Jimmy Gardner R.I.P.

[Euryale]

The British character actor has died at the age of 85.



Jimmy appeared in the films 10 Rillington Place and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as well as making many television appearances.









Jimmy Gardner: War hero and actor whose roles ranged from gravedigger in the RSC's 'Hamlet' to a bus driver in 'Harry Potter' - Obituaries, News - The Independent







Euryale.

[Number Six]

name='Euryale']The British character actor has died at the age of 85.



Jimmy appeared in the films 10 Rillington Place and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as well as making many television appearances.









Jimmy Gardner: War hero and actor whose roles ranged from gravedigger in the RSC's 'Hamlet' to a bus driver in 'Harry Potter' - Obituaries, News - The Independent







Euryale.

Very sad news, a real character in the true sense of the word and a genuine hero . A lovely man. RIP.

[Gerald Lovell]

I'm sorry to hear this. Jimmy was another of those character actors who never looked young!

[wellendcanons]

Very sad news. I'll most fondly remember Jimmy from Hitchcock's classic suspense thriller Frenzy and in an episode of Thriller called Sign It Death.



R.I.P. Jimmy.



wellendcanons.

[julian_craster]

From The Times

May 15, 2010

Jimmy Gardner: actor | Times Online Obituary



Obituary: Jimmy Gardner, actor



Jimmy Gardner was a familiar face, if not a name, in dozens of stage, film and television productions in a career that spanned more than half a century. One of his last roles, when he was 80, was playing Ernie Prang, the driver of the Knight Bus, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.



Sporting a splendid white beard and wearing big round glasses, he offered trips “to all destinations . . . nothing underwater”. Asked if he regarded the film as the summit of his career, he said he hoped that the best was still to come.



Edward Charles James Gardner was born in 1924 in Ireland and spent his early childhood in Newmarket, where his father, Ted, was a leading jockey. The family later moved to Marlborough in Wiltshire, where his father ran a bookmaker’s and Jimmy attended the grammar school. Ted wanted Jimmy to become a jockey and as he did not grow beyond 5ft 3in he was the right build.



He became an apprentice, and spent six months with a Derby-winning trainer, Fred Darling. But he never took to riding and having performed plays at home with his brother and sister he decided that he wanted to act. Before the war he was a prop man for Warner Brothers and at Gainsborough Studios. One of his jobs was passing a lighted cigarette to Margaret Lockwood just before the cameras rolled.



In 1943 he was conscripted into the RAF and joined No 10 Squadron. As a Halifax rear gunner he completed 15 sorties before volunteering for a further 15. For helping his captain to return safely after their aircraft came under attack during a raid on Leipzig, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal.



After the war he had the chance to study acting under a government scheme for ex-servicemen and attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. During the holidays he acted with a repertory company in Devon. Between stage commitments he worked as a chauffeur, and was the driver for the playwright John Osborne, who became a friend. He once picked up Marilyn Monroe with Osborne while she was in London filming with Laurence Olivier.



In the theatre he moved up from playing a peasant in Olivier’s Richard III at the Old Vic to a ten-year stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in more than 20 productions. He did a fine comic turn as the Lion in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was a meddlesome Verges in Much Ado about Nothing. On television he was in two Doctor Who adventures, played Mr Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1967), and appeared in Z Cars , The Onedin Line and Casualty. In 1996 he was a tramp in EastEnders. His films included The Company of Wolves and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.



He did not marry.



Jimmy Gardner, actor, was born on August 24, 1924. He died on May 3, 2010, aged 85

[chuffnobbler]

Now there's an actor with a PROPER cv!



I was watching him just recently in the execrable Dr Who "Underworld", and was struck by how he tried to bring dignity to an awful character and an awful script.



I had totally forgotten he was in Frenzy, one of my alltime favourite films. A key role, too.

[julian_craster]

Jimmy Gardner obituary

Supporting actor in works from Harry Potter to Shakespeare





http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-rad...rdner-obituary



by Nick Fogg

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 June 2010

Jimmy Gardner Jimmy Gardner played cameo roles in many popular television series

In St Paul's church, Covent Garden, amid the memorials to the theatrical stars of their day, is a modest plaque dedicated to an actor described as "a much-respected player of supporting parts". Such a one was Jimmy Gardner, who has died aged 85.



In his acting career, stretching over half a century, he played the gamut of character roles, ranging from the statutory drunken old man in the Royal Shakespeare Company's stage version of A Clockwork Orange (1990) to Peter in Romeo and Juliet (a role first created by Shakespeare's clown, Will Kempe), to the bus driver Ernie Prang in the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). No popular TV series could be counted as having truly arrived until he had played a cameo role in it, whether it be The Forsyte Saga, Z Cars, Doctor Who, EastEnders, Casualty, The Bill, The Onedin Line, Coronation Street, The Avengers, Dixon of Dock Green or Crossroads.



Jimmy was born in Newmarket, Cambridgeshire. His father, Teddy, a jockey, came second in the 1923 Derby to the legendary Steve Donoghue. As a result of this perceived failure, he was fired by Lord Derby. He found rides in Ireland where he became champion jockey in 1937 and where Jimmy grew up.



