julian_craster

From THE STAGE..

Veteran British comedy actor Ronnie Stevens has died aged 81.

The Peckham-born star began his career in West End revues during fifties and went on to play comic roles in a host of films including I’m Alright Jack (1958) with Peter Sellers, Dentist in the Chair (1960) with Bob Monkhouse, and he was one of the many comic talents on board in Carry On Crusing (1962). More recently he co-starred with Dennis Quaid in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap.

In the seventies he was a leading member of the Prospect Theatre Company and played the Fool in King Lear and Sir Nathaniel in Love’s Labours Lost. He was also a founder member with Ian McKellan of The Actor’s Company.
His many television credits included Goodnight Sweetheart, As Times Goes By, Rumpole of the Bailey and Hetty Wainthrop Investigates.

He died in Denville Hall, the actor’s retirement home in Northwood, Middlesex, on November 11, 2006.

MrDrakesDuck

I always remember him as the bloke in Carry on Cruising who spends the entire voyage getting plastered in the bar.

"I thought I had to shoot Germans, not chew 'em"

Harbottle

I always enjoyed his appearances on TV and in film, sad news :-(

fred kite

seen him on sky ...uk gold i think..in hetty wainthropp....playing a local villager who sends dirty pen letters to villagers ..a great performance.good actor.....

julian_craster

Ronnie was also memorable in AN ALLIGATOR NAMED DAISY (1956) as the band vocalist with a cold, and AS LONG AS THEY'RE HAPPY (1955) as a besotted fan of crooner 'Bobby Denver' .....

smudge

Sad news indeed...Ronnie Stevens was one of those brilliant, reliable, character comedy players who (for the main) stayed in the middle/background yet still managed to shine - as in his C ON CRUISING performance. One of my favourites of his was the poor beleaguered architect in A HOME OF YOUR OWN.

Another gone of whom we shall not see the like again, I fear.

Respect,

SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

julian_craster

Obituary
The Times November 15, 2006

Ronnie Stevens
September 2, 1925 - November 11, 2006
Actor who shone in comedies on stage and on screen and who later turned his hand to more dramatic roles

THE long career of Ronnie Stevens — one of Britain’s most gifted comedy actors — included appearances in West End revues and more than 70 films, including many comedy classics.
Often cast as manic or nervous types, he co-starred with Peter Sellers in I’m All Right Jack (1959) and was a stalwart of the 1960s “Doctor” film series with Dirk Bogarde. Later in his career he became a distinguished straight actor winning critical acclaim in classical roles.
Born in London in 1925, the son of Henry Stevens and his wife, Fanny, Ronald Stevens was educated at Peckham Central School and the Camberwell School of Art. During the war he served in the RAF and afterwards he trained for the theatre at RADA, where he struck up a lifelong friendship with the comedy actress Joan Sims.
He made his first appearance on stage in the revue Ad Lib at the tiny Chepstow Theatre Club in 1948. He went on to appear in several other fringe revues before making his West End debut in the fondly remembered revue High Spirits (Hippodrome, 1953) in which he co-starred with such leading lights as Cyril Ritchard, Ian Carmichael, Joan Sims and Diana Churchill.
Stevens’s, comic face and vocal attack made him a natural for revue and in 1954 he joined Joan Sims again together with Ron Moody and Joan Heal in Intimacy at 8.30 at the Criterion. Two years later he was in another hit revue, For Amusement Only, at the Apollo, in which he brought the house down performing No Morpheus in the Underground, written for him by Peter and Stanley Myers to the music of Offenbach.
He went on to appear in several musicals including The Lily-White Boys (Royal Court, 1960) in which he starred with Albert Finney and Georgia Brown, a revival of Rose Marie (Victoria Palace, 1960) but it was in the cinema during the late Fifties and Sixties that he really made his comic talent known to a wider public.
He had made his film debut in 1952 playing a small role in Made in Heaven, a comedy starring David Tomlinson, but he came into his own as one of the eager, but often accident-prone, medical students in Doctor at Large in 1957, starring Dirk Bogarde. He was a harassed secret service official in the wartime drama I Was Monty’s Double (1958), an irritatingly cheerful factory foreman in I’m All Right Jack (1959) and was cast with Bob Monkhouse as hapless dental students in Dentist in the Chair (1960) and the sequel Dentist on the Job (1961).
There were three more Doctor films, Doctor in Love (1960), Doctor in Distress (1963) and Doctor in Clover (1966), and he virtually stole most of Carry On Cruising (1962) when he was cast as the dipsomaniac passenger on a world cruise who never leaves the bar during the entire voyage. He was in San Ferry Ann (1965), about a group of British travellers on a trip to France. He also had a cameo role in the remake of Goodbye Mr Chips (1969) with Peter O’Toole.
In the mid-Sixties Stevens began acting in leading roles in legitimate theatre and became a valued member of Toby Robertson’s Prospect Theatre Company, both touring internationally and resident for a period in the Seventies at the Old Vic. The Prospect company included Derek Jacobi, Robert Eddison and Eileen Atkins and among Stevens’s many roles were Feste in Twelfth Night (1968), an acclaimed Fool in King Lear (1971), Sir Nathaniel in Love’s Labour’s Lost (1971), Gower in Pericles and Estete in Royal Hunt of the Sun (both 1973).
In 1972 he was one of the founders of the Actors Company, with Ian McKellen, with which he played numerous leading roles including Pontagnac in Ruling the Roost. He also played in several modern classics at the Bristol Old Vic. He returned occasionally to the musical theatre including a run in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Leeds Playhouse and he was a noted traditional pantomime dame.
Stevens had been appearing on TV since the Sixties — he had narrated Oliver Postgate’s charming cartoon series Noggin the Nog in 1959 — and he cropped up in character roles for the next 40 years. He had occasional classical roles in TV dramas such as Twelfth Night (1980), in which he was a splendid Sir Andrew Aguecheek, but he usually played harassed fathers, officials or mild barristers in series such as Terry and June, Rumpole of the Bailey, Yes, Prime Minister, A. J. Wentworth, BA and Goodnight Sweetheart. His most recent film role was as Grandpa Charles James in the remake of The Parent Trap (1998).
When once asked by a reporter what his hobbies were Stevens replied: “Music, painting and my two sons.”

