Croft and Perry’s fine-tuning had paid off: most of the old stability, and charm, had been restored. They ended the year in style, with a special 40-minute episode for Christmas, entitled ‘My Brother and I’, which featured a glorious tour de force from Arthur Lowe as not only George Mainwaring but also his crude and crapulous travelling-salesman brother, Barry:
BARRY D’you want a drink?
GEORGE No, thank you.
BARRY Please yourself.
GEORGE I should have thought 5.30 in the afternoon was a bit early even for you.
BARRY Po-face! Look at you: rolled umbrella, striped trousers, pot hat! ‘Course, you’ve ‘got on’, haven’t you?
GEORGE I’m the Branch Manager.
BARRY Nice for you. Put your hand in the till when you get a bit short, do you?
GEORGE Don’t be ridiculous!46
‘That episode was a real eye-opener for me,’ recalled Ian Lavender, ‘because it was just about the conflict between these two characters, Mainwaring and his awful brother, and the setting for it could have been just about anything. I thought: “Ah! Jimmy and David obviously feel, now, that they can write about things that have no reference at all to either the Home Guard or the war.” That’s when I realised: “Oh, I see – we’ve really made it. It’s made it. This is something rather special.”’47
Further proof of the fact that the programme was now firmly established as the nation’s favourite situation-comedy was provided in time-honoured fashion by the nation’s press, which seemed increasingly torn between taking its achievements for granted and searching for signs of decline. ‘One was aware that Dad’s Army was a great comedy show,’ Peter Black would later confess, ‘but did not go on to say: “What a fine institution the BBC must be, to be able to preserve such high quality in a comedy series aimed at the likes of us.” One wrote a letter to say that much as one might have enjoyed the show one’s pleasure was ruined by the fact that Capt. Mainwaring’s form of reply to superior officers on the telephone was contrary to the correct procedure as practised daily by the writer for four years in the Home Guard at Wisbech, Cambs.’48 ‘The more successful the show became,’ remembered Ian Lavender, ‘the more convinced some journalists seemed to be that we were at each other’s throats’:
They just wouldn’t accept that we really did like each other. They’d always be at it, digging away – ‘I hear that Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier don’t talk to each other’; ‘Arnold Ridley and John Laurie can’t stand the sight of each other, can they?’; ‘Is it true that David and Jimmy had a blazing row last week?’ – and you’d answer, ‘No. We all get on. Really. We’re genuinely fond of each other’, but they would not accept it. The sad thing was that it made us guarded, because, as friends, as mates, we’d play jokes on each other, and send each other up, so we had to be very careful about what we said to the press, or to people who might then talk to the press, or else some tongue-in-cheek remark would have been snapped up and used against us. It was extraordinary, really, that ‘build ’em up and then knock ’em down’ attitude. They really wanted us to hate each other.49
There had never been any shortage of backstage badinage, and it was certainly very much in evidence on the morning in 1975 when the award of an OBE to Clive Dunn was made public (Arthur Lowe chose to mark the occasion by announcing that ‘when it comes to my turn I don’t want any of that bargain basement stuff’,50 while John Laurie speculated that his politically active colleague had most probably secured the honour by ‘climbing up Harold Wilson’s arse’).51 There was also, by this stage, a deep-rooted sense of camaraderie, as well as a shared feeling of pride in what their programme had achieved (even the normally circumspect Arthur Lowe took to calling it ‘a legend in its time’).52
The show’s remarkable reputation seemed set to be enhanced even further when an ambitious Los Angeles-based producer by the name of Herman Rush secured the exclusive rights to adapt Dad’s Army for the American market. Rush was eager to follow in the footsteps of the illustrious Norman Lear, whose US versions of Till Death Us Do Part (All in The Family, launched in 1971)53 and Steptoe and Son (Sanford and Son, 1972)54 had soon established themselves as two of the most popular shows on network television. Rush’s own first, and somewhat rash, attempt at a transatlantic adaptation, Love Thy Neighbor,55 had been cancelled in 1973 after a single miserable season, but he believed that in Dad’s Army he had found the kind of distinctive vehicle with which he could make his mark. Croft and Perry furnished him with their own ‘Americanised’ script – based on their 1968 opening BBC episode, but now set in ‘Tulls Point’, a small town on the coast of Maine, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor – along with some advice concerning the casting of the characters: Mainwaring (whom they renamed ‘Cornelius Bishop’) should be, they said, a ‘Gail Gordon type’, Wilson was ‘a Clifton Webb type’ and Godfrey ‘an Edward Everett Horton type’.56 Rush, however, turned instead to an experienced American writer, Arthur Julian,57 to restyle the show for the US audience.
