George Layton

George Layton, born George Michael William Rafael Löwy on 2 March 1942 in Bradford Royal Infirmary, Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, is a British actor, director, and television comedy writer. His parents, Fritz and Edith Löwy, were Austrian Jews who fled Vienna for England shortly before the Second World War, arriving unable to speak English and initially working as a butler and maid. His grandfather, Victor Hecht, had fled to England with his wife and sent the letter that prompted the family's move to the United Kingdom. Layton was the second of three children, with an older brother, Peter, and a younger sister, Viv. After the family settled in Bradford, they lived in a house in Manningham, sharing the space with another refugee family Fritz had met, totaling four adults and six children under one roof.

Layton attended Lilly Croft Primary School from 1947, where a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which he played Puck first drew him toward acting. He went on to Belle Vue Boys' Grammar School in Bradford. As a teenager he earned seven shillings and sixpence each Saturday delivering groceries by bicycle. In 1956, while staying in Edinburgh with his friend Roger Selby during the summer holidays, the two climbed Arthur's Seat after dark and became stranded at the edge of a sixty-foot drop. Police who attempted a rescue also became stuck, and the fire brigade was ultimately called to bring them down. The incident was reported in the national press, including the Bradford Telegraph, which caused difficulties for Layton at school since he had called in sick to extend his stay in Scotland.

Before formal drama training, Layton worked on BBC Children's Hour at the former BBC Studios in Piccadilly, Manchester, where he came under the guidance of Trevor Hill, Violet Carson, and Doris Gamble. He subsequently studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the same class as Mike Leigh, Martin Jarvis, and Ian McShane, winning both the Emile Littler Award for most promising actor and the Denys Blakelock Award for an outstanding performance in a minor role. He graduated in 1962 and joined the Belgrade Theatre. He auditioned for the role of Terry Collier in The Likely Lads but was passed over in favor of James Bolam, with producers concluding he was not yet a sufficiently established name.

After taking on leading parts at Coventry and Nottingham, Layton appeared on Broadway in 1963 in Chips with Everything, playing the role of First Corporal, a production that had also run at the Royal Court. The Broadway run lasted approximately six months before closing, which Layton has attributed to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

His television breakthrough came in 1969 when he was cast as junior doctor Paul Collier in Doctor in the House. He reprised the role across several sequels, including Doctor at Large in 1971, Doctor in Charge from 1972 to 1973, and Doctor at the Top in 1991. Layton also contributed scripts to the Doctor franchise, writing for the first series of Doctor at Large under the pseudonym Oliver Fry and under his own name for subsequent series. His television writing credits alongside Jonathan Lynn include episodes of On the Buses, Nearest and Dearest, Romany Jones, and My Name Is Harry Worth. He was part of the team responsible for writing most of the episodes of series four through six of Robin's Nest, and he created and served as primary writer of Executive Stress, which ran from 1986 to 1988.

Layton was cast as Bombardier Solly Solomons in the first two series of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, appearing in sixteen episodes. He departed after the second series, feeling his character was not developing, a decision that prompted co-creator David Croft to tell him he was free to leave. Solomons was written out of the show at the start of the third series, written off as having been demobbed. In the 1980s, Layton played the recurring character Des the mechanic in early episodes of the comedy-drama Minder, a role he eventually lost after committing to a pantomime engagement. He also appeared in two episodes of The Sweeney, made appearances on the BBC consumer programme That's Life, hosted by Esther Rantzen, and from 1999 to 2000 appeared in all fourteen episodes of Sunburn, starring Michelle Collins. In 2011 he played a love interest to Pat Butcher in EastEnders. In 1999 he was the subject of an episode of This Is Your Life.

His stage work beyond Broadway includes playing Fagin in the first London revival of Oliver! at the Albery Theatre in 1978 and 1979, a role he took over from Roy Hudd, and later at the London Palladium. Other theatre credits include Chicago as Amos Hart at the Adelphi Theatre in London, Billy Liar as Geoffrey Fisher at the King's Head in Islington, The Caucasian Chalk Circle as Lavrenti and Twelfth Night as Feste at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, The Odd Couple as Felix at the Theatre Royal Windsor, and More Lies About Jerzy as Jerzy Kosinski at the New End Theatre in Hampstead. He appeared in an Australian production of Funny Peculiar in 1977. As a director, his credits include Barefoot in the Park and Dangerous Corner for the Cambridge Theatre Company, Aladdin at the Theatre Royal Bath, and Dick Whittington at the Shaw Theatre.

Layton has also written three collections of short stories — The Fib and Other Stories, The Swap and Other Stories, and The Trick and Other Stories — depicting family life in the North of England after the Second World War. The books have been included in the National Curriculum in British schools, and film adaptations have been planned. Scholar Myles McDowell has cited Layton's The Balaclava Story as an example of fiction in which adults are largely absent from children's narratives.

In his personal life, Layton married his first wife, Vera Hodges, in 1968; the marriage later ended in divorce. He met his second wife, Moya Smylie, in 1974 and married her three years later. He has four children: Tristan and Claudie from his first marriage, and Danny and Hannah from his second. Tristan works for a charity, Claudie is a producer, Danny is a former musical director for Endemol, and Hannah works as a comedy agent. Layton lives in North London.