Terry-Thomas

He often portrayed disreputable members of the upper classes, especially cads, toffs and bounders, using his distinctive voice; his costume and props tended to include a monocle, waistcoat and cigarette holder.

[41] Terry-Thomas aimed to produce "good shows, sophisticated, impeccable and highly polished",[44] which included the violinist Eugene Pini playing light classical music, and the Gainsborough Girls chorus line.

[41] In April 1942 Terry-Thomas received his call-up papers; he later wrote that "it would have seemed rather rude and ungrateful to refuse";[45] as a result, he left ENSA and reported to the Royal Corps of Signals training depot in Ossett, West Riding of Yorkshire.

In order to cover up for the absent records he would use his vocal range of four and a half octaves[52] to mimic the singers; he included "impersonations of Britain's clipped crooner Noël Coward, the African-American bass-baritone Paul Robeson, the Peruvian songbird Yma Sumac, the Austrian tenor Richard Tauber and ... the entire Luton Girls Choir".

[53] The show went on a national tour, with the stand-up comedian Charlie Chester as compere, during which Terry-Thomas refined and polished his act and finished as "one of the most prominent and influential members of Stars in Battledress".

[57] The ENSA and Stars in Battledress tours of Britain and Europe had raised Terry-Thomas's profile and, by October 1946, he was appearing alongside Sid Field in Piccadilly Hayride at the Prince of Wales Theatre, London.

Consisting of a "mixture of sketches, solo routines, musical interludes and a range of popular and topical star guests",[68] To Town with Terry was broadcast weekly and ran for 24 episodes until 28 March 1949.

[80] Writing about Terry-Thomas on television, Wilfred Greatorex observed that "he has ... physical attributes that make him a gift to visual entertainment: a large, rather gaunt face, pre-fabricated for close-ups; the notorious space of one-third of an inch between his two most prominent top teeth; a mouth that is full of expression.

[85][86] In September 1952 he travelled to the Federation of Malaya to entertain British troops in a series of concert parties, before returning to the UK to appear in the Royal Variety Performance in November.

Terry-Thomas then reprised his role of Idle Jack for a run of performances in the Granada theatres of Sutton and Woolwich, and the Finsbury Park Empire, which ran to the end of January 1954.

[98] Terry-Thomas appeared in the latter film only briefly, with a total screen time of about ten minutes, but his biographer Graham McCann thought the actor "came close to stealing the show from the central character", Windrush, played by Ian Carmichael.

Terry-Thomas's depiction of the character was not how he wished to play it: his desired choice was that of a "silly-ass" sergeant major, but the role was written as a strict, alcohol and prescription drug-dependent Army officer.

[107] His final part of 1957 was Lord Henry Mayley in The Naked Truth; this brought him together with Peter Sellers for the first time; the two of them appeared frequently together over the next few years, in scenes in which Graham McCann considered that each actor's performance "highlight[ed] what was special about the other".

[127] Many of the other cast members of Private's Progress also returned, including Attenborough, Carmichael and Dennis Price; they were joined by Peter Sellers, who took most of the plaudits from the critics, although Stanley Kauffmann, writing in The New Republic also delighted in Terry-Thomas's "finesse" and "extraordinary skill".

[132] CNN listed the performance among the top ten British villains, stating, "generally found twirling his cigarette holder while charming the ladies — at least, when not swindling, cheating or behaving like an absolute rotter.

[143] In 1962 Bachelor Flat and Operation Snatch were both released,[23] and were followed by two more films: a large-budget biopic from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer called The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, in which Terry-Thomas shared his scenes with the American comedian Buddy Hackett,[119] and Kill or Cure, in which he appeared with Sykes, a friend since they worked together in Large as Life.

By the time his flight arrived in London he had changed his mind, so he telephoned producer Stanley Kramer from the airport to signal his acceptance, and "popped back on a plane to be fitted for the part" the same day.

[23] In the latter, he played Sir Percy Ware-Armitage, a character the film historian Andrew Spicer calls "a cartoon version" of his usual persona in a "bloated mid-Atlantic comed[y]".

[187] Terry-Thomas had more time for the actress with whom he shared his short scene, Jayne Mansfield, commenting that "I found her rather intelligent to talk to and felt quite shattered when I read about the gruesome car accident that killed her".

[189] She would also launch into improvisations while filming; director Hy Averback would mimic a scissor action behind her back to signal to Terry-Thomas that the material would be duly cut from the final print.

[198] On British television, in an episode of the Comedy Playhouse called "The Old Campaigner", he played James Franklin-Jones, a salesman for a plastics company who was continually searching for love affairs while travelling on business.

[200] In between the pilot and the series of The Old Campaigner, in April 1968, Terry-Thomas appeared on the British ITV network in a one-off variety special, The Big Show, which combined musical numbers and his urbane monologues.

[220] Terry-Thomas undertook his final film role in 1980 in Febbre a 40!, a German-Italian co-production that was "nondescript and barely screened", according to Robert Ross,[221] and did not even have a theatrical release in its two domestic markets.

"[232] On 9 April 1989 the actor Jack Douglas and Richard Hope-Hawkins organised a benefit concert for Terry-Thomas, after discovering he was living in virtual obscurity, poverty and ill health.

[236] Although there were exceptions, Terry-Thomas's screen characters were generally similar; Geoff Mayer wrote that "although there would be variations, he would remain the 'rotter', a pretentious, elitist, seedy, sometimes lecherous cad with an eye for quick money and the easy life".

[125] Terry-Thomas himself agreed with the view he presented, writing in the 1980s that "T-T with his permanent air of caddish disdain ... bounder ... aristocratic rogue ... upper-class English twit ... genuine English eccentric ... one of the last real gentlemen ... wet, genteel Englishman ... high-bred idiot ... cheeky blighter ... camel-haired cad ... amiable buffoon ... pompous Englishman ... twentieth-century dandy ... stinker ... king of the cads ... All those descriptions added up to my image as Terry-Thomas".

Filming a scene in a cinema in Private's Progress, a close-up was needed showing his character "registering shock, fury, indignation and anything else I could stuff in"; he "just looked into the camera and kept my mind blank.

[243] Following Terry-Thomas's death, Lionel Jeffries called him "the last of the great gentlemen of the cinema",[245] while the director Michael Winner commented that "no matter what your position was in relation to his, as the star he was always terribly nice.

Not to put too serious a point on it, his portrayal of crass stupidity and blatant deviousness struck a chord with British audiences during the fifties as they experienced the clumsy dismemberment of the Empire and the 'never had it so good' ethos of the Macmillan era.

[253] In 2014, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Memories of a Cad, a comedy drama by Roy Smiles about the relationship between Terry-Thomas and Richard Briers, played by Martin Jarvis and Alistair McGowan respectively.