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Alfie Bass

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Alfie Bass
Born
Abraham Basalinsky

(1916-04-10)10 April 1916
Bethnal Green, London, England
Died15 July 1987(1987-07-15) (aged 71)
Barnet, London, England
Years active1943–1982
SpouseBeryl Bryson
Children2

Alfie Bass (born Abraham Basalinsky,[1] 10 April 1916[2] – 15 July 1987) was an English actor. He was born in Bethnal Green, London, the youngest in a Jewish family with ten children; his parents had left Russia many years before he was born.[3] He appeared in a variety of stage, film, television and radio productions throughout his career.

Early life

After leaving primary school in Bethnal Green at the age of 14, he worked as a tailor's apprentice, a messenger boy and a shop-window display fitter, before taking to the stage.

Stage career

Bass's acting career began at Unity Theatre, London in the late 1930s, appearing in Plant in the Sun alongside Paul Robeson, and as the pantomime King in Babes In the Wood. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Bass joined the Middlesex Regiment as a despatch rider. Despite being kept busy with his duties, he found time to become involved in concert parties, as well as taking part in documentaries for the Army Film Unit.

His stage career included plays by Shakespeare and Shaw[citation needed]. During the 1950s he continued to direct shows at Unity, and on one occasion appeared in court (along with Vida Hope) charged with putting on a play without a licence.[4] His stage work also included an adaptation of Gogol's short story "The Bespoke Overcoat", transposed to the East End of London, which was filmed by Jack Clayton in 1956, and won the Oscar for best short. Bass also took over from Chaim Topol in the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof on the West End stage[5]

Film appearances

Bass first appeared on film in wartime documentaries.[6] He also appeared in a number of feature films including The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Hell Drivers (1957), A Tale of Two Cities (1958) and Alfie (1966) starring Michael Caine and Shelley Winters. In the latter he played Harry Clamacraft, a man Alfie meets and befriends in a sanatorium.

He starred in Roman Polanski's vampire film The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) (British title The Dance of the Vampires) as innkeeper Yoine Shagal with his daughter Sarah played by Sharon Tate. In the course of the film, he and his daughter become vampires. When a maid tries to scare him off with a crucifix, he responds with "Oy, have you got the wrong vampire!".

Bass also appeared in the "Pride" segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971) and had a leading role in the 1977 sex comedy Come Play with Me. He has had many cameo roles, such as the Indian restaurant doorman in the Beatles' film Help! (1965), as Clouseau's seafaring informant in Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and in Moonraker (1979), in which he was cast as a heavy smoking hard drinker. Bass had a small part in I Was Monty's Double as a non-speaking passenger on a train.

In his book British Film Character Actors (1982), Terence Pettigrew remembers, "there was a time when no British film seemed complete without Alfie Bass popping up in some guise or other. Basically playing the same character, he has hopped chirpily from drama to comedy and into costume pieces and back like an energised sparrow. To all of these, he has added an engaging warmth and sanguinity".

Television and radio

Bass appeared as a poacher rescued by Robin in the first episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene. He also appeared in a later episode during season two titled "The Goldmaker's Return" as Lepidus, the roguish alchemist, rescued from the Sheriff by Little John (Archie Duncan). He appeared in The Army Game (1957–61), a British TV comedy series, as Private Montague 'Excused Boots' Bisley, and its sequel Bootsie and Snudge from 1960–63 (there was also a one series revival in colour in 1974) working at a Gentleman's Club with Bill Fraser as 'Claude Snudge' and Clive Dunn as 'Henry Beerbohm Johnson'. Bass played the character in another spin-off, Foreign Affairs in 1964. Bass also played Lemuel "Lemmy" Barnet in the third and fourth series of the landmark 1950s science fiction radio series Journey into Space.

He continued working throughout the 1970s and '80s, in the TV series Till Death Us Do Part and Are You Being Served? as Mr. Goldberg, the second in a series of replacements for Arthur Brough's Mr. Grainger character (the first being James Hayter's Mr. Tebbs). As in the Mr. Goldberg role, he often emphasised his Jewish background in on-screen characterisations. He played a memorable Silas Wegg in the BBC's 1976 adaptation of Dickens's Our Mutual Friend. He played Isaac Rag in a scene-stealing recurring character role in the 1979-1980 Dick Turpin series and as Morrie Levin, a shrewd accountant in the Minder episode The Sun Also Rises (1982).[7]

Bass appeared in a 1979 episode of the ITV Drama series Danger UXB: Just Like a Woman, as a family man with an unexploded bomb in his back garden.

He also guest starred in two episodes of the British comedy television The Goodies, in which he appeared as the "Town Planner" in Camelot, and as the Giant in The Goodies and the Beanstalk.

He was a subject of the television programme This Is Your Life in March 1970 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

Music

In 1955 he recorded the novelty song "Pity the Downtrodden Landlord".[8]

Death

Bass died of a heart attack on 15 July 1987 in Barnet, London.[9] His last home was in Well End, a suburb of Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.

Selected filmography

Footnotes

  1. ^ Sharp, Robert (23 September 2004). "Bass, Alfred [Alfie] [formerly Abraham Basalinsky] (1916–1987), actor". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70372. Retrieved 24 November 2018. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ General Register Office index of deaths, London Barnet registration district, July 1987, Vol. 11 Page 205
  3. ^ "Alfie Bass Obituary". The Jewish Chronicle. 24 July 1987. p. 14.
  4. ^ Colin Chambers The Story of Unity Theatre, London (1990)
  5. ^ Green, Stanley, Encyclopedia Of The Musical Theatre, Da Capo Press 1980, p. 121
  6. ^ Alfie Bass biography accessed 26 Jun 2007
  7. ^ "#3.8 the Son Also Rises".
  8. ^ Brocken, Michael (12 July 2017). The British Folk Revival. ISBN 9781351775205. Retrieved 27 December 2015.
  9. ^ Deaths England and Wales 1984–2006
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