Tiddles
09-10-2006, 08:57 PM
Frank Middlemass
Popular character actor who graced stage, screen, radio and
television for more than 50 years
Carole Woddis
Monday September 11, 2006
The Guardian
The acting persona of Frank Middlemass, who has died aged
87, epitomised everyone's favourite uncle - avuncular,
sometimes a little dotty, but essentially decent. With him
around, you had the impression that humanity had not
entirely given up on benevolence. It ensured him a place as
one of our most popular character actors on radio, stage,
television and film for more than half a century, as well as
acting companion to some illustrious playing partners. He
was Toby Belch to Vivien Leigh's Viola in Twelfth Night for
the Old Vic company which toured Australia, New Zealand and
South America in 1961; on screen he appeared with Bette
Davis in Madame Sin (1972) and alongside Ryan O'Neal in
Barry Lyndon (1975), playing Sir Charles Lyndon.
But it was as the fruity-voiced, bumbling headmaster Algy
Herries, in Andrew Davies' television adapatation of RF
Delderfield's novel To Serve Them All Our Days (1980), that
Middlemass will probably be best remembered - that and his
subsequent stint as Dan Archer in the long-running radio
saga, The Archers. His Fool to Michael Hordern's Lear at the
Nottingham Playhouse, later televised (1975), was regarded
by many as definitive, and he was a brilliant General
Kutuzov in BBC television's War and Peace (1973) - because,
says a friend, he was able to show "both the power and the
vulnerability behind the power".
As with so many made famous by television, Middlemass's
skills were grounded in the long apprenticeship of theatre.
He could evoke sympathy like no other, showing this to
unforgettable effect as the old paterfamilias Martin
Vanderhof in the Islington King's Head's wonderful 1993
revival of the Kaufman and Hart classic, You Can't Take It
With You. As he got older, he got better. And with
Vanderhof, his line in affable eccentricity perfectly
expressed not only the anarchic anti-materialism of the
Grandpa who could not bother to get rich "because it took
too much time", but added to it a deep and matchless vein of
old-worldly charm and warmth.
Middlemass was born in Eaglecliffe, on the Yorkshire-Durham
border, and educated at Stockton-on-Tees. The youngest child
of a Liverpool shipping company director (he had three
sisters, all of whom predeceased him), he began acting in
1949 after a short but distinguished army career, during
which he was wounded at Dunkirk and rose to the rank of
lieutenant colonel. He was starstruck from an early age, and
since he was also a talented artist, his portraits of
leading ladies staying at the Station hotel, Newcastle,
regularly found their way into the local newspaper.
Eventually, Middlemass ran off to join a theatre company in
Penzance, and through the 1950s honed his skills in the
gruelling demands of weekly rep. Seasons with the Old Vic in
London and Bristol followed. In 1984, he joined the Royal
Shakespeare Company, where he played Friar Laurence, a
"beamingly paternal" Quince in Sheila Hancock's production
of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Holofernes in Love's Labour's
Lost and a notable Polonius to Roger Rees's Hamlet in the
Ron Daniels production, in which he brought a hint of
meddling danger to the usual comedy of the bumbling
courtier.
Other West End appearances included Little Boxes (Duchess
theatre, 1968), Rosmerholm (1977), Heartbreak House (1983)
and You Never Can Tell (1987, all Theatre Royal, Haymarket)
and The Entertainer (Shaftesbury, 1986). In 1988 he was in
the world premiere of Tom Stoppard's Artist Descending a
Staircase (King's Head) and later appeared in the British
premieres of Neil Simon's Broadway Bound (Greenwich, 1991)
and Tina Howe's Painting Churches (Southampton, 1991) with
Anna Massey and Rosemary Harris respectively. He also played
the Director in Vaclav Havel's Temptation (Westminster,
1990) and in 1992 was George Booth in the Edinburgh festival
production of Harley Granville-Barker's The Voysey
Inheritance (Royal Lyceum and on tour).
In 1982, when he was already 63, Middlemass provided Radio 4
with its fourth and final Dan Archer, humorously likening
his debut to that of a heart transplant: in danger of being
rejected either by a venerable cast or loyal audience. But
as a regular face over four decades of classic British
television comedy and drama - The Avengers, Dr Finlay,
Soldier Soldier, Miss Marple, Yes, Minister, to name but a
few - there was little danger of that, and the paternalistic
farmer flourished for a further four years. In 1992,
Middlemass was one of the original members of the north
country police series Heartbeat, in which he played Dr Alex
Ferrenby, staying through its first 21 episodes until he was
killed off at the age of 73.
