British Actors Archives - Page 73 of 135

Ronald Lewis

Ronald Lewis (Wikipedia)

Ronald Lewis was born in 1928 and was a Welsh actor, best known for his appearances in British films of the 1950s and 1960s.

He was born in Port Talbot, Glamorgan. He moved with his family to London when he was seven. During the war he was evacuated back to south Wales, where he attended Bridgend Grammar School. There he played Bassanio in the school production of The Merchant of Venice.

He decided to become an actor after seeing Shaw’s Saint Joan at the Prince of Wales Theatrein Cardiff. He studied at RADA, graduating in 1953.

Lewis’s first professional role was in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (1950) in repertory at Worthing. He was in The Square Ring at Hammersmith.

He had uncredited bit in Valley of Song, set in Wales. He was credited for the film version of The Square Ring (1953), for Ealing; The Beachcomber (1954), as a native islander; The Face of Love (1954) for the BBC; and Fantastic Summer (1955) for TV. He had a larger part in Helen of Troy (1955) as Aeneas. and provided some romantic interest in The Prisoner (1955), with Alec Guinness.

Lewis achieved attention with his stage performance in Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill, directed by Peter Hall (1955).

This led to Alexander Korda signing Lewis to a contract with London films and giving him a role in Storm Over the Nile (1956), as one of the main group of friends.

He appeared opposite Vivien Leigh on stage in South Sea Bubble (1956) by Noël Coward and reprised this role on British TV.

He was third billed in the comedy Sailor Beware (1956), one of the ten most popular films at the British box office in 1956.

He was in A Hill in Korea (1956), a Korean War film.

Rank tried to build Lewis into a star, giving him the lead in a thriller, The Secret Place (1957), alongside Belinda Lee.

On British TV he was in Salome (1957), El Bandido and the TV series Hour of Mystery in an adaption of Night Must Fall.

He appeared regularly in Armchair Theatre over fifteen years and other British anthology dramas.

He had a good role as the bad brother in Robbery Under Arms (1957) and was a villain in The Wind Cannot Read (1958). He was in Schiller’s Mary Stuart and Ibsen’s Ghosts on stage in 1958.

After a TV production of A Tale of Two Cities he supported Hardy Krüger in the Rank comedy Bachelor of Hearts (1958), and was in The Cloak (1959) for TV and a production of Miss Julie (1959) at the Old Vic.

Lewis had leading roles in Conspiracy of Hearts (1960) for Rank, playing an Italian officer helping some nuns, and The Full Treatment(1960) for Hammer, directed by Val Guest. Hammer kept him on for another thriller, Taste of Fear (1961), which was a big hit. So too was Mr. Sardonicus (1961) made for William Castle in Hollywood.

Lewis had a support role in the comedy Twice Round the Daffodils (1962) and was back in the lead for Jigsaw (1962), a thriller directed by Guest.

Lewis had support roles in Billy Budd (1962) and was the romantic lead to star Juliet Mills in the comedy Nurse on Wheels (1963), made by the Carry On team. He had the star role in two costume pictures, Siege of the Saxons (1963) and Hammer’s The Brigand of Kandahar (1965).

Obviously nobody offered him work & he was driven to despair. I remember Ronnie… and that drinking session at the White Horse all those years ago… he was a kind boy & people used him. He was 53.”

He focused on stage work in productions such as Raymond and Agnes (1965).

Lewis was a regular in the TV series His and Hers (1970–72). Apart from a role in Friends (1971) and its sequel Paul and Michelle (1974), his final credits were in TV: Tales of Unease (1970), Hine (1971), [The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1973), Harriet’s Back in Town (1973), Nightingale’s Boys (1975), Public Eye (1975), and Crown Court (1974–75).

In Twice Round the Daffodils (1962), Lewis had appeared alongside Kenneth Williams, who later committed suicide. When Lewis committed suicide by taking a barbiturate overdose at a boarding house in Pimlico, Williams recorded in his diary entry for 12 January 1982: “The paper says Ronald Lewis has taken an overdose! He was declared bankrupt last year!

