Colin Gordon

Colin Gordon (27 April 1911 – 4 October 1972) was a British actor born in British Ceylon, the son of William Arthur Gordon and his wife Lily Vera, née Troup. He was educated at Marlborough College and Christ Church, Oxford. His career spanned stage, film, television, and radio, with work concentrated primarily in British productions, though his stage credits extended to Broadway.

Gordon's professional stage career began in repertory at the Palace Theatre, Watford, where he worked from January to December 1934. That same year he made his West End debut at the Royalty Theatre, playing the hind legs of Alfred the carthorse in a production of Toad of Toad Hall. He returned to the Royalty Theatre for two further productions: James in Frolic Wind in March 1935, described by The Stage as "a distinguished failure," and Peter in Closing At Sunrise in September 1935. Between 1936 and 1939 he directed the Fred Melville Repertory Company in Brixton. He then served in the army for six years during the Second World War. In 1953 he appeared on Broadway in The Little Hut, representing his sole credited appearance on the New York stage.

His screen career, running from the 1940s through the 1970s, frequently cast him as government officials and bureaucratic figures. Among his film appearances were The Pink Panther and Casino Royale, both featuring Peter Sellers, with whom Gordon made five films in total. On television he portrayed Number Two on two occasions in the ITC series The Prisoner in 1967, in the episodes "The General" and "A. B. and C." He was a regular in the ITC production The Baron, playing the civil servant Templeton-Green opposite Steve Forrest. He appeared in the 1958 television series The Invisible Man, specifically in the episode "Play to Kill." In 1961 he played the doctor in "The Lift" episode of Hancock's Half Hour, and in 1967 he appeared as the airport commandant in the Doctor Who story The Faceless Ones. He served as host and occasional narrator of the 1969 London Weekend Television series The Complete and Utter History of Britain, which grew out of a collaboration between Michael Palin and Terry Jones predating Monty Python. In 1970 he appeared in the UFO episode "The Cat with Ten Lives," and in 1971 he played Walpole Gibb in the ATV/ITC series Hine. He also appeared in Bachelor Father and made two guest appearances in Steptoe and Son.

In radio, Gordon played Tony Fellows, the fictional husband in A Life of Bliss, from 1953 onward. Diana Churchill played his wife Ann, and George Cole played his brother-in-law David Alexander Bliss. Gordon fell ill while working in South Africa and was brought back to Surrey, where he died on 4 October 1972 at the age of 61. He was buried alongside his wife at St Andrew's Church, Didling, in West Sussex.