Dad's Army

by Graham McCann

  Croft, in the meantime, was busy trying to persuade Clive Dunn to accept the role of Lance Corporal Jones. Jack Haig, an old favourite of Croft’s from his time at Tyne Tees in the 1950s, had been first choice, but, after discussing the offer with the ultra-cautious Tom Sloan (who appears to have given him the impression that the show was by no means assured of a long run),27 Haig had turned the part down in order to concentrate on a lucrative new vehicle for his popular children’s character, ‘Wacky Jacky’. Dunn, though a mere forty-eight years of age, was the obvious alternative: like Haig, who was nine years his senior, he knew how to portray elderly comic characters. An alumnus of the Players’ Theatre, which was a well-respected club in Villiers Street, London WC2, specialising in Victorian/Edwardian-style music hall, pantomime and melodrama, Dunn had appeared in everything from Windmill revues to children’s situation-comedies (such as The Adventures of Charlie Quick, broadcast by BBCTV in 1957), and had first made his name on television as Old Johnson, the aptly-named 83-year-old waiter and Boer War veteran in Granada’s Bootsie and Snudge (1960–3), the popular follow-up to The Army Game. Like Croft, he came from an established showbusiness family – his maternal grandfather, Frank Lynne, had been a moderately popular music-hall comedian, his uncle, Gordon Lynne, was also a comic and both his parents, Bobby Dunn and Connie Clive, had been professional entertainers – and the two men had known and liked each other for years (Dunn’s mother, in fact, had once had an affair with Croft’s father).28 Putting their friendship to one side, however, he had not jumped at the offer when Croft first made his approach: he had just started work on The World of Beachcomber, BBC2’s fine adaptation of J. B. Morton’s much-admired newspaper columns, and, as he would put it later, he ‘wasn’t particularly hungry’.29 As a former prisoner of war – he had spent four harrowing years in a German labour camp in Liezen, Austria – he would have been forgiven for regarding the subject matter with suspicion, but, in fact, he found it quite appealing. The reason for his reluctance had more to do with the high casualty rate of new situation-comedies: ‘The ups and downs of the profession had made me cautious.’30

  He decided to phone a friend: John Le Mesurier. ‘I’ll do it if you do it,’31 said Dunn. ‘Yes,’ replied Le Mesurier, ‘but … ’, and suggested that they ‘hung out a little’ in the hope that the money might improve.32 Dunn agreed with ‘Le Mez’ (as he was known to his friends), and delayed making a decision. Croft, however, had already enlisted a standby: an inexperienced but very promising 28-year-old actor by the name of David Jason. ‘I didn’t know him very well,’ Croft explained, ‘but my wife represented him and I’d used him fairly recently in an episode of Beggar My Neighbour and he’d been marvellous.’33 Jason had just started work on the show that represented his first real breakthrough on television – the ITV/Rediffusion teatime sketch show Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967–9) – but, even so, was quite prepared to commit himself to a high-profile David Croft comedy. Late in February 1968, Croft, who was now growing impatient, spotted Dunn in the BBC canteen, and took the opportunity to ask him if he had reached a decision yet about joining the cast; an embarrassed Dunn stalled again, and then slipped quietly away ‘hoping that John would [soon] make up his mind and that David would not resent the delay’.34

  Wheels began turning within wheels: Dunn’s agent, Michael Grade, was a close friend of Bill Cotton, and spoke to him on an informal basis in order to ensure that someone at the BBC realised that his client really was predisposed to join the show. David Croft, meanwhile, had begun taking steps to resolve the matter once and for all. The following day, David Jason recalled, proved full of surprises: ‘The order of events was as follows: I went to the BBC and read for the part at 11 a.m.; soon after, my agent received the message that I had the part; by 3 p.m., I was out of work! Over the lunch period Bill Cotton had persuaded Clive to take the part, and hadn’t informed the producer. The rest is history!’35

  Dunn, it seems, had just heard via Freddie Joachim that Le Mesurier had finally decided to accept, and the news had sparked him into action.36 Once his billing had been secured – third, below Lowe and ‘Le Mez’ – and the assurance had been given that he would be handed the pick of the ‘Joey Joeys’ – the physical comedy – he proceeded to make a commitment. Both men received and signed their contracts on 29 February 1968 (although Le Mesurier’s fee was set at a sum £52 10s higher than Dunn’s – or Lowe’s),37 and the first tier of the cast was complete.

