These included appearances in the original runs of Barré Lyndon's The Man in Half Moon Street, Vernon Sylvaine's Nap Hand, N.C. Hunter's A Day by the Sea, Robert Bolt's Flowering Cherry and Home at Seven and The White Carnation by R.C.

[4][5] An unassuming man with no trappings of ambition or conceit, Piper rapidly earned a reputation as a reliable, congenial presence on set and became a first choice for directors with smaller roles to cast, accumulating screen credits at the rate of up to six a year through to the 1960s.

[6][7] Later minor roles for Hitchcock were Sabotage (1936 – as the doomed bus conductor), Young and Innocent (1937) and Jamaica Inn (1939 – as Charles Laughton's agent).

From the late 1930s he became associated with Ealing Studios, appearing in dozens of their productions, from cheaply shot programmers through to the company's most prestigious films such as In Which We Serve (1942).

Most of Piper's roles were fleeting and his name rarely appeared in promotional material, but there was an occasional more substantial part in films such as Nine Men (1943), The October Man (1947) and Hunted (1952).