[1][2][3] He went on the stage at an early age, traveled to Sydney and spent eight years in Australian light opera, performing as Willie Bevan.

[6] Usually filmed wearing a derby hat and a drooping mustache, Bevan may not have possessed an indelible screen character like Charlie Chaplin but he had a friendly, funny presence in the frantic Sennett comedies.

Much of the comedy depended on Bevan's skilled timing and reactions; he was the first to perform the familiar "oyster" routine—in which a bowl of "fresh oyster stew" shows alarming signs of life and battles the guy trying to eat it—in the Sennett comedy Wandering Willies (1926).

For the next 20 years he often would play rowdy cockneys (as in Pack Up Your Troubles with The Ritz Brothers), and affable Englishmen (as in Tin Pan Alley and Terror by Night).

[7] He played a friendly bus conductor opposite Greer Garson in one of the opening scenes of Mrs. Miniver.