Ian Lavender, the last remaining cast member of beloved BBC sitcom Dad’s Army, has died. He was 77.
An X statement from the official Dad’s Army Radio Show account announced that Lavender, who played Private Frank Pike in the sitcom that ran for a decade, ending in 1977, had died on Friday.
“We are deeply saddened to hear the passing of the wonderful Ian Lavender,” said the statement. “In what truly marks the end of an era, Ian was the last surviving member of the Dad’s Army main cast. His wonderful performance as Private Frank Pike will live on for decades to come.”
The statement added that Lavender, who appeared in the 2016 Dad’s Army movie and whose other work included EastEnders, Parsley Sidings and Rising Damp, “leaves behind a legacy of laughter enjoyed by millions.” It said it would dedicate this year’s Dad’s Army tour to Lavender’s memory.
An X statement from the official Dad’s Army Radio Show account announced that Lavender, who played Private Frank Pike in the sitcom that ran for a decade, ending in 1977, had died on Friday.
“We are deeply saddened to hear the passing of the wonderful Ian Lavender,” said the statement. “In what truly marks the end of an era, Ian was the last surviving member of the Dad’s Army main cast. His wonderful performance as Private Frank Pike will live on for decades to come.”
The statement added that Lavender, who appeared in the 2016 Dad’s Army movie and whose other work included EastEnders, Parsley Sidings and Rising Damp, “leaves behind a legacy of laughter enjoyed by millions.” It said it would dedicate this year’s Dad’s Army tour to Lavender’s memory.
- 2/5/2024
- by Max Goldbart
- Deadline Film + TV
One of the most unassuming filmmakers of Britain’s early period, Michael Powell entered the golden age of his career with The Edge of the World. Though he had already made over 20 films by 1937, it represented one of his first successfully realized and self-actualized stabs at what would become one of his chief directorial strengths: the ability to film a very specific and localized environment in a manner that emphasizes its otherworldly fantasias and, paradoxically, remains faithful to the area’s ethnographical features.
To watch the film is to bear witness to Powell’s unique alchemy. Throughout, he infuses a weather-battered island community off the coast of Scotland on the verge of abandonment with off-kilter camera angles, dreamily gauzy cinematography, and a becalmed detachment that lets the characters and scenario do the work for him.
Which isn’t to say that Powell occasionally indulges in a few melodramatic flourishes that...
To watch the film is to bear witness to Powell’s unique alchemy. Throughout, he infuses a weather-battered island community off the coast of Scotland on the verge of abandonment with off-kilter camera angles, dreamily gauzy cinematography, and a becalmed detachment that lets the characters and scenario do the work for him.
Which isn’t to say that Powell occasionally indulges in a few melodramatic flourishes that...
- 10/20/2023
- by Eric Henderson
- Slant Magazine
Hammer’s attempt at a budget monster romp for 1966 isn’t quite as good as its sister film Plague of the Zombies, but it has fine atmosphere and a couple of worthy grace notes, namely its fine actresses Jennifer Daniel and Jacqueline Pearce. Although the title monster bites some fans the wrong way, it works for this reviewer — it’s every appearance is a surprise, and for me it’s convincingly… reptilian.
The Reptile
Blu-ray
Scream Factory
1966 / Color / 1:85 + 1:66 widescreen / 91 min. / Street Date July 30, 2019 / 27.99
Starring: Noel Willman, Jennifer Daniel, Ray Barrett, Jacqueline Pearce, Michael Ripper, John Laurie, Marne Maitland.
Cinematography: Arthur Grant
Film Editors: James Needs, Roy Hyde
Production Design: Bernard Robinson
Makeup: Roy Ashton
Original Music: Don Banks
Written by John Elder (Anthony Hinds)
Produced by Anthony Nelson Keys
Directed by John Gilling
Here’s something fresh for this reviewer, a noted Hammer picture to enjoy that I...
The Reptile
Blu-ray
Scream Factory
1966 / Color / 1:85 + 1:66 widescreen / 91 min. / Street Date July 30, 2019 / 27.99
Starring: Noel Willman, Jennifer Daniel, Ray Barrett, Jacqueline Pearce, Michael Ripper, John Laurie, Marne Maitland.
Cinematography: Arthur Grant
Film Editors: James Needs, Roy Hyde
Production Design: Bernard Robinson
Makeup: Roy Ashton
Original Music: Don Banks
Written by John Elder (Anthony Hinds)
Produced by Anthony Nelson Keys
Directed by John Gilling
Here’s something fresh for this reviewer, a noted Hammer picture to enjoy that I...