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Although Stephanie Beecham has starred in movies, notably opposite Marlon Brando in “The Nightcomers” and Ava Gardner in “Tam Lin”, she is best known for her roles in some iconic television series. She was born in Barnet in 1947. She began her acting career with roles on television in “The Saint” with Roger Moore and “Jason King”. Her major roles on TV were as Rose in the series “Tenko”, in “Connie” in 1985, in Hollywood in “The Colbys” and then back in the UK in “Bad Girls” with Amanda Barrie. She has two daughters from her marriage to John McEnery.

TCM overview:

A British stage actress who migrated to the USA to play the bitchy Sable Coolly on “Dynasty II: The Cloys” (ABC, 1985-87), Stephanie Beacham has often been cast in roles that vary between nasty vixens and cool, take-charge women. The London native began her career on stage in Liverpool in 1964 where she was a founding member of the Everyman Theatre. She debuted there in “The Servant of Two Masters” and as the First Witch in “Macbeth”. By 1970, Beacham was working on the London stage in “The Basement” and later appeared opposite Ian McKellen in “Venice Preserved” (1985) and Jeremy Irons in “The Rover” (1988). She belatedly made her Broadway debut in 1996 in a production of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”.

Beacham debuted in films in 1969’s “The Games” as an Olympic hopeful opposite Michael Crawford. She subsequently appeared as a swinger alongside Ava Gardner in Roddy McDowell’s “The Devil’s Widow” (1971). More recently, she was a nemesis to Shelly Long in the pallid comedy “Troop Beverly Hills” (1989). Beacham has feared better on the small screen, She reprised her role as the bitch-goddess Sable on “Dynasty” for the 1988-89 season. She switched to comedy in the title role of “Sister Kate” (NBC, 1989-90), a nun more familiar with work in the high echelons of power now assigned to run an orphanage. Beacham had the recurring role of Luke Perry’s mother on Fox’s “Beverly Hills, 90210” and later played the very able Dr. Westphalen for two seasons (1993-95) on NBC’s “seaQuest DSV”.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Stephanie Beecham TCM Overview

Setephanie Beacham has starred in movies, notably opposite Marlon Brando in “The Nightcomers” and Ava Gardner in “Tam Lin”, she is best known for her roles in some iconic television series. She was born in Barnet in 1947.

She began her acting career with roles on television in “The Saint” with Roger Moore and “Jason King”. Her major roles on TV were as Rose in the series “Tenko”, in “Connie” in 1985, in Hollywood in “The Colbys” and then back in the UK in “Bad Girls” with Amanda Barrie. She has two daughters from her marriage to John McEnery.

TCM overview:

By 1970, Beacham was working on the London stage in “The Basement” and later appeared opposite Ian McKellen in “Venice Preserved” (1985) and Jeremy Irons in “The Rover” (1988). She belatedly made her Broadway debut in 1996 in a production of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”.

Beacham has feared better on the small screen, She reprised her role as the bitch-goddess Sable on “Dynasty” for the 1988-89 season. She switched to comedy in the title role of “Sister Kate” (NBC, 1989-90), a nun more familiar with work in the high echelons of power now assigned to run an orphanage.

Beacham had the recurring role of Luke Perry’s mother on Fox’s “Beverly Hills, 90210” and later played the very able Dr. Westphalen for two seasons (1993-95) on NBC’s “seaQuest DSV”. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Michael Legge. IMDB.

Michael Legge gave wonderful performances in two films associated with Limerick, “Angela’s Ashes”in 1999 and “Cowboys and Angels” in 2003.

He was born in Newry, Co. Down in 1978. Has also starred in the popular television series “Shameless”.

IMDB entry:

Michael Legge was born on December 11, 1978 in Newry, Co. Down, Northern Ireland. He is an actor and director, known for Angela’s Ashes (1999), Cowboys & Angels (2003) andWhatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999).

Lost close to thirty pounds to play Frank in Angela’s Ashes (1999). While at school, he appeared in a variety of plays, both modern and classic. He is a ten-year veteran of theater in his Northern Ireland hometown.

Frank McCourt‘s novel “Angela’s Ashes” had been his mom’s, aunt’s, and grandmother’s favorite book. He appeared as Older Frank in the film version of the novel.

