Tenniel Evans R.I.P.

[Euryale]

The British character actor has died at the age of 83.



Tenniel appeared in many TV shows and played in the long-running radio comedy series The Navy Lark.





Tenniel with Jeremy Brett



E.

[HUGHJAMPTON]

Only watched him the other day in an episode of Redcap. Another fine character gone. RIP Tenniel.

[CaptainWaggett]

Thanks to BBC7 I listen to him at least once a week in The Navy Lark! Wasn't he the chap who suggested Jon Pertwee put himself up for Doctor Who? And he was Leslie Banks' son-in-law. I see from IMDB his own son is a very successful tv director.



Sad news

[penfold]

Always a class act.....

[batman]

RIP sir.

[Dr. Schreck]

Never seen him in anything else but The Dancing Men, as pictured, I believe. But he was fine as the unfortunate Hilton Cubitt. May he rest in peace.

[julian_craster]

Obituary : Tenniel Evans



A journeyman actor of great versatility, he was a regular on radio sitcom The Navy Lark



by Philip Purser

The Guardian, Friday 12 June 2009



Tenniel Evans | Obituary | Culture | The Guardian



The actor Tenniel Evans, who has died at the age of 83, was a familiar presence on stage, screen and radio. In a 50-year career, which included a stint at the National Theatre, he made guest appearances in almost every popular television series and was a stalwart of the long-running radio comedy The Navy Lark. Yet he was never quite recognised as a star, or even as a face. "Should I know you?" strangers would ask. Perhaps Evans's most surprising role came when he was 60 and left acting to become a Church of England non-stipendiary minister.



Descended on one side from the family of Mary Anne Evans (whose nom de plume was George Eliot), and on the other from John Tenniel, the Punch cartoonist and Alice in Wonderland illustrator, little Walter - he only switched to Tenniel when he became an actor - was born in Kenya, where his father was a settler trying to wrest a living from a scrubby farm. He was the youngest, by a wide margin, of four children.



From the European school in Kitale, Evans won a scholarship to Christ's hospital, the Bluecoat boarding school in Sussex, and was sent, unaccompanied, by his parents to the UK when he was 10. He was not to see them again for 20 years.



Schooldays over, Evans joined the army, was selected to become an officer and was in due course commissioned, only to collapse on an exercise. A serious heart defect was belatedly discovered, and he was discharged. The second world war was just ending. In 1946 he went up to St Andrews University on an ex-service grant, ostensibly to study German and economics, but in reality to find out what he wanted to do in life.



The answer soon came. He embraced student dramatics, sang in the choir, played small parts (unpaid) in the town's little professional theatre and then in a major Edinburgh festival attraction of 1948, The Satire of the Three Estates. He was now determined to be an actor.



Evans muffed his audition for the Old Vic's drama school, but, after making the examiner laugh, was offered a place at Rada. On completing the two-year course, he played the Archangel Michael in a 1951 Festival of Britain production of the York Mystery Plays, performed in the ruins of St Mary's Abbey. Next came a new part every week or fortnight in the repertory company at the Castle theatre in Farnham, Surrey.



A fellow member of the company was Evangeline Banks, daughter of the film star Leslie. They fell in love and planned to marry. Evans got a part in a play heading for the West End, but it lasted only two weeks. Holed up in a seedy London hotel, he searched in vain for other work while his debts mounted. Finally, a saintly uncle, who was rector of Byfield in Northamptonshire, came to his rescue, took him home and ruled that if he was to support a wife, he must get a job. He found one as a teacher in a private school for boys in Spratton, near Northampton, and he and Evangeline were married, by the uncle, early in 1953.



Although he turned out to be a good teacher, Evangeline sensed his lack of fulfilment. She was about to join the King's repertory theatre in Northampton and asked her husband what he would be doing if he were single. He would be an actor, he supposed. "Right, give your notice in tomorrow," she said firmly. She thought both would be welcome at the King's. In fact the company had a "no married couples" policy but, after a few months' separation while Evans returned to the stage via Huddersfield, the rule was relaxed and the couple spent four years with the Northampton company. Their son was born in 1955, and soon after they moved to London and then to the Quaker village of Jordans, in Buckinghamshire.



