Arthur Brough
Encyclopedia
Arthur Brough was a British actor, best known for portraying the character of senior menswear salesman Mr. Grainger on the BBC
sitcom Are You Being Served?
in the mid-1920s. After graduating, he joined a Shakespearean theatrical troupe where he met his wife-to-be, actress Elizabeth Addyman. After they married, they used their wedding dowry as collateral to rent the Leas Pavilion, a repertory theatre in Folkestone
, Kent. They had one daughter, Joanna, who was educated at Ashford
School for Girls.
Arthur both ran the company ("The Arthur Brough Players") and acted in the shows and, once the new Folkestone rep was established, he established new repertory companies in Bradford
, Bristol
, Blackpool
, Keighley
, Leeds
, Lincoln
, Oxford
and Southampton
, as well as other acting companies throughout the country. With the outbreak of World War II
, he enlisted in the Royal Navy
, in which he served for the duration of the war. His service included helping with the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, his ship returning to the rescue scene several times.
, who appeared in The Guinea Pig in 1948: Eric Lander, later a star of the TV series No Hiding Place, in 1949: Polly James
in the 1960s: and Anne Stallybrass
, who started out as ASM in 1960 and went on to play Ida the maid in Pool's Paradise by Philip King; as well as appearing in The Aspern Papers, Candida, and A Taste of Honey at the little Folkestone theatre. Others included Andrew Jack: Sydney Sturgess
, who went on to marry Barry Morse
: and Trevor Bannister
, who would later act alongside Brough in Are You Being Served?
In those days a local repertory company would present a fresh play each week, to rival the cinemas, with a small stable cast rehearsing one play by day, whilst performing what they had rehearsed the previous week each evening, with a mid-week 'tea' matinee. Since there was a limited number of actors in the company for economic reasons, they often had to play characters far from their own age or appearance. Brough took his company on tour, and helped establish rep companies in Southend and Eastbourne
.
, Brough predicted the eclipse of repertory theatre as a viable entertainment form. In the '60s he began seeking roles in the mass media, appearing in small roles in movies and television. His daughter, Joanna Hutton, said this about his forecast of the decline of repertory theatre: 'He was very astute and unsentimental about it. He realized the era was over and that he must diversify'. According to his daughter, he first found it hard adjusting from stage to screen. "He realized how hammy he was. He used to take the mickey out of himself; he'd always acted in a Shakespearean manner and suddenly realized he had to tone down his performance for film."
One of the first jobs Brough did away from the stage was the film The Green Man
with Alastair Sim
, in which he played the landlord of the eponymous hotel. He had a minor role opposite Jayne Mansfield
in the 1960 film The Challenge, and made guest appearances in TV shows such as Upstairs, Downstairs
(Episode 3.2), Dad's Army
, Z-Cars
, The Persuaders
and Jason King
. He also continued to appear in theatrical productions, including Half a Sixpence
(1967), playing a shopkeeper. The Folkestone Rep continued until 1969 before closing at the time that Brough's wife Elizabeth began to suffer ill-health.
and David Croft. Initially a pilot episode in the Comedy Playhouse slot, it was well-received and commissioned for a series in May 1973. Set in a fading department store, Brough played the senior menswear salesman, with assistants Mr. Humphries (John Inman
) and Mr. Lucas (Trevor Bannister
). The show became enormously popular, with an audience of 22 million in 1979, and ran until 1985.
After the show completed its fifth season in 1977, all was going well when, on Easter Sunday (26 March) 1978, Arthur Brough's wife of 50 years, Elizabeth, died, and the emotionally devastated Brough announced he was quitting acting. According to his daughter, he stayed with her for a few weeks, during which time Jeremy Lloyd
and David Croft made contact to say they were writing him into the next series. However, he died just six weeks after his wife, on 28 May 1978, in Folkestone. Croft decided not to have another actor take over the part of Mr. Grainger, so his character in Are You Being Served? was replaced by Mr. Tebbs, played by James Hayter.
credited him with helping train a generation of actors. His colleagues have fond memories of working with Brough, who, as his daughter noted, "was a highly respected actor who'd spent forty years in the profession." At the time of his death, David Croft said: "Arthur created a living character who was the inspiration for much of the humour. His personality made him a pivot round which a whole lot of laughter and affection revolved."