- 7/27/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Don't panic! Your first look at BBC Two's upcoming Dad's Army origins drama is here.
We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story tells of the struggles creators Jimmy Perry and David Croft had to endure to get the classic comedy on screen.
The stills show Friday Night Dinner's Paul Ritter and Game of Thrones actor Richard Dormer as Perry and Croft, respectively, and John Sessions as a dead ringer for Arthur Lowe.
EastEnders star Shane Richie will play Bill Pertwee in the one-off film, with the rest of the Dad's Army actors portrayed by Julian Sands (as John Le Mesurier), Mark Heap (as Clive Dunn), Kevin Bishop (as James Beck), Michael Cochrane (as Arnold Ridley) and Ralph Riach (as John Laurie).
Meanwhile, Keith Allen will appear as TV executive Paul Fox and Sally Phillips will play Croft's wife Ann.
The drama has been written by Stephen Russell (Shameless) and...
We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story tells of the struggles creators Jimmy Perry and David Croft had to endure to get the classic comedy on screen.
The stills show Friday Night Dinner's Paul Ritter and Game of Thrones actor Richard Dormer as Perry and Croft, respectively, and John Sessions as a dead ringer for Arthur Lowe.
EastEnders star Shane Richie will play Bill Pertwee in the one-off film, with the rest of the Dad's Army actors portrayed by Julian Sands (as John Le Mesurier), Mark Heap (as Clive Dunn), Kevin Bishop (as James Beck), Michael Cochrane (as Arnold Ridley) and Ralph Riach (as John Laurie).
Meanwhile, Keith Allen will appear as TV executive Paul Fox and Sally Phillips will play Croft's wife Ann.
The drama has been written by Stephen Russell (Shameless) and...
- 10/27/2015
- Digital Spy
There's already a Dad's Army movie remake on the horizon, and now there's going to be a drama based around its origins.
EastEnders star Shane Richie will play Bill Pertwee in BBC Two's Making Dad's Army, a one-off film about the classic and beloved British sitcom.
The drama will focus on the show's original idea in 1967 up until its first broadcast in 1968, and the struggles creators Jimmy Perry and David Croft had to endure to get it on screen.
Friday Night Dinner's Paul Ritter will play Perry, while Game of Thrones actor Richard Dormer will portray Croft.
The rest of the Dad's Army actors will be played by John Sessions (as Arthur Lowe), Julian Sands (as John Le Mesurier), Mark Heap (as Clive Dunn), Kevin Bishop (as James Beck), Michael Cochrane (as Arnold Ridley) and Ralph Riach (as John Laurie).
Meanwhile, Keith Allen will play TV executive Paul Fox,...
EastEnders star Shane Richie will play Bill Pertwee in BBC Two's Making Dad's Army, a one-off film about the classic and beloved British sitcom.
The drama will focus on the show's original idea in 1967 up until its first broadcast in 1968, and the struggles creators Jimmy Perry and David Croft had to endure to get it on screen.
Friday Night Dinner's Paul Ritter will play Perry, while Game of Thrones actor Richard Dormer will portray Croft.
The rest of the Dad's Army actors will be played by John Sessions (as Arthur Lowe), Julian Sands (as John Le Mesurier), Mark Heap (as Clive Dunn), Kevin Bishop (as James Beck), Michael Cochrane (as Arnold Ridley) and Ralph Riach (as John Laurie).
Meanwhile, Keith Allen will play TV executive Paul Fox,...
- 8/28/2015
- Digital Spy
Alex pays a fond return revisit to 1960s classic TV series, The Avengers...
Stylish crime fighting, despicable evil masterminds, a bowler-hatted old Etonian gentleman spy and a series of beautiful leather cat-suited, kinky-booted, no-nonsense heroines. The Avengers had all this and more. What began as a monochrome tape series in January 1961 ran the whole of the Sixties, becoming a colourful slice of period hokum, full of flair, wit and sophistication, yet with its tongue firmly in its cheek.
Always the perfect gentleman, John Steed was played by Patrick Macnee. Originally billed second to the late Ian Hendry, Macnee was still playing Steed over 15 years later when he was teamed with the youthful duo of Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt for The New Avengers in 1976. In the 1998 film, the role of Steed was given to Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman played Emma Peel. I will say no more about the film.
Stylish crime fighting, despicable evil masterminds, a bowler-hatted old Etonian gentleman spy and a series of beautiful leather cat-suited, kinky-booted, no-nonsense heroines. The Avengers had all this and more. What began as a monochrome tape series in January 1961 ran the whole of the Sixties, becoming a colourful slice of period hokum, full of flair, wit and sophistication, yet with its tongue firmly in its cheek.
