Radford was born in Chester. He was on stage from 1922, made his film
debut in America, but stuck mostly to the English stage until the late
1930s. In 1938 Alfred Hitchcock teamed him with Naunton
Wayne in The
Lady Vanishes. They played Charters and Caldicott, names dreamed
up by screenwriters Sidney Gilliat
and Frank Launder, later to become
famous producer-directors. As Englishmen on a train going through dangerous
European territory, they were more interested in cricket scores than
in bodies in the corridor or missing ladies. The characters cropped
up again in the Gilliat/Launder-scripted Night
Train to Munich: more trains, more Nazis. They also popped up in
wartime shorts like the multi-story Millions
Like Us.
When Radford and Wayne returned to radio, Launder and Gilliat claimed
copyright on their film characters. So it was as Woolcott and Spencer
that Radford and Wayne appeared in their first post-war series, Double
Bedlam. Them was another film, too, a funny number called It's
Not Cricket, in which, as Bright and Early, the priceless pair are
prime eyes dogged by a lunatic Nazi on cases that end, appropriately,
with a cricket match - in which the ball contains a stolen diamond.
These most popular wearers of the old school tie were half-way through
their 1952 radio adventure, Rogues' Gallery, when Radford collapsed
and died from a heart attack. He was 55.