From now on, Evans would be a journeyman actor, as he chose to describe himself, his versatility valued by directors. Luck played its part again. The Welsh accent he donned for a radio play happened to be heard by the producer setting up The Navy Lark (1959-77), who grabbed him for the role of the Welsh seaman, mysteriously named Goldstein.



It was another piece of good fortune that Evangeline's mother was a London neighbour of the legendary "Bon Viveur" team of Fanny and Johnny Cradock, which led to Tenniel and his wife playing a honeymoon couple in an extraordinary entertainment devised by Fanny. On stage, she prepared meals they had to consume with delight or, later in the run, with gritted teeth.



Evans's happiest years were with the Actors' Company, a co-operative outfit set up by Ian McKellen and friends, which chose its own plays and performed them in London and New York. He played in two New York productions of Chekhov and Feydeau.



His first role for the National Theatre was in David Hare's Racing Demon in 1990, the second a Restoration comedy, Wild Oats. This followed a period when a church in Buckinghamshire was without a vicar, and Evans was virtually a full-time churchman (he had been ordained in 1985 after studying part-time for the ministry) as well as an actor. He was tired, he had emphysema, he resolved to retire from the stage at the end of the run. Wild Oats incorporated the device of bringing the whole cast on stage for a wrapping-up of loose ends in the plot and a valedictory speech from the presiding character. By happy chance this was Evans, according him an apt theatrical farewell on that last night.



He continued to take small parts in films or TV and, in 1999, published a charming memoir of his African boyhood, Don't Walk in the Long Grass. He is survived by Evangeline, their son Matthew and daughter Serena.



Walter Tenniel Evans, actor, born 17 May 1926; died 10 June 2009

[cornershop15]

Thanks Julian. I learnt a lot there, particularly about his troubled youth, but I'm disappointed at the apparent lack of interest in the Film and TV work. Maybe later obituaries will put that right?



So sorry to learn of Tenniel Evans' death. I saw him twice a couple of weeks ago, firstly in Public Eye, where he was excellent as Alfred Burke's bemused but sympathetic bank manager, and then a funny cameo as Michael Palin's father in an episode of Ripping Yarns. Hilary Mason (the blind psychic in Don't Look Now) played his wife.



It was Faith Brook that he was married to in a film called Walk a Crooked Path (1969), shown one Friday night on LWT about 20 years ago, and this was the first time I became aware of him. It's a distant memory now but all I recall of this obscure movie is that visually it was terrible and that it had the then-controversial subject of homosexuality as it's theme.



Film Review annuals from that period don't include this film (that's how obscure it is!) and IMDB doesn't have any details at present, so I've referred to Haliwell's Film Guide, which has this as it's plot summary: A headmaster at a boys' school is accused of homosexuality (sounds like a remake of Serious Charge, doesn't it?) and "Po-faced melodrama in a minor key" as it's review. Typical Leslie! I do remember it being devoid of humour, come to think of it. Interesting to see Christopher Coll and Patricia Haines among the cast. I can imagine a bitchy Patricia spreading nasty rumours! This was also the first time I saw Faith Brook.



Sorry I've chosen this film as my opening tribute as I don't think this was a very good film, but I thought I'd mention it as I've enjoyed many of Tenniel screen appearances since then, especially that recent viewing of his likeable performance in Public Eye.



Tenniel Evans

[ShirlGirl]

A very familiar face. Sad news.

[mrs_emma_peel]

A superb actor … I particularly remember Tenniel’s fine performance as Hilton Cubitt in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Dancing Men … one of my favourite Sherlock Holmes stories; and as Dr David Kerridge in Inspector Morse - The Last Enemy.