A new lease of life almost immediately came his way when he
teamed up with Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer in the
long-running romantic comedy As Time Goes By (1993-2005),
playing Lionel's zanily unpredictable father, Rocky. Such
was his amazing longevity that in the 1990s he was still in
demand, appearing the length and breadth of the country. He
was a kindly Lord Augustus to Francesca Annis's Mrs Erlynne
in Birmingham Rep's production of Oscar Wilde's Lady
Windermere's Fan (1994), which transferred to the West End,
and in 1996 Uncle Willie in the 1930s classic, The
Philadelphia Story (immortalised on screen as High Society),
in Manchester Royal Exchange's inaugural production after
the IRA bomb attack that all but destroyed the theatre. In
the Chichester Theatre's revival of Pinero's farce The
Magistrate (1998), starring Ian Richardson, he was a
typically enjoyable and wayward old buffer; it later
transferred to the Savoy.
That same year he appeared as the Narrator in John Crowley's
revival of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods at the Donmar,
and two years later he was a heartbreaking old retainer,
Firs, forgotten and left to die in the English Touring
Theatre's production of The Cherry Orchard with Prunella
Scales.
Age refused to diminish him. At 84, he was still touring,
playing Canon Chasuble in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of
Being Earnest - a role, observed its director, Christopher
Luscombe, that might have been written for him.
Popular and gregarious, Middlemass never married. Offstage,
he was extremely generous, and according to his close friend
Gareth Armstrong, "as funny as he was on-stage. The two
values Frank rated most highly were loyalty and silliness."
Loyal he certainly was. Needing somewhere to stay in London
in the mid-60s, he asked the actor Geoffrey Toone (obituary,
June 3 2005) if he could borrow his spare room for a couple
of weeks. Forty years later, he was still there and to their
general amusement they were often mistaken for "an item".
They never were.
? Frank Middlemass, actor, born May 28 1919; died September
8, 2006
Popular character actor who graced stage, screen, radio and
television for more than 50 years
Carole Woddis
Monday September 11, 2006
The Guardian
The acting persona of Frank Middlemass, who has died aged
87, epitomised everyone's favourite uncle - avuncular,
sometimes a little dotty, but essentially decent. With him
around, you had the impression that humanity had not
entirely given up on benevolence. It ensured him a place as
one of our most popular character actors on radio, stage,
television and film for more than half a century, as well as
acting companion to some illustrious playing partners. He
was Toby Belch to Vivien Leigh's Viola in Twelfth Night for
the Old Vic company which toured Australia, New Zealand and
South America in 1961; on screen he appeared with Bette
Davis in Madame Sin (1972) and alongside Ryan O'Neal in
Barry Lyndon (1975), playing Sir Charles Lyndon.
But it was as the fruity-voiced, bumbling headmaster Algy
Herries, in Andrew Davies' television adapatation of RF
Delderfield's novel To Serve Them All Our Days (1980), that
Middlemass will probably be best remembered - that and his
subsequent stint as Dan Archer in the long-running radio
saga, The Archers. His Fool to Michael Hordern's Lear at the
Nottingham Playhouse, later televised (1975), was regarded
by many as definitive, and he was a brilliant General
Kutuzov in BBC television's War and Peace (1973) - because,
says a friend, he was able to show "both the power and the
vulnerability behind the power".
As with so many made famous by television, Middlemass's
skills were grounded in the long apprenticeship of theatre.
He could evoke sympathy like no other, showing this to
unforgettable effect as the old paterfamilias Martin
Vanderhof in the Islington King's Head's wonderful 1993
revival of the Kaufman and Hart classic, You Can't Take It
With You. As he got older, he got better. And with
Vanderhof, his line in affable eccentricity perfectly
expressed not only the anarchic anti-materialism of the
Grandpa who could not bother to get rich "because it took
too much time", but added to it a deep and matchless vein of
old-worldly charm and warmth.