Always the perfect gentleman, John Steed was played by Patrick Macnee. Originally billed second to the late Ian Hendry, Macnee was still playing Steed over 15 years later when he was teamed with the youthful duo of Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt for The New Avengers in 1976. In the 1998 film, the role of Steed was given to Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman played Emma Peel. I will say no more about the film.
- 10/13/2014
- by louisamellor
- Den of Geek
The all-star cast for the big-screen reboot of the classic sitcom Dad's Army has been revealed.
Bill Nighy, Toby Jones and Michael Gambon are among the actors to feature in the film, written by Hamish McColl and directed by Oliver Parker.
The BBC One comedy was created by Jimmy Perry and the late David Croft and originally aired between 1968 and 1977.
Here's our guide of who's playing the seven main platoon members below:
Captain George Mainwaring
Marvellous actor Toby Jones takes on the pompous, patriotic bank manager and pillar of the community Captain George Mainwaring, played by Arthur Lowe in the BBC comedy.
Sergeant Arthur Wilson
Bill Nighy will be playing privately educated, former city banker Sergeant Arthur Wilson, who is of a cheerful and carefree disposition yet exudes an aura of mystery. He's at odds with Captain George Mainwaring over his privileged background.
Wilson was originally played by the late British actor John Le Mesurier.
Bill Nighy, Toby Jones and Michael Gambon are among the actors to feature in the film, written by Hamish McColl and directed by Oliver Parker.
The BBC One comedy was created by Jimmy Perry and the late David Croft and originally aired between 1968 and 1977.
Here's our guide of who's playing the seven main platoon members below:
Captain George Mainwaring
Marvellous actor Toby Jones takes on the pompous, patriotic bank manager and pillar of the community Captain George Mainwaring, played by Arthur Lowe in the BBC comedy.
Sergeant Arthur Wilson
Bill Nighy will be playing privately educated, former city banker Sergeant Arthur Wilson, who is of a cheerful and carefree disposition yet exudes an aura of mystery. He's at odds with Captain George Mainwaring over his privileged background.
Wilson was originally played by the late British actor John Le Mesurier.
- 10/8/2014
- Digital Spy
The all-star cast for the big-screen reboot of the classic sitcom Dad's Army has been revealed.
Bill Nighy, Toby Jones and Michael Gambon are among the actors to feature in the film, written by Hamish McColl and directed by Oliver Parker.
The BBC One comedy was created by Jimmy Perry and the late David Croft and originally aired between 1968 and 1977.
Here's our guide of who's playing the seven main platoon members below:
Captain George Mainwaring
Marvellous actor Toby Jones takes on the pompous, patriotic bank manager and pillar of the community Captain George Mainwaring, played by Arthur Lowe in the BBC comedy.
Sergeant Arthur Wilson
Bill Nighy will be playing privately educated, former city banker Sergeant Arthur Wilson, who is of a cheerful and carefree disposition yet exudes an aura of mystery. He's at odds with Captain George Mainwaring over his privileged background.
Wilson was originally played by the late British actor John Le Mesurier.
Bill Nighy, Toby Jones and Michael Gambon are among the actors to feature in the film, written by Hamish McColl and directed by Oliver Parker.
The BBC One comedy was created by Jimmy Perry and the late David Croft and originally aired between 1968 and 1977.
Here's our guide of who's playing the seven main platoon members below:
Captain George Mainwaring
Marvellous actor Toby Jones takes on the pompous, patriotic bank manager and pillar of the community Captain George Mainwaring, played by Arthur Lowe in the BBC comedy.
Sergeant Arthur Wilson
Bill Nighy will be playing privately educated, former city banker Sergeant Arthur Wilson, who is of a cheerful and carefree disposition yet exudes an aura of mystery. He's at odds with Captain George Mainwaring over his privileged background.
Wilson was originally played by the late British actor John Le Mesurier.
- 10/8/2014
- Digital Spy
Feature Alex Westthorp 9 Apr 2014 - 07:00
In the next part of his series, Alex talks us through the film careers of the second and fourth Doctors, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker...
Read Alex's retrospective on the film careers of William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee, here.
Like their fellow Time Lord actors, William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker also shared certain genres of film. Both appeared, before and after their time as the Doctor, in horror movies and both worked on Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films.
Patrick George Troughton was born in Mill Hill, London on March 25th 1920. He made his film debut aged 28 in the 1948 B-Movie The Escape. Troughton's was a very minor role. Among the better known cast was William Hartnell, though even Hartnell's role was small and the two didn't share any scenes together. From the late Forties, Troughton found more success on the small screen,...
