Ian Gillett Carmichael (18 June 1920 – 5 February 2010) was an English actor who worked prolifically on stage, screen and radio in a career that spanned seventy years. Born in Kingston upon Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but his studies—and the early stages of his career—were curtailed by the Second World War. After his demobilisation he returned to acting and found success, initially in revue and sketch productions.
In 1955 Carmichael was noticed by the film producers John and Roy Boulting, who cast him in five of their films as one of the major players. The first was the 1956 film Private's Progress, a satire on the British Army; he received critical and popular praise for the role, including from the American market. In many of his roles he played a likeable, often accident-prone, innocent. In the mid-1960s he played Bertie Wooster in adaptations of the works of P. G. Wodehouse in The World of Wooster for BBC Television, for which he received mostly positive reviews, including from Wodehouse. In the early 1970s he played another upper-class literary character, Lord Peter Wimsey, the amateur but talented investigator created by Dorothy L. Sayers.
Much of Carmichael's success came through a disciplined approach to training and rehearsing for a role. He learned much about the craft and technique of humour while appearing with the comic actor Leo Franklyn. Although Carmichael tired of being typecast as the affable but bumbling upper-class Englishman, his craft ensured that while audiences laughed at his antics, he retained their affection; Dennis Barker, in Carmichael's obituary in The Guardian, wrote that he "could play fool parts in a way that did not cut the characters completely off from human sympathy: a certain dignity was always maintained".
Contents
Biography
Early life
Ian Gillett Carmichael was born on 18 June 1920 in Kingston upon Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He was the eldest child of Kate (née Gillett) and her husband Arthur Denholm Carmichael, an optician on the premises of his family's firm of jewellers. Carmichael had two younger sisters, the twins Mary and Margaret, who were born in December 1923. Robert Fairclough, his biographer, describes Carmichael's upbringing as a "privileged, pampered existence"; his parents employed maids and a cook. His infant education included one term at the local Froebel House School when he was four, but this was curtailed after his parents were shocked at the "alarmingly foul language he began bringing home", according to Alex Jennings, Carmichael's biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
In 1928 Carmichael was sent to Scarborough College, a prep school in North Yorkshire, which he attended between the ages of seven and thirteen. He did not like the spartan and authoritarian regime at the school. He described the discipline as "Dickensian", with corporal punishment used for even minor infringements of the rules; ablutions in the morning and evening were conducted with cold water—which often had a film of ice on the top during winter.
In 1933 Carmichael left Scarborough College and entered Bromsgrove School, a public school in Worcestershire. He soon concluded that "the new curriculum was not arduous", which gave him the opportunity to focus on matters that were of more interest for him: acting, popular music and cricket. In the late 1930s Carmichael decided to go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. His parents would have preferred he went into the family jewellery business, but accepted their son's decision and supported him financially when he left Yorkshire for London in January 1939.
Early career and war service, 1939–1946
Carmichael enjoyed his time at RADA, including the fact that women outnumbered men on his course, which he described as "heady stuff" after his boys-only boarding school. He remembered the time at RADA in the late 1930s fondly in his autobiography, describing it as:
A period of unconfined joy, occasioned by my finally shaking off the shackles of school discipline and being able to mix daily with young men and young women who shared my interests and enthusiasms. This joy was, nevertheless, being tempered by the worsening European situation. The fear that now, just as I was standing on the threshold of a future that I had dreamed about for years, the whole thing might be snuffed out like a candle was too unbearable to contemplate.
During his second term Carmichael had his first professional acting role: as a robot in Karel Čapek's R.U.R. at the People's Palace theatre, in Mile End, East London. He recalled the experience as "a dull play performed in a cold and uninspiring theatre and my particular contribution required absolutely no acting talent whatsoever". He then appeared as Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream at RADA's Vanbrugh Theatre. The opening night was 1 September 1939, the day Hitler invaded Poland. After the play's second performance its run was ended, as RADA shut down in anticipation that war was about to be declared; the following day the UK joined the war. Carmichael returned to his familial home and completed the forms to join the Officer Cadet Reserve, hoping to be commissioned as an officer. He helped gather the harvest in a nearby farm until 2 October, when he was attested into the army; he was told he would have to wait until he was twenty—on 18 June 1940—before he started training.
