Jack Warner (actor)
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| Jack Warner | |
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| Born | October 4, 1896 London |
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| Died | May 24, 1981 (aged 84) London |
| Burial place | East London Cemetery |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Dixon of Dock Green |
- This article is about Jack Warner, the British film and television actor. For other people named Jack Warner, see Jack Warner (disambiguation).
Jack Warner OBE (October 24, 1896 – May 24, 1981) was a popular British film and television actor.
He was born in London, his real name being Horace John Waters.[1] His sisters Elsie and Doris Waters were well-known comediennes under the names Gert and Daisy.[2] Like them, Jack Warner made his name in music hall and radio, but he became known to cinema audiences as the patriarch in a trio of popular post-World War II family films beginning with Here Come the Huggetts. He also co-starred in the 1955 Hammer film version of The Quatermass Xperiment and as a police superintendent in the 1955 Ealing Studios black comedy The Ladykillers.
Warner attended the Coopers' Company's Grammar School for boys in Mile End,[3] while his sisters both attended the nearby sister school, Coborn School for Girls in Bow. The three children were choristers at St. Leonard's Church, Bromley-by-Bow, and for a time, Warner was the choir's soloist.[3]
It was in 1949 that Warner first played the role with which he would forever after be associated, that of PC George Dixon in the film, The Blue Lamp.[4] One observer predicted, "This film will make Jack the most famous policeman in Britain".[4] Although the police constable was shot dead in the film, the character was later revived for the long-running BBC television series, Dixon of Dock Green, which debuted in 1955 and ran until 1976, although in later years the aged Warner and his long-past-retirement-age character were confined to a less prominent desk Sergeant role. The series had a prime-time slot on Saturday evenings, and always opened with PC Dixon giving a little soliloquy to the camera, beginning with the words, "Good evening, all". According to Warner's autobiography, Jack of All Trades, Elizabeth II once visited the television studio where the series was filmed and told Warner "that she thought Dixon of Dock Green had become part of the British way of life".[5]
He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1965.[6] In 1973, he was made a Freeman of the City of London. Warner commented in his autobiography that the honour "entitles me to a set of eighteenth-century Rules for the Conduct of Life urging me to be sober and temperate". Warner added, "Not too difficult with Dixon to keep an eye on me"![7]
The characterisation by Warner of Sergeant George Dixon, was held in such high regard that officers from Paddington Green Police Station bore the coffin at his funeral in 1981.[8]
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Sydney-Smith, Susan (2002). Beyond Dixon of Dock Green: Early British Police Series. London: I. B. Tauris. ISBN 1860647901
- Warner, Jack (1975). Jack of All Trades: The Autobiography of Jack Warner. London: W.H. Allen. ISBN 0491019521
[edit] External links
Jack Warner was very well known and appreciated in the early war years (1940), starring in a BBC radio show named, 'Garrison Theatre', he invariably opened with, 'A Monologue Entitled...'.