Rush and Julian flew over to England, watched an episode of Dad’s Army being made and studied a selection of tapes from past series. One episode, in particular, caught their eye: ‘The Deadly Attachment’. Armed with a copy of Croft and Perry’s original script, the two men travelled back to Los Angeles and put the process of ‘Americanisation’ into motion. There had been no wartime ‘Home Guard’, as such, in the US,58 so the name of the force was changed to the ‘Volunteer Civilian Defence Corps’, and the setting switched from Walmington-on-Sea to Long Island, New York. Julian then transformed Captain George Mainwaring into ‘Captain Nick Rosatti’, a vain and somewhat garrulous Italian-American, and Sergeant Arthur Wilson into ‘Sergeant Max Raskin’, a wise-cracking Jew; he also renamed Pike ‘Bobby Henderson’, merged the personalities of Jones and Godfrey into ‘Bert Wagner’, an incontinent old soldier, and introduced a female character, Marsha Wilson, from the local aircraft plant. There was one other significant alteration: the title, Dad’s Army, was deemed far too demographically specific for US television’s taste, and so Julian renamed it The Rear Guard.
The actual storyline did not, in fact, stray too far from the BBC original – the volunteers have to guard a six-man German U-boat crew until the Regular Army is able to collect them – but most of the references were revised so as to match the new milieu. The ‘fish and chip supper’, for example, was transformed, for the US version, into a snack from ‘Greenblatt’s kosher delicatessen’:
ROSATTI
All right, get six salami sandwiches.
U-BOAT CAPTAIN I would like corned beef.
ROSATTI All right. One corned beef …
U-BOAT CAPTAIN Lean.
ROSATTI … and five salami sandwiches.
U-BOAT CAPTAIN Just a minute. (he says something in German to his crew) Make that three corned beef, two salamis and a tongue.
HENDERSON Three corned beef, two salamis and a tongue.
U-BOAT CAPTAIN Hold the mustard on the corned beef.
ROSATTI Henderson, go back to the original order – six salami sandwiches.
RASKIN On white bread, with mayonnaise … the hell with the Geneva Convention.59
The ‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’ exchange underwent the same kind of cultural conversion:
U-BOAT CAPTAIN
I’m making a note of your insults, Sergeant. Your name will go on the list, and when we win the war, you will be brought to account.
RASKIN You can put down whatever you want, but you’re not going to win this war.
U-BOAT CAPTAIN Oh yes we are …
RASKIN Oh no you’re not …
U-BOAT CAPTAIN Oh yes we are …
RASKIN Oh no …
HENDERSON Adolf Hitler is a jerk
He’s nothing but a Nazi
He thinks that he will win the war
(the U-boat Captain looks at him) He’s not so hotsy totsy.
U-BOAT CAPTAIN Your name will also go on the list. What is it?