As the early months of the war were marked by limited military action, RADA reassessed its closure, and decided to reopen. Carmichael returned to London and shared lodgings with two fellow RADA students, Geoffrey Hibbert and Patrick Macnee; Carmichael and Macnee became lifelong friends. Between June and August 1940 Carmichael was on a ten-week tour of Nine Sharp, a revue developed by Herbert Farjeon. After the tour Carmichael reported for training on 12 September at Catterick Garrison. After ten weeks' basic training, he was posted to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to become an officer cadet. He completed his training and passed out in March 1941 as a second lieutenant in the 22nd Dragoons, part of the Royal Armoured Corps.
Early post-war career, 1946–1955
In July 1946 Carmichael signed with Stone, who had also been demobilised and had set up as a theatrical agent. Carmichael obtained his first post-war role in the revue Between Ourselves in mid-1946 before he appeared in two small roles in the comedy She Wanted a Cream Front Door— a hotel receptionist and a BBC reporter. The production went on a twelve-week tour round Britain from October 1946, and then ran at the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, London, for four months.
Between 1947 and 1951 Carmichael appeared on stage in both plays and revues —the latter often at the Players' Theatre in Villiers Street, Charing Cross. He made his debut appearance on BBC television in 1947 in New Faces, a revue that also included Zoe Gail, Bill Fraser and Charles Hawtrey. From 1948 he also began appearing in films, including Bond Street (1948), Trottie True and Dear Mr. Prohack (both 1949); these early roles were minor parts and he was uncredited. He spent much of 1949 in a thirty-week tour of Britain with the operetta The Lilac Domino. According to Jennings, Carmichael's "first conspicuous success" was The Lyric Revue in 1951; the production transferred to The Globe (now the Gielgud Theatre) as The Globe Revue in 1952. He received a positive review in the industry publication The Stage, which reported that he "hits the bull's-eye" for his comic performance in one sketch, "Bank Holiday", which involved him undressing on the beach under a mackintosh.
Carmichael spent the next three years appearing in stage revues and small roles in films. Although he enjoyed working in revues, he was concerned about being stuck in a career rut. In a 1954 interview in The Stage, he said "I'm afraid that managers and directors may think of me only as a revue artist, and much as I enjoy acting in sketches I feel there must be a limit to the number of characters one is able to create. What I would like now is to be offered a part in light comedy or a farce". Between November 1954 and May 1955 he appeared as David Prentice in the stage production of Simon and Laura alongside Roland Culver and Coral Browne at the Strand Theatre, London. The following year a film version was directed by Muriel Box; she asked Carmichael to repeat his role, while Browne and Culver's roles were taken by Kay Kendall and Peter Finch. The reviewer for The Times thought Carmichael "comes near to stealing the film from both of them". In 1955 Carmichael also appeared in The Colditz Story. He played Robin Cartwright, an officer in the Guards, and spent much of his screen time appearing with Richard Wattis; the two men provided an element of comic relief in the film, with what Fairclough describes as a "Flanagan and Allen tribute act". The Colditz Story was Carmichael's ninth film role and he had, Fairclough notes, risen to sixth in the credits behind John Mills and Eric Portman.