Was encouraged to act at school by drama teacher Sean Hollywood, who was respected and renowned throughout Ireland for his talent-scouting of young actors in the Newry district. TCM Overview:

Lanky, dark-haired, freckle-faced Michael Legge came to moviegoers’ attention as the older incarnation of narrator Frank McCourt in the “Angela’s Ashes” (1999), the film adaptation of McCourt’s Pulitzer-winning memoir. A native of Newry in Northern Ireland, Legge was already a veteran stage and TV performer when he won that role over some 15,000 aspirants.

As a child, he came to the attention of drama teacher Sean Hollywood who encouraged the youngster. Work in local theater followed as did a featured role in the 1996 British television drama “The Precious Blood”. 1999 proved to be a banner year for Legge as he landed pivotal roles in three features. In addition to his finely wrought portrayal of McCourt in “Angela’s Ashes”,

he demonstrated his versatility as a teenager who discovers the hideaway of three feral youths during an unnamed conflict in the intense, Swedish-made “Straydogs” and displayed his comic gifts and natural charm as a disco-loving teen in 1977 Sheffield in “Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?”.The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

David Baxt made his debut in”Twilight’s Last Gleaming” in 1977 which starred Burt Lancaster. His other films include “Yanks” and “Silver Dream Racer”.

Maureen Delany was a wonderful Irish actress who enlivened mamy British films of the 1940’s. She was born in Kilkennyin 1888.Her film debut came in 1924 in “Land of Her Fathers”. Her cinema highlights include “Odd Man Out” in 1947, “The Mark of Cain”, “Captain Boycott”and her final film “The Doctor’s Dilemma” with Dirk Bogarde in 1958. She died in 1961.

“Wikipedia” entry:

She was born in Kilkenny, daughter of Dr. Barry Delany, who died when she was three months old. She was educated in Galway and originally intended to train for the opera, as she had a fine singing voice. However, she was accepted into the Abbey School of Acting by Lennox Robinson. She made her debut on the stage in Edward McNulty’s comedy The Lord Mayor in 1914.^[

She quickly gained a reputation as a noted comic actress and singer. She became identified with Maisie Madigan in Juno and the Paycock and Bessie Burgess in The Plough and the Stars (both by Sean O’Casey), as well as the Widow Quin in Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.

Dictionary of Irish biography:

Delany, Maureen (c.1888–1961), actress, was born in Kilkenny, daughter of Dr Barry Delany, medical officer to the Kilkenny mental home, and his Kerry-born wife (née Nagle). Her father died when she was three months old. She was educated at the Dominican College in Galway and originally intended to train for opera as she had a fine singing voice, inherited from her father. However, she was accepted to the Abbey School of Acting, then run by Lennox Robinson (qv) and J. M. Kerrigan (1885–1964). After training she made her debut on 13 March 1914 as the mayoress in Edward McNulty’s comedy ‘The lord mayor’, and was commended by the Evening Mail. She quickly became a staple of the Abbey company and as early as 1916, the inveterate playgoer Joseph Holloway (qv) was praising her acting as ‘delightfully explosive’ (Holloway, 189). He was a constant admirer and in 1920, commenting on ‘The golden apple’ by Lady Gregory (qv), he noted that Delany’s ‘comic art and figure grow apace . . . there was a whimsical drollery about all she did’ (Holloway, 207). Delany was by this stage a noted comic actress and singer and among the best loved of the Abbey players. Lady Gregory found her rendition of ‘Oft in the stilly night’ in ‘Aristotle’s bellows’ in March 1921, very fine. Sean O’Casey (qv) was also an admirer and Delany gave vent to her full comic potential to become identified with two of his most noted character parts – Maisie Madigan in ‘Juno and the Paycock’ and Bessie Burgess in ‘The plough and the stars’. O’Casey even introduced a song for Maisie Madigan at her request. After the riotous opening of ‘The plough and the stars’ in February 1926, the Irish Times reported that a member of the audience had deliberately struck Delany in the face, but the actors themselves denied this.

