Ian Carmichael
Encyclopedia
Ian Gillett Carmichael, OBE (18 June 1920 – 5 February 2010) was an English
film
, stage
, television
and radio
actor
.
, in the East Riding of Yorkshire
. The son of an optician, he was educated at Scarborough College
and Bromsgrove School
, before training as an actor at RADA
. He made his stage debut as a robot at the People's Palace
in Mile End
, East London
in 1939. With the outbreak of World War II
his acting career was interrupted by service with the Royal Armoured Corps
as a commissioned officer in the 22nd Dragoons
. He served in the Normandy campaign
, losing the tip of one finger to an accident with the turret hatch of a Valentine tank
, and reached the rank of major before leaving the Army in 1947.
He portrayed serious characters in Betrayed
(1954), starring Clark Gable
and Lana Turner
, and in The Colditz Story
(1955), but he made his name playing in a series of films for the Boulting Brothers
, including Private's Progress
(1956), Brothers in Law
(1957) and I'm All Right Jack
(1959), as well as similar films for other producers, for example School for Scoundrels
(1960). He also appeared in the "Pride" segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins
(1971).
During the 1960s and 1970s, he was successful on television, including the sitcom, Bachelor Father, based on the story of a real-life bachelor who took on several foster children. On television he was Bertie Wooster
, opposite Dennis Price
as Jeeves
, in several series of The World of Wooster, based on the works of P. G. Wodehouse
. In later years, he was heard on BBC
radio as Galahad Threepwood
, another Wodehouse creation. In the 1970s, he played Lord Peter Wimsey
in several drama series based on the mystery novels by Dorothy L. Sayers
.
Carmichael continued to act until shortly before his death. In 1999, he appeared in the BBC serial Wives and Daughters
. In the ITV
series Heartbeat, and its spin-off The Royal
, he played the Hospital Secretary T.J. Middleditch (2003–2006, 2007, 2009, 2011).
He was appointed an OBE
in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours
List.
, from 1992 until his death in 2010.
He had five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
His autobiography, Will the Real Ian Carmichael... was published in 1979.
on 5 February 2010.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, stage
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
.
Early life
Carmichael was born in HullKingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...
, in the East Riding of Yorkshire
East Riding of Yorkshire
The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Yorkshire, is a local government district with unitary authority status, and a ceremonial county of England. For ceremonial purposes the county also includes the city of Kingston upon Hull, which is a separate unitary authority...
. The son of an optician, he was educated at Scarborough College
Scarborough College
Scarborough College is an independent day and boarding school for boys and girls aged 3-18 years. It is located in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England and was founded in 1898. The school has been an International Baccalaureate World School since June 2006...
and Bromsgrove School
Bromsgrove School
Bromsgrove School, founded in 1553, is a co-educational independent school in the Worcestershire town of Bromsgrove, England. The school has a long history and many notable former pupils.-History:...
, before training as an actor at RADA
Rada
Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages....
. He made his stage debut as a robot at the People's Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
in Mile End
Mile End
Mile End is an area within the East End of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross...
, East London
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
in 1939. 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...
his acting career was interrupted by service with the Royal Armoured Corps
Royal Armoured Corps
The Royal Armoured Corps is currently a collection of ten regular regiments, mostly converted from old horse cavalry regiments, and four Yeomanry regiments of the Territorial Army...
as a commissioned officer in the 22nd Dragoons
22nd Dragoons
The 22nd Dragoons was the title held by a series of four Cavalry regiments of the British Army raised and disbanded between 1716 and 1945. The last regiment of this name existed during the Second World War, from 1 December 1940 until 30 November 1945....
. He served in the Normandy campaign
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings...
, losing the tip of one finger to an accident with the turret hatch of a Valentine tank
Valentine tank
The Tank, Infantry, Mk III, Valentine was an infantry tank produced in the United Kingdom during the Second World War. More than 8,000 of the type were produced in 11 different marks plus various purpose-built variants, accounting for approximately a quarter of wartime British tank production...
, and reached the rank of major before leaving the Army in 1947.
Career
The young actor had turned his back on his family's shopkeeping business in Hull to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and to sing in talent contests at the Hammersmith Palais de Danse.He portrayed serious characters in Betrayed
Betrayed (1954 film)
Betrayed is a 1954 war drama film made by MGM. It was directed by Gottfried Reinhardt, from a screenplay by Ronald Millar and George Froeschel. The music score was by Walter Goehr and Bronislau Kaper, the cinematography by Freddie Young....
(1954), starring Clark Gable
Clark Gable
William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh...
and Lana Turner
Lana Turner
Lana Turner was an American actress.Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget . She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy...
, and in The Colditz Story
The Colditz Story
The Colditz Story is a 1955 prisoner of war film starring John Mills and Eric Portman and directed by Guy Hamilton.It is based on the book written by P.R...
