Tributes - 1996

Jon Pertwee

Actor, comedian and variety entertainer. Born London, July 7, 1917. Died Connecticut, May 20, 1996.

In a career lasting 60 years, Jon Pertwee ignored advice to stick to acting in one forum, spreading his considerable talents over the stage, variety theatre, children's records, country music, radio and over 35 films. He was Danny Kaye's stuntman in the film Knock on Wood (1954), the original Fagin in the stage play Oliver! (1962), 'The Man of a Thousand Voices' on radio comedy, and for several years, the title character of Worzel Gummidge. But he is mostly remembered as one of eight actors to play the Doctor, the hero of the BBC-TV cult series Doctor Who.

Despite mixed feelings about being forever associated with children's television, Pertwee regarded the Doctor as one of his favourite roles. "They said, 'Play it as Jon Pertwee,' and I said, 'Who's he?' In all my years as an actor, I'd never been me - I'd always hidden behind glasses, moustaches and funny voices," he recalled. "So for helping me realise who Jon Pertwee is, I owe a lot to Doctor Who."

Playing himself was possibly his crowning achievement. After all, acting was a simple task for his family. His father Roland was a playwright, four of his aunts were actresses, and his grandmother Emily was an opera singer. His elder brother Michael would follow in his father's footsteps, while his cousin Bill was also destined to be a well-known comedy actor, co-starring with Jon on occasion.

Jon studied for a time at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, but dropped out, considering it a pretentious "waste of time". Instead, at the age of 18, he joined a travelling revue theatre comedy. By the end of the decade he was a veteran of six films and much repertory theatre.

During World War II, he enlisted in the Navy as an officer, serving aboard the HMS Hood. (Due to a last-minute change of orders, he left the ship only 48 hours before it was sunk by the Bismarck.)

In 1940, he founded the Service Players - but ironically, his big break came when he was ordered to take a break from entertaining troops, and work with Naval Intelligence, running the Navy's broadcasting section.

There he met broadcaster Eric Barker, who - impressed with his range of voices - hired him on the spot. After the war, he would appear regularly on radio shows such as Waterlogged Spa (1949) and Up the Pole (1952). In 1959 he began playing a range of characters - Commander High-Price, Robin Fly and Dai, the Welsh story-teller, among others - on The Navy Lark, a series which ran for nearly 20 years, becoming the longest-running comedy show in radio history.

In the meantime, he divided his spare time between stage, film and television. In 1967, he received a Tony nomination for the Broadway version of There's a Girl in My Soup.

Doctor Who beckoned in 1970, when he discovered that Patrick Troughton, who had played the lead role for three years, was leaving the series.

A popular children's drama since 1963, when the Doctor was portrayed by William Hartnell, Doctor Who tells the adventures of a heroic rebel, who travels through time and space in the TARDIS, a spaceship disguised as an antique British police box. Being an alien "Time Lord", he possess the ability to "regenerate" into a new form, with a new persona, whenever his body is poisoned or severely injured.

Pertwee played the Doctor as an eccentric dandy, whose somewhat Edwardian dress sense (which Pertwee had hastily improvised from his grandfather's wardrobe) suited his dignified, old-fashioned grace.

At the same time, Pertwee's Doctor was an action hero, complete with hilarious displays of Venusian aikido (a martial art never seen on the series before or since) and the Who-mobile, a combined car, boat and plane (designed by Pertwee himself) which would have impressed James Bond.

This was Pertwee as himself - a daredevil. Here was an actor who raced motorbikes and hydroplanes, went skin diving at the Great Barrier Reef, and almost lost a leg in a waterskiing accident.

Though Doctor Who made regular use of HAVOC, a well-known stunt team, Pertwee performed most of his own stunts. provoking complaints from some parents that the non-violent, children's character of the 1960s had been replaced by James Bond. The fact was that the series had changed: ratings were higher, and adults comprised approximately 73% of the audience.

The major change was that - after years of visiting alien planets - the Doctor was now stranded on Earth, where he was made the scientific advisor to UNIT, a military organisation who dealt with alien invasions such as the Doctor's arch-enemy, the Master (played by the late Roger Delgado) and of course the Daleks. "I hate [the Daleks] and they don't scare me one bit!" Pertwee later admitted. "You only had to run away from them down a flight of stairs and you had them well and truly screwed!"

He played the Doctor until 1974, when he regenerated into Tom Baker. For three years he hosted the panel show Whodunnit?, before playing the innocent scarecrow, Worzel Gummidge, for four television seasons. Like Doctor Who, Worzel Gummidge was easily one of Britain's most popular children's series, but there the similarities end.

"When I made personal appearances as the Doctor," Pertwee said, "children were in awe of me, and very respectful... As I started to walk through the crowd, they'd part like the waters of the Red Sea. But when I made personal appearances as Worzel Gummidge, it was a totally different story. I did get grabbed, and I really did need the police to clear the way."

AfterWorzel Gummidge, he would occasionally appear on stage and on radio, reprising his role as the Doctor for both media. In Doctor Who surveys, he (along with Tom Baker) is invariably voted one of the two all-time best Doctors.

Jon Pertwee married actress Jean Marsh in 1955, but they separated within a year. Two years later, while on a skiing holiday in Australia, he met his second wife, Ingeborg. (Australia was one of his favourite holiday spots. He last visited in 1990, to attend a Doctor Who convention in Brisbane.) He is survived by Ingeborg, their daughter Dariel and son Sean.