Another part which Dublin theatregoers considered she made her own was the Widow Quin in ‘The playboy of the western world’ by J. M. Synge (qv). However, the critic Hugh Hunt (qv), assessing her career, noted that she played all her famous character parts in the same manner: ‘Large, warm-hearted, with a permanent twinkle in her eye . . . Maureen was not a great actress, but she was a superb performer. For over twenty years she was to play herself on the stage without varying her characterisation by a twitch of her eyebrow, to the utter delight of her public’ (Hunt, 118). The Dublin audience’s appreciation probably prevented her development and froze her mannerisms; the American critic George Jean Nathan, writing on the Abbey’s 1937 American tour, called the company ‘a caricature of its former self . . . [it] is obviously unable to control its fundamentally talented but personally over-cocky actress, Maureen Delany, and to prevent her from indulging in an outrageous overplaying, winking, snorting, and mugging that wreck any serious play she is in’ (Newsweek, 27 Dec. 1937). Her Times obituary noted that the Dublin audience often began to laugh even before she spoke.

In 1940 she appeared as a housekeeper in ‘Where stars walk’, the earliest comedy of Micheál MacLíammóir (qv), at the Gate, and thereafter appeared in numerous Gate productions. She had few film appearances but was part of the talented cast of mainly Irish actors in Carol Reed’s thriller Odd man out (1947), set in Belfast. In the late 1940s she moved to London, where she appeared in small character roles, getting mainly good reviews although The Timesnoted of her performance in Noel Coward’s ‘Waiting in the wings’ at the Duke of York’s Theatre, September 1960, that she could not help overacting. She died in her room at a London Hotel on 27 March 1961 and was predeceased by her husband Peter O’Neill, whom she married about 1947; there were no children

Briony McRoberts was born in Welwyn Garden City in 1957. Her career highlights include “Malice Aforethought” in 1979 and the series “Take the High Road”. She was married to the actor David Robb. Sadly she died in 2013. Her obituary from “The Stage” can be found here.

Anthony Hayward’s “Independent” obituary:

The actress Briony Mc Roberts spent two decades taking character roles on television before making her biggest impact as the super-bitch Sam Hagen in Take the High Road, the Scottish soap opera screened nationally by ITV.

The glamorous Sam arrived in the fictional village of Glendarroch in 1991 as a dynamic business executive and eventually bought the estate, becoming the lady laird.

In 1994, the serial’s title was shortened to High Road, following the vogue of the times – five years earlier, Emmerdale Farm had become Emmerdale. The Scottish Television soap also followed its Yorkshire counterpart in featuring more raunchy storylines.

As the glamorous Sam, who could be thoroughly ruthless in her business dealings, McRoberts brought steamy passion to the community on the banks of Loch Lomond. The character had a string of affairs – starting with Davie Sneddon (Derek Lord), the local “JR”, because he had information useful to her business interests – and she even bedded a teenage boy (played by Gary Hollywood, above).

In 2000, when McRoberts left the serial, Sam hit the bottle after being jilted by a lover, then disappeared. Early the following year, news reached Glendarroch that her body had been found on a rubbish tip and she had lived her last days destitute. The actress made only a handful of television appearances after leaving High Road.

Briony McRoberts was born in Hertfordshire in 1957 but, aged six, moved to Richmond-upon-Thames following the death of her mother and her father’s remarriage.

As a child, she studied drama at the Professional Children’s School, in Teddington. This led to her screen debut, uncredited, at the age of 12 with a small role in the 1969 film fantasy Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, directed by James Hill, who had made Born Free three years earlier and had a particular talent for getting the best out of child actors.

As an adult, McRoberts made her first television appearance as Anna, one of the children fostered by the failed romantic played by Ian Carmichael in the sitcom Bachelor Father (1970-71), and other roles soon followed.

She was seen as Wendy Darling in a live-action television musical version of Peter Pan (1976), starring Mia Farrow and Danny Kaye; as Esther Bronte in The Crezz (1976), with Joss Ackland and Elspet Gray as her parents; as Charlotte, a student, in the final series of the sitcom Sink or Swim (1982); and as Caroline, secretary to the Whitehall-based spycatcher played by Alec McCowen, in Mr Palfrey of Westminster (1984-85). In 1990, McRoberts briefly acted Janine Butcher’s counsellor, Carol Nickleson, in EastEnders.

She was also in the film The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) as the glamorous Margo Fassbender, who is kidnapped with her physicist father by Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), out of a psychiatric hospital and intent on killing Clouseau (Peter Sellers), who has driven him to the edge.