Very sad news indeed.

RIP Tenniel

[Marky B]

A great character actor,Tenniel Evans

Mark

[999picklepuss]

Interesting family - the son-in-law of Leslie Banks and the father of Serena Evans - Sgt Dawkins in The Thin Blue Line.

[cornershop15]

So sorry to learn of Tenniel Evans' death. I saw him a couple of weeks ago in Public Eye, where he was excellent as Alfred Burke's bemused but sympathetic bank manager.

It was because I liked Tenniel so much in this that I felt especially sad at his passing just days later.



This is my favourite moment from his performance as Bill Pearce in the episode Hard Times, where Marker (Alfred Burke) is as guarded as ever to the more personal questions!:

"Have you always been on your own?"

Basically, he thinks Marker is "under-pricing" himself, in his job as an enquiry agent, and manages to persuade him to raise the standard fee from six pounds a day to ten pounds (plus expenses). Those were the days! "He's a funny chap", he says to his assistant, "But a NICE man ... which means we won't be getting much out of him!"



More captures to follow - if I can work through this horrible hot weather. Do others agree that Tenniel resembled an older Kenneth Haigh?

[julian_craster]

Tenniel Evans: Taffy Goldstein in 'The Navy Lark'



The Independent

Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Tenniel (top right) with the cast of 'The Navy Lark' in 1963

On screen, Tenniel Evans was one of those character actors with a face recognisable in dozens of television programmes but whose name was less familiar. He played doctors, police officers, judges and vicars, and even went on to be become a priest himself.



But it was out of vision, acting a look-out in the long-running BBC radio comedy The Navy Lark (1959-77), that Evans could claim to be "recognised". As Taffy Goldstein, alongside Ronnie Barker as Johnson, he was one of the two Able Seamen among an inept crew aboard HMS Troutbridge, a frigate refitted to house undesirable elements of the Royal Navy.



The programme, following the motley bunch's misadventures, was devised as a vehicle for Jon Pertwee, who played the on-the-fiddle Chief Petty Officer Pertwee, in charge of stores, and also featured Richard Caldicot as Commander (later Captain) Povey and Leslie Phillips as Sub-Lieutenant Phillips. Evans was instantly identified with the line: "Starboard look-out here!" His character was constantly in search of promotion but achieved only a brief stint as Commodore. When called on, Evans also took other roles, including those of the crusty, old, gin-soaked Admiral, Lord Quirk the Sea Lord, Shamus O'Ginsburg and the Governor, Sir Willoughby Todhunter Brown.



Later, he reportedly recommended his friend Pertwee to audition as television's third Doctor Who, with both unaware that the actor was already being considered. During Pertwee's run in the role, Evans appeared in the Doctor Who story "Carnival of Monsters" (1973) as Major Daly.



Walter Tenniel Evans was born in 1926 in Nairobi, Kenya, where his expatriate father eked out a living by running a farm. He was the youngest of three brothers and three sisters, including one brother who had died before Evans's birth. His parents were both English, but there was Welsh blood several generations back on his father's side. Evans's paternal great-great-aunt was Mary Ann Evans, the novelist George Eliot, and his maternal great-uncle was the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland illustrator John Tenniel.



In 1936, at the age of 10, Evans left Africa and his family after winning a scholarship to Christ's Hospital boarding school in Horsham, West Sussex. During holidays, he lived with his father's cousin and her husband, the Reverend Rupert Winser, at Allesley Rectory, Warwickshire. Evans contrasted his African years of running around barefoot and living in a bungalow of mud and wattle walls, and a corrugated iron roof, with a more middle-class and serious life in England in his memoirs of childhood, Don't Walk in the Long Grass (1999). He was never again to see his father, who died before he visited his family in Africa 20 years after his own departure.