Ronnie Stevens, actor, was born on September 2, 1925. He died on November 11, 2006, aged 81.

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Ronnie Stevens
Daily Telegraph
15/11/2006

Ronnie Stevens, the actor who died on Remembrance Day aged 81, possessed the sort of lantern jaw and mobile features that lend themselves to comedy, and enjoyed a versatile and prolific career on television, in films and on the West End stage.
His first appearances were in intimate revue, and he performed frequently in Peter Myers shows in the West End alongside Joan Sims, who became a life-long friend. He went on to play comic character roles in some 40 films, including I'm All Right Jack (1958, with Peter Sellers), Dentist in the Chair (1960, with Bob Monkhouse) and Carry On Cruising (1962).
In the 1970s and 1980s he was a leading member of the Prospect Theatre Company, playing the Fool in King Lear (1972) and Sir Nathaniel in Love's Labour's Lost (1984). He was also a founder member, with Ian McKellen, of the Actors' Company. On television he appeared in numerous drama and comedy series, including The Goodies, Hi-di-Hi!, Yes, Prime Minister, Goodnight Sweetheart, Rumpole of the Bailey and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates.
advertisementRonald George Stevens was born at Peckham on September 2 1925 and educated at Peckham Central School and Camberwell School of Art. During the Second World War he served in the RAF and the Royal Engineers. Subsequently he paid his way through Rada.
After making his stage debut in revue at the Chepstow Theatre Club in 1948, he soon established himself as a member of a group of actors who appeared in Peter Myers revues, making his West End debut at the Hippodrome in 1953 in High Spirits. In 1954 he appeared alongside Joan Sims with Ron Moody and Joan Heal in Intimacy at 8.30 at the Criterion, then, in 1956, in For Amusement Only, when he brought the house down with No Morpheus in the Underground, a sketch written to music by Offenbach. In 1960 he took five roles in Christopher Logue's musical The Lily White Boys at the Royal Court, then appeared in the Billy Barnes Revue at the Lyric, Hammersmith. In the musical Rose Marie at the Victoria Palace (1960) he took the comedy role of Hard-Boiled Herman. The following year he got star billing in Myers's The Lord Chamberlain Regrets at the Savile Theatre.
When revue fell out of fashion in the mid-1960s Stevens turned to the classical stage, playing, among many other roles, the dandyish Sir Fopling Flutter in Etherege's The Man of Mode (1965), Speed in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1969), Feste in Twelfth Night (1973), Sparkish in Wycherley's The Country Wife (1973) and Trinculo in The Tempest (1975). For the Actors' Company he played Pontignac in Feydeau's Ruling the Roost (1972) and Richardetto in Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1972).
In 1978 he made a memorable Dauphin to Eileen Atkins's Saint Joan in a Prospect Theatre production at the Old Vic, and the same year and in the same theatre he was Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, a role he reprised for the BBC. The following year he was a gossip-mongering landowner in Gogol's Government Inspector, and in 1980 played the malevolent Lockit, keeper of Newgate in Gay's Beggar's Opera at the Lyric, Hammersmith.
After making his film debut in Scarlet Web (1954) and his television debut in Dick and the Duchess (1957), an American sit-com set in London, he continued to take character roles on television and in films into the 1990s. In 1998 he co-starred with Dennis Quaid as the grandfather in a re-make of The Parent Trap.
Ronnie Stevens's wife, Ann, predeceased him. He is survived by their two sons

David Brent

A very funny actor.

He lived in Australia for a couple of years in the sixties and performed in a very popular television comedy series over here called 'The Mavis Bramston Show'.

Another very sad loss.

