Wilfrid Brambell
Birthday: Born in 1912-03-22 in Dublin, Ireland
Deathday: 1985-01-18
Henry Wilfrid Brambell (22 March 1912 – 18 January 1985) was an Irish television and film actor and comedian, best remembered for his role in the television series Steptoe and Son. He also performed alongside The Beatles in their debut film A Hard Day's Night, playing the fictional grandfather of Paul McCartney.
TV Credits
Steptoe and Son
Character: Albert Steptoe
Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about a father and son played by Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett who deal in selling used items. They live on Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, "Old Ned", was composed by Ron Grainer. The series was voted 15th in a 2004 BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom. It was remade ...
Citizen Smith
Character: Jack
Classic BBC comedy starring Robert Lindsay as revolutionary leader Wolfie Smith of the Tooting Popular Front. Hoping to emulate his icons, Wolfie forms the Tooting Popular Front with a small group of his friends. However, he soon finds himself struggling to get his ambitious plans off the ground due to his laid back attitude and lack of organisation....
The Buccaneers
Character: Old Man
The adventures of privateer Captain Dan Tempest and his crew of former pirates as they make their way across the seven seas in The Sultana....
The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
Character: Fisherman
The Adventures of Sir Lancelot is a British television series first broadcast in 1956, produced by Sapphire Films for ITC Entertainment and screened on the ITV network. The series starred William Russell as the eponymous Sir Lancelot, a Knight of the Round Table in the time of King Arthur at Camelot....
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Character: Fisherman
The legendary character Robin Hood and his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest and the surrounding vicinity. While some episodes dramatised the traditional Robin Hood tales, most episodes were original dramas created by the show's writers and producers....
No Hiding Place
Character:
No Hiding Place is a British television series that was produced at Wembley Studios by Associated-Rediffusion for the ITV network between 16 September 1959 and 22 June 1967. It was the sequel to the series Murder Bag and Crime Sheet, all starring Raymond Francis as Detective Superintendent, later Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Lockhart....
The Adventures of William Tell
Character: Josef
The Adventures of William Tell is a British swashbuckler adventure series, first broadcast on the ITV network in 1958, and produced by ITC Entertainment....
Maigret
Character: Jacob
BBC series based on the novels by Georges Simenon which starred Rupert Davies as Inspector Maigret, a French police detective who preferred to watch and listen in order to solve crimes. The series ran from 1960-63 on British television....
Quatermass II
Character: Tramp
The serial sees Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group being asked to examine strange meteorite showers. His investigations lead to his uncovering a conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British Government. As even some of Quatermass's closest colleagues fall victim to the alien influence, he is forced to use his own unsafe rocket prototype, which recently caused a nuclear disaster at an Australian testing range, to prevent the aliens...
The Larkins
Character: Ernshaw
'The Larkins' is a British television sitcom which was produced by Associated Television and aired on ITV. It aired for four series between 1958 to 1960. An additional two series aired from 1963 to 1964....
All Creatures Great and Small
Character: Dinsdale's Brother
All Creatures Great and Small is a British television series, based on the books of the British veterinary surgeon Alf Wight, who wrote under the pseudonym James Herriot. Ninety episodes were aired over two three-year runs. The first run was based directly on Herriot's books; the second was filmed with original scripts....
The Beatles Anthology
Character: Self (archive footage)
A documentary series on the career of The Beatles....
Sunday Night Theatre
Character: Old Man / Thin Prisoner
Sunday Night Theatre was a long-running series of televised live television plays screened by BBC Television from early 1950 until 1959. The productions for the first five years or so of the run were re-staged live the following Thursday, partly because of technical limitations in this era, and the theatrical basis of early television drama. Some of the earliest collaborations between Rudolph Cartier and Nigel Neale were produced for this series, including Arrow to the Heart and Nineteen Eighty...
Movie Credits
A Hard Day's Night
Character: Grandfather
Capturing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in their electrifying element, 'A Hard Day's Night' is a wildly irreverent journey through this pastiche of a day in the life of The Beatles during 1964. The band have to use all their guile and wit to avoid the pursuing fans and press to reach their scheduled television performance, in spite of Paul's troublemaking grandfather and Ringo's arrest....
Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Character: Porter
Gawain was a squire in King Arthur's court when the Green Knight burst in and offered to play a game with a brave knight. Gawain journeys across the land, learning about life, saving damsels, and solving the Green Knight's riddle....
Steptoe & Son
Character: Albert Steptoe
Albert Steptoe and his son Harold are rag-and-bone men, complete with horse and cart to tour the neighbourhood. They also live together at the junk yard. Harold, who likes the bright lights in the West End of London, meets a stripper, marries her and takes her home. Albert is furious and tries every trick he knows to drive the new bride from his household....
Witchfinder General
Character: Master Loach
England, 1645. The cruel civil war between Royalists and Parliamentarians that is ravaging the country causes an era of chaos and legal arbitrariness that allows unscrupulous men to profit by exploiting the absurd superstitions of the peasants; like Matthew Hopkins, a monster disguised as a man who wanders from town to town offering his services as a witch hunter....
In Search of the Castaways
Character: Bill Gaye
Two teenagers, Mary (Hayley Mills) and Robert (Keith Hamshere) are lead by Professor Paganel (Maurice Chevalier) on a search expedition for the children's shipwrecked sea captain father. This Disney film was based upon Jules Verne's 1868 adventure novel Captain Grant's Children....
Death and Transfiguration
Character: Robert Tucker
A British man on his deathbed recalls moments from his life....
The Terence Davies Trilogy
Character: Robert Tucker (old age)
In stark black and white, Terence Davies excavates the life of his fictional alter ego, Robert Tucker, in a narrative that slips between childhood, middle age and death, shaping the raw materials of his own life into a rich tapestry of experiences and impressions....
Holiday on the Buses
Character: Bert Thompson
Due to a female passenger falling out of her top whilst running for the bus Stan is distracted and crashes the bus resulting in the depot managers car being written off. As a result Stan, Jack and Blakey are fired. Stan and Jack soon get new jobs as a bus crew at a Pontins holiday resort but discover that Blakey has also gotten a job there as the chief security guard....
Steptoe & Son Ride Again
Character: Steptoe / Albert
Albert Steptoe and his son Harold are rag-and-bone men, complete with horse and cart to tour the neighbourhood. They also live amicably together at the junk yard. Always on the lookout for ways to improve his lot, Harold invests his father's life savings in a greyhound who is almost blind and can't see the hare. When the dog loses a race and Harold has to pay off the debt, he comes up with another bright idea. Collect his father's life insurance. To do this his father must pretend to be dead....
Crooks in Cloisters
Character: Phineas
Having pulled off the smallest ever train robbery, Little Walter and his crew decide to get out of London. The six of them set up business in a disused monastery off the Cornish coast, despite the fact that none of them really qualifies as a monk - least of all Walter's moll Bikini. Bit by bit, the quiet way of life starts becoming a habit....
Some Will, Some Won't
Character: Henry Russell
Four people go to great lengths to obtain the fortune left in a will by a very wealthy practical joker....
Another Shore
Character: Arthur Moore
A young Irishman comes up with an unusual plan to get the money to emigrate to Tahiti. One of the Ealing comedies....
Where the Bullets Fly
Character: Train Guard
In a spoof of the spy genre a secret agent chases a missing formula that can drain nuclear energy from an element named Spurium,...
San Ferry Ann
Character: Grandad
A motley crew of British characters ride The San Ferry Ann to the shores of France where they embark on a weekend of calamity. The campervan family led by Dad and Mum (David Lodge and Joan Sims) create chaos from the moment they set their tires on the shore resulting in frequent run-ins with the Gendarme, while Lewd Grandad (Wilfred Brambell) finds his own misadventures with a newly acquainted friend, a mad German ex-soldier (Ron Moody). Also aboard for the ride is a saucy hitchhiker (Barbara Wi...
Captured
Character:
Directed by cult British director John Krish, the film was sponsored by the Army Kinematograph Corporation. This tightly plotted drama shows British POWs enduring brainwashing and torture during the Korean War, thereby revealing what a soldier could expect if he was ever captured by enemy forces....
Urge to Kill
Character: Mr. Forsythe
A psychopathic killer murders three girls before police catch him....
