His wife was saddened, if not entirely surprised, therefore, when she found out that he had started drinking again. A doctor was brought in to lecture him on the damage that he was doing to his liver, and his wife ‘nagged, pleaded and wept’, but, she would recall, ‘John, for all his gentleness, was stubborn.’11 Towards the end of 1978, Joan resolved, as the last resort, to call a family conference:
I pleaded my case, then John pleaded his. He argued that it was, after all, his life, and without the normality of being able to have a drink when he fancied one, meet up with his mates in London from time to time and have a drink with them on an equal footing, then he would just as soon be dead. He said that he loved me and our life together, but for the past year and a half he had been unhappy. He preferred quality to quantity. He promised to drink nothing but beer, and that in moderation, but he was incapable of giving up alcohol completely. I was out-voted. I gave up. All I could do was treasure each day with him from then on.12
The irony was that, as soon as the beer was added to his diet, he began to put on much of the weight that he had lost, the colour came back to his face, his mood brightened and, to his great relief and delight, fresh offers of work started to arrive. He toured the Far East in a production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Bedroom Farce, took part in a revival of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever at the Lyric, Hammersmith, recorded some lucrative voice-overs for a wide range of commercials, contributed to the Peter Sellers swansong movie The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu (1980), and, on television, played the lead role in David Mercer’s Flint (BBC1, 1978), portrayed a priest in Brideshead Revisited (Granada, 1981) and, at the request of David Croft, made a special guest appearance in an episode of Hi-de-Hi!13 ‘They were quality years of a good vintage,’ his wife would reflect, ‘during which he drank moderately. We were closer than ever, and happier.’14
The other ex-members of the cast were similarly industrious. Clive Dunn went on a cabaret tour of New Zealand, made his opera debut as the drunken gaoler Frosch in the ENO production of Die Fledermaus, appeared as Verges in the 1984 BBC2 production of Much Ado About Nothing and starred in four series of the children’s television show Grandad (BBC1, 1979–84). Ian Lavender was active in the theatre as both a performer and a director, but also appeared on television in several more situation-comedies, including the revival of Frank Muir and Denis Norden’s The Glums (LWT, 1978–9) and, as Tom the dentist, Have I Got You … Where You Want Me? (Granada, 1981). Bill Pertwee, in addition to his regular stage, television and radio work, began a second career as an author of popular showbusiness histories;15 and Frank Williams continued to figure on the small screen, and, most memorably, in Croft and Perry comedies. John Laurie, meanwhile, resisted the chance to return to the theatre – ‘At my time of life,’ he explained, ‘who wants to be commuting at midnight?’16 – but, in spite of his fast-failing health, he still managed to summon up sufficient strength for one last spirited performance, in an edition of BBC2’s nostalgic The Old Boy Network (1979),17 before his death, at the age of eighty-three, on 23 June 1980. Arnold Ridley, on the other hand, went straight from the last episode of Dad’s Army into his very first pantomime,18 collected an OBE in 1982, and, although physical infirmity prevented him from accepting most offers of work, he refused to contemplate an ‘official’ retirement (‘When I die,’ he liked to say, ‘I want to break a contract’).19
All of the actors took care to remain in touch with each other socially, but the nearest they came to a professional reunion20 was at the start of the 1980s, when Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles – the two men who had been responsible for adapting the original scripts of Dad’s Army for radio – came up with an idea for a post-war ‘sequel’. The show, which they proposed to call It Sticks Out Half a Mile, would open in 1948 with the return to England of George Mainwaring after a two-year spell working as a supervisor in a cuckoo clock factory in Switzerland (the chilly Swiss air, it seems, did not suit Elizabeth’s delicate chest); he settles in Frambourne – a few miles further down the coast from Walmington-on-Sea – and resolves to buy the town’s dilapidated pier in order to save it from demolition. When, however, he visits the local branch of Swallow Bank, he is greatly distressed to discover that the manager with whom he must plead for a loan is none other than his old chief clerk and sergeant, Arthur Wilson.21
