Jon Pertwee
John Devon Roland Pertwee, known professionally as Jon Pertwee, was an English actor. He made many appearances on television, film and in the theatre throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but is best known for playing the third incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running science fiction series Doctor Who and the title character in Worzel Gummidge. Other notable roles included Chief Petty Officer Pertwee in the BBC Radio sitcom The Navy Lark and appearing in four films in the Carry On series. He also hosted the game show Whodunnit?.
Towards the end of his life, Pertwee maintained a close association with Doctor Who by appearing at many fan conventions related to the series and giving interviews.
Biography
Early life and education
Pertwee was born in Chelsea. He was of part-French Huguenot ancestry, his surname being an Anglicisation of "Perthuis", "de Perthuis de Laillevault", a family of counts descended from Charlemagne. He was the son of screenwriter and actor Roland Pertwee and distant cousin of actor Bill Pertwee. Pertwee's mother, Avice Scholtz, separated from his father Roland when Pertwee was young. His father remarried, and his mother found a new partner, Louis Auguste De La Garde, with whom Pertwee did not build a relationship; she died in 1951, leaving Pertwee's elder brother Michael as her executor. Avice's sister Daphne married Captain Philip Cecil Clowes and became the mother of Pertwee's cousin, the writer St John Legh Clowes. Actor Henry Ainley, a close friend of his father, was his godfather. Coincidentally, Ainley's son Anthony appeared as the Master – a renegade Time Lord who was the Doctor's greatest enemy – alongside Pertwee in the Doctor Who anniversary story "The Five Doctors".Pertwee was educated at Frensham Heights School, an independent school in Rowledge, near Farnham in Surrey and at Sherborne School in Dorset. He then applied to the Central School of Speech and Drama but was unsuccessful. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but later expelled, allegedly because he wrote rude remarks on the lavatory walls and the principal considered him talentless. Another account for his expulsion is that he refused to play a Greek wind in a play.
Early career
While still at school, Pertwee worked as a circus performer riding the wall of death on a motorcycle with a toothless lion in the sidecar. He then worked in repertory theatre before being contracted with the BBC at 18 as an actor.During the Second World War, Pertwee spent six years in the Royal Navy. He was a crew member of and was transferred off the ship for officer training shortly before she was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck, losing all but three men in May 1941.
Later, he was attached to the top secret Naval Intelligence Division, working alongside future James Bond author Ian Fleming, and reporting directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee. In an interview conducted in 1994 and published in 2013, he said, "I did all sorts. Teaching commandos how to use escapology equipment, compasses in brass buttons, secret maps in white cotton handkerchiefs, pipes you could smoke that also fired a.22 bullet. All sorts of incredible things."
In 1942, as a Sub Lieutenant, Pertwee was posted to HMS Valkyrie. Whilst stationed on the Isle of Man he was actively engaged in amateur variety shows appearing in character sketches. It was during this time that Pertwee became one of the founding members of the Service Players, a drama society which remains active to this day.
During his time in the Navy, Pertwee woke up one morning after a drunken night out while in port to find a tattoo of a cobra on his right arm.
After the war, Pertwee worked as a stage comedian, which included performing at the Glasgow Empire Theatre and sharing a bill with Max Wall and Jimmy James. He began to work as a comedy actor on radio, becoming known for being able to do a variety of comedic voices and accents. He featured Waterlogged Spa, alongside Eric Barker, and Puffney Post Office in which he played a hapless old postman with the catch-phrase "It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you tears them up."
On 15 November 1948, at the Wood Green Empire, he was billed as "The Most Versatile Voice in Radio – Jon Pertwee from the Radio Shows Merry-go-Round and Up the Pole". From 1959 to 1977, he performed the role of the conniving Chief Petty Officer Pertwee in The Navy Lark on BBC Radio. The fictional ship in the series HMS Troutbridge almost shared its name with the real HMS Troubridge whose commanding officer at one point was a relative of Pertwee's, who wrote to the BBC to provide details of comic incidents on the ship which were then used in The Navy Lark's scripts. After Ronnie Barker left the series, Pertwee took on various additional roles, including a villainous character called the Master, whose voice Pertwee said was an impression of Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
Pertwee did not appear in the 1959 film version of The Navy Lark. In his 1996 memoir he attributed this to producer Herbert Wilcox refusing to employ his co-star Dennis Price on the grounds that "he was gay", a decision Pertwee made clear that he thought "was ridiculous". Shortly after voicing his support of Price he found out he had been dropped from the film's cast and replaced by Ronald Shiner.