Middlemass was born in Eaglecliffe, on the Yorkshire-Durham
border, and educated at Stockton-on-Tees. The youngest child
of a Liverpool shipping company director (he had three
sisters, all of whom predeceased him), he began acting in
1949 after a short but distinguished army career, during
which he was wounded at Dunkirk and rose to the rank of
lieutenant colonel. He was starstruck from an early age, and
since he was also a talented artist, his portraits of
leading ladies staying at the Station hotel, Newcastle,
regularly found their way into the local newspaper.
Eventually, Middlemass ran off to join a theatre company in
Penzance, and through the 1950s honed his skills in the
gruelling demands of weekly rep. Seasons with the Old Vic in
London and Bristol followed. In 1984, he joined the Royal
Shakespeare Company, where he played Friar Laurence, a
"beamingly paternal" Quince in Sheila Hancock's production
of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Holofernes in Love's Labour's
Lost and a notable Polonius to Roger Rees's Hamlet in the
Ron Daniels production, in which he brought a hint of
meddling danger to the usual comedy of the bumbling
courtier.
Other West End appearances included Little Boxes (Duchess
theatre, 1968), Rosmerholm (1977), Heartbreak House (1983)
and You Never Can Tell (1987, all Theatre Royal, Haymarket)
and The Entertainer (Shaftesbury, 1986). In 1988 he was in
the world premiere of Tom Stoppard's Artist Descending a
Staircase (King's Head) and later appeared in the British
premieres of Neil Simon's Broadway Bound (Greenwich, 1991)
and Tina Howe's Painting Churches (Southampton, 1991) with
Anna Massey and Rosemary Harris respectively. He also played
the Director in Vaclav Havel's Temptation (Westminster,
1990) and in 1992 was George Booth in the Edinburgh festival
production of Harley Granville-Barker's The Voysey
Inheritance (Royal Lyceum and on tour).
In 1982, when he was already 63, Middlemass provided Radio 4
with its fourth and final Dan Archer, humorously likening
his debut to that of a heart transplant: in danger of being
rejected either by a venerable cast or loyal audience. But
as a regular face over four decades of classic British
television comedy and drama - The Avengers, Dr Finlay,
Soldier Soldier, Miss Marple, Yes, Minister, to name but a
few - there was little danger of that, and the paternalistic
farmer flourished for a further four years. In 1992,
Middlemass was one of the original members of the north
country police series Heartbeat, in which he played Dr Alex
Ferrenby, staying through its first 21 episodes until he was
killed off at the age of 73.
A new lease of life almost immediately came his way when he
teamed up with Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer in the
long-running romantic comedy As Time Goes By (1993-2005),
playing Lionel's zanily unpredictable father, Rocky. Such
was his amazing longevity that in the 1990s he was still in
demand, appearing the length and breadth of the country. He
was a kindly Lord Augustus to Francesca Annis's Mrs Erlynne
in Birmingham Rep's production of Oscar Wilde's Lady
Windermere's Fan (1994), which transferred to the West End,
and in 1996 Uncle Willie in the 1930s classic, The
Philadelphia Story (immortalised on screen as High Society),
in Manchester Royal Exchange's inaugural production after
the IRA bomb attack that all but destroyed the theatre. In
the Chichester Theatre's revival of Pinero's farce The
Magistrate (1998), starring Ian Richardson, he was a
typically enjoyable and wayward old buffer; it later
transferred to the Savoy.
That same year he appeared as the Narrator in John Crowley's
revival of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods at the Donmar,
and two years later he was a heartbreaking old retainer,
Firs, forgotten and left to die in the English Touring
Theatre's production of The Cherry Orchard with Prunella
Scales.
Age refused to diminish him. At 84, he was still touring,
playing Canon Chasuble in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of
Being Earnest - a role, observed its director, Christopher
Luscombe, that might have been written for him.
Popular and gregarious, Middlemass never married. Offstage,
he was extremely generous, and according to his close friend
Gareth Armstrong, "as funny as he was on-stage. The two
values Frank rated most highly were loyalty and silliness."
Loyal he certainly was. Needing somewhere to stay in London
in the mid-60s, he asked the actor Geoffrey Toone (obituary,
June 3 2005) if he could borrow his spare room for a couple
of weeks. Forty years later, he was still there and to their
general amusement they were often mistaken for "an item".
They never were.
? Frank Middlemass, actor, born May 28 1919; died September
8, 2006