Lionel Jeffries

Lionel Jeffries
Spouse(s)	Eileen Mary Walsh (m. 1951-2010)

Lionel Charles Jeffries (10 June 1926 – 19 February 2010) was a British actor, screenwriter and film director.

Biography

Jeffries attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wimborne Minster, Dorset. After his World War II service, for which he was awarded the Burma Star, he trained at RADA. He entered repertory at the David Garrick Theatre, Lichfield for 2 years and appeared in early British television plays.

He built a successful career in British films mainly in comic character roles and as he was prematurely bald he often played characters older than himself. For example, he played the role of father to Caractacus Potts (played by Dick Van Dyke) in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), although Jeffries was actually six months younger than Van Dyke. His acting career reached a peak in the 1960s with leading roles in other films like Two-Way Stretch (1960), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), First Men in the Moon (1964) and Camelot (1967).

In the 1970s Jeffries turned to writing and directing children's films, including the celebrated 1970 version of The Railway Children and The Amazing Mr Blunden. He was a member of the British Catholic Stage Guild.

Jeffries had a dislike of television and its production values and shunned the medium for many years. Since the 1980s, however, he did appear on television, including Inspector Morse.

Following a long illness, Jeffries died in a nursing home in Poole, Dorset, on 19 February 2010 at the age of 83. He was married to Eileen Mary Walsh from 1951 until his death. Their son and two daughters survive him.

Selected filmography

As actor

• Stage Fright (1950)
• Will Any Gentleman...? (1953)
• The Black Rider (1958)
• Windfall (1955)
• The Colditz Story (1955)
• The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)
• No Smoking (1955)
• All for Mary (1955)
• Bhowani Junction (1956)
• Jumping for Joy (1956)
• Up in the World (1956)
• The Baby and the Battleship (1956)
• Eyewitness (1956)
• Lust for Life (1957)
• High Terrace (1956)
• Hour of Decision (1957)
• Doctor at Large (1957)
• The Vicious Circle (1957)
• The Man in the Sky (1957)
• Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957)
• Barnacle Bill (1957)
• Behind the Mask (1958)
• Girls at Sea (1958)
• The Revenge of Frankenstien (1958)
• Dunkirk (1958)
• Up the Creek (1958)
• Further up the Creek (1958)
• Orders to Kill (1958)
• Nowhere to Go (1958)
• Law and Disorder (1958)
• The Nun's Story (1959)
• Please Turn Over (1959)
• Bobbkins (1959)
• Idle on Parade (1959)
• Jazz Boat (1960)
• Life is a Circus (1960)
• Let's Get Married (1960)
• Two-Way Stretch (1960)
• Tarzan the Magnificent (1960)
• The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960)
• The Hellions (1961)
• Fanny (1961)
• Mrs. Gibbon's Boys (1962)
• Operation Snatch (1962)
• The Notorious Landlady (1962)
• Kill or Cure (1962)
• The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963)
• The Scarlet Blade (1963)
• Call me Bwana (1963)
• Murder Ahoy! (1964)
• The Long Ships (1964)
• The Truth About Spring (1964)
• First Men in the Moon (1964)
• You Must Be Joking! (1965)
• The Secret of My Success (1965)
• The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966)
• Drop Dead Darling (1966)
• Rocket to the Moon (1967)
• Camelot (1967)
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
• 12 + 1 (1969)
• Twinky (1969)
• Eyewitness (1970)
• Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971)
• What Changed Charley Farthing? (1974)
• Royal Flash (1975)
• The Prisoner of Zenda (1979)
• Better Late Than Never (1982)
• A Chorus of Disapproval (1988)
• Abel's Island (1988)

As writer-director

• The Railway Children (1970)
• Baxter! (1972)
• The Amazing Mr Blunden (1972)
• Wombling Free (1977)
• The Water Babies (1978)

External links

• Lionel Jeffries at IMDb
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• Lionel Jeffries - Daily Telegraph obituary