In the next part of his series, Alex talks us through the film careers of the second and fourth Doctors, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker...
Read Alex's retrospective on the film careers of William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee, here.
Like their fellow Time Lord actors, William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker also shared certain genres of film. Both appeared, before and after their time as the Doctor, in horror movies and both worked on Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films.
Patrick George Troughton was born in Mill Hill, London on March 25th 1920. He made his film debut aged 28 in the 1948 B-Movie The Escape. Troughton's was a very minor role. Among the better known cast was William Hartnell, though even Hartnell's role was small and the two didn't share any scenes together. From the late Forties, Troughton found more success on the small screen,...
- 4/8/2014
- by louisamellor
- Den of Geek
Even back when Britain was an industrial nation, films about industry were relatively rare: audiences who worked on assembly lines presumably wanted to look at something more glamorous on their night at the pictures. In Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Albert Finney snarled, "Don't let the bastards grind you down," a neat encapsulation of the working man's political philosophy, whereas I'm Alright Jack (1959) took a dismayed view of the hostile stand-off between Capital and Labor. That Boulting Brothers satire may have adopted a "plague on both your houses" stance, but in fact its sympathy was with management.
The Agitator (1945) is the product of a gentler age: it tries to be sympathetic to everybody, but again there's a hidden conservative bias. Still, as the product of a generation who had just won the war and were looking forward, some of them, to a bright socialist future of free education and health care,...
The Agitator (1945) is the product of a gentler age: it tries to be sympathetic to everybody, but again there's a hidden conservative bias. Still, as the product of a generation who had just won the war and were looking forward, some of them, to a bright socialist future of free education and health care,...
- 3/20/2014
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Above: Spectacular full-scale derailment from the 1931 version of The Ghost Train (and also the 1941 version).
Arnold Ridley is fondly remembered in the UK as one of the stars of seventies sitcom Dad’s Army, about an incompetent and mainly superannuated group of volunteer soldiers in the WWII home guard, a show which made Ridley a national star at age 72 (it continued until he was 81). His sweetly doddering persona made a brilliant foil to the petulant Arthur Lowe, the dithering John Le Mesurier and gloomy Scot John Laurie.
One day, shooting on location in a graveyard, one of Ridley’s younger co-stars mused, “Hardly worth your leaving, is it, Arnold?” A rather harsh bit of humor: if you find it too mean, take comfort in the fact that the young thesp predeceased Ridley by some years, owing to liver failure. What larks!
But looong before Dad’s Army, Arnold Ridley found...
Arnold Ridley is fondly remembered in the UK as one of the stars of seventies sitcom Dad’s Army, about an incompetent and mainly superannuated group of volunteer soldiers in the WWII home guard, a show which made Ridley a national star at age 72 (it continued until he was 81). His sweetly doddering persona made a brilliant foil to the petulant Arthur Lowe, the dithering John Le Mesurier and gloomy Scot John Laurie.
One day, shooting on location in a graveyard, one of Ridley’s younger co-stars mused, “Hardly worth your leaving, is it, Arnold?” A rather harsh bit of humor: if you find it too mean, take comfort in the fact that the young thesp predeceased Ridley by some years, owing to liver failure. What larks!
But looong before Dad’s Army, Arnold Ridley found...
- 9/9/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Network DVD have announced the UK DVD release of the classic horror series Mystery and Imagination on July 5th 2010. This critically acclaimed and extremely popular anthology series presents a selection of Gothic tales by legendary 19th Century writers: Robert Louis Stevenson’s nihilistic The Suicide Club, Sheridan le Fanu’s Uncle Silas plus Edgar Allen Poe to name but a few, not to mention a most faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Famous faces and well – known names lend this most chilling collection of tales authenticity and truth. Ian Holm, Denholm Elliot and Patrick Mower are among the many who turn in powerhouse performances for each of the six specially commissioned, featured-length TV plays. Freddie Jones’s performance as the demented pie-maker, Sweeney Todd, lingers in the memory long after the credit has rolled and the television turned off!
This release contains every remaining episode of Mystery and Imagination,...
Famous faces and well – known names lend this most chilling collection of tales authenticity and truth. Ian Holm, Denholm Elliot and Patrick Mower are among the many who turn in powerhouse performances for each of the six specially commissioned, featured-length TV plays. Freddie Jones’s performance as the demented pie-maker, Sweeney Todd, lingers in the memory long after the credit has rolled and the television turned off!
This release contains every remaining episode of Mystery and Imagination,...
- 6/10/2010
- by Phil
- Nerdly
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