Pertwee was known as a Danny Kaye look-alike, and his impersonation of Kaye can be seen in the crime film Murder at the Windmill. He played Charlie Sterling in the comedy film Will Any Gentleman...?, which also featured future First Doctor actor William Hartnell playing Inspector Martin.
On stage, he played the part of Lycus in the 1963 London production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with Frankie Howerd and appeared in the smaller role of Crassus in the 1966 film version. He appeared as Sidney Tait in the comedy film Ladies Who Do. In 1966, Pertwee starred alongside Donald Sinden in the original West End production of the long-running comedy There's a Girl in My Soup. In this period he appeared in three Carry On films: Carry On Cleo as the soothsayer; Carry On Cowboy as Sheriff Earp; and Carry On Screaming! as Dr. Fettle. In a lost interview from 1986, which was rediscovered and published in 2008, he said he had not wanted to appear in more Carry On films because he believed the series had adversely affected the careers of other regular actors such as Kenneth Williams, Sid James and Joan Sims. In 1967 Pertwee was chosen by Dad's Army producer David Croft for the role of Captain George Mainwaring, but he turned it down – possibly because he preferred to extend his role on Broadway in There's a Girl in My Soup.
His television career had started off with small parts in children's shows featuring Richard Hearne's Mr Pastry character. Later he made an appearance in The Avengers episode "From Venus With Love" as Brigadier Whitehead, and later, he guest-starred as a vicar in The Goodies' episode "Wacky Wales".
''Doctor Who''
In 1969, shortly before leaving the series, producer Peter Bryant cast Pertwee as the Third Doctor in Doctor Who. Pertwee had asked his agent to apply for the role for him and was surprised to find he was already on the shortlist. He was the second choice for the role; Ron Moody was the first but was unavailable.In a departure from the Doctor's first two incarnations, Pertwee's era was influenced by the James Bond film series. His interpretation of the Doctor was described as "a man of action, supremely confident, articulate, yet also warmly reassuring". This incarnation was credited with being more scientifically minded than early versions of the Doctor. He played the character as an active crusader with a penchant for fancy clothes, while exiled to Earth by the Time Lords for much of his tenure and serving as the scientific adviser to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT. He played the Doctor for five seasons from early 1970 to mid-1974, a longer stint than either of his predecessors in the role, although he ultimately appeared in fewer episodes than William Hartnell as the BBC had reduced the production schedule.
Pertwee credited his performance as the Doctor with helping him work out exactly who he really was when he was not resorting to comedic disguises or voices. This was because the BBC's Head of Drama, Shaun Sutton, had advised him to act the Doctor as himself: in effect, to "play Jon Pertwee". In The Making of Doctor Who, Pertwee himself said "Doctor Who is me – or I am Doctor Who. I play him straight from me."
On 14 April 1971, Pertwee was the subject of Thames Television's This Is Your Life.
During his tenure as the Doctor, Pertwee appeared in the Amicus horror anthology The House That Dripped Blood, which was filmed in the summer of 1970 between his first and second Doctor Who seasons. Pertwee played the lead in the last segment of the film as Paul Henderson, an arrogant horror film star who meets his doom thanks to a genuine vampire cloak. In 1973, Pertwee endorsed the Co-op's Baking Your Cake and Eating It, a recipe book written by Sarah Charles. It has been given the unofficial title of The Jon Pertwee Recipe Book.
In early 1974, Pertwee announced he would step down as the Doctor to resume his stage career in The Bedwinner, also citing potential typecasting in the role as the reason for leaving, though he later said that the catalyst for his departure was the death of his good friend and co-star Roger Delgado and the departures of co-star Katy Manning, producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks. Also, according to Elisabeth Sladen in an interview on the DVD release of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Pertwee asked for a substantially increased fee for another year on the series. However, the request was rejected, and he subsequently resigned from the role. Pertwee was also dealing with chronic back pain at the time, and was becoming less interested in the character of the Doctor. His last full-time appearance in the series was in the story Planet of the Spiders in June 1974, which finished with Tom Baker replacing him in the role.
Pertwee later reprised the role in the 20th anniversary story "The Five Doctors" and the Children in Need story Dimensions in Time, in two radio adventures and on stage in Doctor Who – The Ultimate Adventure.