Nevertheless, the secret of the show?s success ? and the reason it remains beloved all over the world ? is that the war is less than the half of it. What draws me in, for instance, is the nostalgic evocation of a lost (pre-immigration) Englishness. Walmington-on-Sea, with its Novelty Rock Emporium, Jolly Roger Ice Cream Parlour, and Marigold Tea Rooms; with its archetypal vicar, verger, butcher and bank manager assembling proudly in a shabby church hall ? it is all as idyllic as an Ealing comedy.
Yet the script ? the conception ? couldn?t work its magic without the actors. Would anybody remember Dad?s Army if Thorley Walters or Jon Pertwee had played Mainwaring, as originally discussed? Or if Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier?s roles had been reversed, as was once planned?
One of the funniest scenes ever filmed is Arthur Lowe falling over and coming back into view with his spectacles and cap askew, the little chap with an inflated sense of his own importance. I still laugh, after 40 years, at Mr Yeatman, the verger, in his Sea Scout uniform. I never could abide, however, Clive Dunn?s old git act, losing his cool and dropping his rifle and yelling: ?Don?t panic! Don?t panic!?
The comic timing between Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier remains unsurpassed. ?Would you all mind falling into three ranks, please? Just as quickly as you can, in three nice, neat lines. That would be absolutely lovely, thank you so much,? orders Sergeant Wilson, a monument to world-weariness and benign helplessness. Meanwhile, Captain Mainwaring, bursting with indignation, looks on incredulously.
If the Nazis are a distant menace, what produces the tension in the series is the class conflict ? Mainwaring, the struggling lower middle-class grammar school boy, pitted against the insouciant public school toff Wilson, a gent who is also his underling at the bank. Jonathan Cecil, who like Croft also sadly died a few days ago, and who appeared in one of the episodes as an intelligence officer in charge of dog handling, told me that Lowe and Le Mesurier were similarly characterised in real life. ?When Mainwaring looks disbelievingly at Wilson, that was Arthur looking with amazement at John.?
Le Mesurier went to Sherborne and swanned through life, always being offered the pick of character actor roles. He was once married to Hattie Jacques and didn?t seem to notice when she ran off with other men, as we know from the biopic with Ruth Jones. With his third wife, Joan, he was cuckolded by Tony Hancock, but they remained friends.
Lowe, meantime, huffed and puffed his way through variety and provincial rep ? he was a stalwart in Hereford for many years ? and was stuck at Granada playing the bossy Leonard Swindley, chairman of the Glad Tidings Mission Hall, in Coronation Street.
He was born in humble circumstances in Derbyshire in 1915, and his first job was as an under-manager in a warehouse selling spare bicycle parts.
?He was definitely a bit pompous, even then,? recalled a colleague. During the war he joined the Royal Ordnance Corps and trained in radar. ?He was very pompous as a corporal,? a fellow soldier testified.
Le Mesurier was so dreamy and enervated, he?d get a wardrobe assistant to wind up his wristwatch. Lowe was prickly and full of insecurities. On a location shoot in Thetford, the props man eventually complained, ?D?you know, in one day I?ve had more trouble with him than I had with Charlton Heston on the whole of El Cid.? It was a contractual obligation, for example, that Lowe would never be required to remove his trousers.
Le Mesurier was aloof, doing his suffering in stoical silence. Lowe was bold, vulnerable and noisily scornful. ?Oh, they?ll know by the tone of my voice that I?m in charge,? Mainwaring would say ? and Croft and Perry knew just when to give the character lines they?d heard Arthur Lowe himself say.
Of the rest of the happy breed, Arnold Ridley (Private Godfrey) was a successful playwright ? The Ghost Train is still revived ? and according to Graham McCann, who has written the definitive history of the series, he himself was ?not incontinent?, which is good to know. As a young man he had fought on the Somme and had played wing three-quarter for Bath RFC. Where Lowe?s character, in Coronation Street, had been jilted at the altar by Emily Nugent (later Emily Bishop), Ridley appeared in the soap as Herbert Whittle, wooer of Minnie Caldwell.
John Laurie, Frazer the gloomy funeral director, was a professional Scot who lived all his life in Chalfont St Giles. If he fluffed a line he implored the studio audience to forgive him, as ?ahm such a silly auld sod? ? but one who was proud to have been in Olivier?s Henry V and Richard III. He is also the wife-beating crofter turning on Peggy Ashcroft in Hitchcock?s Thirty-Nine Steps.
?And now I?m only famous for this crap!? he?d growl, turning up for yet another recording session ? there were seven series all told, plus Christmas specials. Lowe was similarly morose about being typecast, and wouldn?t allow the Dad?s Army script in his house, considering it ? or pretending to consider it ? the most frightful rubbish.
James Beck, the charming black marketeer Private Walker, was the first to go, dying of alcoholism in 1973, aged 44. They are all long gone now, of course, the Home Guard actors, save Ian Lavender (Pike) and Clive Dunn (Private Jones). Nevertheless, such is their immortality on television and through DVD boxed sets that every week someone used to ask David Croft if the original cast could be reassembled and the programme revived. It won?t be long before computers will be able to accomplish exactly that.
Roger Lewis?s new book, 'What Am I Still Doing Here??, is published on October 13 by Coronet
William Holden Billie Holiday Bob Hope Harry Houdini Rock Hudson
No comments:
Post a Comment