On leaving school at the end of the Second World War, Evans went to Sandhurst (1945-46) to train as an Army officer but was discharged after collapsing during an exercise on Mount Snowdon. While studying German and economics at St Andrews University (1946-9), he found his true vocation, acting, and subsequently trained at Rada (1949-51). After graduation, he acted the Archangel Michael in a revival of the York Mystery Plays, performed in the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, York, as part of the Festival of Britain (1951).



Evans then joined the repertory company at the Castle Theatre, Farnham, Surrey, where he met his future wife, the actress Evangeline Banks, daughter of the film star Leslie Banks.



When work became scarce, Evans found a new job as a teacher at Spratton Hall, then a boys-only private school, near Northampton, but he eventually returned to acting in Huddersfield, before joining his wife at Northampton Repertory Theatre. He made his television début as a policeman in an episode of No Hiding Place (1960), before acting Jonathan Kail, alongside Geraldine McEwan and Jeremy Brett, in an ITV adaptation of Tess (1960, based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles).



For 45 years, Evans worked solidly in character parts on television, flitting from one popular programme to another – and even playing Hitler in The Roads to Freedom (1970). Occasionally, the actor found regular roles, such as John, one of the solicitor siblings, in the legal drama The Sullavan Brothers (1964-65), Sergeant Bluett in the sitcom My Brother's Keeper (1975-76), Geoff Barratt in the final series of the post-war comedy-drama Shine on Harvey Moon (1985), Teddy Haslam in the zoo vet drama One by One (1987) and Sir Edward Parkinson-Lewis in September Song (1994). He also took over from the late Patrick Troughton the role of Perce, grandfather of Ashley (Nicholas Lyndhurst), in the sitcom The Two of Us (1987-90).



Evans was in few films, but he did play a detective in 10 Rillington Place (1971), a biopic of the murderer John Christie. He also acted the director of a company of theatre actors in Knots (1975), the director David Munro's screen version of a play devised by Edward Petherbridge from the "new wave" psychiatrist R.D. Laing's book of the same name, in which thespians examine their own inner emotions as they prepare for a stage performance.



On the "real" stage, Evans acted with the Royal Court Theatre company in Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen (1959), Gwyn Thomas's The Keep (1961, also Piccadilly Theatre), David Storey's The Restoration of Arnold Middleton (1967, also Criterion Theatre) and Beside Herself (1990). His other West End appearances were in the Agatha Christie play The Unexpected Guest (as Sergeant Cadwallader, Duchess Theatre, 1958), Portrait of Murder (Savoy Theatre, 1963), Hamlet (as Polonius, Cambridge Theatre, 1971) and Ten Times Table (Globe Theatre, 1978).



He also enjoyed his stage roles in the Actors' Company, a collective formed in 1971 by Ian McKellen and Edward Petherbridge, and with the National Theatre as Henderson in David Hare's Racing Demon (1990) and Banks in John O'Keeffe's Restoration comedy Wild Oats (1995).



In 1985, the actor – a lifelong Christian – was ordained as a non-stipendiary Anglican priest and licensed to St Mary's Church, Beaconsfield, but continued to act on screen. His last role was in an episode of the romantic comedy-drama William and Mary in 2004, when he retired from both acting and the priesthood, suffering from emphysema. The actor's two children are the director Matthew and the actress Serena.



Anthony Hayward



Walter Tenniel Evans, actor: born Nairobi, Kenya 17 May 1926; married 1953 Evangeline Banks (one son, one daughter); died High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire 10 June 2009.

[Bernardo]

British Character actors were THE BEST, sadly another one gone but he has left his mark.

[cornershop15]

Much more satisfied with that last obituary's coverage of Tenniel's Film and TV work. Thanks again to Julian.

British Character actors were THE BEST, sadly another one gone but he has left his mark.

I agree with both statements. A very likeable personality. He turned up on DVD again last night actually, in Budgie, but only for the first few minutes - something else to capture for you! He reminded me very much of Thorley Walters this time.