McRoberts met the actor David Robb when they were both in a disastrous 1975 production of the William Douglas-Home play Betsy at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford. They married three years later.

On the West End stage, she acted at the Shaftesbury Theatre in the musicals Maggie (1978), alongside Anna Neagle, and Peter Pan (1980), again as Wendy Darling, then appeared at the Aldwych in Charley’s Aunt (1983). Her last television appearance was in a 2005 episode of The Bill.

McRoberts’s final acting role was alongside her husband and actress friend Joanna Lumley in a production of Walter Scott’s epic poem “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” at the Borders Book Festival in June.

She and Robb – who played Dr Clarkson, the Crawley family GP, in Downton Abbey and has been a volunteer for the Samaritans for a quarter of a century – ran the Edinburgh marathon every year from 2004 to raise money for Leukaemia Research.

McRoberts was killed after being hit by a London underground train. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances and her agent stated that it was believed the actress had committed suicide.

Anthony Hayward

The above “Independent” obituary can be accessed online here.

Lois Daine was born in Bolton, Lancashire in 1941. She made her cinema debut in “Hell Is A City” with Stanley Baker in 1960. Other films inckude “Cash On Demand” and “Linda”. Her son is the actor Aran Bell from her marriage to the late great Tom Bell.

Tom Adams made his bid for cinema stardom in the mid 1960’s with his performance as Charles Vine, spy in “”Licensed to Kill” and “Where the Bullets Fly””, He gave terrific performances in both movies. He was born in London in 1938. He began his career on television in “Emergency Ward Ten”. He died in 2014.

His “Guardian” obituary

The tall frame and dark good looks of the actor Tom Adams, who has died of cancer aged 76, made him a natural for casting directors. He will be best remembered on the big screen for his role as Dai Nimmo, the RAF officer in charge of “diversions”, in the 1963 prisoner-of-war drama The Great Escape, alongsideRichard Attenborough, James Garner and the rising star Steve McQueen. The money he earned from the classic movie enabled Adams to buy his first car after years of earning a pittance on stage and teaching English and drama at a London school.

“It was a lovely summer,” Adams recalled of filming in Germany, talking to the journalist Sinclair McKay last year. “I had a hell of a time.” It also gave him an insight into the power of stardom. “Whatever it was about Steve McQueen … I couldn’t put my finger on it,” he said. “There he was, about 5ft 7in, skinny, but on nights out in Munich, if he walked into the bar, the women – whoomph! – would be around him.”

Television producers spotted Adams and cast him in the hospital soap opera Emergency – Ward 10. He spent six months of 1964 as one of its long list of heart-throbs, the senior registrar Guy Marshall, whose storylines included examining a young woman who had fallen from a window while cleaning. The ITV mogul Lew Grade axed the serial in 1967, but later said it was one of his biggest mistakes. Five years later, he found a replacement with General Hospital and Adams joined it as Dr Guy Wallman (1975-78) when it moved from an afternoon to a peak-time slot.

In the meantime he had played Major Sullivan (1973-75) in the BBC counter-espionage drama Spy Trap. Adams was in it from the second series, replacing the government intelligence service’s agent Commander Anderson (played by Julian Glover), whose job was to track down “subversives”. Then came a leading role in an established series, The Onedin Line, the late-19th-century saga starring Peter Gilmore. In 1977, Adams took over from Michael Billington as Daniel Fogarty, a rival ship’s captain whose affair with Onedin’s spoiled sister, Elizabeth, produced an illegitimate son, William. At the end of Adams’s first series, Fogarty returns from Australia a rich man and marries Elizabeth. Later, he becomes an MP, then British ambassador to Turkey, but comes a cropper in the final series, screened in 1980, drowning when his ship is sunk. Adams followed The Onedin Line with the star role in The Enigma Files (1980), as Detective Chief Inspector Nick Lewis, who is transferred to a desk job and stirs up a hornets’ nest when he investigates unsolved cases. It failed to get a second series.

Son of David, a commercial chauffeur, and Lillian (nee Bennett), he was born Anthony Adams in Poplar, east London, and later took Tom Adams as a stage name. After national service in the army, he joined the leftwing UnityTheatre, in London, then worked with repertory companies. In between jobs, he taught at Cardinal Griffin secondary modern school, Poplar.

