Home > Wilfrid Brambell

His television career began during the 1950s, when he was cast in small roles in three Nigel KnealeNigel Kneale (born Thomas Nigel Kneale on April 18, 1922 in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England, UK) is a Manx television and film scriptwriter, who has worked mostly in the UK. He is best known for his creation of the character of Professor Bernard Quate / Rudolph CartierRudolph Cartier (born Rudolph Katscher on April 17 1904 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary; died June 8 1994 in London, England, UK) was an Austrian television director, who worked almost exclusively in British television for the BBC. Cartier initially trained as productions for BBC Television: as a drunk in The Quatermass ExperimentThe Quatermass Experiment is a British television science-fiction serial, transmitted by BBC Television in the summer of 1953. Comprised of six half-hour episodes, it was the first science-fiction production to be written especially for an adult televisio ( 19531953 is a common year starting on Thursday (click on link for the calendar). Events January events January 7 President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. January 13 Marshal Josip Broz Tito chosen President of Yugosl), as both an old man in a pub and later a prisoner in Nineteen Eighty-FourPeter Cushing played Winston Smith while Donald Pleasence played Syme. Nineteen Eighty-Four was a British television adaptation of the novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in the winter of 1954. The production pr ( 1954Events January events January 14 The Hudson Motor Car Company merges with Nash-Kelvinator forming the American Motors Corporation January 14 Marilyn Monroe weds Joe DiMaggio. January 15 Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya January 20 The Nati) and as a tramp in Quatermass II ( 1955). All of these roles earned him a reputation for playing old men, though he was only at the time in his forties.

It was this ability to play old men that led to his casting in his most famous role, as Albert Steptoe, the irascible father Steptoe and Son. Initially the role was merely a one-off for the BBC's Comedy Playhouse anthology strand: however, its success led to a full series being commissioned, which lasted throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s. There were also two feature film spin-offs, a stage show and an American re-make entitled Sanford and Son, based on the original British scripts. In the latter, Brambell's part was taken by Red Foxx.

The success of Steptoe and Son made Brambell a high profile figure on British television, and earned him the major role of Paul McCartney's grandfather in The Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night. A running joke is made throughout the film of his character being "a very clean old man." This is in reference to his on-screen son, Harold, in Steptoe and Son constantly referring to his father as "you dirty old man!"

Brambell had a difficult private life: he and Harry H. Corbett, who played Harold Steptoe in Steptoe and Son, detested each other, and were barely on speaking terms outside of takes by the end of the programme's run. In a series almost entirely based around the pair of them with no other regular characters, this made production of the series difficult and stressful.

Brambell was also a homosexual, at a time when it was very difficult, almost impossible, for public figures to be so. Indeed, when he first became famous for Steptoe and Son, it was still illegal in the UK. Earlier in his life he had been married, from 1948 to 1955, to Molly Josephine, but the marriage ended after she gave birth to the child of their lodger, Roderick Fisher, in 1953.

After the final series of Steptoe and Son was made in 1974, Brambell had some guest roles in films and on television, but both he and Corbett found themselves heavily type cast as their famous characters. In an attempt to take advantage of this situation, they undertook a tour of Australia in the late 1970s with a Steptoe and Son stage show: however, with the pair openly despising each other, the tour was a disaster and a working relationship proved impossible. On one occasion, Brambell used bad language and was openly derogatory about the Australian people in an interview. Brambell did, however appear on the BBC's television news to pay tribute to Corbett after the latter's death from a heart attack in 1982.

Brambell himself died less than three years later, of cancer. He was seventy-three. News of his death received far less attention than that of his co-star, and his funeral was sparsely attended.