Arthur Lowe

For the British tennis player, see Arthur Lowe (tennis).

Arthur Lowe
Lowe as Captain George Mainwaring in Dad's Army
Born	22 September 1915(1915-09-22) Hayfield, Derbyshire, England
Died	15 April 1982(1982-04-15) (aged 66) Birmingham, West Midlands, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1948–82
Spouse	Joan Cooper (1948–1982 his death)

Arthur Lowe (22 September 1915 – 15 April 1982) was a BAFTA Award winning English actor. He was best known for playing Captain George Mainwaring in the popular British sitcom Dad's Army from 1968 until 1977.

Early life

Arthur Lowe was born in Hayfield, Derbyshire, the only child of Arthur (1888–1971) and his wife Mary Annie (Nan) née Ford (1885–1981). His father worked for a railway company, in charge of moving theatrical touring companies around Northern England and the Midlands in special trains. Young Arthur went to Chapel Street Junior School in Chapel Street, Levenshulme, Manchester. Lowe’s original intention was to join the Merchant Navy but this idea was thwarted because of his poor eyesight. Working at an aircraft factory he joined the British Army on the eve of the Second World War, but not before experiencing his first brush with the acting world by working as a stagehand at the Manchester Palace of Varieties. Lowe served in the Middle East with the Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry, and began to take part in shows put on for the troops, which appears to have sparked his desire to act. He left the Army at the end of the war with the rank of Sergeant Major.

Early career

Lowe made his debut at the Manchester Repertory Theatre in 1945, where he was paid £5 per week for twice-nightly performances. He worked with various repertory companies around the country and became known for his character roles, which included parts in the West End musicals Call Me Madam, Pal Joey and The Pajama Game; he eventually featured in at least 50 films - an early role is as a reporter in the classic 'Kind Hearts and Coronets'. By the 1960s, Lowe had successfully made the transition to television and landed a regular role as draper/lay preacher Leonard Swindley in the northern drama series Coronation Street (1960–65). So popular was his role with viewers that he was eventually given his own spin-off series, Pardon the Expression (1966), and its sequel Turn out the Lights (1967).

Leonard Swindley was not a role Lowe relished however, and he longed to move on. During the months he was not playing Swindley he was busy on stage or making guest appearances in other TV series including Z-Cars and The Avengers. He also had prominent parts in the Lindsay Anderson films This Sporting Life (1963), if.... (1968) and multiple roles in O Lucky Man! (1973).

In 1968 Lowe was invited by Laurence Olivier to act at the National Theatre at the Old Vic and appeared in Somerset Maugham's Home and Beauty in 1968 and later The Tempest in 1974 with John Gielgud.

Lowe married Joan Cooper (1922–1989) on 10 January 1948. They had met in 1945 when she was his leading lady at the Manchester Repertory Theatre, and they remained together until his death. Their son, Stephen Lowe, was born in January 1953.

Dad's Army

In 1968 Lowe was cast in his most famous role, Captain George Mainwaring in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army. His former colleagues on the show remarked that this was the role that most resembled Lowe himself, pompous and bumbling; Lowe had a clause written into his contract specifying that he would never have to lose his trousers. He also successfully played Mainwaring's drunken brother Barry Mainwaring in the 1975 Christmas episode "My Brother and I". He went on to take the character into a radio series, a stage play and a feature length film.

When not involved in Dad's Army Lowe appeared in plays at the National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre. His film roles included Spike Milligan's surreal The Bed Sitting Room, in which he mutates into a parrot, a drunken butler in The Ruling Class with Peter O'Toole, and a jokey Vincent Price horror movie Theatre of Blood, as one of the unfortunate critics.

On television he appeared as a guest performer on The Morecambe and Wise Show, alongside Richard Briers in a series of Ben Travers farces for the BBC, as the pompous Dr Maxwell in the ITV comedy Doctor at Large, and as Redvers Bodkin, a snooty, old-fashioned butler in the short-lived sitcom The Last of the Baskets (1971–72).

Between 1971 and 1973 Lowe joined Dad's Army colleague Ian Lavender on the BBC radio comedy Parsley Sidings. In 1974 he played Mr Micawber in the BBC serial David Copperfield. He employed a multitude of voices on the 1975 BBC animated television series Mr. Men, where he voiced all the characters as well as narrated.

Later career

When Dad's Army ended in 1977, Lowe was still very much in demand with starring roles in television programmes such as Bless Me Father with Daniel Abineri (1978–81) as the mischievous Irish priest Father Charles Clement Duddleswell – quite a departure from the pompous characters that Lowe usually portrayed  – and Potter (1979–80), as busybody Redvers Potter.

He made many television commercials, but his later stage career mainly involved touring the provinces, appearing in plays and pantomimes with his wife, Joan. In 1981 he reprised his role as Captain Mainwaring for the pilot episode of It Sticks Out Half a Mile, a radio sequel to Dad's Army. His last film role was in Lindsay Anderson's Britannia Hospital.

In his final years Lowe chose to act in pantomimes and touring theatre productions, in order that he was able to act along side his wife, Joan.

Amazon

When touring at coastal theatres with his wife, Lowe used his distinctive 1885 former steam yacht Amazon as a floating base. He bought Amazon as a houseboat in 1968, but realised her potential and took her back to sea in 1971; this unique vessel is still operating in the Mediterranean today.. The ship had a bar with a semicircular notch cut halfway along, to enable both the portly figure of Lowe and his wife to serve behind the bar at the same time, acting as hosts during the parties they threw on board.