(1955), but he made his name playing in a series of films for the Boulting Brothers
John and Roy Boulting
John Edward Boulting and Roy Alfred Clarence Boulting , known collectively as the Boulting brothers, were English filmmakers and identical twins who became known for their popular series of satirical comedies in the 1950s and 1960s.-Biography:The twin brothers were born in Bray, Berkshire, England...
, including Private's Progress
Private's Progress
Private's Progress is a 1956 British comedy film based on the novel by Alan Hackney. It was directed and produced by John and Roy Boulting, from a script by John Boulting and Frank Harvey.-Plot:...
(1956), Brothers in Law
Brothers in Law (film)
Brothers in Law is a 1957 British comedy film directed by Roy Boulting and starring Richard Attenborough, Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas and Jill Adams...
(1957) and I'm All Right Jack
I'm All Right Jack
I'm All Right Jack is a 1959 British comedy film directed and produced by John and Roy Boulting from a script by Frank Harvey, John Boulting and Alan Hackney, based on the novel Private Life by Hackney...
(1959), as well as similar films for other producers, for example School for Scoundrels
School for Scoundrels (1960 film)
School for Scoundrels is a 1960 British comedy film inspired by the "Gamesmanship" series of books by Stephen Potter. The main character, Henry Palfrey , is a failure in sport and love, and victim of conmen. He enrols at the "School of Lifemanship" in Yeovil, run by Dr...
(1960). He also appeared in the "Pride" segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins
The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins
The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins is a 1971 British comedy film directed and produced by Graham Stark. Its title is a conflation of The Magnificent Seven and the seven deadly sins. It comprises a sequence of seven sketches, each representing a sin and written by an array of British comedy-writing...
(1971).
During the 1960s and 1970s, he was successful on television, including the sitcom, Bachelor Father, based on the story of a real-life bachelor who took on several foster children. On television he was Bertie Wooster
Bertie Wooster
Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. An English gentleman, one of the "idle rich" and a member of the Drones Club, he appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of...
, opposite Dennis Price
Dennis Price
Dennis Price was an English actor, remembered for his suave screen roles, particularly Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets, and for his portrayal of the omniscient valet Jeeves in 1960s television adaptations of P. G...
as Jeeves
Jeeves
Reginald Jeeves is a fictional character in the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse, being the valet of Bertie Wooster . Created in 1915, Jeeves would continue to appear in Wodehouse's works until his final, completed, novel Aunts Aren't Gentlemen in 1974, making him Wodehouse's most famous...
, in several series of The World of Wooster, based on the works of P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
. In later years, he was heard on BBC
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...
radio as Galahad Threepwood
Galahad Threepwood
The Honourable Galahad "Gally" Threepwood is a fictional character in the Blandings stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Lord Emsworth's younger brother, a lifelong bachelor, Gally was, according to Beach, the Blandings butler, "somewhat wild as a young man"...
, another Wodehouse creation. In the 1970s, he played Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a bon vivant amateur sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries; usually, but not always, murders...
in several drama series based on the mystery novels by Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
.
Carmichael continued to act until shortly before his death. In 1999, he appeared in the BBC serial Wives and Daughters
Wives and Daughters (1999 miniseries)
Wives and Daughters is a 1999 four part BBC serial adapted from the novel Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story by Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell...
. In the ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
series Heartbeat, and its spin-off The Royal
The Royal
The Royal is a British medical drama series produced by ITV. The show comprises one hour episodes which were normally first aired on ITV in the Sunday early evening slot....
, he played the Hospital Secretary T.J. Middleditch (2003–2006, 2007, 2009, 2011).
He was appointed an OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours
Queen's Birthday Honours
The Queen's Birthday Honours is a part of the British honours system, being a civic occasion on the celebration of the Queen's Official Birthday in which new members of most Commonwealth Realms honours are named. The awards are presented by the reigning monarch or head of state, currently Queen...
List.
Personal life
Ian Carmichael was married twice: firstly to Jean Pyman (Pym) McLean, from 1943 until her death in 1983 (they had two daughters, Lee and Sally) and then to the novelist Kate FentonKate Fenton
Kate Fenton is an English novelist and former BBC radio producer.Fenton studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Hilda's College, Oxford . After leaving Oxford, she worked for a short while as a researcher in the House of Commons for a Member of Parliament.From 1978 to 1985 she was at the...
, from 1992 until his death in 2010.
He had five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
His autobiography, Will the Real Ian Carmichael... was published in 1979.
Death
Ian Carmichael died, at the age of 89, at his home in the Esk Valley on the North York MoorsNorth York Moors
The North York Moors is a national park in North Yorkshire, England. The moors are one of the largest expanses of heather moorland in the United Kingdom. It covers an area of , and it has a population of about 25,000...
on 5 February 2010.