The trio was founded in 1946, with the musicians Eric York and Jimmy Prescott, and as it gained fame in clubs and on radio in The Forces Show, Henry developed the character of “Cedric”. His shuffle, tiny black beard, brilliant timing and squeaky voice turned them into a top-rating variety act. They appeared more times than any other musical act at the London Palladium, starred in revue and cabaret in London, Las Vegas and South Africa, and notched up several Royal Variety performances. In the 1960s they were an almost permanent fixture with the Black and White Minstrel Show. It was Henry who christened the trio the Three Monarchs — billed in variety as “Kings of Harmonica”. Initially the act was purely musical but the character of Cedric became so popular that extra comic routines were added. As well as the harmonica the Monarchs also played trumpet, drums, piano, guitar and saxophone.
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  End of an era for iconic sports show (26 January 2007)
Legendary BBC sports show Grandstand will end on Sunday 28th January after 48 years of broadcasting. Grandstand first appeared on 11 October 1958 on Saturday afternoon, with the remit "to feature sports and events as they happen, where they happen". It went head-to-head with ITV rival World of Sport, presented by Dickie Davies, but viewers preferred tuning in to the BBC on a Saturday. Past presenters included Peter Dimmock, David Coleman, Frank Bough, Cliff Morgan, Des Lynam, Tony Gubba and Steve Rider.
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Barbara Kelly, television personality, has died aged 82 (16 January 2007)
Barbara Kelly was one of showbusiness's brightest personalities in the 1950s, often appearing with her husband, Bernard Braden; she was probably best known for her appearances on the panel show What's My Line? Barbara Kelly was in regular demand in radio dramas and scored a hit in Male Animal in the West End, but soon joined her husband on the radio variety show Breakfast with Braden, which was so popular that in 1950 it was moved to a later slot and renamed Bedtime with Braden.
They made their television debut on An Evening at Home With Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly in 1951 but, though popular, it ran for only one series.
In 1953 she joined What's My Line?, which featured Eamonn Andrews as the chairman, and David Nixon, Gilbert Harding and Isobel Barnett as the other contestants attempting to guess the occupations of members of the public.
Her other television work included Kelly's Eye, Criss Cross Quiz and Leave Your Name and Number as well as the sitcom B and B in 1968, where she again teamed up with her husband, and in which their younger daughter Kim also appeared.
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Yvonne De Carlo, film star of the 1940s and 1950s, has died aged 84 (12 January 2007)
In the 1940s and early 1950s Yvonne De Carlo was Hollywood’s favourite Arabian Nights heroine, a dark-haired beauty waiting for a handsome leading man to loosen her chains. If her function was to look decorative, rather than to stretch herself as an actress, she carried it off with style.
But despite efforts to broaden her range she became typecast in exotic roles and when these were no longer in demand, her career floundered. Ironically, it was with another exotic character, Lily in The Munsters, that she won a new following from a generation who barely remembered her films.
In the 1950s she made two films in Britain: Hotel Sahara, where she starred opposite Peter Ustinov, and The Captain’s Paradise, in which she played Alec Guinness’s wife, revealing a talent for comedy she was seldom able to display elsewhere. In 1956 she was back in costume playing Sephora, wife of Charlton Heston’s Moses, in Cecil B. de Mille’s The Ten Commandments, and was a mulatto girl sold as a slave in 19thcentury Kentucky in Band of Angels, with Clark Gable.
But on television she had a big hit as the 156-year-old Dracula-inspired Lily Munster opposite Fred Gwynne’s Herman in the spoof horror series, The Munsters, which ran for two years in the mid-1960s. She also appeared in several made-for-television films.
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Lila Prentice, variety artiste, has died aged 98 (7 January 2007)
Lila Prentice was one half of the rope-spinning, whip-cracking variety act El Granadas, which played halls, theatres and miners' galas from the 1920s until the 1970s; they took part in the Royal Command Performance in 1946 at the Palladium, an evening that included performances by Arthur Askey, Sid Field, Tessie O'Shea and Terry Thomas.
Lila's partner was Cecil Prentice, a variety artist whom she first met on stage in pantomime in Derby in 1928. He was a stepbrother of Kay Smart, of Billy Smart's Circus.
Their stage act featured fancy rope-spinning, stock-whips, unicycling, lassooing and baton-swinging.
There were numerous memorable occasions. Once Danny Kaye tried to ride Peter's unicycle and promptly fell off; they appeared on Blue Peter in its early days, and with Judy Garland at the London Palladium in 1947 in a variety show that also featured Max Bygraves, Dina Shaw and the Debonairs.
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Slapstick comic Charlie Drake dies at 81 (24 December 2006)
Actor and comic Charlie Drake will be best remembered for his slapstick comedy and his catchphrase "Hallo, my darlings!" He also enjoyed late success in straight theatre. From being the uneducated son of a south London newspaper seller, Charlie Drake went on to become to a multi-millionaire entertainer and one of Britain's best-loved comedians. After serving in the RAF in World War II, Drake turned professional, becoming a noted knockabout comedian, and made his first television appearance in the mid-1950s.