Returning to his performance in Public Eye, I'd like to add two more captures. These are from the scene where, as friendly bank manager Bill Pearce, he visits Marker's office, beside a railway in Chertsey.







Once again, there is concern for Marker's odd approach to his work and lifestyle ...

"You do worry me!"

Rex Features has 15 pictures of Tenniel Evans from all sorts of TV series. Please have a look.

[cornershop15]

It's about time we were reminded of Tenniel again, seven months after his sad death. He was only in

this compelling film for a few minutes, but had a couple of good scenes as Detective Sergeant Gough,

who is surprised to hear Timothy Evans (John Hurt) confess to the murder - and disposal - of his wife:



"Now wait a minute. Do you realise what you are saying?"



After expressing his doubts about the body being hidden down a drain, the detective listens to the

confused Evans giving a different version of what really happened, mentioning the name of Christie:

"Christie?"



I wasn't expecting to do these screencaps yesterday but was inspired by a post Geoffers did a few days ago:

I have a feeling they are among the names in IMDb's cast list, one of whom is Douglas Blackwell, who was Murray in The Ipcress File and 'Workman Jones' in 10 Rillington Place. I scrutinised the scenes Geoffers described and did a few captures from both films, eventually finding the Workman. I don't think I've got very far in establishing which one Mr. Blackwell is in The Ipcress File but all that scanning led me to Tenniel Evans' scenes, which is how I came to do those ATW screencaps of him. So now you know. I am delighted with how they've turned out and hope his family and friends will chance upon them some time.

[cornershop15]

I have just posted this at the 'Lost Plays of ITV' thread and thought I'd do the same here

as Tenniel is included in the picture. Another one that's missing from the archives ... :





Joint Ventures:

Not long afterwards, Tenniel co-starred with Margery Mason again in Walk a Crooked Path

(where I first noticed him) and many years later in the TV series A Question of Guilt (1980).

[wideboy]

Interesting that you posted a picture of Tenniel with Margery Mason, cornershop.



As you note above, she plays his housekeeper in Walk A Crooked Path, which I watched a few days ago. Quite a compelling story, largely thanks to the actors, but I certainly agree with you about the lack of visual interest.

[cornershop15]

Sorry for the very late response, wideboy. I did write back here a few weeks ago but eventually abandoned the post as I didn't plan it well enough (better luck this time, I hope). Looking back at the earlier posts, it seems I didn't mention that Margery Mason was Tenniel's housekeeper in Walk a Crooked Path but I can definitely imagine her in the role! I have only ever seen it once, in the days when ITV used to show rare and interesting films on Friday nights, and my memories are extremely vague. Was your recent viewing, by any chance, a recording of that same transmission (1989/90)?

Tenniel Evans in 'Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)'



Tenniel has made quite a few brief appearances on my DVDs - including 10 Rillington Place and Budgie - and here is another.

He played James Howe, one of several disappointed relatives of the late Mrs. Wentworth Howe, whose will stipulated that her

£2 million fortune remain in trust. The unusual condition was that it stayed that way for as long as her collection of exotic birds

lived. James and wife Gabrielle (Gabrielle Brune) are later murdered by lawyer Cyril Luckham, who wants the money for himself.

This is when Mrs. Howe introduces her husband to Jeff Randall (Mike Pratt), who's been assigned to keep an eye on the aviary:

The unfortunately headless figure in the background is Jane Merrow, who played Tenniel's niece (I'll be doing a similar tribute to her soon).



This is an amusing shot I think. He's waiting for Colonel Chalmers (played by Maurice Hedley) to go for a walk outside, so that the coast

is clear to go to the aviary and save the birds. His wife has poisoned the birdseed (for financial reasons!), but a poisoned dart kills him:





I thought you might like to know that the above image is just before the capture I used to open the new 'Randall and Hopkirk sets' thread:



Original ITV Transmission: 21st December 1969, the day after Rolf Harris topped the charts with Two Little Boys, the last No. 1 of the Sixties.