Richard Haydn

George Richard Haydn was born on March 10, 1905, in Camberwell, in the London Borough of Southwark, England. Before entering the theatre, he worked as a music hall entertainer and as an overseer on a Jamaican banana plantation. He eventually joined a touring British theatre troupe, during which time he shortened his surname from Haydon to Haydn. He died on April 25, 1985, from a heart attack at his home in Pacific Palisades, California, at the age of 80, and his body was donated to the University of California, Los Angeles.

Haydn made his Broadway debut in 1939 in Set to Music, followed by Two for the Show in 1940. He was also a Broadway lyricist. His stage delivery was characterized by a deliberately over-nasalized and over-enunciated manner of speaking, a quality that defined many of his eccentric screen and radio characters as well.

His film career encompassed a wide range of roles. Early credits included Professor Oddley in Ball of Fire (1941), Roger in No Time for Love (1943), and the manservant Thomas Rogers in And Then There Were None (1945), the latter adapted from Agatha Christie's novel. He played Emperor Franz Joseph in The Emperor Waltz (1948) and Baron Popoff in The Merry Widow (1952). In 1948 he appeared in Sitting Pretty alongside Clifton Webb and Maureen O'Hara, portraying a nosy, gossiping neighbor. He provided the voice of the Caterpillar in Disney's animated Alice in Wonderland (1951) and played Professor Summerlee in The Lost World (1960), the same year he appeared opposite Doris Day in Please Don't Eat the Daisies. He played William Brown in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Haydn received considerable acclaim for his portrayal of Max Detweiler, the Von Trapp family friend, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein film musical The Sound of Music (1965). His final film role was Gerhard Falkstein in Young Frankenstein (1974).

For a period in the late 1940s, Haydn also worked as a film director, helming Miss Tatlock's Millions (1948), Dear Wife (1949), and Mr. Music (1950). In each of those productions he also appeared on screen, playing Richard Rancyd, Stanley Stayle, and Claud Curdle, respectively.

On radio, Haydn portrayed the character Edwin Carp on The Charlie McCarthy Show and was a regular performer on The Swan Soap Show, which featured George Burns and Gracie Allen. He revisited the Edwin Carp character in a 1964 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, which paid tribute to veteran radio performers. His television work also included a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone titled "A Thing About Machines," in which he played Bartlett Finchley, a technophobic man confronted by the machines in his home, as well as appearances in Bewitched (1968), Bonanza (1969), and Love American Style (1973). In 1954, Haydn published a book titled The Journal of Edwin Carp.