With a mischievous sense of humour, he would often pull pranks on the rest of the cast during recordings. Despite this, however, Trevor Bannister held him in very high regard, saying of him that he was a "wicked old man but a wonderful man." David Croft recalls the time Arthur would disappear from the set. 'Whenever we were rehearsing he'd vanish at about three minutes to eleven.. For a while we wondered where he went, but eventually discovered that he'd nip next door to the pub for a quick Pink Gin
. We'd watch from the window as this little figure hurled towards the pub - we never spoke to him about it. One day when he returned, John Inman
asked where he'd been. He made some excuse, but what he'd forgotten was that it was pouring with rain and his bald head was soaking wet!'
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
sitcom Are You Being Served?
Are You Being Served?
Are You Being Served? is a British sitcom broadcast from 1972 to 1985. It was set in the ladies' and gentlemen's clothing departments of Grace Brothers, a large, fictional London department store. It was written mainly by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, with contributions by Michael Knowles and John...
Theatre
The diminutive actor (5'2") originally wanted to become a teacher, but couldn't get a job and so went to work in a solicitor's office. He found work there too mundane and he began to take an interest in the theatre. After indulging in amateur theatricals, Brough attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic ArtRoyal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
in the mid-1920s. After graduating, he joined a Shakespearean theatrical troupe where he met his wife-to-be, actress Elizabeth Addyman. After they married, they used their wedding dowry as collateral to rent the Leas Pavilion, a repertory theatre in Folkestone
Folkestone
Folkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
, Kent. They had one daughter, Joanna, who was educated at Ashford
Ashford, Kent
Ashford is a town in the borough of Ashford in Kent, England. In 2005 it was voted the fourth best place to live in the United Kingdom. It lies on the Great Stour river, the M20 motorway, and the South Eastern Main Line and High Speed 1 railways. Its agricultural market is one of the most...
School for Girls.
Arthur both ran the company ("The Arthur Brough Players") and acted in the shows and, once the new Folkestone rep was established, he established new repertory companies in Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
, Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, Blackpool
Blackpool
Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...
, Keighley
Keighley
Keighley is a town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England. It is situated northwest of Bradford and is at the confluence of the River Aire and the River Worth...
, Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, Lincoln
Lincoln, Lincolnshire
Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England.The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of 85,595; the 2001 census gave the entire area of Lincoln a population of 120,779....
, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
, as well as other acting companies throughout the country. With the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he enlisted in the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
, in which he served for the duration of the war. His service included helping with the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, his ship returning to the rescue scene several times.
After the war
Upon being demobilized, he resumed his acting career by reopening the Folkestone rep. Many notable actors began their careers with the Arthur Brough Players, including Peter BarkworthPeter Barkworth
Peter Wynn Barkworth was an English actor.-Early life:Peter Barkworth was born at Margate, Kent. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Bramhall in Cheshire and Barkworth was educated at Stockport School. His headmaster wanted him to go to university but Barkworth had set his heart on a career...
, who appeared in The Guinea Pig in 1948: Eric Lander, later a star of the TV series No Hiding Place, in 1949: Polly James
Polly James
Polly James is an award winning British actresswith a varied career in theatre, film, television and radio spanning nearly 40 years...
in the 1960s: and Anne Stallybrass
Anne Stallybrass
Anne Stallybrass is a British actress who trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London.She was born in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex...
, who started out as ASM in 1960 and went on to play Ida the maid in Pool's Paradise by Philip King; as well as appearing in The Aspern Papers, Candida, and A Taste of Honey at the little Folkestone theatre. Others included Andrew Jack: Sydney Sturgess
Sydney Sturgess
Dorothy Anna "Sydney" Sturgess was a British-Canadian actress. She is best known for her work with the Shaw Festival and the Stratford Festival of Canada...
