biography

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Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, two affable, upper-crust British actors whoso tickled the public's fancy as cricket-loving Englishmen abroad that they made several more appearances together in some very popular comedies, and provided light reliefin other films. They were equally popular on radio. Although both sounded as though they came from the most afluent part of London, nothing could be further from the truth. Wayne was actually born in Wales, and Radford across the border in Chester.

Large, bluff, hearty and moustachised, light-haired Radford looked every inch an ex-army officer. He was onstage from 1922, made his film debut in America, but stuck mostly to the Englishstage until the late 1930s. Small, neat, dapper Wayne, on the other hand, with hisshining black hair, concerned look andpigeon cheeks, was a compere and comedian, and a concert-party entertainerfor the first eight years of his career fromhis 1920 debut in the Pavilion at South Wales's Barry Island. He came to Londonin 1928 and was emcee and general jokester in several West End shows, also appearing in cabaret at some of the town's swishest nightspots, including the Ritz, theDorchester and the Cafe de Paris. He didn'ttake a straight acting role until 1937, andit was only the following year that Alfred Hitchcock teamed him with Radford in The Lady Vanishes. They played Charters andCaldicott, names dreamed up by screenwriters Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder,later to become famous producer-directors.As Englishmen on a train going throughdangerous European territory, they weremore interested in cricket scores than inbodies in the corridor or missing ladies.Both Wayne and Radford proved to have adelightfully droll way of delivering inconsequential dialogue amusingly irrelevant tothe events going on around them, and theyswiftly developed a marvellous rapport.

Thecharacters cropped up again in the Gilliat/Launder-scripted Night Train to Munich, more trains, more Nazis. Radio showed aninterest and Launder and Gilliat wrote azippy serial for them, Crooks' Tour, in 1940,filmed with almost indecent haste the sameyear.

They also popped up in wartime shorts,the multi-story Millions Like Us and a secondradio serial, Secret Mission 609, bumblingtheir way to foiling yet another Nazi plot.

Launder and Gilliat had written them intoanother film, I See a Dark Stranger, but Radford and Wayne wanted the parts builtup a bit. When the writers demurred theactors declined to participate, in so doingsaying goodbye to the character names. Forwhen Radford and Wayne returned to radio,Launder and Gilliat claimed copyright ontheir film characters. So it was as Woolcottand Spencer that Radford and Wayne appeared in their first post-war series, DoubleBedlam.

These jolly comedy-thrillers, usually in eight parts, so pleased the nation's listeners that they proceeded at the rate ofone a year: Traveller's Joy, Crime GentlemenPlease, That's My Baby, Having a WonderfulCrime and May I Have the Treasure. Therewas another film, too, a funny number called It's Not Cricket, in which, as Bright andEarly, the priceless pair are private eyesdogged by a lunatic Nazi (Maurice Denham)on cases that end, appropriately, with acricket match - in which the ball contains astolen diamond.

They also made cameo appearances in two other late 1940s comedies, Helter Skelter and Stop Press Girl. Thesemost popular wearers of the old school tiewere half-way through their 1952 radio adventure, Rogues' Gallery, when Radford collapsed and died from a heart attack. He was55. Wayne gallantly carried on to the end ofthe story alone. It was a gesture in keepingwith two characters who always 'played upand played the game'.

1961 saw his last film appearance in Nothing Barred, and in 1969 Wayne was seen on TV for the last time in John Browne's Body. He died on the 17th November 1970 in Surbiton, Surrey.



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