John Laurie

John Paton Laurie was a Scottish stage, film, and television actor born on 25 March 1897 in Dumfries, the son of William Laurie, a clerk in a tweed mill who later worked as a hatter and hosier, and Jessie Ann Laurie, née Brown. He was educated at Dumfries Academy before abandoning plans for a career in architecture to serve in the First World War with the Honourable Artillery Company. Following demobilisation, he trained as an actor under Elsie Fogerty at the Central School of Speech and Drama, then housed at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and made his stage debut in 1921.

Laurie's London stage career began in 1922 at the Old Vic, where he took on many leading roles. He subsequently joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, performing such parts as Richard III, Othello, Macbeth, and, in only his second season there, Hamlet. Throughout his stage career he was recognized as a speaker of verse, particularly the poetry of Robert Burns. On radio, he originated the role of John the Baptist in Dorothy L. Sayers' cycle of plays The Man Born to Be King and reprised the part in two subsequent versions of the cycle. He also played Macduff opposite Ralph Richardson's Macbeth in a radio adaptation of the play. In 1955, Laurie appeared on Broadway in the drama Tiger at the Gates.

His film career began with the 1930 Alfred Hitchcock production Juno and the Paycock. Hitchcock cast him again in 1935 as John the Crofter in The 39 Steps, which proved a significant role for Laurie in only his third film. The following year he appeared alongside fellow Old Vic alumnus Laurence Olivier in As You Like It, the first of several collaborations with Olivier; he went on to appear in Olivier's three Shakespearean films, Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), and Richard III (1955). His work with directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger included Peter Manson in The Edge of the World (1937), Clive Candy's batman in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), and a small speaking part in I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), for which he also received an adviser credit. Additional film roles during this period included the psychiatrist Dr. James Garsten in Mine Own Executioner (1947), the villainous Pew in Disney's Treasure Island (1950), Angus in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), and Dr. MacFarlane in David Lean's Hobson's Choice (1954). In 1954 he joined the Edinburgh Gateway Company to play the lead role in Robert Kemp's The Laird o' Grippy, a Scots-language translation of Molière's L'avare.

Later film appearances included Mad Peter in the Hammer production The Reptile (1966), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), the Disney film One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (1975), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1979). He also appeared in Return to the Edge of the World (1978), in which Michael Powell revisited his 1937 film. Laurie's final work was the BBC Radio 2 comedy series Tony's (1979), alongside Victor Spinetti and Deborah Watling.

Laurie is perhaps most widely remembered for his television role as Private Frazer, a gaunt, pessimistic undertaker and Home Guard soldier, in the sitcom Dad's Army, which ran from 1968 to 1977. During the Second World War, Laurie had himself served in the Home Guard. He also appeared in numerous British television series across the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, including Tales of Mystery, Doctor Finlay's Casebook, and The Avengers.

In his personal life, Laurie married twice. His first wife, Florence May Saunders, whom he met at the Old Vic, died from meningitis in 1926. His second wife was Oonah Veronica Todd-Naylor, with whom he had a daughter, Veronica, born in 1939. Oonah survived him and died in 1990. Laurie died on 23 June 1980 from emphysema at Chalfont and Gerrards Cross Hospital in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, at the age of 83. His ashes were scattered in the English Channel.