After his run in Emergency – Ward 10, Adams starred as the mathematician turned secret agent Charles Vine in the low-budget James Bond film spoof Licensed to Kill (1965), described as “bargain basement” 007 by one critic. However, it was popular enough for him to reprise the role in Where the Bullets Fly (1966) and Somebody’s Stolen Our Russian Spy (1967). Adams played a psychotic killer, complete with false teeth, in the horror film The House that Dripped Blood (1971) and starred as the brutal mastermind behind a bank robbery in The Fast Kill (1972).

His other TV roles included Commander Vorshak, leader of Sea Base 4, in the 1984 Doctor Who story Warriors of the Deep, Ken Stevenson in Strike It Rich! (1986-87), a drama about news agency shareholders receiving a windfall, and Malcolm Bates (on and off from 1987 until 1991), looking for a reconciliation with his estranged wife Caroline, in Emmerdale Farm (later Emmerdale).

When acting roles became fewer, Adams’s rich, velvety tones led him to commercials – in the 1980s and 90s, he was the “face” of the DFS furniture store and the “voice” of the TV channel E4. He enjoyed playing golf and watching cricket, and was the author of Shakespeare Was a Golfer (1996).

• Tom Adams (Anthony Frederick Charles Adams), actor, born 9 March 1938; died 11 December 2014

The above obituary can also be accessed online here.

In a career spanning six decades, Tony Britton, who has died aged 95, went from being a leading juvenile at Stratford-upon-Avon and a contracted film star with British Lion in the 1950s, to a West End “above the title” lead in the 60s, a TV sitcom stalwart in the 70s and thereafter a benign, suave presence on stage and screen. He was still touring into his mid-80s, playing Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest in 2007.

As a slightly less irascible version of Rex Harrison, he toured for two years in 1964 as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, repeating the role 10 years later in a touring revival by Cameron Mackintosh that was the first such commercial venture underpinned with money from the Arts Council. The show, in which Liz Robertson co-starred as Eliza Doolittle, settled at the Adelphi in the West End for a decent run.Advertisement

This was exactly the time when Britton reinvented himself as a television favourite, first in Arthur Hopcraft’s comic imbroglio of Westminster politics, The Nearly Man (1975), with Wilfred Pickles and Ann Firbank, and then, decisively, in Robin’s Nest (1977-81), beautifully and edgily written by Brian Cooke and Johnnie Mortimer.

Robin’s Nest was the first common-law marital sitcom, with Britton as James Nicholls, business partner of Richard O’Sullivan’s aspirational chef, Robin Tripp (whose “nest” was his Fulham bistro). Robin lived “in sin” with his girlfriend, Victoria (Tessa Wyatt), James’s daughter; James in turn disapproved of the relationship, while contending with the incursions of his own former wife, played by Honor Blackman and, later on, Barbara Murray.

Britton then consolidated his place in the sitcom firmament with Don’t Wait Up (1983-90), about a tricky father-and-son relationship, with serious moral and political overtones, co-starring Nigel Havers. The scripts were by the actor George Layton who had chipped in as a writer to several later episodes of Robin’s Nest. Britton, as Toby Latimer, was a Harley Street consultant, while Havers as his son, Tom, was an idealist and over-worked NHS GP; both had split up from their respective wives and they end up sharing a home. Father and son frequently argue about politics and medical practices. The situation was further aggravated by Dinah Sheridan (Toby’s ex and Tom’s mother) popping in from time to time.

Surprisingly, perhaps, given his debonair image, Britton was born in a room above the Trocadero pub in Temple Street, Birmingham, the son of Doris (nee Jones) and Edward Britton. He was educated at Edgbaston Collegiate school and, when the family moved to the west country, Thornbury grammar school (now Marlwood school), in Alveston, Gloucestershire.

He had thought of doing nothing else except acting, he said, since childhood. On leaving school, he joined two amateur drama companies in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, while articled to an estate agent and then working in an aircraft factory. A professional debut followed in 1942 when he appeared in Esther McCracken’s Quiet Weekend at the Knightstone Pavilion in the seaside town.

