British actor born Horace John Waters in Bow, East London, whose career
on both film and television made him an icon of responsible post-war
ordinariness. After leaving school he started work in the motor trade
in Balham, as a general hand, and in 1913 was sent to Paris to learn
more about the cars and the company Sizaire Berwick. During WWI he served
in the RFC and flew a Camel airplane. His stage career began to take
off in the 1920s as part of a musical-comedy double-act and by the 1940s
Warner had made the successful transition to films.
His role as the paterfamilias of the Huggetts in the series of Gainsborough
films which grew out of Holiday
Camp (1947) represented the values of working-class decency and
community inspired by the Attlee Labour government. The Huggetts anticipated
such television families as the Appleyards and the Groves of the 1950s,
and the community values of the early Coronation Street.
Despite his role as an embittered and heartless killer in My
Brother's Keeper (1948), Warner's role as PC George Dixon in The
Blue Lamp (1950) established him as the image of benevolent community
policing. Translated to television in 1955 as Dixon of Dock Green, his
Saturday night homilies on order, justice and the British way of life
ran until 1976, by which time both Jack Warner and the image of the
police which he represented were ready for retirement. He was awarded
the OBE in 1965.