Once Croft and Perry had given their blessing to the project, a pilot script was written. Snoad gave it to Arthur Lowe, who liked it enough to recommend making it into a series for television.22 No takers could be found, however, and so Snoad took it to BBC Radio 2, and a pilot programme – co-starring Lowe and Le Mesurier – was duly recorded in the summer of 1981 (although never broadcast).23 A series was commissioned, but then, on 15 April 1982, before all of the scripts had been completed, Arthur Lowe – as he always said he would – ‘keeled over’ and died, from a stroke, in his dressing room at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre.24 ‘Few can die and have it said about them that their passing caused as much grief as their living caused laughter,’ declared the Daily Mirror in its leader. ‘But it is true about Arthur Lowe.’25 The surviving members of the Dad’s Army cast mourned the loss of their friend and colleague – Clive Dunn put it simply and sincerely when he said, ‘We’ll miss him terribly’26 – and Snoad and Knowles assumed that their project would now have to be shelved. It came as something of a surprise, therefore, when, following the memorial service that was held at St Martin-in-the Fields, Lowe’s widow, Joan, sought Snoad out and assured him that her late husband would have wanted the series, in some shape or form, to go ahead (‘Arthur thought,’ she said, ‘it had so much potential’).27 The result was that the basic story was rewritten, with Wilson now being joined at Frambourne-on-Sea by Mavis and Frank Pike: their peacetime idyll is soon spoiled, however, by the arrival of Hodges, who has decided to sell his old greengrocer’s business and persuade Wilson – via the still somewhat stupid Frank – to grant him a loan to purchase the pier. A new pilot episode, co-starring John Le Mesurier, Ian Lavender and Bill Pertwee, was recorded on 11 September 1982, and a thirteen-episode series would follow in November 1983.28
Before the ill-fated project could run for any longer, however, John Le Mesurier fell ill. Early one morning in the summer of 1983, he began to haemorrhage, and was rushed to hospital. He was discharged after a week, put on a strict salt-free diet, and told to rest as much as possible, but, a month or so later, he haemorrhaged again, and it was now clear that he was terminally ill. He lasted until the middle of November, when, in a bed in Ramsgate hospital, he squeezed his wife’s hand, whispered, ‘Darling, I’m fed up of it now and I think I’d like to die,’ then squeezed again, mumbled, ‘It’s all been rather lovely,’ and slipped into a coma.29 After his death, his family honoured his wish by placing the following announcement in the obituary column of The Times: ‘John Le Mesurier wishes it to be known that he “conked out” on November 15th. He sadly misses family and friends.’30
They were all there, at St Paul’s in Covent Garden, for the memorial service for the sad-eyed, funny, gentle man who had always believed that the most important words in the English language were ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.31 ‘Things did happen to him,’ said Derek Taylor in his affectionate tribute. ‘He told me once he had, that very week, seen a hen fall over as it walked down a lane. “Not an everyday sight,” he said. He wrote to me from London in 1980: “At 3 a.m. the bell rang and there was someone breathing heavily through the letterbox saying that he had met me in Tregunter Road, Earls Court, in 1950 and had something to show me. We called the police and sent him merrily on his way.”’32 There were more stories, and jokes, and music (from ‘Le Mez’s’ favourite movie, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday). ‘He knew that life could be bloody,’ Taylor remarked, ‘knew that it was, but like those bad films among the good in which he appeared as that jobbing actor, there was always the shining Le Mesurier moment when things didn’t seem quite so ghastly after all.’33 After the service, on the steps outside, Ian Lavender and Bill Pertwe