The Salvage Gang
Character: Tramp
Four children try to raise money to replace a broken saw, taking them on an unexpected journey through the capital....
Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence
Character: Malipieri
Through the childhood and adolescence of Signor Giacomo Casanova (from his memoirs), this is a description of how people lived in 18th-century Venice: their customs, habits, medicine, religion, and--most of all--the omnipresence of hypocrisy....
The Sinister Man
Character: Lock-Keeper
When a corpse is found in the Thames, the only clue is that the dead man was killed by a karate or judo expert....
The Boys
Character: Norman Albert Brewer
A night watchman at a garage is found murdered, and four teddy boys are put on trial for the crime. Witnesses and suspects give differing accounts of the lead-up to the crime, and the truth emerges....
The Small World of Sammy Lee
Character: Harry
The compère of a seedy strip club struggles to keep one step ahead of the bookies to whom he owes money....
What a Whopper
Character: Postie
A writer attempts to raise some cash by writing a book about the Loch Ness Monster. No publisher will take it because they all think there isn't really a monster. The writer and some of his friends make a fake monster and take photographs and then travel to Scotland to see if they can convince the locals....
Cry WoIf
Character: Delivery man
A highly imaginative boy involves his friends in a series of false alarms, with the result that nobody will come to his aid when he is involved in a dangerous situation....
Lionheart
Character: Dignett
A lion escapes from a circus but is rescued and protected by a young boy....
Go Kart Go
Character: Junkman Fred
Jimpy leads a gang of kids as they attempt to beat another gang, no matter how underhanded their tactics are....
Catch Me a Spy
Character: Beech
While on vacation, a woman's husband is taken by the Russian government. After one attempt fails, she begins looking for a suitable spy to capture and trade in exchange for her husband, but she develops an attraction to the one she thinks is a good candidate....
Alice in Wonderland
Character: White Rabbit
Alice in Wonderland (1966) is a BBC television play based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It was directed by Jonathan Miller, then most widely known for his appearance in the long-running satirical revue Beyond the Fringe....
Serious Charge
Character: Verger
Howard Phillips, a vicar who's new in the town of Bellington, wants to reach out to youth. The previous vicar's daughter, Hester Peters, who fears being a spinster, wants to be his wife. He tells her he's not interested. When he confronts a tough kid about something the youth has done, the lad sets out to frame the vicar. Hester, who's walked in on the confrontation, backs the youth's story. The town sides with her and the lad, turning against Phillips. He has a crisis of faith. What options doe...
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Character: Old Man / Thin Prisoner
A man who works for 'The Party' (an all powerful empire led by a man known only as 'Big Brother') begins to have thoughts of rebellion and love for a fellow member. Together they look to help bring down the party....
Flame in the Streets
Character: Mr. Palmer senior
Flame in the Streets is a 1961 British drama film directed by Roy Ward Baker. Racial tensions manifest themselves at home, work and on the streets during Bonfire Night in the burgeoning West Indian community of early 1960s Britain. Trades union leader (Mills) fights for the rights of a black worker but struggles with the news that his own daughter is planning to marry a West Indian, much against his own logic and the prejudice of his wife....
The Adventures of Picasso
Character: Alice B. Toklas
Already in his childhood, Pablo Picasso shows talent for painting and is sent to the Academy of Arts in Madrid. He becomes a painter but has to live in Paris in poverty. But one day he is discovered by a rich American millionaire and starts to earn money. But he wastes his talent by painting plates. He meets the famous people of the 1920s; Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Appolinaire, Hitler and Churchill....
Break-In
Character:
A dramatised training film for the Military Police showing the correct methods and procedures that should be used in solving a crime....
Carry On Again Doctor
Character: Mr. Pullen (uncredited)
Dr. Nookey is disgraced and sent to a remote island hospital. He is given a secret slimming potion by a member of staff, Gladstone Screwer, and he flies back to England to fame and fortune. But others want to cash in on his good fortunes, and some just want him brought down a peg or two....
Odd Man Out
Character: Standing Passenger on Tram (uncredited)
Belfast police conduct a door-to-door manhunt for an IRA gunman wounded in a daring robbery....