ROSATT
I Don’t tell him, Henderson!60
Hal Cooper – a seasoned situation-comedy specialist who had previously worked on such shows as I Dream of Jeannie, The Odd Couple, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Maude – was brought in as director, and a cast was assembled that included such assured comic actors as Lou Jacobi (as Raskin), Cliff Norton (Rosatti) and Eddie Foy, Jr (Wagner). Rush and Julian also arranged for David Croft and Jimmy Perry to fly over and assist in the production. ‘It started promisingly enough,’ Perry remembered:
We arrived at Los Angeles airport and were greeted by a stretch limo – ‘You guys okay? Can I get you anything?’ – and we were driven to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. We then went down to the studio, did a week’s rehearsal – I had the privilege of meeting Eddie Foy, Jr, a wonderful performer whose father was one of the great vaudevillians, and Lou Jacobi, a marvellous Jewish comedian – and then they recorded the show. I thought it was rather good.61
The Rear Guard was broadcast on ABC at 10 pm on 10 August 1976 as an edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Pilot Film’ series. Its fate, however, appears to have been more or less sealed prior to its transmission: a preview tape had met with a frosty reception from the network’s overly-influential focus groups, and, as a consequence, the decision was made to drop it. ‘They got cold feet,’ said Jimmy Perry. ‘They’d been very enthusiastic, and then they decided it didn’t work. And David and I returned to Los Angeles airport in a yellow cab.’62
Back in Britain, meanwhile, Dad’s Army was taking a break. The cast was on tour, the writers were tired, and, as Bill Cotton explained, the BBC was doing its best to be supportive:
Success … demands a self-discipline by television companies. Somebody coined the phrase … that one was obliged to exert ‘management of creativity’. The temptations of a hit show are to flog it into the ground … [but the BBC’s] policy is to try to sustain the series. This entails a form of rationing so that the standards of production can be maintained over as long a period as possible. Showbusiness is a business. There is no reason why a series should not last for as long as 10 years if its exposure is handled in the right way.63
The result of this ‘rationing’ was that only one episode of the show – a low-key Christmas special entitled ‘The Love of Three Oranges’64 – reached the screen in 1976, but the BBC remained hopeful that it would not be long before the Dad’s Army team – or ‘my boys’,65 as Huw Wheldon had taken to calling them – was ready to return with another series.
There would not, however, be any more talk of Dad’s Army going on ‘for ever and ever’. The senior actors had always looked their age, but now they were starting to feel it. The writers had acquired other responsibilities, and a fresh set of challenges (both Croft and Perry’s It Ain’t Half Hot Mum66 and Croft and Jeremy Lloyd’s Are You Being Served?67 were into their fourth series, and other projects were already in development).68 The audience was still there, but, as all of the professionals involved in the programme were experienced enough to know, no audience – no matter how enthusiastic it was at present – could be relied on to stay there indefinitely. No one wanted it to stop, but no one wanted it to spoil. Croft and Perry did agree to go on, but not on how long. The clock could now be heard ticking.
CHAPTER XIV
Never Too Old?
It is not so much that we care to be alive a hundred or a thousand years hence, any more than to have been alive a hundred or a thousand years ago: but the thing lies here, that we would all of us wish the present moment to last for ever. We would be as we are, and would have the world remain just as it is, to please us.1
WILLIAM HAZLITT
There is a time – a right time – to stop any series, no matter how much you’d like to keep going. You might not look out for it, but I think you know when it’s arrived.
JIMMY PERRY2
Starting and stopping is not easy for a situation-comedy; it prefers to stay in the middle, the moment, for as long as is possible. Dad’s Army, for example, progressed steadily, and with admirable historical accuracy, from the summer of 1940 (in the first series) to the summer of 1942 (in the sixth),3 and then seemed disinclined to progress any further. It came as no great surprise, therefore, when Croft and Perry revealed that the ninth series would be set, yet again, in 1942. They did not want it all to end, even though they knew it had to.