e stopped to speak to Le Mesurier’s widow, Joan. ‘While we were talking,’ Lavender recalled, ‘a little man whom we recognised from a certain tabloid newspaper came up and literally interposed himself within the three of us and said: “Right, you can tell us now – Arthur and John really hated each other, didn’t they?” And I had to hold Bill back – I just had to hold on to his arms – while he told this man what he could do with himself’34
There was another loss early the following year, when Arnold Ridley died, aged 88, on 12 March 1984, and then Janet Davies – Mrs Pike – succumbed to cancer, at the age of 56, on 22 September 1986. Each new absence, however, seemed to revive old memories. Bill Pertwee thought back to the first time that he and Arthur Lowe dined out together in a high-class restaurant: ‘The Warden will sort out the bill,’35 Lowe had declared just loudly enough to catch the ears of the other customers. Ian Lavender reflected on the drive that he shared with John Laurie one warm summer evening after filming: ‘He said, “Son, would you like me to recite something for you?” So I said, “Yes, please, John, I’d like that very much.” He said, “D’you know Tam O’Shanter?” And I replied, “I read it once, yes.” So he said, “Right, I’ll recite Tam O’Shanter.” And I had a one-to-one performance of Tam O’Shanter from John Laurie, on a wonderful summer’s evening, all the way back to London. It was one of the great memories of my life.’36 Jimmy Perry’s mind returned to the untypically chilly morning back in April 1968 when the cast gathered in a field in Thetford for the very first day of filming: ‘It started snowing – would you believe it? – and everyone was sitting inside David’s Rolls Royce waiting for the first shot to be set up. I was terribly excited – this was the first day of filming of my first TV series! – and I went over to the car – the windows were completely steamed up – and pulled open one of the doors and said to them, “Er, we’re ready in ten minutes!” And Arthur just looked at me and replied, “We’ll come when we’re ready.” So I went back to David and said, “We’ve got a right bunch of miserable old sods here!” But they didn’t turn out badly, did they?’37
Life went on. Clive Dunn, along with his wife, Priscilla Morgan, drifted off into contented semi-retirement in the cool country hills above Vilamoura in Portugal. ‘John Le Mesurier was probably right when he said actors are rogues and vagabonds and should be treated as such,’ he reflected. ‘All they really want is the odd round of applause and the occasional villa with a swimming pool!’38 The other surviving members of the old team got on with other activities. There was even another Croft and Perry situation-comedy on television – You Rang, M’Lord (BBC1, 1988–93),39 a costly period comedy featuring both Bill Pertwee and Frank Williams in regular roles – which David Croft professed himself to feel more proud of, at least in terms of its production values, than any of his previous projects.40
Dad’s Army, however, failed to fade away. BBC1 began screening repeats in 1978, which regularly attracted audiences of more than seven million,41 and by the late 1980’s the reruns were being watched by as many as eleven million people;42 BBC Worldwide began releasing three-episode video compilations at the start of the 1990s;43 a ‘Dad’s Army Appreciation Society’ was established in 1993;44 and the programme continued to be broadcast overseas, via various means, in a vast number of countries ranging from Canada to Croatia.45 A new generation started to watch, enjoy and, in time, treasure the old shows. ‘Children keep discovering it,’ said Frank Williams. ‘There was this three-year-old girl whom I met when I was getting ready to do a reading for a service given by a vicar friend of mine. He said, “Oh, I’d like you to meet your youngest fan,” and there she was. Apparently they’d recently shown an episode on television in which I’d had a bit of a row with Mainwaring about the use of the office, because this little thing turned to me and said: “Now, please tell me: that desk – is it really yours, or is it really Captain Mainwaring’s?” I thought, well, not only is she watching it, she’s taking the plot in, too! So that was really very gratifying.’46