, who went on to marry Barry Morse
Barry Morse
Herbert "Barry" Morse was an Anglo-Canadian actor of stage, screen, and radio best known for his roles in the ABC television series The Fugitive and the British sci-fi drama Space: 1999...
: and Trevor Bannister
Trevor Bannister
Trevor Gordon Bannister was an English actor best known for playing the womanising junior salesman Mr. Lucas in the sitcom Are You Being Served? from 1972 to 1979, and for his role as Toby Mulberry Smith in the longest-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, from 2003 until it ended its run in 2010...
, who would later act alongside Brough in Are You Being Served?
In those days a local repertory company would present a fresh play each week, to rival the cinemas, with a small stable cast rehearsing one play by day, whilst performing what they had rehearsed the previous week each evening, with a mid-week 'tea' matinee. Since there was a limited number of actors in the company for economic reasons, they often had to play characters far from their own age or appearance. Brough took his company on tour, and helped establish rep companies in Southend and Eastbourne
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
.
Television
With the rise of televisionTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, Brough predicted the eclipse of repertory theatre as a viable entertainment form. In the '60s he began seeking roles in the mass media, appearing in small roles in movies and television. His daughter, Joanna Hutton, said this about his forecast of the decline of repertory theatre: 'He was very astute and unsentimental about it. He realized the era was over and that he must diversify'. According to his daughter, he first found it hard adjusting from stage to screen. "He realized how hammy he was. He used to take the mickey out of himself; he'd always acted in a Shakespearean manner and suddenly realized he had to tone down his performance for film."
One of the first jobs Brough did away from the stage was the film The Green Man
The Green Man (film)
The Green Man is a 1956 British comedy-drama film based on the play Meet A Body by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, who produced and adapted the big-screen version.-Plot:...
with Alastair Sim
Alastair Sim
Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE was a Scottish character actor who appeared in a string of classic British films. He is best remembered in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1951 film Scrooge, and for his portrayal of Miss Fritton, the headmistress in two St. Trinian's films...
, in which he played the landlord of the eponymous hotel. He had a minor role opposite Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both in Hollywood and on the Broadway theatre...
in the 1960 film The Challenge, and made guest appearances in TV shows such as Upstairs, Downstairs
Upstairs, Downstairs
Upstairs, Downstairs is a British drama television series originally produced by London Weekend Television and revived by the BBC. It ran on ITV in 68 episodes divided into five series from 1971 to 1975, and a sixth series shown on the BBC on three consecutive nights, 26–28 December 2010.Set in a...
(Episode 3.2), Dad's Army
Dad's Army
Dad's Army is a British sitcom about the Home Guard during the Second World War. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and broadcast on BBC television between 1968 and 1977. The series ran for 9 series and 80 episodes in total, plus a radio series, a feature film and a stage show...
, Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
, The Persuaders
The Persuaders!
The Persuaders! is a 1971 action/adventure series, produced by ITC Entertainment for initial broadcast on ITV and ABC. It has been called "the last major entry in the cycle of adventure series that had begun eleven years earlier with Danger Man in 1960", as well as "the most ambitious and most...
and Jason King
Jason King (TV series)
Jason King was a British television series produced from 1971 to 1972. Each episode was one hour in duration , and the series had a run of one season of 26 episodes. As well as its native UK, the series was also screened in countries as far afield as Australia, Norway, Argentina and Peru...
. He also continued to appear in theatrical productions, including Half a Sixpence
Half a Sixpence
Half a Sixpence is a musical comedy written as a vehicle for British pop star Tommy Steele.It is based on H.G. Wells's novel Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul...
(1967), playing a shopkeeper. The Folkestone Rep continued until 1969 before closing at the time that Brough's wife Elizabeth began to suffer ill-health.
Are You Being Served?
