Harry H. Corbett

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Harry H. Corbett OBE (28 February 1925 – 21 March 1982) was a distinguished English actor.

Corbett was best known for his starring role in the hugely popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 70s. Early in his career he was dubbed "the English Marlon Brando" by some sections of the British press, but typecasting prevented the development of his career as a film actor, much to his frustration.

[edit] Early life

He was born in Burma, while it was still a British colony. His father was an officer in the British Army who was stationed in the country as part of the Colonial defence forces. When he was three his mother died and Corbett was sent back to England where he was raised by an aunt in Wythenshawe, Manchester.

Corbett himself served in the armed forces during the Second World War — in the Royal Marines — and following his discharge after the war's conclusion and training as a radiographer, he took up acting as a career, initially in repertory theatre. In the early 1950s he added the middle initial 'H' to his name in order to avoid confusion with the then-popular television entertainer Harry Corbett, who was well known for his act with the hand-puppet Sooty. When asked, he would often joke that the 'H' stood for "h'anyfing" - a manner of saying the word 'anything' once found in Cockney and some other English regional dialects.

From 1958 he began to appear regularly in film roles, first coming to public attention as a very serious, intense performer, completely in contrast to the reputation he would later gain as a sitcom actor. He also guested regularly in television dramas, appearing in episodes of popular series such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (as four different characters in four different episodes between 1957 and 1960) and Police Surgeon.

[edit] Steptoe and Son

A chance meeting with writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, at the time basking in the success of their groundbreaking project Hancock's Half Hour, changed Corbett's life.

And so in 1962, Corbett appeared in "The Offer", an episode of the BBC's anthology series of one-off comedy plays, Comedy Playhouse, written by Galton and Simpson. He played Harold Steptoe, a rag and bone man living with his irascible father Albert, played by Wilfrid Brambell, in a junkyard with only their horse for company.

The play was a huge success and a full series was soon commissioned, which eventually ran, with some breaks, until 1974, where the Christmas special became the final ever episode. Although the enormous popularity of Steptoe and Son - as the series was titled - made Corbett a star, it proved to be a dead-end to his serious acting career, as he became irreversibly associated with the Harold Steptoe character in the public eye. Production on the series was also made stressful by Corbett's strained relationship with his co-star Brambell. Brambell was an alcoholic and would often be ill-prepared for rehearsals, forgetting his lines or blocking.^[1] By the end of their time on the series they were not on speaking terms outside of takes. A subsequent tour of a Steptoe and Son stage show in Australia in the late 1970s proved to be a complete disaster. On this tour Brambell also drank heavily, which sometimes affected his ability to perform.^[1] However the two re-united shortly before Corbett's death for one final peformance as Steptoe and Son in a commerical for Kenco coffee. ^[2]

The Curse of Steptoe, a BBC TV play about Corbett and his co-star Wilfrid Brambell, was broadcast on March 19, 2008 on digital BBC channel BBC Four, featuring Jason Isaacs as Corbett. The first broadcast gained the channel its highest audience figures to date, based on overnight returns. ^[3]

[edit] Other work

As well as doing pantomime, Corbett also returned to appearing in stage plays, something he was doing long before the days of Steptoe and Son.

Steptoe and Son did lead to Corbett gaining some work in comedy films, most notably starring in Carry On Screaming! in 1966 and appearing in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977). He also appeared in the Lust segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins. In 1964 he starred with Ronnie Barker in The Bargee, written by Galton and Simpson. As with many other British comedy programmes of the era, there were also two theatrically-released Steptoe and Son films: Steptoe and Son (1972) and Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973).

[edit] OBE

Corbett was a Labour Party campaigner,^[4] had appeared in a party political broadcast,^[5] and was a guest of Harold Wilson.^[1] In addition Harold Steptoe had been the Labour Party Secretary for Shepherd's Bush West in the sixth series episode Tea for Two.

In 1976 as Prime Minister, Wilson wished to have Corbett awarded an OBE, but the middle initial "H" was lost in the bureaucratic process, and the award went to the Sooty puppeteer Harry Corbett instead.^[6][7]

[edit] Later life

Corbett suffered his first heart attack in 1979 and appeared in pantomime at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley within two days of being discharged from hospital. He then suffered a serious car accident, in which he was badly hurt. He appeared shortly afterwards in the BBC detective series Shoestring, with his facial injuries obvious. Other work included a Thames Television/ITV comedy series entitled Grundy and the film Silver Dream Racer with David Essex, both made in 1980. Corbett's final acting role was in an episode of the Anglia Television/ITV anthology drama series Tales of the Unexpected, "The Mole". It featured a man who planned to tunnel into a bank, only to have forgotten that the following day was Bank Holiday Monday and that there would be no money in the vaults. Filmed shortly before his death, it was transmitted two months afterwards, in May 1982. He had died of a massive heart attack in the March of that year, at the age of 57, in Hastings, East Sussex. He is buried in the churchyard at Penhurst, East Sussex.

Corbett was married twice, firstly to the actress Sheila Steafel, and then to Maureen Blott, who bore him two children, one of whom, Susannah Corbett, is an actress, best known for the role of Ellie Pascoe in the BBC's television adaptations of Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe detective novels.

He is commemorated in the name of the Corbett Theatre at the East 15 Acting School at Loughton which was founded by Margaret Bury and Jean Newlove, two members of Theatre Workshop. In his early career he had worked with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, London.

[edit] Partial filmography

• Passing Stranger (1954)
• Nowhere to Go (1958)
• The Shakedown (1959)
• Cover Girl Killer (1959)
• Floods of Fear (1959)
• Shake Hands with the Devil (1959)
• In the Wake of a Stranger (1959)
• The Unstoppable Man (1960)
• The Big Day (1960)
• Wings of Death (1961)
• Some People (1962)
• Sammy Going South (1963)
• Sparrows Can't Sing (1963)
• What a Crazy World (1963)
• Ladies Who Do (1963)
• The Bargee (1964)
• Rattle of a Simple Man (1964)
• Joey Boy (1965)
• The Sandwich Man (1966)
• Carry on Screaming! (1966)
• Crooks and Coronets (1969)
• Steptoe and Son (1972)
• Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973)
• Percy's Progress (1974)
• Hardcore (1977)
• Jabberwocky (1977)
• Adventures of a Private Eye (1977)
• What's Up Superdoc! (1978)
• The Plank (1979)
• Silver Dream Racer (1980)

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Harry H. Corbett at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Harry H. Corbett at the Internet Movie Database