The programme continued to be used – and, on occasion, misused47 – throughout the 1990s and into the next millennium by ratings-conscious schedulers who knew that Dad’s Army, unlike so many situation-comedies of more recent vintage, could always be relied on to bring in a broad range of viewers; more than two decades since the show came to a close, repeats of individual episodes were still being seen by audiences of well over six million.48 When, in the year 2000, the British Film Institute published its list – compiled from a poll of 1,600 programme-makers, critics and executives – of the hundred best British television programmes, of any kind, from the past half-century, Dad’s Army was placed thirteenth, and the only surprise was that it had not been rated even higher.49 ‘It’s sad that the likes of Arthur [Lowe] and John [Le Mesurier] and the others didn’t live to see the full extent of the show’s fame,’ said Jimmy Perry, ‘because it’s been quite something.’50
There have, over the years, been countless conventions, ‘events’ and tributes to the programme. A ‘Dad’s Army Day’ was held on 13 May 2000 in Thetford, during which most of the surviving members of the original cast and crew – including David Croft and Jimmy Perry, Harold Snoad, Clive Dunn, Bill Pertwee and Frank Williams – were driven in a procession of open-top Second World War-vintage vehicles through all of those areas of the town that used to double as Walmington-on-Sea. The following day, ‘The Dad’s Army Collection’ – featuring many authentic artefacts from both the show and the era, as well as several specially-made walk-in shops and an accurate reconstruction of the church hall and its office – was opened at Bressingham Steam Museum, near Diss in Norfolk, in front of a crowd of more than two thousand.51 ‘It was unbelievable,’ said Frank Williams. ‘When we drove into the main square in Thetford the people were four or five deep, and then the next day, when we arrived in Bressingham, the crowds were just as large. And you could see fairly elderly pensioners, middle-aged men and women, and very small children, all smiling and cheering and waving as we went past. It was absolutely amazing.’52
‘I can’t believe I did it,’ said Clive Dunn to Jimmy Perry as the two men sat in the back of a taxi and reminisced about the old days. ‘It was all magic, like a fairytale.’53 It is easy to see what he meant: there was – there is – something magical about it. Dad’s Army was only a television programme, only a situation-comedy, but every single time that it comes on the screen, every time that the music begins and the lyrics start – ‘Who do you think …’ – we sit back, look forward, and, for the next thirty minutes, we smile.
EPILOGUE
If television is to take life seriously, and if we are to take television seriously, whether as practitioners or viewers, we have to recognise that the modern world makes many demands; it asks for laughter and reality and delight and stories and escape and insight and information and reassurance. Above all, it asks that as little of the coinage as possible be false. It asks for a true bill. That is what taking television seriously means.
HUW WHELDON1
It is glory – to have been tested, to have had our little quality and cast our little spell. The thing is to have made somebody care.
HENRY JAMES2
One day, some years after Dad’s Army had ended, Ian Lavender, while on a tour of New Zealand, was interviewed about the old show:
INTERVIEWER Of course, there’s not many of you left now, are there?
LAVENDER No, there aren’t.
INTERVIEWER Because, well, Arthur Lowe is dead, isn’t he?
LAVENDER Yes, Arthur’s dead.
INTERVIEWER How did he die?
LAVENDER Arthur died in-between shows, in his dressing room, at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham.
INTERVIEWER Oh. And Jimmy Beck, the spiv, he was the first to go, wasn’t he?
LAVENDER Yes. Appalling. He was so young.
INTERVIEWER Is the Scotsman still alive?
LAVENDER John Laurie?
INTERVIEWER Yes, John Laurie. Is he still alive?
LAVEND
ER No, sadly. John Laurie is dead. Very sadly, because he was godfather to one of my sons.
INTERVIEWER Oh. Of course, Arnold Ridley, he’s dead, too, isn’t he?
LAVENDER Yes. Arnold died.
INTERVIEWER Is your mother still alive?
LAVENDER Pike’s mother? Jan Davies? No, I’m afraid not.
INTERVIEWER Ah. And didn’t I read somewhere that the verger passed away?
LAVENDER Yes, sadly, Teddy died just after the last series.
INTERVIEWER And, of course, John Le Mes – how do you pronounce that name?
LAVENDER ‘Le Mesurier’. Rhymes with ‘treasurer’.
INTERVIEWER Right, John Le Mesurier. He’s dead. He had a very funny epitaph, didn’t he?
LAVENDER Yes. He wrote it himself: ‘Conked out.’ (There is a short, thoughtful pause before the final question.)
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