Tragedies, triumphs of a life off and on stage and screen

Budapest Times

03-05-2025

It's a bit of a relief to read in British actor David Tomlinson's autobiography his recognition that he was known for 'my dimwitted upper-class twit performances' – a relief because if you had asked us here at The Budapest Times to describe Tomlinson, we would have been tempted to say, 'You know, that bloke who often used to play dimwitted upper-class twits in films', but we certainly would have hesitated to do so, for risk of 1) causing offence to the family, and 2) failing to recognise a career wider than that.
So, if Tomlinson was self-aware enough, good for him, and us, and if we think back to British films of his peak period in the 1940s-1970s we can do so without guilt, because you'd have to agree that he and Ian Carmichael had basically cornered the market when it came to topping casting directors' lists of candidates to fill the parts of dimwitted upper-class twits.
Tomlinson made 50 films and we haven't seen a whole lot of them, partly because he seems to be primarily remembered for three roles in Walt Disney films, and this is the sort of soppy family fare that we tend to avoid. He made a big name for himself in Disney's huge hit 'Mary Poppins' (1964), appearing as Glynis Johns' husband and singing 'Let's Go Fly a Kite'.
His other two successes in the Disney trio were 'The Love Bug' in 1968 and 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' in 1971. But rather we prefer to think of him in 'The Wooden Horse' (1950) tunnelling out of Stalag Luft III, a German POW camp for officers. Also, he was one of the 'Three Men in a Boat' (1956), based on Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel (a book we love) containing non-stop twittishness not just from Tomlinson, as Jerome, but from all three bods.
Another was 'The Chiltern Hundreds' (1949), in which Tomlinson was again a trademark genial high-born ass, playing Tony, Viscout Pym, the son of a lord who becomes a Labour candidate for Member of Parliament, and we've also seen him in two of the four old-fashioned but enjoyable Huggetts films, 'Here Come the Huggetts' in 1948 and 'Vote for Huggett' in 1949. Jack Warner, later of 'Dixon of Dock Green' TV fame, and Kathleen Harrison starred in these family-friendly British efforts, with a young Petula Clark.
Such films give a fair idea of the Tomlinson niche. However, as he points out he did play a wide range of characters, from heroes and amiable silly asses to dignified old gentlemen. For good measure, he was even a wicked villain, dying with a bullet in his chest in the back of a plane, the only time, as far as he could recall, when he wasn't basically a 'nice guy'.
And he had a solid stage craeer too, often filming during the day and working in the theatre at night. With a growing family of four sons he was rather keen on money, and one of the boys was autistic, presenting considerable problems. Here, good people helped cope.
Actors usually lead very fascinating lives, engrossing to we in the common herd, and Tomlinson's memories are entertaining for sure. Here are encounters to satisfy any cinephile, with Anthony Asquith, Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley, Errol Flynn, Peter Sellers, Walt Disney, Vanessa Redgrave, Noël Coward and other luminaries.
Also King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and later the Princess Royal, plus adventures on foreign lands with good times in Hollywood and bad times witnessing the appalling apartheid of South Africa. Whether its people were black or white, they were good to Tomlinson.
David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was born on May 7, 1917 in Henley-on-Thames and died aged 83 on June 24, 2000 in King Edward VII's Hospital, London, after a stroke. It was a joke of his that he wanted the words 'David Tomlinson, an actor of genius, irresistible to women' on his headstone. (He was buried in the grounds of his home in Buckinghamshire, wording unknown.)
The autobiography was published in 1990 and is now available again in a new edition from Dean Street Press, a publisher 'devoted to uncovering and revitalizing good books'. Tomlinson's is well worthy of such attention. From his earliest remembered family days to the world of films it is a winner, with unusual tales nicely told. Some would make good plots.
These don't come much odder than that of Tomlinson's father Clarence, an outwardly respectable solicitor but given to rages at home. He horrified even himself when once he burned David's hand with a domestic iron, to teach the boy, aged about 8, a lesson after he had turned it on. But most incredibly he somehow managed to successfully juggle two entirely separate families for decades.
He told his wife Florence and four children in Folkestone that for work purposes he needed to stay at his London club on weekdays, while actually living with his mistress and their seven – seven! – illegitimate children. The subterfuge was eventually uncovered when David's brother Peter was on his way to Heathrow on a double-decker airport bus that stopped unexpectedly in Chiswick, whereupon Peter found himself gazing through a top-deck window at his father sitting up in bed in a strange house drinking tea.
In fact his wife had known of her husband's double life for 60 years because during the First World War in France he was writing to both women but once put the letters in the wrong envelopes. She never mentioned it until, 86 years old, she was on her death bed. 'The marriage was important to her,' Tomlinson writes. The only time her husband was truly kind to her was whenever she was ill, so she made a point of being frequently ill and had, the son believes, two or even three unnecessary operations.
Tomlinson says his childhood was plagued by the tensions and friction when his father was home. He and his three brothers were used to his arrival in Folkestone on Friday night and departure on Monday morning. 'If truth be told, we were quite pleased to see him go,' Tomlinson tells. The family was frightened of this unpredictable man.
The boy enjoyed the pleasures of Folkestone. There were horses, gas lights, Punch and Judy, cinema and a rollerskating rink. He was 10 when he decided to be an actor after visiting the Pleasure Gardens Theatre. Do they really get paid for doing that, he wondered? He couldn't believe anything could be quite so wonderful. 'I decided then and there that it must be better than working and I have never altered my view.'
The young man had a a stammer but was determined to overcome it and his father's opposition. He scoured London for theatrical jobs then joined the Grenadier Guards, which was a big mistake so he bought himself out after 16 months. A period as dogsbody in repertory helped equip him for his first professional, but non-speaking, appearance in 1936. The film director Anthony Asquith saw him in a play and signed him, rescuing him from dispiriting provincial tours with often drunken colleagues and cold and uncomfortable theatrical boarding-houses, and an unsuccessful spell selling vacuum cleaners.
In the Second World War he was a Royal Air Force flying instructor, surviving a crash after blacking out in a Tiger Moth. There was the appalling tragedy of a first marriage in 1943 to a beautiful American widow who threw herself out of a 15th-floor window in New York, together with her two little boys. He was in England with the RAF.
In 1953 Tomlinson married Audrey Freeman and theirs was a long and happy union, remaining together for nearly 50 years and raising the four boys. At first he had a stammer but overame it with tenacity and determination. Courage was the vital factor to succeed in acting, he says. Succeed he did and the memories of a full career are here to enjoy.