One little-known fact about The Magic Box is that one of London’s most notorious gangsters, Ronnie Kray, made a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance as an extra. Along with a group of East End kids, Kray was selected as an extra, and is clearly seen for the shortest second. Albeit in his teens at the time, it was something the fame-seeking killer would dine out on throughout his life.
Hartnell did return to comedy, albeit as an army sergeant again, in the TV comedy series The Army Game (1957–58, 1960–61) and the first Carry On film, Carry On Sergeant (1958), in itself a pastiche of The Army Game (and with parallels with The Way Ahead). Hartnell was really giving himself the niche role of over-serious officer that had a bunch of dead-enders to sort out; and the laughs would be generated by the dead-enders not by him.
In fairness, perhaps it was his unforgettable role as supercool gangster Dallow against Richard Attenborough’s Pinkie in Brighton Rock (1947) that really typecast him, less than five years after playing Sergeant Fletcher in The Way Ahead. A powerful role in a popular film does tend to do this, and throughout the 50s Hartnell resigned himself to playing the hard man.
Dallow was a dangerous man and although Hartnell wasn’t the biggest man, his stern face, slightly gruff voice and probing eyes made a menacing presence on screen alongside Attenborough’s psychotic character, Pinkie.
One does get the impression that Hartnell’s character is the boss in Brighton Rock; his sharp suits and cool exterior set against the cavalier antics of Pinkie, certainly suggests a role of authority, made complete by Hartnell’s acting skills.
Brighton Rock is a strange film, based on Graham Greene’s iconic novel of post-war gang warfare in Brighton, and centres on the fact that a wife can’t give evidence against her husband.
The tough roles continued. In 1957, Hartnell appeared as Cartley, the bespectacled, hard-nosed manager of Hawlett Trucking, in Hell Drivers, another great British movie and one that highlighted excellent young talent, such as future James Bond Sean Connery, Stanley Baker, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum, Herbert Lom, Sid James and Patrick McGoohan in one of his finest roles.
The film opens with Stanley Baker’s character – Tom – approaching Cartley for a job. Cartley is quick to lay down the law, which Tom, with no other option open to him as an excon, accepts without question.
The Hell Drivers are the fastest road-haulage carriers around, and the faster they go the more money they make. There is much fighting and competition between the drivers, causing high tensions, but nobody of importance cares. These men are outcasts, low-lifes with nothing to lose; they are ostracised by the local people and even by their families but, for some of them, there is a crumb of pride – there is friendship. When Tom learns of a shady deal between Cartley and his reckless foreman (McGoohan), the movie quickens in pace towards a fatal accident, which leaves Tom crying out for revenge against the money men who have exploited him and his friends.
Hell Drivers is a passionate film, with quality input from McGoohan and McCallum – with their seldom-heard Scottish accents – but Connery, Baker, James and Lom are all excellent too, as are the female leads, Peggy Cummins, Jill Ireland and Marjorie Rhodes.
Although Hartnell only appears at the beginning and the end of the movie, his hard-man presence as the company boss is felt throughout the film, making Hell Drivers a milestone in his career, as well as a classic, gritty and tough British movie.
Hartnell did have a couple of comedy roles amidst the hard stuff. In 1959, he played alongside Peter Sellers in The Mouse That Roared, and he worked with Sellers again in the Boulting Brothers comedy Heavens Above, albeit as Major Fowler.
In 1963, Hartnell broke the mould and gave one of his very best performances, playing talent scout ‘Dad’ Johnson in This Sporting Life.
The movie starred Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts, both of whom were nominated for Oscars (Roberts eventually picking up a BAFTA).
The screenplay was written by David Storey, based on his own novel, and, from the moment the eerie Jerry Goldsmith-type opening music starts (composed by Roberto Gerhard), it is clear that this film is very different.
Roberts’s character is a bitter woman who is indifferent to miner Frank Machin and his hard ways. Machin is a talented rugby player who the kind, gentle and modest ‘Dad’ takes under his wing to get into big-time rugby. He succeeds and, once he accomplishes this, he quietly moves on.
This Sporting Life had some great cameo roles in it, such as Arthur Lowe and Leonard Rossiter (Slomer and Phillips, respectively), which enhances the enjoyment by lightening the storyline somewhat.
It was This Sporting Life that brought the possibility of Hartnell becoming Doctor Who to the show’s producer. Verity Lambert went to see the movie (released January 1963) and was struck by Hartnell’s depth of acting ability. Hartnell’s gentleness and life experience is a perfect counterbalance against Richard Harris’s unthinking bullishness, and one that impressed Lambert very much.
Lambert approached Hartnell’s agent to see if he would be interested in taking on the role of Doctor Who. She must have had much charm in order to persuade the agent into asking Hartnell. It wasn’t his type of work after all. He had started out doing Shakespeare and adult comedy, then became the tough-guy actor. But perhaps this was Lambert’s carrot on a stick: to offer something completely different to the actor, something as wonderful as the role of ‘Dad’ Johnson. The agent made the call and said, ‘I wouldn’t normally have suggested it to you, Bill, to work in children’s television, but it sounds the sort of character part you have been longing to play.’ The agent went on to explain that the part was ‘of an eccentric old grandfather-cum-professor type who travels in space and time’.
Hartnell wasn’t too sure about the part, but did agree to meet Verity Lambert and find out more. He said of the meeting: ‘The moment this brilliant young producer, Miss Verity Lambert, started telling me about Doctor Who I was hooked.’
Perhaps it wasn’t as clear-cut as that. Hartnell did go away and consider the offer and perhaps it was the diversity – the break from the typecasting – that persuaded him to take it on, as Lambert recalled, ‘[he] was interested but wary’ when first offered the role. However, he soon made a decision and called her to accept the part.
Hartnell would find the work gruelling. He was in his mid-fifties and working 48 weeks a year, learning a variety of scripts and performing an action role, which ‘was very hard work’, as he admitted. Despite this, he ‘loved every minute of it’.
The show became a smash hit, and Hartnell loved the idea of working for a young audience, as he said, ‘To me kids are the greatest audience – and the greatest critics – in the world… You know, I couldn’t go out into the high street without a bunch of kids following me. I felt like the Pied Piper.’
This was a fact echoed by his wife Heather, who used to pick him up from the railway station after a day’s filming. She would say that he would get off the train and walk down the road with a stream of children behind him – not unlike the Pied Piper.
Hartnell played Doctor Who for three years and became quite wealthy because of it, earning the equivalent of about £4,000 per episode in present-day money, which was a good regular salary at the time.
Hartnell said he quit Doctor Who because he didn’t see eye-to-eye with the BBC over the use of ‘evil’ in the show. He wrote in a letter to a fan, Ian McLachlan, in 1968 that, ‘It was noted and spelled out to me as a children’s programme, and I wanted it to stay as such; but I’m afraid, the BBC had other ideas. So did I, so I left.’
In her preface to Jessica Carney’s biography of William Hartnell, Verity Lambert said that Doctor Who ‘emanated