Dad’s Army: The Story of a Very British Comedy. Graham McCann
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the role on television in both Hancock’s Half-Hour (1956–60) and Hancock (1961), and more recently he had shown a little of the warmer side to his nature as the retired Colonel Maynard – ‘a dear old stick’24 – in the situation-comedy George and the Dragon (1966–8). Croft sent him the pilot script of Dad’s Army. Le Mesurier, on reading it, thought it had the potential to become a ‘minor situation comedy’, but he was intrigued by the news that he was wanted for the role of the sergeant rather than the captain – ‘casting directors usually saw me as officer material’.25 He read the script again, and liked it a little more: Perry, he felt, ‘knew how to turn a funny line’, and Croft, he noted, was ‘a theatre man who had brought to television a reputation for cool, calm organisation’. ‘Promising,’ he thought to himself, ‘all promising.’26 He informed his agent, Freddie Joachim, that he only had one real reservation: the fee. Joachim, who regarded the medium of television as beneath his calibre of client, proceeded, without the slightest sign of enthusiasm, to haggle on Le Mesurier’s behalf.
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,