He was in the slapstick children's show Mick and Montmorency and then several of his own shows, including The Worker.
Before long, Charlie Drake was one of television's most popular stars. His catchphrase, "Hallo, my darlings," delivered in his trademark high-pitched voice, was soon to be heard around the country. Gradually the money started rolling in. Drake was starring in films, back-to-back television series, appearing in pantomimes and summer seasons around the country and regularly topping the bill at the London Palladium.
At the 1968 Montreux festival his TV show, The World of Charlie Drake, won the Charlie Chaplin award as the funniest show. The programme included a comic sequence in which he played numerous parts in a comic version of the 1812 Overture. Charlie Drake also made a number of film comedies in the 1960s, most notably Sands of the Desert, Petticoat Pirates and The Cracksman.
The 1980s saw Charlie turn to straight acting, with some success. He was a perfectionist. He wrote many of his own scripts, and would rehearse again and again until he'd got what he wanted.
And, on more than one occasion, he was injured during a slapstick routine. When, in 1961, when he was knocked unconscious during a television sketch, 2,000 people telephoned to see if he was all right.
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Joseph Barbera, animation producer has died aged 95 (20 December 2006)
Barbera was, with his partner William Hanna, the only rival to Walt Disney in the art of making animated cartoons; his creations included Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, Scooby Doo and Yogi Bear. They began their association at MGM's fledgling animation unit in 1937. Hanna's precise comic timing and technical skills were the ideal complement to Barbera's genius as a storyboard artist and animator.
In 1957 Hanna and Barbera were told by MGM to disband their unit. Instead the pair resigned and set up their own company (H-B Enterprises, soon changed to Hanna-Barbera Productions) to make cartoons specifically for television. In order to do this successfully, they had to cut corners by developing ways of creating animated pictures more quickly and cheaply, using less detail and movement, more stock footage, and fewer drawings – 300 for a minute of film rather than the 1,000 they produced for MGM.
Hanna-Barbera's first offering for television was Ruff and Reddy, a tale of a cat and a dog, but they made their fortune in 1958 with the first-ever animated children's television series, The Huckleberry Hound Show. Its mildly satirical tone attracted adults as well as children and the series was so successful that one of its regular characters, Yogi Bear, was soon given his own show.
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Ronnie Stevens, actor, has died aged 81 (15 November 2006)
Ronnie Stevens possessed the sort of lantern jaw and mobile features that lend themselves to comedy, and enjoyed a versatile and prolific career on television, in films and on the West End stage. After making his film debut in Scarlet Web (1954) and his television debut in Dick and the Duchess (1957), an American sit-com set in London, he continued to take character roles on television and in films into the 1990s.
His first appearances were in intimate revue, and he performed frequently in Peter Myers shows in the West End alongside Joan Sims, who became a life-long friend. He went on to play comic character roles in some 40 films, including I'm All Right Jack (1958, with Peter Sellers), Dentist in the Chair (1960, with Bob Monkhouse) and Carry On Cruising (1962). In the 1970s and 1980s he was a leading member of the Prospect Theatre Company, playing the Fool in King Lear (1972) and Sir Nathaniel in Love's Labour's Lost (1984). He was also a founder member, with Ian McKellen, of the Actors' Company. On television he appeared in numerous drama and comedy series, including The Goodies, Hi-di-Hi!, Yes, Prime Minister, Goodnight Sweetheart, Rumpole of the Bailey and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates.
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Diana Coupland, singer and actress, has died aged 74 (11 November 2006)
She began her career at the age of 11 when the BBC producer Barney Colehan heard her sing and gave her a spot on one of his radio shows.
By the time she was 14 she was singing full-time at the Mecca Locarno in Leeds, and a year later moved with her parents to London, where Mecca gave her a job as resident singer at their ballroom in Tottenham Court Road.
During the 1940s she worked with many big name bands, including those of Teddy Foster, Geraldo, Cyril Stapleton and Stanley Black.
She established herself as one of the leading singers of the day, with seasons at the Dorchester and Savoy hotels and bookings at London's leading nightclubs. These led to appearances on BBC Television: Diana Coupland starred in the series Hit Parade, and continued to sing professionally until the 1960s.
But her career took an unexpected turn when Joan Littlewood cast her as Sally in Wolf Mankowitz's musical Make Me An Offer (1959).
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Nigel Kneale, Creator of Quatermass, has died aged 84 (2 November 2006)
During the 1950s and 1960s, the writer Nigel Kneale bestrode the world of British television like a colossus. At a time when the wildest science fiction, in books, magazines and on the big screen, seemed in imminent danger of becoming scientific fact, Kneale's clever and terrifying imaginings became obligatory viewing for a TV audience which had only just recovered from the shock of watching the Coronation.
Kneale wrote many television plays and serials, as well as film scripts, including the ground-breaking and highly controversial small-screen version of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1954).
Kneale's greatest achievement as a melder of science fiction and horror was undoubtedly Quatermass and the Pit, which kept people out of the pubs while it was running. He cheerfully threw aliens from Mars, pagan rituals, the "Horned God" and race memory into the mix and scored a huge popular success.
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