  The remainder of the platoon proved somewhat easier to assemble. Croft cast Arnold Ridley as Private Godfrey. Up until this point, Ridley’s life had been chequered with bad luck: he had been invalided out of the Army on two separate occasions (first in 1917, following the Battle of the Somme, then after talking his way back into service, in 1940, following the evacuation from Dunkirk); his production company, Quality Films, went bust after just one, well-received release (Royal Eagle, 1936), and he had been forced to sell the rights to some of his most enduringly popular – and lucrative – plays (including The Ghost Train, 1925) in order to stave off bankruptcy. There had been spells in various soap operas – including Crossroads (as the Revd Guy Atkins) and Coronation Street (as Herbert Whittle, the would-be wooer of Minnie Caldwell), as well as an ongoing role in The Archers (as Doughy Hood) – and undemanding one-off appearances in such series as White Hunter (1958) and The Avengers (1961 – as, all too predictably, ‘Elderly Gent’), but, at the beginning of 1968, the septuagenarian actor was still performing primarily because he could not afford not to. ‘He was another one who’d worked for me before,’ Croft recalled:

  He’d been very good, very funny, and he was a lovely, gentle character. He looked right, sounded right. I was a bit worried about him because I think he was already 72 when I first interviewed him for the part. I’d said, ‘I don’t think I can save you from having to run about a bit now and then. Are you up for it?’ And he’d said, ‘Oh, yes, I think I’ll manage.’ As it turned out, of course, he couldn’t, but we got an enormous amount of capital out of helping him on to the van and things like that, you know. So he turned out to be a very successful character.38

  Casting Dumfries-born John Laurie as Private Frazer had been another one of Michael Mills’ suggestions. Laurie, who at 71 was Ridley’s junior by a single year, was a hugely experienced actor: he had played all of the great Shakespearean roles at the Old Vic and Stratford, and appeared in a wide range of movies, including two directed by Alfred Hitchcock – Juno and the Paycock (1930) and The 39 Steps (1935) – three by Laurence Olivier – Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1954) – and four by Michael Powell (the most notable of which was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, in which he played the ever-loyal Murdoch), as well as one starring Will Hay – The Ghost of St Michael’s (1941). He had been working intermittently on television since the mid-1930s, but it had only been since the start of the 1960s that he had begun appearing on a relatively regular basis (first as thriller writer Algernon Blackwood in Associated-Rediffusion’s 1961 Tales of Mystery, and later as Dr McTurk in the 1966 TVS children’s science-fiction series The Master, as well as several cameo roles in both The Avengers and Dr Finlay’s Casebook). David Croft was well aware of what Laurie could do – he had worked with him before in a 1965 episode of Hugh and I,39 and had every faith in his ability to flesh-out the still-skeletal figure of Frazer – but was apprehensive about the actor’s reaction to such an under-developed character:

  ‘Frazer’, at that time, was described in the script simply as ‘A Scotsman’. It can’t have been very inspiring to such an experienced actor. Michael Mills said, ‘Make him into a fisherman.’ So Jimmy and I made him into a fisherman for that first episode. No use to us at all, of course, as a fisherman never went out to sea in those days because it was the invasion coast. Later on, we started allowing him to make coffins in his workshop, and that developed into him becoming the undertaker – and then he became very useful indeed, a marvellous character. But we did find it difficult, at the start
, to write for him, as this ‘Scottish fisherman’, and I doubt that John was too impressed either.40

  Laurie, sure enough, was far from impressed, but he had a policy of never refusing offers of work, and so he agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to play a character whose lifetime he confidently expected to last no longer than six half-hour episodes.

  James Beck was a far more willing recruit. The 39-year-old actor from Islington had been working extremely hard at establishing himself on television since the start of the 1960s – following a formative period spent in rep at York – but had not yet succeeded in securing a regular role in a significant show. At the end of 1963 he had written a typically polite letter to Bush Bailey, the BBC’s assistant head of artists’ bookings, asking if there was any chance of an interview (‘as I don’t seem to be making a great deal of headway’).41 Bailey did see him early the following year, and filed a favourable report, but nothing tangible came of the meeting except for more of the same old bits and pieces. By 1968, most viewers would have glimpsed him at some time or other in the odd episode of such popular police drama series as Z Cars, Dixon of Dock Green and Softly Softly, or in a one-off role in a situation-comedy such as Here’s Harry, but few could have put a name to the face. The prospect of a major role in a new show such as Dad’s Army, therefore, was precisely the kind of opportunity that Beck had been waiting for. Playing a spiv actually represented something of a departure for an actor who had grown used to being cast as characters on the right side of the law: even in his two previous appearances in Croft situation-comedies he had played a police constable on the first occasion and a customs officer on the second.42 As someone who had grown up in the same working-class environment that had (with more than a little help from capitalism and rationing) formed such ambiguous characters, and also as a great fan – and gifted mimic – of Sid Field, it was a departure that Beck relished. ‘He was obviously a talented actor,’ Croft recalled. ‘He just came to me, in fact, in an audition. I had used him before, and I fancied him very much for that particular part. There weren’t any other real competitors for it – except Jimmy, of course, and we’d already ruled him out – so casting Walker turned out to be one of the easiest ones of the lot.’43

