however, was disappointed to learn that he would not, on a regular basis, be joining them. Michael Mills had argued that the show’s creator and co-writer would have to make up his mind as to which side of the camera he most wanted to be, and David Croft had concurred: ‘Jimmy, I knew, had set his heart on playing the spiv – he’d actually written it with himself in mind – but I felt that, as one of the writers, he would be needed in the production box to see how things were going. I also felt, I suppose, that it wasn’t going to make for a particularly happy cast if one of the writers gave himself a role – the other actors would’ve been inclined to say that he’d written the best lines for himself.’4 Perry was by no means the first writer to find that his cunning plan had suddenly gone awry. Back in 1960, for example, the American writer Carl Reiner had created his very own starring vehicle (Head of the Family), basing the leading role of Rob Petrie expressly on himself, only to be informed by his producer that Dick Van Dyke was much more suited to playing himself than he was (and the show, as a consequence, was relaunched as The Dick Van Dyke Show).5 Perry’s sense of disappointment, nonetheless, was immense: ‘I always resented it. Always. I wrote Walker for myself. That’s how it had all started. And I wanted to be on both sides of the camera. But Michael Mills didn’t think it was a good idea and neither did David, and, in those days, I was in no position to argue. So that was that: very sad, but there you are – you can’t have everything.’6
The casting process, from the first casual discussion to the final collection of contracts, lasted several months, beginning in mid-October 1967 and ending in early March 1968. The genealogy of the characters (who were little more, so far, than garrulous strangers on paper but already intimate friends within the minds of Croft and Perry) contained the clues. Mainwaring, for example, was a composite of three people from Perry’s past: the manager of his local bank, the head of a Watford building society and Will Hay’s chronically incompetent, permanently harassed, on-screen persona (there had been a ‘Colonel Mannering’ – ‘known to the press as “the uncrowned king of Southern Arabia”’7 – in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but the name ‘Mainwaring’ was chosen for its comically ambiguous, class-sensitive pronunciation). Wilson was prompted by Perry’s aversion to the stereotypical sergeant figure:
I’d been a sergeant myself, you see, and one day, while I was serving in the Far East, this major had come up and said to me: ‘Sergeant Perry, why do you speak with a public school accent?’ And I’d replied: ‘Well, I suppose because I went to a public school.’ So he said, ‘Oh. But still: a sergeant speaking like that – it – it’s most strange!’ Well, the man was an idiot. There were more than a million men in the Royal Artillery alone, and they came from all walks of life. So this cliché that a sergeant should always look a certain way and sound a certain way – it’s just a cliché, and I wanted to get right away from that.8
Jones owed much to the elderly raconteur with whom Perry had served in the Home Guard, and a little to the bellicose sergeant at Colchester barracks who had taught him bayonet drill (‘Any doubt – get out the old cold steel, ’cause they don’t like it up ’em!’).9 Godfrey was a throwback to the Edwardian era, when discreet and deferential shop assistants would inquire politely if one was ‘being attended to’;10 Walker was drawn from memory – not only of real wartime wide boys, but also, inevitably, of the still-vivid ‘Slasher Green’, Sid Field’s kinder, gentler, comic parody; Frazer was formed from all of the old anecdotes about those Scots who had grown progressively – and aggressively – more ‘Scottish’ while in exile down south among the Sassenachs; and Pike was modelled on Perry’s own youthful experiences as a movie-mad, scarf-clad, impressionable raw recruit.
Casting Mainwaring, Perry believed, would be easy. There was one actor in particular who, in his opinion, bore a striking family resemblance to Walmington-on-Sea’s uppity little fusspot: Arthur Lowe. What impressed Perry most about Lowe was his technical brilliance: his timing – like that of Jack Benny or Robb Wilton – was flawless; his mid-sentence double takes – like those of Bob Hope or Cary Grant – were exquisite; and his control of crosstalk – like that of Will Hay or Jimmy James – was seemingly effortless. ‘You just had to watch him,’ said Perry. ‘It takes an awful long time to learn how to do those things even moderately well, but he did them beautifully.’11 Lowe had been acting professionally for more than twenty years, starting off in Manchester rep before graduating to West End musicals (including Call Me Madam, Pal Joey and The Pyjama Game), plays (Witness for the Prosecution, A Dead Secret, Ring of Truth) and movies (including a brief role as a reporter in Kind Hearts and Coronets and a more significant part in Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life). By the mid-sixties he was best known for his long-running role on television as the irascible and fastidious Leonard Swindley – first, from 1960, in Coronation Street (where he managed Gamma Garments boutique, unsuccessfully fought a local election as the founder and chairman of the Property Owners and Small Traders Party, and was jilted at the altar by the timid Emily Nugent), and then, from 1965, in a broader spin-off situation-comedy, Pardon the Expression (which saw him leave Weatherfield to become assistant manager at a northern branch of a department store called Dobson and Hawks). ‘I’d seen him in those two things,’ said Perry, ‘and somehow he’d clicked with me. He was such a funny little man.’12 By 1967, after appearing in yet another spin-off series called Turn Out the Lights, Lowe, having tired of being associated so closely with one long-running role, had left Mr Swindley behind and returned to the theatre. He was available, but, much to Perry’s surprise, the BBC did not appear to want him.
‘Arthur Lowe?’ exclaimed Michael Mills when the name first came up. ‘He doesn’t work for us!’13 This was not entirely true – he had, in the past, appeared in the odd episode of such programmes as Maigret and Z Cars – but it was true enough to make Mills (ever protective of the BBC’s distinctive identity) urge his producer to look elsewhere. David Croft had, in fact, already done so, and had settled on Thorley Walters – an actor whose most recent role on television had been that of Sir Joshua Hoot QC in BBC1’s A. P. Herbert’s Misleading Cases. Walters was no stranger to playing either stuffy or inept military characters – and in the Boulting Brothers’ satire Private’s Progress (1956) he had played Captain Bootle, who was both – although his movie career now centred on such Hammer horrors as Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966) and Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). Croft went ahead and offered him the role. Walters turned it down. ‘He thanked me very much for asking,’ recalled Croft, ‘but he said that he couldn’t think why I’d thought of him. But he would have been very good.’14 Perry, once again, suggested Arthur Lowe, but Croft, once again, already had someone else in mind: this time it was Jon Pertwee.
Pertwee was one of those actors who seemed almost too serviceable for their own good. Whenever a radio producer wanted someone to play a gibbering Norwegian, or a spluttering English aristocrat, or a windy Welshman, or just about any other comical accent, tic or turn, Pertwee invariably came top of the list (in The Navy Lark, for example, he supplied the voices for no fewer than six distinctive characters);15 whenever a television show or movie required a piece of Danny Kaye-style verbal dexterity or a quirky characterisation, Pertwee would, inevitably, find himself in demand. Croft had worked with him on an episode of Beggar My Neighbour,16 and had been very impressed: ‘He’d played this major – quite similar, really, to the part [of