In 1972, Brough was cast as Ernest Grainger in the BBC sit-com Are You Being Served? by Jeremy LloydJeremy Lloyd
Jeremy Lloyd is an English writer, screenwriter, author and actor, best known as co-author and writer of several successful British sitcoms.-Career:...
and David Croft. Initially a pilot episode in the Comedy Playhouse slot, it was well-received and commissioned for a series in May 1973. Set in a fading department store, Brough played the senior menswear salesman, with assistants Mr. Humphries (John Inman
John Inman
Frederick John Inman was an English actor best known for his role as Mr. Humphries in Are You Being Served?, a British sitcom in the 1970s and 1980s. Inman was also well known in the United Kingdom as a pantomime dame....
) and Mr. Lucas (Trevor Bannister
Trevor Bannister
Trevor Gordon Bannister was an English actor best known for playing the womanising junior salesman Mr. Lucas in the sitcom Are You Being Served? from 1972 to 1979, and for his role as Toby Mulberry Smith in the longest-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, from 2003 until it ended its run in 2010...
). The show became enormously popular, with an audience of 22 million in 1979, and ran until 1985.
After the show completed its fifth season in 1977, all was going well when, on Easter Sunday (26 March) 1978, Arthur Brough's wife of 50 years, Elizabeth, died, and the emotionally devastated Brough announced he was quitting acting. According to his daughter, he stayed with her for a few weeks, during which time Jeremy Lloyd
Jeremy Lloyd
Jeremy Lloyd is an English writer, screenwriter, author and actor, best known as co-author and writer of several successful British sitcoms.-Career:...
and David Croft made contact to say they were writing him into the next series. However, he died just six weeks after his wife, on 28 May 1978, in Folkestone. Croft decided not to have another actor take over the part of Mr. Grainger, so his character in Are You Being Served? was replaced by Mr. Tebbs, played by James Hayter.
Personal Appearances
On Friday 19 November 1976, Brough performed the official opening of the Morison's department store in Dover. Morison's was part of the Lavells Newsagents chain. The Morison's name was short-lived and the store re-opened under the Lavells facia just eighteen months later.Related Family Life
His daughter, Joanna Hutton became the first female curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, for a period in the 1960s.Credits
Arthur Brough dedicated his life to the theatre, and Are You Being Served? Co-star Mollie SugdenMollie Sugden
Isobel Mary 'Mollie' Sugden was an English comedy actress best known for portraying the saleswoman Mrs. Slocombe in the British sitcom Are You Being Served? from 1972 to 1985. She later reprised this role in Grace & Favour, which ran from 1992 to 1993...
credited him with helping train a generation of actors. His colleagues have fond memories of working with Brough, who, as his daughter noted, "was a highly respected actor who'd spent forty years in the profession." At the time of his death, David Croft said: "Arthur created a living character who was the inspiration for much of the humour. His personality made him a pivot round which a whole lot of laughter and affection revolved."
With a mischievous sense of humour, he would often pull pranks on the rest of the cast during recordings. Despite this, however, Trevor Bannister held him in very high regard, saying of him that he was a "wicked old man but a wonderful man." David Croft recalls the time Arthur would disappear from the set. 'Whenever we were rehearsing he'd vanish at about three minutes to eleven.. For a while we wondered where he went, but eventually discovered that he'd nip next door to the pub for a quick Pink Gin
Pink Gin
Pink Gin is a cocktail made fashionable in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, consisting of Plymouth gin and a dash of 'pink' Angostura bitters, a dark red extract of gentian and spices, known from the 1820s at Angostura, Venezuela but now made in Trinidad and Tobago...
. We'd watch from the window as this little figure hurled towards the pub - we never spoke to him about it. One day when he returned, John Inman
John Inman
Frederick John Inman was an English actor best known for his role as Mr. Humphries in Are You Being Served?, a British sitcom in the 1970s and 1980s. Inman was also well known in the United Kingdom as a pantomime dame....
asked where he'd been. He made some excuse, but what he'd forgotten was that it was pouring with rain and his bald head was soaking wet!'