But still Hartnell tried to carry on, taking on a guest spot in the popular Softly, Softly, in January 1968. It was here that he seemed to emerge from a low point. Due to the lack of work, harsh criticism and health problems – the main cause of his declining acting abilities – he had been drinking an awful lot; but he suddenly perked up.
On 25 April 1968, Hartnell discussed doing a Robert Bolt play at the Bristol Old Vic. It was called Brother & Sister and would co-star Sonia Dresdel; but it appeared that he had problems grasping the nuances of the part. The play ran for four weeks but didn’t go on tour thereafter, the reason unclear. Just a couple more TV spots came his way after that, finishing with his return – in colour – in the anniversary Doctor Who story, ‘The Three Doctors’.
It seemed that Doctor Who overshadowed his career after he ceased to play the role, but it was Hartnell’s escalating health problems that were the main cause of this, not a lack of acting skills. His consequent depressions led to more drinking bouts and, after brave efforts to restore his health and start acting seriously again, he fell short of expectation. Perhaps in hindsight he should have retired after Doctor Who, but he loved his work and didn’t want to give in to illness, and aren’t so many people like that?
In retrospect, Hartnell had done enough to secure his memory in the hearts of the nation. He was Doctor Who? not the Doctor! When he played the part, nobody knew who the character was and where he came from; he was exciting and intriguing. Indeed, it has never been explained in the show if Susan Foreman was his grand-daughter or not, as Carole Ann-Ford explained, ‘It was never really explained how she [Susan] came to be with him, but it was sort of accepted that they’d escaped together from another planet’. Was she a fellow alien, or an Earth child – perhaps an orphan? Although Anthony Coburn’s original script of ‘An Unearthly Child’ has now been found, it takes nothing away from the intrigue that surrounded the show in its formative years.
During the Hartnell years, there was a real air of wonder and eccentricity about the character and the show itself. Even the music was strange, and its eeriness, coupled with the grainy black and white of the show, helped achieve greater thrills for the expectant audience.
One last thought and, perhaps, final compliment to William Hartnell: when Richard Hurndall took on the role of the first Doctor in ‘The Five Doctors’ to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary, his character was given much respect from his successors. It was even the Hartnell character who solved the cryptic question set by the great Rassilon himself at the end of the story, which earned nothing less than an admiring shake of the head from the third Doctor. He was ‘the original’ as Hurndall declared, and a great respect for the first Doctor Who has endured ever since.
It is clear that William Hartnell left the programme with a heavy heart when he knew he couldn’t cut the mustard of a gruelling production schedule any more. He bowed out of show business slowly – painfully – over an approximate three-year period after that, with his only memorable performance being his return to the show seven years later for his very last TV acting appearance.
He was the Doctor of mystery, an eccentric old man and the original interstellar Pied Piper – something his successor Patrick Troughton would build upon…
‘All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after,
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.’
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Robert Browning
‘Dr Who faces the awe-inspiring reality of Space and Time and with wonderful human courage… He is human curiosity personified. He must see for himself; he must go there; he must learn all there is to know.
Are we not all a little possessed of the spirit of Dr Who?’
The Equations of Dr Who
The Doctor Who Annual, 1965
PATRICK GEORGE TROUGHTON was born in Mill Hill, London, on 25 March 1920 and educated at Bexhill-on-Sea Preparatory School and Mill Hill Public School. At the age of 16, he went to the Embassy School of Acting at Swiss Cottage, London, which was run by Eileen Thorndyke, sister of Dame Sybil Thorndyke. He earned a scholarship there and progressed to the Leighton Rollins Studio for Actors at the John Drew Memorial Theatre in Long Island, USA. He was in America when the Second World War broke out. He returned to England on a Belgian ship, but it hit an enemy mine and sank just off Portland Bill, in sight of England. Troughton escaped by lifeboat and always considered himself lucky to have done so.
He joined the Tonbridge Repertory Company on his return to England in 1939 and acted there for a year. In June 1940, he joined the Royal Navy (RN) not deterred by his close escape from an ocean-going death the previous year. His first duty was protecting the coast from enemy submarines in an RN destroyer. He was then transferred to motor torpedo boats based at Great Yarmouth, where he was given his own command after the Allied invasion of Normandy. He left the RN in March 1945, but always retained a fondness for the sea.
Troughton then returned to acting and joined the Amersham Repertory Company. From there he was asked to join the famous Bristol Old Vic Company, and he appeared in Hamlet (1947–48) and King Lear (1948). He then spent two years with the Pilgrim Players performing T S Eliot’s plays at the Mercury Theatre, Nottingham.
In the early 1980s Troughton said of his career, ‘I like to play all kinds of people in all kinds of plays. I’ve got a special liking for fantasy and rip-roaring adventures with plenty of action, such as Robin Hood and Kidnapped.’
Troughton always considered himself a character actor and he cut his teeth on roles in classic Boy’s Own-type adventures. He was the character actor personified, which was why he was always very reluctant to give interviews, as he explained in a rare radio interview towards the end of his career, ‘It’s wrong [for a character actor] to promote their own character too much… the audience get to know you too much, which makes your job harder.’
Troughton’s career was long and distinguished. His first movie role was in Escape (in which William Hartnell also appeared) in 1948 and, in 1950, he was in Disney’s Treasure Island alongside Robert Newton’s infamous Long John Silver, a larger-than-life character actor who had been in the RN with future Doctor Who Jon Pertwee.
Troughton’s first TV appearance was in 1948. ‘It was the early days of TV,’ he remembered later. ‘About 300,000 TV viewers in London only… I was never relaxed in live TV.’
He may not have been, but he played many live roles for about 15 years before pre-recording came in. Unfortunately, many of Troughton’s early TV performances, along with those by William Hartnell and, to a certain degree, Jon Pertwee, no longer exist, which makes analysis of the actor’s work difficult. But many older people remember Troughton as Robin Hood. The six-part show was written by Max Kester and was recorded live at the Gaumont-British Studios in Lime Grove, London, between 17 March and 21 April 1953. Nowadays, Troughton’s grandson Sam appears in the latest BBC interpretation of Robin Hood alongside Jonas Armstrong and Keith Allen.
Some of Troughton’s other early roles included