Jimmy had just the right build for a jockey, which his father regarded as his destiny. "He did try riding," Jimmy's brother Vic (himself a fine jockey) recalled, "but he didn't like it very much. Even as a child, he wanted to be a film star." To pursue this ambition, Jimmy ran away from home to seek work at the Warner Bros studios in Teddington, Middlesex. When the gatekeeper refused him admittance, he sneaked in by riding on the blind-side running board of Margaret Lockwood's car. Once inside, he got work as a scene-painter, later progressing to the clapperboard.



He might well have remained on the wrong side of the camera had it not been for the second world war. In 1942 he was conscripted into the RAF, flying 30 missions as a rear-gunner on Halifax bombers – twice the standard duty. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for his action in fighting off three enemy warplanes over Germany on 19 February 1944. In the words of the citation, Sergeant Gardner's "skilful directions and accurate fire played a good part in frustrating the attacks and enabled his captain to return safely to base".



On another occasion, the pilot was obliged to ditch his crippled aircraft in the Thames. The bedraggled crew had no money between them to telephone base for a pick-up, but they managed to make their way to central London. Jimmy remembered that his father was a good friend of a theatrical agent, Charlie Tucker. It was not until after Tucker had wined and dined them that they phoned the military police for a lift back to base.



Jimmy finally achieved his ambition to appear on stage after he was demobilised in 1945. He used his RAF gratuity to enrol at the Central School of Speech and Drama.



His first work was in repertory theatre in Barnstaple, Devon. The two or three parts he had to learn each week stood him in good stead for the vast selection of character roles that were to become his metier. He felt the contrast during his 10 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, when he had weeks to learn the delightful range of small parts on which he stamped his mark – Snug the joiner in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Adam in As You Like It, Old Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, the gravedigger in Hamlet, with his greatest theatrical friend, Mark Rylance, and many more. He also took on no fewer than five roles in David Edgar's noted stage adaptation of Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby (1980).



He is survived by Vic, and by his sister, Joan.



Edward Charles James "Jimmy" Gardner, actor, born 24 August 1924; died 3 May 2010

[seeall]

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Multi-BAFTA winning screenwriter Jimmy Gardner died on December 14th, 2010 aged 53 of heart failure. His work was marked by an honesty and integrity which reflected his own character. Though best known for the hard hitting and highly acclaimed British television dramas The Cops and Buried, in person Jimmy was a kind, thoughtful, humorous and modest man, qualities not always associated with the television industry.

Brought up in Edinburgh, Gardner later studied at Kent University for a BA Hons in English and American Literature. Subsequently, he led a somewhat peripatetic life with an eclectic range of jobs in London, New York and Lisbon before returning to Edinburgh.

In 1992 he graduated from the screenwriting course at the Northern Film School with Borderland which won the Best British Student Short Film Award was shortlisted for the 1996 Dennis Potter Award after a recommendation from Tessa Ross, then at BBC Television. As Ross recalls 'I still remember well how exciting it was to read Jimmy's submission to the Dennis Potter Award, all those years ago - here was an honest and clear original voice, a voice with grit and humanity and a clear sense of purpose. Jimmy was quiet and serious, unshowy and very unusual - just like his writing. Working with him and the team on Buried was a great highlight and Cops remains one of the true inspirational, unforgettable pieces of television drama. I am very sad to hear of his death.'

Following a BAFTA nomination for his short film The Butterfly Man, Gardner began his television career writing episodes of The Bill. Having written for the second series of This Life Gardner, together with Robert Jones and Anita Pandolfo, developed The Cops with producer Francis Hopkinson which went on to win the BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series in 1999 and 2000 and the Royal Television Society’s Best Drama Series Award in 2000.

The Cops was described by Executive Producer Tony Garnett as a 'Trojan Horse drama', a critique of life on a northern sink estate and of the realities of policing in this milieu. Francis Hopkinson described Gardner's first script for the series as a perfect opener and launched the show that boosted many careers – so we all owe Jimmy'. On learning of his death, producer Tony Garnett said 'Jimmy was a real talent, perceptive about people and angry at injustice. It was a privilege to work with a writer of such integrity.'

Gardner went on to co-devise and write (with Robert Jones) the critically acclaimed series Buried and this uncompromising, harsh and violent portrayal of prison life won the 2004 BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series.

He also wrote the screenplay for a feature film Outlanders based on a story by Dominic Lees which was released theatrically in 2009.

Gardner created and was the lead writer for the darkly comic family saga Goldplated; a prescient tale of unsustainable avarice set around a nouveau riche family of property developers in Manchester.

More recently he had written an episode of the period cop drama George Gently starring Martin Shaw and at the time of his death was writing another episode, along with developing a number of original drama projects.

Gardner was born with a congenital heart defect, which required surgery at different stages of his life, together with ongoing treatment, all of which he bore with characteristic good grace and wry humour. He is survived by his wife, Claire Russell, three brothers, his son, Eugene, and his parents.

The Writers' Guild.

