Lionel Jeffries

Lionel Charles Jeffries (10 June 1926 – 19 February 2010) was an English actor, director, and screenwriter born in Forest Hill, South London. Both of his parents served as social workers with the Salvation Army, and as a boy he attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wimborne Minster, Dorset. In 1945 he received a commission in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and was stationed at the Rangoon radio station in Burma during the Second World War, earning the Burma Star. He also held the rank of Captain in the Royal West African Frontier Force. Jeffries later trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and spent two years in repertory at the David Garrick Theatre in Lichfield, Staffordshire, before appearing in early British television productions.

His film career flourished primarily through comic character roles in British productions. Because he had lost his hair prematurely — a condition he attributed to the humidity he experienced in Burma at age nineteen — Jeffries frequently portrayed characters older than himself. A well-known example is his role as the father of Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), despite being six months younger than Dick Van Dyke, who played his son. His acting career reached particular prominence in the 1960s with appearances in Two-Way Stretch (1960), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), Murder Ahoy opposite Margaret Rutherford, First Men in the Moon (1964), and Camelot (1967). He also received a Golden Globe Award nomination for his performance in The Spy with a Cold Nose.

Jeffries subsequently moved into writing and directing, focusing on children's films. His adaptation of The Railway Children (1970) was widely praised, and he followed it with The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972), though later directorial efforts, including Wombling Free, met with less success. He was a member of the British Catholic Stage Guild throughout his career.

For many years Jeffries held a negative view of television and largely avoided the medium. His perspective shifted after he appeared in the 1980 London Weekend Television drama Cream in My Coffee, written by Dennis Potter, and recognized that television production values had become comparable to those of the film industry. He subsequently appeared in a 1983 episode of the ITV comedy drama Minder as Cecil Caine, an eccentric widower, and starred as Tom Maddisson in the Thames/ITV sitcom Tom, Dick and Harriet alongside Ian Ogilvy and Brigit Forsyth. During location filming for a 1983 episode of that series, a stunt involving a car and a lake went seriously wrong, and Jeffries narrowly escaped through the front window before the vehicle sank to a depth of forty-five feet. He also appeared in an episode of Inspector Morse in 1990.

Jeffries extended his work to the stage as well, appearing on Broadway in 1987 in the play Page Pygmalion. He was originally from London, England. The 2010 BBC television drama The First Men in the Moon carried a dedication to his memory.

Jeffries began experiencing vascular dementia in 1998 and retired from acting in 2001. He died on 19 February 2010, at a nursing home in Poole, Dorset, at the age of eighty-three. He had been married to Eileen Mary Walsh since 1951 and is survived by a son and two daughters. His son Ty Jeffries is a composer, lyricist, and cabaret artist, and his granddaughter Amy Mason is a novelist and playwright.