John Dearth

John Dearth, born Kenneth Paton on 16 October 1920, was an English actor whose career spanned theatre, film, radio, and television until his death on 17 March 1984. He began his professional stage work as a regular performer with Reginald Salberg's Players in Preston before joining Nottingham Playhouse on his 30th birthday, where he took on the role of Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor and subsequently played Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

In 1951, Dearth traveled to the United States for a Broadway engagement, appearing in Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra, credits that remained part of his verified stage record through 1954 and also included A Midsummer Night's Dream. Returning to England the following year, he performed at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, where he made his debut as a mythical god in Isle of Umbrellas and played Iago in Othello. He subsequently joined The Old Vic theatre company, appearing as Guildenstern in Hamlet at the Edinburgh Festival. During that production he served as understudy to Richard Burton in the title role, and the two men developed a lasting friendship through further performances together at the Old Vic.

Dearth was a member of the BBC Radio Repertory Company during the 1960s and accumulated an extensive list of British television credits. He appeared in Dixon of Dock Green, The Adventures of William Tell, The Four Just Men, Emergency Ward 10, No Hiding Place, The Avengers, The Saint, Z-Cars, Softly Softly, Angels, Treasure Island, and Kessler, among many others. He is particularly associated with the ITV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, in which he played numerous roles across nearly 30 episodes. Within the science fiction series Doctor Who, Dearth contributed two notable villain performances: he voiced the supercomputer BOSS in the Season 10 finale The Green Death, and portrayed the character Lupton in the following season's finale, Planet of the Spiders.

His film work included The Flying Scot (1957), Dangerous Exile (1957), Breakout (1959), Look Back in Anger (1959), The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), Circle of Deception (1960), The Shadow of the Cat (1961), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), Strongroom (1962), The Road to Hong Kong (1962), and The Runaway (1964), among other productions. In 1959, producer Ivan Foxwell dismissed Dearth from a role in A Touch of Larceny on the grounds that he bore too close a resemblance to the film's leading man, James Mason. Director Barry Letts, who later worked with Dearth on Doctor Who, stated that the experience embittered him for the remainder of his life and described him as a heavy drinker, noting that personal difficulties made steady employment increasingly hard to secure in his later years. Letts characterized Dearth as a lovely man, but ruined by drink. Dearth's daughter was the actress Lynn Dearth, who lived from 1946 to 1994.