In an interview for a Dad's Army retrospective on BBC television in 2010, Lowe's co-star, Clive Dunn, described him sitting at the bar in the evenings when they were filming on location, consuming a drink which Lowe named 'Amazon' after his yacht. Dunn described the drink as comprising "gin and ginger ale, with a single slice of cucumber".

Death

Lowe collapsed due to a stroke in his dressing room at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham before a performance of Home at Seven (in which he appeared with wife Joan) on 15 April 1982, having given a live interview on the BBC 1 afternoon show Pebble Mill at One only hours earlier. He died in hospital shortly afterwards, aged 66.

His ashes were scattered at Sutton Coldfield Crematorium following a sparsely attended funeral. Joan herself did not attend as she refused to miss a performance of Home at Seven and, as a result, was appearing in Belfast at the time. A memorial service was held in May 1982 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, attended by his family, former colleagues, and many friends. His last sitcom, A J Wentworth, BA, was shown between July and August 1982.

Memorials

In December 2007 plans were unveiled for a statue of Lowe to be erected in Thetford, where the outside scenes for Dad's Army were filmed.

Statue of Captain Mainwaring, Arthur Lowe's Dad’s Army character in Thetford.

The statue was unveiled on 19 June 2010 by the writers of the series, Jimmy Perry and David Croft.

The star has also had two blue plaques unveiled one at Maida Vale and one at his birthplace in Hayfield, Derbyshire.

Television roles

Year	Title	Role
1960 to 1965 1965 to 1966 1967	Coronation Street Pardon the Expression Turn out the Lights	Leonard Swindley
1968 to 1977	Dad's Army	Captain George Mainwaring
1971	Doctor at Large	Dr Maxwell
1971 to 1972	The Last of the Baskets	Redvers Bodkin
1972	It's Murder, But Is It Art?	Phineas Drake
1974	Microbes and Men	Louis Pasteur
1978	A Car Across the Pass	(Galton & Simpson Playhouse)
1978 to 1981	Bless Me Father	Father Charles Clement Duddleswell
1979 to 1980	Potter	Redvers Potter
1982	A J Wentworth, BA	Arthur James Wentworth, BA

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1949	London Belongs to Me		Uncredited
	The Spider and the Fly	Town Clerk
	Floodtide	Pianist	(Uncredited)
	Kind Hearts and Coronets	The Reporter
	Poet's Pub	Coach Guide	(Uncredited)
1954	Final Appointment	Mr. Barrett
1955	Breakaway	Mitchell
	The Woman for Joe	George's Agent	(Uncredited)
	Windfall		(Uncredited)
	Reluctant Bride	Mr. Fogarty
	One Way Out	Sam
	Murder Anonymous	Fingerprint Expert	(Uncredited)
1956	Who Done It?		(Uncredited)
	The Green Man	Radio Salesman
1957	Hour of Decision
	Stranger in Town		(Uncredited)
1958	Stormy Crossing	Garage Owner
1959	The Boy and the Bridge	Bridge Mechanic
1960	Follow That Horse!	Auctioneer	(Uncredited)
	The Day They Robbed the Bank of England	Bank Official	(Uncredited)
1962	Go to Blazes	Warder
1963	This Sporting Life	Charles Slomer
1965	You Must Be Joking!
1967	The White Bus	Mayor
1968	If....	Mr. Kemp
1969	It All Goes to Show	Councillor Henry Parker
	The Bed-Sitting Room	Father
1970	Spring and Port Wine	Mr. Aspinall
	Some Will, Some Won't	Police Sergeant
	Fragment of Fear	Mr. Nugent
	The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer	Ferret
	The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens
	Rookery Nook	Harold Twine	Television film
1971	A Hole Lot of Trouble	Whitehouse
	Dad's Army	Captain Mainwaring
1972	Adolf Hitler – My Part in His Downfall	Major Drysdale
	The Ruling Class	Daniel Tucker
1973	No Sex Please, We're British	Mr. Bromley
	Theatre of Blood	Horace Sprout
	O Lucky Man!	Mr. Duff / Charlie Johnson / Dr. Munda
1974	Man About the House	Spiros
1976	The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones	Dr. Thwackum
1977	The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It	Dr. William Watson, M.D
1979	The Lady Vanishes	Charters
1980	Sweet William	Captain Walton
1982	Britannia Hospital	Guest Patient

BAFTA Awards

Year	Award	Category	Film	Result
1969	BAFTA TV Awards	Best Actor	Dad's Army	Nominated
1970	BAFTA TV Awards	Best Light Entertainment Performance	Dad's Army	Nominated
1972	BAFTA TV Awards	Best Light Entertainment Performance	Dad's Army	Nominated
1973	BAFTA Film Awards	Best Supporting Actor	O Lucky Man!	Won
1974	BAFTA TV Awards	Best Light Entertainment Performance	Dad's Army	Nominated
1974	BAFTA TV Awards	Best Actor	Microbes and Men and David Copperfield	Nominated
1977	BAFTA TV Awards	Best Light Entertainment Performance	Dad's Army	Nominated

Further reading

Two biographies of Arthur Lowe have been published: Arthur Lowe – Dad's Memory by his son Stephen which was issued in 1997 and more recently Arthur Lowe by Graham Lord in 2002. In 2000 The Unforgettable Arthur Lowe was part of The Unforgettable… series of TV biographies of famous comedy performers.

External links

• Arthur Lowe at the Internet Movie Database
• Arthur Lowe at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Performances in the Theatre Archive University of Bristol