James Hayter

In his early seventies, James Hayter was travelling by coach to London when the driver said "I know you - you're Mr Kipling, aren't you?", and heads craned round to see the owner of that famously fruity voice. Hayter wryly replied, "Yes, but I have done a few other things in my fifty-two years in the business!" He was then in Robin Midgley's company at the Leicester Haymarket, reviewed by Bernard Levin for his cameo role in Crime and Punishment - "James Hayter as the drunken, tragic Marmeladov is the triumph of the evening, and I cannot imagine many evenings of which such acting would not be the triumph. Indeed, he is not acting at all; he has stepped, living and entire, from those terrible pages, and for his single, overwhelming scene the whole book comes on to the stage with him".

Hayter was born near Lahore, India in 1907, the son of a police commissioner stationed at Simla, and was sent 'home' to school at Dollar Academy at the age of seven. He went to RADA in 1924 and then trod the road taken by so many actors of his era- doing his apprenticeship years in repertory theatre, graduating to the West End, and thence to films and finally to television. After seasons with Northampton Rep, Dundee and Sir Barry Jackson's Repertory Company in Birmingham he went to Perth with his own company; he was Manager, Producer and Actor twice nightly with a different play each week, and in 1935 returned to the Birmingham Rep. He progressed to the West End in 1936, playing Andrew Young, a young Scots composer, in The Composite Man at Day's Theatre, and this led to his first film part, as a Scots reporter in Sensation.

He served with the Royal Armoured Corps throughout the war, and after demob appeared in The Dove and the Carpenter, directed by Alec Clunes. Many theatre appearances were to follow, and in 1951 Jimmy made his debut on the New York stage as Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet at the Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway, opposite Olivia de Havilland's Juliet.

His longest-running stage role (8 times a week, 2,415 appearances in total) was Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady, taking over from Stanley Holloway in the original Drury Lane production of 1959 and playing for 5 years in the West End and on tour. The London News Chronicle wrote: "Hayter is a chubbier, kindlier old rascal of a dustman, with a lovely bronchial wheeze and a tragic look of glassy misery when in the thralls of middle-class morality".

Hayter appeared in over 100 films, among his more notable being Big Fella with Paul Robeson and Elisabeth Welch, The Crimson Pirate with Burt Lancaster, Land of the Pharaohs with Jack Hawkins and James Robertson Justice, Nicholas Nickleby in which he played both Cheeryble twins, The Verger- one of Somerset Maugham's Trio, Pickwick Papers (leading a marvellous cast including Nigel Patrick, James Donald, Kathleen Harrison, Joyce Grenfell, Athene Seyler and Donald Wolfit), Walt Disney's Robin Hood with Richard Todd, The Blue Lagoon with Donald Houston and Jean Simmons, and Morning Departure with John Mills and Richard Attenborough. Dilys Powell wrote of The Verger: "James Hayter ... does not rank in public estimation as a star. But Mr Hayter is much more than a star: he is an actor. And in The Verger he seems not to act, but to be the decent, circumscribed little man who so enjoyably turns the tables on his pompous vicar..."

His extensive television work over the decades included the lead in Pinwright's Progress, British television's first authentic half-hour situation comedy series; a mad train conductor hell-bent on the assassination of the Prime Minister in an episode of The Avengers (Diana Rigg vintage); and James Onedin’s doughty father-in-law in The Onedin Line. He was delighted to be brought in for the sixth series of BBC Television's Are You Being Served? as the cantankerous Mr Tebbs, but J Walter Thompson were soon in touch with his agent to communicate that their Kipling Cakes account was less thrilled with the shadow it might cast on the avuncular and long-established image of Mr Kipling, and he was consequently bought out of the programme for an agreed sum.

Having worked long and hard at his profession, Jimmy was tickled pink to be paid for not working! He was sustained in his later years by voice-over work. Older readers may recall his Persil years (“What is a mum? Persil makes the care a mother takes worthwhile. Persil washes whiter - and it shows”); the Heineken campaign in the 1960s where he appeared as a cardigan-clad publican behind the lager pump - ("There's a terrific draught in here!") and, most famously, "Mr Kipling does make exceedingly good cakes!".

Jimmy retired to Spain in the early 1970s, and flew back to the UK when work beckoned, but died in his sleep in 1983 at Villajoyosa at the age of 76. With eight children to support, life had not been without anxiety, but he had enjoyed his last years in the sun.

This article was first published in The Stage newspaper (UK), on their Heydays page.

Cinema Museum excerpt:

(Both articles, letter, and images above as well as the portrait image at top used with kind permission from Judith Johnson who has a blog about her Dad at: http://www.judithjohnson.co.uk/james-hayter.html).

(Used with permission from Tony who runs a blog at: http://disneysrobin.blogspot.com/).