He was called up and served during the second world war with the Royal Artillery. While doing officer training, he formed a small drama group. On being demobbed in 1946, he joined the Library theatre in Manchester for a nine-month season, moving on for a year to a new repertory company in Edinburgh.

His big break came in 1952 when he played the juvenile lead, the pharaoh Ramases, in Christopher Fry’s The Firstborn, about Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, at the Winter Garden in London in 1952. His second big leading role, at the Edinburgh festival of the same year, and on tour, was opposite Cathleen Nesbitt in The Player King by Christopher Hassall, a lyricist for Ivor Novello’s musicals.

This experience with the two leading verse dramatists of the day led to a two-year stint in Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon (1953-54) as Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, Lysander in The Dream, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (soon after, he played Romeo on television) and Cassio to Anthony Quayle’s Othello. He was now becoming established, and returned to the West End in Michael Burn’s The Night of the Ball (1955) in a cast, directed by Joseph Losey, which included Wendy Hiller, Gladys Cooper and Thelma Holt; and in the Louis Jourdan role in Gigi (1956, before the film) with Leslie Caron, directed by Peter Hall.

His first two starring roles for British Lion – as a posh criminal in The Birthday Present (1957) with Sylvia Syms and as a surgeon covering for a fatal mishap in Behind the Mask (1958) with Michael Redgrave – were virtually his last as the British movie industry was transformed with the new wave of working-class subjects and actors. Britton’s polish and class were suddenly surplus to requirements.

Something similar happened in the theatre, but Britton could adapt more easily, playing Trigorin in The Seagull and Hotspur in Henry IV Part 1 at the Old Vic in 1961 and, after touring with My Fair Lady, partnering Margaret Leighton in the Guys and Dolls writer Abe Burrows’s Cactus Flower at the Lyric in 1967, and Margaret Lockwood in Somerset Maugham’s Lady Frederick at the Vaudeville in 1970.

In the next decade, his pre-eminence on television was matched in three West End hits: starring with Cicely Courtneidge and Moira Lister in Ray Cooney and John Chapman’s mechanically ingenious farce of swapped apartments, Move Over Mrs Markham (1972); alongside Anna Neagle and Thora Hird in the musical No, No, Nanette at Drury Lane in 1973; and, in 1974, opposite a formidable Celia Johnson, as the invading Nazi commander on the Channel Islands in William Douglas Home’s The Dame of Sark at Wyndham’s.

The Chichester Festival theatre was a natural habitat for him. In the 1987 season, he directed Wilde’s An Ideal Husband with Clive Francis and Joanna Lumley, and played – though not with the tortured brilliance of Paul Scofield– Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, with Roy Kinnear as the Common Man.

Still, in the early 90s, he was part of three shows which belied Chichester’s “safe” reputation: supporting Alan Howard in a flashing melodrama, The Silver King; as Wolsey, with great speeches, and Keith Michell and Dorothy Tutin, in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII; and as the bishop of Chelsea in Shaw’s rarely seen Getting Married.

In 1994, he returned to Stratford as Chorus in Henry V and an avuncular Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. His last West End appearance, at the Haymarket, was in Jeffrey Archer’s The Accused (2000) in which the audience voted on the accused’s culpability, though it was Archer himself whom the critics placed in the dock. Britton and Edward de Souza were judge and jury bailiff in a distinctly underwhelming occasion, a real trial to be sure.

Britton’s many enthusiasms included golf, gardening, wine and photography. He was a member of the Garrick, Surrey cricket club and the MCC.

He married Ruth Hawkins in 1948. They divorced, and in 1962 he married the Danish portrait sculptor Eva Birkefeldt; she died in 2008. Britton is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, Cherry, a scriptwriter, and Fern, a TV presenter, and by a son, Jasper, an actor, from his second.

• Anthony Edward Lowry Britton, actor, born 9 June 1924; died 22 December 2019Topics

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Ronald Lewis

Ronald Lewis (Wikipedia)

Stephanie Beacham

Stephanie Beecham TCM Overview

Michael Legge

Michael Legge. IMDB.

David Baxt

Maureen Delany

Dictionary of Irish biography:

Briony McRoberts

Lois Daine

Tom Adams

Tony Britton

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