The decision had very nearly been taken out of their hands. Early in 1977, John Le Mesurier had fallen seriously ill in Perth, Australia, during rehearsals for a play. He was flown straight home and was met at Heathrow by his wife, Joan. ‘He was in a wheelchair looking desperately ill,’ she recalled. ‘He seemed to have aged ten years in the few weeks he had been away and I was hard pressed to hold back the tears.’4 He was taken to the hospital near his home in Ramsgate, where he was diagnosed as suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and warned that if he continued consuming alcohol he would die. Joan consulted a naturopath, who prescribed a diet of raw fruit for one month, followed by raw vegetables and salads. ‘John moaned,’ she remembered, ‘but I had the upper hand.’5 His liver – much to the specialist’s surprise – started to mend itself, although he remained seriously ill: ‘He was out of danger, but so weak he could hardly walk unaided. He was as thin as a stick, and his eyes were great sunken hollows in his craggy face. People who came to visit were shocked at his appearance.’6
Le Mesurier was still in very poor health when, in June, the call came to join the rest of the Dad’s Army team in Thetford for another fortnight of filming. He knew that he was not really well enough to work, and he also knew that this would almost certainly be the show’s ‘final parade’,7 and he could not bear to miss it. His colleagues had been forewarned about the fragility of his condition, but, when he arrived, they still found it hard to hide their distress at how frail and emaciated their friend had become. ‘He was pathetic,’ recalled David Croft:
He looked so ill. I remember one day in particular, when the weather had turned rather cold, being so concerned about him that I ordered all the lights to be arranged around him in a sort of six-foot square area and then turning them all on to warm him up a bit. He was in such a bad way. It was very hard, very sad. And when we went on to do the last episode in the studio I remember thinking, ‘Well, that’s the last we shall see of John Le Mesurier.’8
Le Mesurier was not the only member of the cast to cause the team concern. Arthur Lowe, for example, had been suffering for some time from narcolepsy, a rare neurological disorder characterised by intermittent and uncontrollable episodes of drowsiness during the daytime, and, although he responded to this frustrating and sometimes frightening condition with disarming good humour – ‘The mulligatawny’s not as good as it was,’9 he would observe as, upon waking, he raised his head from out of the soup bowl – it was starting to have a subtle but significant effect upon his acting. ‘There’d be times when he’d seem sluggish,’ said David Croft. ‘And I don’t think there can be much doubt that his timing wasn’t quite what it was. We’d cover it up – we’d edit out some of the pauses, the “ums” and “ahs”, and tighten scenes up – but he was slowing down.’10 Some of the other actors were also beginning to struggle: Arnold Ridley’s mobility was, at the age of 81, more restricted than ever, and John Laurie’s emphysema was getting progressively worse. ‘We realised that, well, none of them was getting any younger,’ said Jimmy Perry. ‘One day it just sort of hits you like that. They were the kind of tough old pros who wanted to go on till they dropped, but [David and I] knew that we’d have to finish it. “Leave the audience wanting more” – that was the motto.’11
Studio recording followed in July. David Croft had other commitments, and so all but one of the six episodes were directed by his new assistant, Bob Spiers.12 It had been confirmed, by this stage,13 that this series would indeed mark the end of the show’s nine-year run (although, as Arthur Lowe revealed to reporters, there was still a possibility that the team would reunite for ‘the occasional appearance in a Christmas special or something’)
,14 and, as a consequence, the general mood on the set was quietly, but increasingly, emotional. John Le Mesurier likened the experience to that of ‘an old boys’ reunion, made all the more poignant by the knowledge that this was the final roll-call, the “last Post” as it were’.15
Any lingering doubts as to how ‘final’ this final series would turn out to be were dispelled one month later, on 29 August, with the death, at the age of 63, of Edward Sinclair.16 ‘That really did mark the end of it,’ said Ian Lavender:
I remember all of us going back to Teddy’s house after his funeral. It was a beautiful sunny day. We were standing by the french windows, looking out on to the little back garden, when David Croft suddenly said: ‘Well, I think that’s it, don’t you?’ And everyone went: ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ There might have been some value in us doing another hour-long special, at least, about, say, how we coped after the war when we had to settle back into civilian life, but I can see why David and Jimmy thought: ‘Look, we went through Jimmy Beck’s death, we’re not going to go through all of that again for the sake of six more episodes, or even one special. So that’s it. We’ve done it. We’ve done the last episode.’17
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