Screen success, 1955–1962
In 1955 Carmichael was contacted by the filmmaker twins the Boulting brothers. They wanted him to appear in two film versions of novels—Private's Progress by Alan Hackney and Brothers in Law by Henry Cecil—with an option for five films in all; the final contract was for a total of six films. The Boultings' first work with Carmichael was the 1956 film Private's Progress, a satire on the British Army. The film opened in February 1956 and starred Carmichael, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price and Terry-Thomas. The film historian Alan Boulton observed "Reviews were decidedly mixed and the critical response did not match the popular enthusiasm for the film"; it was either the second or third most popular film at the British box office that year. Carmichael received praise for his role, however, including from The Manchester Guardian, which thought he "fulfils his promise as a comedian"; the reviewer for The Times thought Carmichael acted "with an unfailing tact and sympathy—he even manages to make a drunken scene seem rich in comedy". The film introduced American audiences to Carmichael, and his screen presence in the US was warmly received by reviewers. The reviewer Margaret Hinxman, writing in Picturegoer, considered that after Private's Progress Carmichael had become "one of Britain's choicest screen exports".
From June to September 1956 Carmichael was involved in the filming of Brothers in Law, which was directed by Roy Boulting; others in the cast included Attenborough and Terry-Thomas. When the film was released in March 1957 Carmichael received positive reviews, including from Philip Oakes, the reviewer from The Evening Standard, who concluded that Carmichael "confirms his placing in my form book as our best light comedian". The reviewer for The Manchester Guardian thought Carmichael was "irrepressibly funny in his well-bred, well-intentioned, bewildered ineptitude".
In September 1957 Carmichael appeared in a third Boulting brothers film, Lucky Jim, in which he appeared alongside Terry-Thomas and Hugh Griffith in an adaptation of a 1954 novel by Kingsley Amis. Fairclough notes that while the film was not well received by the critics, Carmichael's performance received great praise. The Manchester Guardian considered that Carmichael, "although in many ways excellent, has fewer chances than in Brothers-in-Law to delight us with those studies in agonised embarrassment in which he excels", while The Daily Telegraph reviewer considered "[Carmichael's] Jim, complete with North-Country accent and the ability to pull comic faces, might so easily have been the author's creation brought to life off the page."
Wooster and Wimsey, 1962–1979
Tastes in film changed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the new wave of British films moving away from plots centred on the upper classes and the establishment, to works such as Look Back in Anger, Room at the Top (both 1959), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), where working class drama came to the fore. One of the effects of the new movement was a downturn in the number of films that wanted a character like those normally played by Carmichael. He was still being offered some film roles, but all, he said, "were variations on the same old bumbling, accident-prone clot" with which he was becoming increasingly bored.
In August 1964 the BBC approached Carmichael to discuss the possibility of his taking the role of Bertie Wooster—described by Fairclough as "the misadventuring, 1920s upper-class loafer"—for adaptations of the works of P. G. Wodehouse. He turned it down, as he had agreed to appear on Broadway, taking the lead in a production of the farce Boeing-Boeing. He appeared at the Cort Theatre in February 1965, but the run ended after 23 performances, as the farce was not to the taste of New York audiences. Carmichael was delighted by the early close, as he hated his time in the US and said "I found New York a disturbing, violent city and I disliked it instantly". As soon as he heard the production was to close, he sent a telegram to the BBC to note his availability to play Wooster. Carmichael negotiated a fee of 500 guineas (£525) per half-hour episode, and assisted in finding the right person for Jeeves, eventually selecting Dennis Price.
The first series of The World of Wooster received the Guild of Television Producers and Directors award for best comedy series production of 1965, and the programme ran for three series, broadcast between May 1965 and November 1967, comprising twenty episodes in total. Reviews for Carmichael were positive, with a reviewer in The Times declaring "The World of Wooster is also a triumph of casting, for Ian Carmichael and Dennis Price are perfect impersonators of two characters who are by no means lay-figures ... They are a priceless pair." A different reviewer pointed out one drawback of the 44-year-old Carmichael's performance: "If we have thought of Bertie Wooster as eternally 22, not far in time from enjoyably wasted university days, Mr. Ian Carmichael opposes our view with a Bertie who is older but hopefully fixed in an inescapable mental youth." The best review, as far as Carmichael and the producer Michael Mills were concerned, was from Wodehouse, who sent a telegram to the BBC:
Semi-retirement, 1979–2009
In 1979 Carmichael published his autobiography Will the Real Ian Carmichael ..., which marked what Fairclough calls his "semi-retirement" in Yorkshire. He continued to work periodically, including providing the voice for Rat in the 1983 film The Wind in the Willows and as the narrator for the television series of the same name between 1984 and 1990. He revisited the works of Wodehouse in the late 1980s and early 1990s, providing the voice of Galahad Threepwood for two radio productions, Pigs Have Wings and Galahad at Blandings.
