Basil Radford

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basil Radford (25 June 1897 Chester – 20 October 1952 London) was an English character actor who featured in many British films of the 1930s and 1940s. He is probably best-remembered for his appearances alongside Naunton Wayne as two cricket-obsessed Englishmen in several films from 1938-1949.

The two first appeared as their characters Charters and Caldicott in Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes. They were popular enough to reprise their roles in the 1940 sequel Night Train to Munich, which was again scripted by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. They were the only cast characters to return from the original film (though Margaret Lockwood returned, as a different character).

They went on to appear together in several other 1940s films, including Crook's Tour (1941), Millions Like Us (1943), Dead of Night (1945), It's Not Cricket (1948), Quartet (1948) and Passport to Pimlico (1949).

Apart from his long-running partnership with Naunton Wayne, Radford made many other memorable film appearances in character roles. His other films included Young and Innocent (for Hitchcock again) (1937), The Way to the Stars (1945), The Captive Heart (1946), The Winslow Boy (1948), and Whisky Galore! (1949).

Throughout his film career, Radford had a crescent-shaped scar on his right cheek which -- depending on the camera angle and the lighting of a given shot -- was sometimes barely perceptible but sometimes extremely prominent. He died of a heart attack on October 20, 1952, while rehearsing for a radio show with Naunton Wayne in London.