[julian_craster]

Jimmy Gardner: Bafta-winning writer whose scripts for 'The Cops' exemplified his tough, gritty, realist style

By Anthony Hayward
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Jimmy Gardner: Bafta-winning writer whose scripts for 'The Cops' exemplified his tough, gritty, realist style - Obituaries, News - The Independent


The writer Jimmy Gardner co-created The Cops, a groundbreaking drama series that was so uncompromising in its portrayal of the police that their assistance was eventually withdrawn.

The first episode, written by Gardner, featured a rookie police officer high on speed at a nightclub shortly before the start of her shift. More broadly, the programme showed the problems of poverty and desperation on the streets and estates of a town in north-west England and how they challenged the local police force's black-and-white view of the world. Officers advocating community policing had to battle with others whose solutions were firmly rooted in more old-fashioned methods.

Gardner – whose anger at injustice was reflected throughout his work – was a driving force behind The Cops (1998-2001), which was shot in documentary style with hand-held cameras, and won two Bafta awards for best drama series. "We spent three weeks in Blackburn, shadowing the police – we had access all areas," he said. "The reason why The Cops was so successful is that it was so well researched. What really struck us was the futility of it. Most of the villains were just hopeless. One of the officers said to me, 'If it wasn't for drugs – if you count alcohol as a drug – we wouldn't have a job.'"

Born in Buckinghamshire in 1957, the eldest of four brothers, Gardner was the son of a civil engineer and a teacher of deaf children who later moved back to their native Edinburgh. As a result of his mother contracting German measles while pregnant, he grew up with a heart defect and, through poor health and hospital visits, missed much of his schooling at George Watson's College, Edinburgh.

When he was 18, open-heart surgery improved Gardner's health and he completed his A-levels at Napier College (now Edinburgh Napier University), before graduating in English and American literature from the University of Kent. For years, he drifted from job to job – labourer, street trader, mini-cab driver – in London, New York and Lisbon. Following the birth of his son, Eugene, Gardner decided he needed a career.

He studied at the Northern School of Film and Television in Leeds. His break came with the school's production of Borderland (1993), a short film he co-wrote with its director, Dominic Lees. Screened at Edinburgh and Venice in 1994, it told the story of an IRA member and a young British soldier living on opposite shores of a lake between Northern Ireland and the Republic. When Borderland won Best Student Film award at the 1994 British Short Film Festival, one of the judges was the producer David Puttnam and the accolade – plus a Bafta Best Short nomination for his 1996 The Butterfly Man – brought attention.

His first scripts were for The Bill (1996-97), then the cult series This Life (1997), made by the veteran producer Tony Garnett's independent company, World Productions. Its next major series, The Cops, was devised by Gardner, Robert Jones and Anita J Pandolfo, with Gardner scripting two episodes for each of the three series.

He and Jones then created the prison drama Buried (2003), set in the fictional HMP Mandrake, near Manchester. It followed the fortunes of a new inmate, Lee Kingley (Lennie James), beginning a sentence for shooting and grievously wounding a man who raped his sister. Again, he and Jones did intensive research, interviewing prisoners at Wormwood Scrubs, London, and Grendon, near Aylesbury, to ensure the result was another gritty drama.

"We wanted to show that most people who go to prison are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations," Gardner said, "and that, basically, any of us could end up in there, given the wrong set of circumstances." The result was another Bafta. Gardner then contributed two scripts to the criminal-lawyer series Outlaws (2004), before re-teaming with Lees to write with him the feature film Outlanders (2006), about the dilemma faced by a Polish immigrant after his brother is discovered to be bringing illegal labour to Britain.

Praise from the television critics disappeared only when Gardner left realism behind with Goldplated (2006), a series about "Cheshire girls" taking over the mantle from their stereotypical Essex counterparts – throwing themselves at men with money and flaunting it themselves. "The Cops was about losers and people living in sink estates," he said. "It was about poverty in Britain. I thought it would be interesting to go to the other extreme and look at the winners."

Gardner turned to adaptation for the first time with Missing (2006), based on Karin Alvtegen's novel about a homeless young woman (played by Joanne Froggatt) going on the run when she is suspected of being a serial killer. Also working on the two-part drama was the script editor Claire Russell, whom he married in 2008.

Last year, Gardner contributed a script to the second series of Survivors, about the aftermath of a virus that kills most of the world's population, and another to Inspector George Gently, starring Martin Shaw as the detective of Alan Hunter's novels.

James McKay Gardner, writer: born Flatwell Heath, Buckinghamshire 27 August 1957; one son; married 2008 Claire Russell; died London 14 December 2010.

[TimR]

I read this over a few times to see what the cause of death was - and then I found it in another obituary. I was surprised by his death at a relatively young age. It was from heart failure. His early health/heart problems are mentioned in both.

His themes were often to do with those who are suffering, struggling and overcoming - or being overcome - by their circumstances. I am always intrigued by people who go through difficult times and then use it in a constructive way, with a strong sense of purpose. Gardner used his writing to bring characters to life who would not always receive much attention.

Cops writer Jimmy Gardner dies aged 53 | News | Broadcast