In 1992 and 1993 he played Sir James Menzies in two series of Strathblair, a BBC family drama set in 1950 broadcast on Sunday evenings. He undertook his last stage role in June 1995, playing Sir Peter Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal at the Chichester Festival Theatre. From 2003 he took his final role: that of T. J. Middleditch in the ITV hospital drama series The Royal. He continued filming with The Royal until 2009.
Personal life
In late March 1941, when Carmichael's regiment was posted to Whitby he met "Pym"—Jean Pyman Maclean—who he described as "blonde, just eighteen, five feet six, sensationally pretty and a beautiful dancer"; he thought her personality was "warm ... genuine. There was an innocence about her, an unsophistication that disarmed even the most worldly". The couple became engaged in May 1942 and married on 6 October 1943; they had two daughters, Lee (born in 1946) and Sally (born in 1949). Pym died of cancer in 1983.
In 1984 Carmichael recorded a series of short stories for the BBC; the programmes were produced by Kate Fenton. They began a relationship and she left the BBC in 1985 and moved in with him in the Esk Valley, near Whitby. They were married in July 1992.
Carmichael enjoyed playing and watching cricket, and listed it as one of this interests in Who's Who. He was a member of the Lord's Taverners cricket charity from 1956 until October 1976, and would relax on film sets playing a casual game with other members of the cast and crew, a practice he was introduced to by the Boulting brothers. He was also a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club. In 2003 Carmichael was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama. He died on 5 February 2010 of a pulmonary embolism.
Screen persona and technique
Carmichael learned much of his technique from the thirty-week tour of The Lilac Domino he undertook in the late 1940s, where he appeared opposite the comic actor Leo Franklyn. Carmichael acknowledged the credit for his development as a light comic actor went "in its entirety to the training, coaxing and encouragement of ... Franklyn", who "showed me how to time my laughs and how to play an audience". Carmichael's experience in revue helped when he worked in a dramatic play; his experience in getting a character across to an audience quickly in a short sketch showed him that "it is very important to establish a comedy character as soon as possible. Your whole performance may depend on this being done".
Carmichael polished his performances through extensive rehearsals and training. The screenwriter Paul Dehn acknowledges the effort and discipline needed by Carmichael to achieve a polished feel to his act, describing how Carmichael would "slave for hours to perfect one stumble on a stairway and, having got it, ... [would] make it seem effortless thereafter". Jennings considers much of Carmichael's seemingly effortless light touch "was built on a hugely disciplined and virtuosic technique". Carmichael's choice of comedy was character-, rather than situation-based and when the film or play generated its atmosphere from normal, recognisable aspects of life. He selected his work projects carefully and became involved in the development and production side as closely as possible, or initiated the project himself.
The image he portrayed in many of his works was summarised by one obituarist as "the affable, archetypal silly ass Englishman" with a "wide-eyed boyish grin, bemused courtesy and hapless, trusting manner". He became somewhat typecast with the character, but audiences liked him in the role, and "he polished this persona with great care", according to his obituarist in The Daily Telegraph, even though he tired of playing the role so often. One of the attractions for the public was that he played his parts to get the audience's sympathy for the character, but with a measure of dignity that viewers could relate to. During Carmichael's semi-retirement, the Boulting brothers told him that they had not shown the range of his talents, and that "perhaps they should not virtually have confined him to the playing of twerps". When he took the role of Wimsey—the intelligent, cultured and effective investigator—the critic Nancy Banks-Smith wrote that "it was high time that Ian Carmichael was given the opportunity to look intelligent".