by Allan Fish
(UK 1968-1977 2,340m) DVD1/2
We are the boys who will make you think again
p David Croft d David Croft, Harold Snoad, Bob Spiers w Jimmy Perry, David Croft theme song sung by Bud Flanagan
Arthur Lowe (Capt.George Mainwaring), John le Mesurier (Sgt.Arthur Wilson), Ian Lavender (Pte.Frank Pike), John Laurie (Pte.James Frazer), Clive Dunn (Cpl.Jack Jones), Arnold Ridley (Pte.Charles Godfrey), James Beck (Pte.Joe Walker), Bill Pertwee (Warden Hodges), Frank Williams (The Vicar), Edward Sinclair (The Verger),
One cannot help thinking back to Powell and Pressburger’s immortal The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and the moment when John Laurie’s faithful servant, Murdoch, announces he’s helping the war effort by joining the Home Guard. It’s enough to make you think Pressburger, when writing his script, could see into the future. Laurie was one of British cinema’s forgotten character actors, memorable in everything from Hitch’s The 39 Steps to Mine Own Executioner and appearing – one of only two people besides Larry himself – in all three Olivier Shakespeare films. Yet none of that matters, for he will always be Private James Frazer, undertaker and member of the Home Guard for Walmington on Sea, always ready to tell you the tale of the “auld empty barn”. And he wasn’t alone, there’s not an actor amongst this cast whose efforts in other spheres has not been dwarfed by their association with arguably Britain’s best-loved small screen comedy.
The institution that was Dad’s Army ran for nearly a decade and followed the (mis)adventures of a group of Local Defence Volunteers during the dark days of World War II when a Nazi Invasion was expected. Among the volunteers are young Pike, a bank teller whose poor health prevented him signing up, Frazer, the aforementioned Scottish undertaker, Jones, a butcher who once served in the Boer War and can’t shut up about how he used to deal with the Fuzzy-Wuzzies, and Godfrey, an old bachelor who lives with his elderly female relatives and has all the ferocity of an angel cake. Rounding off the group are Walker, a dodgy geezer who perpetuates the “fell off a back of a lorry” small-time black marketeer, and the two leading personnel; Sergeant Wilson served in World War I at Gallipoli and Passchendaele, but his superior officer, also his manager at the bank where he works, still insists he should be in command. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you – and get ready to cringe – Captain Arthur Mainwaring. Mainwaring comes from a long line, a tradition of incompetence in authority well-remembered from the Will Hay comedies of the 1930s, but the character itself surely derived most from the eerily similar portrayal of the Home Guard captain in Whisky Galore by Basil Radford. Despite memorable performances in small and large screen, Mainwaring would immortalise Arthur Lowe, the little Napoleon too pompous to realise what a dimwit he really is.
There’s a tendency these days to overlook the quality of Dad’s Army. True, the later series set in similar times by Perry and Croft – Allo! Allo!, Hi-De-Hi and the execrable You Rang M’Lord – were instantly forgettable, and it’s also true that Dad’s Army went on four years too long. It should have stopped in 1973 after the premature death of James Beck. Somehow Beck’s immortal portrayal of the wide boy Walker was more intrinsic to the show’s popularity than they realised. It became a story of old men going through the motions after that, but in its early black and white years, the writing and playing was at its sharpest, so that though later episodes and exchanges from the colour years have become legendary – such as the “Don’t tell him, Pike!” episode – it’s to the earlier pieces, narrated by the voice of the newsreel himself E.V.H.Emmett, and when Bud Flanagan’s singing of the much-loved them tune hadn’t passed its sell by date, that we find the real treasures. All the characters were national institutions, and the entire cast, right down to Pertwee’s Warden and Williams’ Vicar, were irreplaceable. Laurie, Dunn, le Mesurier, Ridley and Beck were incomparable, but Lowe recreated a figure of British tragedy, a King Canute trying to stem back the tide through sheer stubborn obstinacy. Even Mr Alternative Comedy, Ben Elton called it the greatest British sitcom.
Enjoyed this piece a lot, Allan – I only saw ‘Colonel Blimp’ fairly recently and could hardly believe it when John Laurie said he was off to join the home guard at the end. Not sure whether I would give the laurels for best British sitcom to ‘Dad’s Army’ or ”Fawlty Towers’ (which I suspect may come up on your list later!) – but ‘Dad’s Army’ is the one I go back to and watch time and again, along with my husband who also grew up on it. We have all the episodes on DVD and they never fail to entertain.
Yes, it probably ran too long, and the Welsh character brought in for a few episodes was no replacement for Walker, showing up just how important each actor was – but even the lesser episodes are still hugely watchable. Must agree with all you say about the greatness of the characters and the way that all the actors are perfect for their roles – the relationship between Mainwaring and Wilson was the heart of it, as you say, and I liked the fact that their mutual irritation/class friction ran all the way through, never softening into friendship. As well as all the great male characters you discuss here, there was one memorable female character, Mavis Pike (I have to admit that my husband sometimes calls me Mavis if I start fussing over whether my 18-year-old son has a coat, scarf etc.)
Just to add that the series was filmed in my area of the country, East Anglia, and the surviving cast members sometimes go along to events at a local museum (Bressingham in Norfolk) which has a section devoted to ‘Dad’s Army’, including Jonesie’s van.My family went along to one of these events about 18 months ago and both Croft (not long before he died) and Perry were there, as well as Frank Williams, Bill Pertwee and Pamela Cundell who played Mrs Fox.
Nice. It’s got a quintessential Britishness to it, Judy. Not as revolutionary as the very best British coms perhaps, but still, at its best, priceless.
It was an institution over here too, and a comedy series you look back on with real affection. Each character had a veracity that had a real pathos. The writers never ridiculed their creations, whose dogged decency was always respected. They became old friends who you love for what they are and the joy of indulging in their endearing idiosyncrasies. Despite his bluster and class-arrogance Mainwaring was deep down a “thoroughly decent chap”. As is the way of the world, you lose touch with your school mates, but never these old codgers who will always be a treasured part of my adolescence. The series also reflected a nostalgia for a simpler time when lives were lived in a community of like-minded souls who looked out for each other despite the distances of class, age, and temperment. That such a place ever existed is of course unlikely and it does come from a quintessentially British xenophobia bred from an isolation and insularity that belied and still belies the reality of the rest of Europe.
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