Norman Rossington

Norman Rossington (24 December 1928 – 21 May 1999) was an English actor born in Liverpool, Lancashire, the son of a publican. He attended Sefton Park Elementary School and Liverpool Technical College before leaving formal education at fourteen. He subsequently worked as a messenger, an office boy at Liverpool Docks, and an apprentice joiner. After completing national service in the RAF, he returned to night school to study industrial design and pursue a draughtsman's qualification. His interest in acting drew him to the David Lewis Theatre, a local group where he performed Shakespeare and appeared in The Critic under the direction of Thomas G Reed. He later trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

By the mid-1950s Rossington had established himself on the stage, participating in a London Old Vic tour of the United States that included A Midsummer Night's Dream — the production through which he made his Broadway appearance in 1954. He was also among the original cast of Salad Days. His television breakthrough arrived in 1957 when he was cast as Private 'Cupcake' Cook in the popular sitcom The Army Game, a role he held for three series before departing in 1959. He reprised the character in the film spin-off I Only Arsked!

Rossington's film career began with Three Men in a Boat in 1956. He appeared in Carry On Sergeant, the first entry in the Carry On series, and returned to the franchise in Carry On Nurse (1959) and Carry On Regardless (1961). He also took on more serious film work, including Saint Joan (1957) and the 1960 British New Wave film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in which he appeared alongside Albert Finney. In 1958 he played a steward in A Night to Remember, the first of two Titanic-themed films in his career; the second was S.O.S. Titanic (1979), in which he portrayed the Sergeant-at-Arms. He played an uncredited role as Corporal Jenkins in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and subsequently appeared in The Longest Day (1962), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), Tobruk (1967), and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). In 1972 he appeared in both Young Winston and the horror film Death Line alongside Donald Pleasence.

Rossington holds the distinction of being the only performer to have worked in both a Beatles film and an Elvis Presley film. He appeared in A Hard Day's Night and in Presley's Double Trouble, recalling Presley as a quiet man who sat alone on set and frequently borrowed his newspaper. From the 1970s onward his career shifted predominantly to television, with appearances in I, Claudius, Z-Cars, Crown Court, Budgie, The Bill, Last of the Summer Wine, and other productions. He played the title role of Big Jim in Big Jim and the Figaro Club (1981) and reprised the character in six BBC Radio 4 episodes recorded in 1987. His final screen credits included Heartbeat (1996), Sharpe's Regiment (1996) as Sergeant Horatio Havercamp, and What's a Carry On? (1998).

His stage work extended to the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. West End appearances included Peter Pan, My Fair Lady in the role of Alfred Doolittle, Annie Get Your Gun as Charlie Davenport, Pickwick: The Musical as Tony Weller, Guys and Dolls as Nathan Detroit, and Beauty and the Beast as Maurice. Rossington married twice; his second marriage, to Cindy Barnes, took place on 19 January 1999. He died of cancer on 21 May 1999 at the age of seventy.