Sam Kydd


Samuel John Kydd was a British actor. He appeared in more than 290 films, more than any other British actor, including 119 between 1946 and 1952.
His best-known roles were in two major British television series of the 1960s, as the smuggler Orlando O'Connor in Crane and its sequel Orlando. He also played a recurring character in Coronation Street. Kydd's first film was The Captive Heart, in which he played a POW.

Early life and career

An army officer's son, Kydd was born on 15 February 1915 in Belfast, Ireland. He moved to London as a child. He was educated at Dunstable School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. During the mid-1930s Kydd entered various talent contests and was spotted by Oscar Rabin who made him an MC for the Oscar Rabin Band and one of his "Hot Shots". He would warm up audiences with jokes, impressions and tap dance routines before introducing the singers and attractions on the bill. He also worked on the same bill as Bud Flanagan in Scarborough. During the late 1930s he briefly joined the Territorial Army serving with the Queen Victoria's Rifles to please a girlfriend and when war broke out he was called up for active service.
Early in the Second World War, he went to France with the British Expeditionary Force but was quickly captured, spending the rest of the war in Stalag XX-A, a camp in Toruń in German-occupied Poland. Kydd later wrote of his experiences as a POW in his autobiographical book For You the War Is Over. While held in a forced labour subcamp in Wyrzysk, he learned various Polish phrases through contact with the local Polish population and bartered with them illegally, on one occasion spending a month in solitary confinement on bread and water. He caught tuberculosis.
During his internment in the German prisoner-of-war camp, where he remained for the next five years, he played a prominent part in the camp's theatrical activities, acting in, devising and staging plays. He felt so strongly about his work there that, when he was offered repatriation after three years, he turned it down to continue with his theatrical work. In recognition of his valuable services during these years, he was awarded a pair of drama masks, made by the Red Cross from barbed wire.

Career

Returning to Britain after the war, Kydd auditioned for the film The Captive Heart, which was about life in a prison camp, and as this was an area where he had much experience, he got a part as an advisor cum actor. He went on to appear in more than 290 films and 1,000 TV plays and series, including films The Blue Lamp, Father Brown, The 39 Steps and I'm All Right Jack.
He often played the part of a strong and resilient cockney, though he made many appearances as Irishmen as well, in both comedy and drama. He appeared as a character actor in films such as Chance of a Lifetime, The Cruel Sea, Reach for the Sky, The Yangtse Incident, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Too Many Crooks, Sink the Bismarck!, Smokescreen, Island of Terror, Too Late the Hero, Steptoe and Son Ride Again and Eye of the Needle. He also appeared in the big-screen versions of Dad's Army and Till Death Us Do Part.
In 1963, Kydd appeared as the lovable smuggler Orlando O'Connor in Crane starring Patrick Allen as a Briton who moved to Morocco to run a cafe and had an aversion to smuggling. The programme ran for 39 episodes and was watched each week by over 16 million viewers. Kydd's character was so popular that when Crane finished he was given his own programme, Orlando, a children's adventure series which ran for 126 episodes 1965–1968.
He also appeared on TV in The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Pickwick Papers, Mess Mates, The Arthur Askey Show, The Benny Hill Show, The Charlie Drake Show, The Harry Worth Show, The Expert, 11 different characters in Dixon of Dock Green, Fossett Saga, Curry and Chips, The Tony Hancock Show,'' Hancock's Half Hour , Minder, Crossroads, Coronation Street, The Eric Sykes Show and Follyfoot.
He was the subject of This Is Your Life'' in 1974 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

Personal life

Kydd married Pinkie Barnes, an ex-international table tennis champion and one of Britain's first women advertising copywriters. Their son, Jonathan Kydd, followed his father into the acting profession.
Kydd died at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton in London on 26 March 1982, aged 67. The cause of death of emphysema. Jonathan Kydd reported that his father smoked up to 80 cigarettes a day.

Memoirs

Jonathan Kydd has edited four volumes of his father's memoirs, Sam Kydd: The Unpublished Memoirs, the first of which to be published was Volume 1: Be a Good Boy Sam, 1945–1952 in 2021. He has also created a website for him.

Selected filmography

The Captive Heart as POW in Top Bunk They Made Me a Fugitive as Eddie Fortune Lane A Song for Tomorrow as SergeantTrouble in the Air Colonel Bogey as Bit Role To the Public Danger as Police DriverLove in Waiting as Bit Part It's Hard to Be Good as Husband Scott of the Antarctic as Leading Stoker E. McKenzie R.N.A Piece of Cake as Uncredited