  Ian Lavender had Ann Callender to thank for the part of Private Pike. Lavender – a 22-year-old, Birmingham-born actor whose fledgling career up to this point consisted simply of two years in drama school at Bristol’s Old Vic followed by a six-month season playing juvenile leads at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre – had recently become one of Callender’s clients, and early in 1968, just before he was due to make his television debut on 5 March in a one-off ITV/Rediffusion drama called Flowers At My Feet, she urged her husband to watch him. ‘So I did,’ recalled Croft, ‘and I was most impressed. He played a young juvenile delightfully.’44 Croft had no qualms, as a BBC producer, about casting one of his wife’s clients, partly because he had great faith in her – as well as his own – judgement, and partly because he already had the BBC’s blessing to go ahead and do so:

  I’d had a considerable number of interviews at this time with Tom Sloan, because of the fact that my wife was an agent. I said, ‘Tom, look: we’ve got this corporate situation – my wife’s an agent, she’s got some good clients, but, at the same time, I don’t want to use them if somebody is going to say, “He uses his wife’s talent all the time.”’ So he said, ‘Well, no, you mustn’t not use them, David; you must also forbear to use them when somebody else of superior ability is available. But you must not deny her actors a chance for employment.’ And that was fine; that was settled. He did go on to say, ‘When you do use somebody in your wife’s list, just drop me a note’, which I always did.45

  When Callender called Lavender with the news that he was wanted at Television Centre he had no idea that the man to whom she was sending him was her husband:

  I was just sent along to see this man Croft. About a situation-comedy called Dad’s Army. It was a bit terrifying, really, because at drama school I’d been playing Romeo and Florizel and all that sort of thing, and the only comedy I’d ever done was Restoration Comedy. I knew about the Home Guard, because my father had been station sergeant at a police station that served the Austin motorworks in Birmingham, and he’d had to go and inspect them and make sure they were doing everything right, so I knew what it was. But the thought of being in a comedy – I did find that daunting. Anyway, I went and read for David. Then I was called back again the following week, and then again at the end of the week after that. And then I heard I’d got the part.46

  It was only after he had been hired that Lavender discovered just how well-connected his agent actually was:

  Ann Callender said to me, ‘I’m going to take you out to lunch, darling.’ Which she did. And she said, ‘By the way, I forgot to tell you that David Croft is my husband.’ And my face obviously dropped, because then she said, ‘Yes. That’s exactly why we didn’t tell you. But you got the part because he wants you. And I’d just like to point out – don’t forget that he can always write you out!’47

  Once Pike had been picked, Croft turned his attention to the supporting players. John Ringham, an experienced, self-styled ‘jobbing character actor’,48 was chosen to play Private Bracewell, the Wodehousian silly ass from the City; Janet Davies, a bright, reliable performer whom Croft had used in a recent episode of Beggar My Neighbour, was hired as Mrs Mavis Pike;49 Caroline Dowdeswell was recruited to play junior clerk Janet King (a hastily drawn character introduced after Michael Mills had declared that the show needed a soupçon of sex);50 Gordon Peters, a former stand-up comic who specialised in playing Hancock-style characters, was drafted in for the one-off role of the fire chief; and several seasoned professionals – including Colin Bean, Richard Jacques, Hugh Hastings, George Hancock, Vic Taylor, Richard Kitteridge, Vernon Drake, Hugh Cecil, Frank Godfrey, Jimmy Mac, David Seaforth and Desmond Cullum-Jones – were engaged (at six guineas each per episode) to make up the platoon’s back row.51 One character now remained to be cast: the nasty, nosy, noisy ARP warden.

  Croft thought more or less immediately of Bill Pertwee. Pertwee, in real life, could not have been less like the loud and loutish character Croft and Perry had created to darken Mainwaring’s moods, but he was quite capable of investing such a role with a degree of comic vulnerability that would lift it far above the realm of caricature. Like his cousin, Jon, Bill Pertwee came to television after learning his craft both in Variety – first as a colleague of Beryl Reid, later in partnership with his wife, Marion MacLeod – and radio – as a valued and versatile contributor to both Beyond Our Ken (1958–64) and Round the Horne (1965–7). After catching the eye in a series of The Norman Vaughan Show on BBC1 in 1966, he found himself increasingly in demand not only for comic cameos but also as a warm-up man for various television shows, and he started to think more seriously about pursuing work in the medium ‘to add another string to one’s bow, as it were’.52 In 1968, just as he was preparing for a season of performances at Bognor Regis, he heard from David Croft:

  I’d worked for David the previous year. It was just a small part in an episode of Hugh and I with Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd: I’d only had a couple of lines, but I had to shout at Terry Scott and push him around a wee bit in a cinema queue. That must have stuck in David’s mind, because when he was casting Dad’s Army he rang up the agency I was with [Richard Stone], found out that I was probably available and gave me a call. He said, ‘I’m starting a programme about the Home Guard, and I’ve got these couple of lines for an air-raid warden. You just come into an office and shout a bit and then go out again.’ And that was it – that was how he cast me in that.53