March 10 - Richard Haydn

On this day, in 1905, George Richard Haydon was born in Camberwell, London, England. While he would eventually become a prolific character actor (after dropping all of his first name and the o from his last), Richard’s career did not get off to a rousing start. He began in show business as a ticket seller at the Daily Theatre in London. He finally landed a comedic role in a musical revue but the show flopped. Deciding maybe the theater wasn’t for him, he moved to Jamaica and became an overseer on a banana plantation. After a hurricane wiped out the plantation, he returned to England, unsure of what to do with his life. While he tried to figure that out, he kept picking away at the whole acting thing. In 1926, he was cast in a West End production of Betty of Mayfair which led to his first roles on radio and, finally, some success.

Image courtesy forums.tcm.com

It was on the radio that Richard developed and perfected the basic character he would play variations of for the rest of his life: a stuffy fellow with a nasally voice and a tendency to over enunciate. His most famous version of this character was Professor Carp, a fish expert and momma’s boy, on The Charley McCarthy Show. The professor was so popular that Richard wrote a book about him in 1954, The Journal of Edwin Carp. His numerous radio appearances led him back to stage in 1939 when he hopped the pond and made his Broadway debut in Noel Coward’s Set to Music opposite Beatrice Lillie. The success of that show brought Richard a contract with 20^th Century Fox. Throughout the Forties, he played mostly comedic supporting roles to great acclaim. Some of his highlights include Professor Oddly in 1941’s Ball of Fire, Rogers the butler in 1945’s And Then There Were None and Mr. Appleton in 1948’s Sitting Pretty.

Image copyright 20th Century Fox

Richard continued his role as character actor extraordinaire into the Fifties but began adding television shows to his resume. His career began slowing down in the Sixties but some of his most well known performances come from that decade. In 1960, he played Bartlet Finchley in an episode of The Twilight Zone called "A Thing About Machines." 1962 was the year he portrayed William Brown in the classic Mutiny on the Bounty. In 1965 he was Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music. He reprised Professor Carp on episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show and had a famous (if somewhat off color by today's standards) turn as a Japanese businessman on Bewitched. Richard made his last appearance on film (although his voice would go uncredited as Bookworm in 1985's The Hugga Bunch) in one of my favorite films, Young Frankenstein, in 1974. He plays Herr Falkstein, the lawyer at the beginning of the picture trying to convince Gene Wilder of his true heritage.

Image copyright Disney

Richard has two Disney credits to his name. The first happened in 1951 as the voice of the marvelously haughty Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. I'm pretty sure that no one else would have been able to make exactly three inches high sound like a giant. His other role is somewhat lesser known. In 1967, Disney released a comedic Western musical (of sorts) complete with songs by the Sherman Brothers and yet I'd wager not many people have heard of it. It even starred Roddy McDowall, Suzanne Pleshette and Karl Malden. The picture is called The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin and Richard plays Quentin Bartlett, an actor who has his map to a gold mine stolen by a villainous Malden.

Richard never liked the whole Hollywood scene all that much. He'd never gotten married (although he was engaged for a few months in 1943) and spent most of his spare time reading and gardening. Sometime on April 25, 1985, while alone at his home in Pacific Palisades, California, he suffered a fatal heart attack. His body was donated to the University of California, Los Angeles medical department for science. He was 80 years old.