Dave.

julian_craster

The Independent Obituary
Ronnie Stevens
Comedy character actor
Published: 12 December 2006

Ronald George Stevens, actor: born London 2 September 1925; married 1963 Ann Bristow (deceased; one son, and one son deceased); died Northwood, Middlesex 11 November 2006.
The comic actor Ronnie Stevens was singularly unlucky in that his success on stage, in "intimate" revues that bridged the gap between stand-up and character comedy, did not translate into wider stardom. Instead, he became the kind of face, in supporting roles where he was perfectly cast as enthusiastic but ineffectual characters, that audiences recognised and welcomed, but would have struggled to put a name to.
Although sometimes cast as an establishment type, Stevens was from Peckham and his father had been a bus driver. Following wartime service in the RAF, he trained at Rada. He first came to notice in such revues as High Spirits (1953), Intimacy at 8.30 (1954) and For Amusement Only (1956), at a succession of West End venues.
Rendered obsolete by Beyond the Fringe and the eventual proliferation of sketch comedy on television, these shows, once described by Alan Bennett as "the sort where people came on dressed as garden gnomes", and loaded with theatrical in-jokes, were nevertheless highly popular with their chosen audience, who took them to represent sophistication. One sketch featured Stevens impersonating Liberace, singing of his fan letters, "At least one or two are from girls." When called as a witness in the pianist's infamous 1959 libel case against the Daily Mirror for suggesting he was gay, Stevens denied the number had any deeper implications.
His first television series as a regular was Dick and the Duchess (1957-58), a comedy thriller made in Britain but for the CBS network, in which he conformed to American notions of Englishness. Only three episodes exist today. He was better suited to New Look (1958-59), an ATV sketch show created as a showcase for new talent, whose other regulars included Bruce Forsyth, Joyce Blair and Roy Castle.
For a while, Stevens was one of the ever-present army of character players in British comedy movies, but attempts to promote him from cameos to co- starring roles were not successful. He and Bob Monkhouse (another witness in the Liberace case) played mischievous dental students with larcenous leanings, in Dentist in the Chair (1960), intended as the start of a series to rival the Carry Ons. However, the second of these, Dentist on the Job (1961), was also the last. Stevens did not acquit himself well, in the comic-relief role of a virginal, incompetent British Intelligence man, in Some Girls Do (1969), an attempt to revive Bulldog Drummond (Richard Johnson) in the manner of James Bond.
Consistently cast as waiters, hairdressers and harassed hotel employees, Stevens supported in three in the same series, Doctor at Large (1957), Doctor in Love (1960) and Doctor in Distress (1963). He gave an overly eager tour of a sweet factory in I'm All Right Jack (1959). In Raising the Wind (1961), from the Carry On stable, he crossed verbal swords with his fellow revue star Kenneth Williams; in his diaries, Williams wrote of "Ronnie Stevens whom I abhor . . . rather colourless & suburban but harmless . . . [Stevens's scene] failed completely. Not an ounce of humour left in it." The occasion was on the set of Carry On Cruising (1962), Stevens's only Carry On appearance.
Like Williams, however, he made records of children's stories, and lent his voice to similar television programmes, such as Oliver Postgate's much-loved The Saga of Noggin the Nog (1963) for the BBC, returning for a 1982 revival in colour. Space Patrol (1963) was an ITV puppet series, often mistakenly assumed to have been a Gerry Anderson production. Stevens provided the voices for an eccentric professor, a puny Venusian and a rugged Martian.
In Australia in the late 1960s, Stevens was a regular on The Mavis Bramston Show, best described as a would-be Antipodean That Was the Week That Was.
Two ambitious BBC projects, 20 years apart, provided him with more dramatic opportunities than usual. He was a poetic butterfly in Capek's allegory The Insect Play (1960), under the Twentieth Century Theatre banner, and was well cast as Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night (1980), part of the BBC's Shakespeare marathon. Surprisingly, perhaps, he helped form the egalitarian, classically inclined stage troupe the Actors' Company in the 1970s, with Sir Ian McKellen and Edward Petherbridge.
Stevens's television guest appearances included a maudlin window dresser in The Avengers (1965), a judge in Rumpole of the Bailey (1991) and a government minister in The Goodies (1971). He supported in Arthur Lowe's final sitcom, A.J. Wentworth, BA (1982), not shown until after Lowe's death and generally felt not to have been in the Dad's Army class. Later appearances came in such gentle fare as May to December (1989-94) and As Time Goes By (2002).
Along with many of his peers, he was unable to escape the "British sex comedy" genre of the 1970s; fortunately for the cast of All I Want is You . . . And You . . . And You (1974), which also included Koo Stark, no copies are known to exist.
Arguably, Morons from Outer Space (1985) was no better, but Stevens did have one notable late credit, as one of the judges in the climactic concert in Brassed Off (1996).
Gavin Gaughan

Merton Park

Wonderful actor. Always remember him in Danger Within and loads of other British films of the fifties and sixties. Spotted him in a repeat episode of Goodnight Sweetheart not long ago, I think he played George Formby's manager. RS was a special favourite of mine.

Jim

Right on there Smudge! I'm not overly religious, having done a bible study some years ago; that really screwed me up, but I hope that there is a Heaven that we may all arrive in one day - hopefully to meet all these dear old actors/actresses in the spirit so to speak.

Good morning boys.

Captain Casper

And another light goes out.

RIP, Ronnie. A great old-school character actor.