Graham Stark obit

Graham Stark dead

Graham Stark was an actor alongside Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films and provided voices for The Goon Show

He was not on the list.

Graham Stark , the actor, who has died aged 91, was frequently cast in supporting roles in comedy films starring his close friend Peter Sellers.

Never quite achieving stardom himself, Stark moved on the periphery, appearing in nearly 80 films, often as the fall-guy or put-upon sidekick.

Stark’s links with Sellers dated from the post-war heyday of The Goon Show on BBC Radio, where his natural talent for creating funny voices shone through. The pair went on to appear in the popular Pink Panther films, Sellers starring as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau while Stark took various subservient roles. He was particularly notable as Hercule LaJoy in A Shot in the Dark (1964).

Off screen, Stark and Sellers not only became good friends, but — as single men in the 1950s — shared many amorous adventures together, often taking girlfriends back to Sellers’s flat in Finchley Road where the machinery of seduction included one of the first automatic record-players in London. Stark would later stand as best man at all of Sellers’s four weddings.

Although best known as a comedy actor, Stark turned in a touching performance in the film Alfie (1966) as Humphrey, the bus conductor who marries the pregnant girlfriend of Michael Caine’s title character.

 

The son of a purser on transatlantic liners, Graham William Stark was born at Wallasey, Merseyside, on January 20 1922, and educated at Wallasey Grammar School, where he acted in school plays. He was only 12 when he appeared with the Liverpool Repertory Company as Macduff’s son in a production of Macbeth.

 

Dancing lessons led to his professional debut the following year in a West End pantomime, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves (Lyceum, 1935). Moving to London in 1937, he took elocution lessons to lose his Merseyside accent and made his first, fleeting, film appearance as a bellboy in the thriller A Spy in Black (1939).

 

At 17 Stark enrolled at Rada, but volunteered for the RAF when war intervened, joining Ralph Reader’s gang shows and entertaining troops in North Africa, the Far East and Germany.

 

After the war Stark joined the bohemian coterie frequenting the ornate Grafton Arms pub in Victoria where up-and-coming entertainers like Terry-Thomas, Jimmy Edwards, Tony Hancock, Dick Emery and Alfred Marks held court. It was in the Grafton’s back bar that Stark renewed an RAF friendship with Peter Sellers while Sellers and Spike Milligan experimented with material that, in 1951, would metamorphose into The Goon Show.

As well as providing madcap voices for The Goons, Stark also appeared in other popular radio shows of the day, notably Educating Archie, with the ventriloquist Peter Brough, and Ray’s A Laugh, starring the Liverpool comedian Ted Ray.

 

Stark had a complex relationship with Spike Milligan, who suffered from manic depression . Whenever Milligan failed to turn up for a Goon Show recording, Stark would stand in for him; and when Milligan and Sellers moved into television with A Show Called Fred in 1956, Stark joined the cast.

 

In 1963 he appeared as a psychiatrist in Milligan’s bleak satirical comedy The Bed Sitting Room, set in the aftermath of World War III. But when Stark’s stage performance attracted critical acclaim, Milligan flew into a jealous rage and threatened to shoot him. Since Milligan was known to keep a revolver, Stark took the threat seriously — but the two were later reconciled.

 

In 1964 Stark starred in his television comedy sketch series, The Graham Stark Show, which — although written by Johnny Speight, later to create Till Death Us Do Part — proved a flop.

 

Stark was also an accomplished photographer, and often took pictures of stars, including Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor , whom he encountered on film sets.

 

He published Remembering Peter Sellers in 1999 and an autobiography, Stark Naked, in 2003.

 

Graham Stark married, in 1959, the actress Audrey Nicholson, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

Filmography as actor

 

    The Spy in Black (1939) as Bell Boy (uncredited)

    Ça c'est du cinéma (1951) (voice, uncredited)

    Emergency Call (1952) as Posh Charlie

    Down Among the Z Men (1952) as Spider

    Forces' Sweetheart (1953) as Simmonds

    Flannelfoot (1953) as Ginger

    Johnny on the Spot (1954) as Stevie

    The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954) as Corporal (uncredited)

    One Good Turn (1955) as Boxing Competitor (uncredited)

    They Never Learn (1956) as Plum

    The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959) (uncredited)

    Inn for Trouble (1960) as Charlie (Driver)

    Sink the Bismarck! (1960) as Petty Officer Williams (uncredited)

    The Millionairess (1960) as Butler

    A Weekend with Lulu (1961) as Chiron

    Double Bunk (1961) as Flowerman

    Dentist on the Job (1961) as Sourfaced Man

    Watch it, Sailor! (1961) as Carnoustie Bligh

    On the Fiddle (1961) as Sgt. Ellis

    Only Two Can Play (1962) as Hyman

    Operation Snatch (1962) as Soldier

    A Pair of Briefs (1962) as Police Witness

    Village of Daughters (1962) as Postman

    She'll Have to Go (1962) as Arnold

    The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) as Sid Copper

    The Mouse on the Moon (1963) as Standard Bearer

    Lancelot and Guinevere (1963) as Rian

    Strictly for the Birds (1963) as Hartley

    Ladies Who Do (1963) as Foreman

    Becket (1964) as Pope's Secretary (uncredited)

    A Shot in the Dark (1964) as Hercule Lajoy

    Guns at Batasi (1964) as Sgt. 'Dodger' Brown

    Go Kart Go (1964) as Policeman

    Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965) as Fireman

    San Ferry Ann (1965) as Gendarme

    You Must Be Joking! (1965) as McGregor's friend

    Runaway Railway (1965) as Grample

    Alfie (1966) as Humphrey

    The Wrong Box (1966) as Ian Scott Fife

    Finders Keepers (1966) as Burke

    Casino Royale (1967) as Cashier

    Rocket to the Moon (1967) as Grundle

    The Plank (1967) as Amorous Van Driver (Harry Nichols)

    A Ghost of a Chance (1968) as Thomas Dogood

    Salt and Pepper (1968) as Sgt. Walters

    The Picasso Summer (1969) as Postman

    The Magic Christian (1969) as Waiter

    Rhubarb (1969) as Golf Pro. Rhubarb

    Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) as Andre Coupe

    Doctor in Trouble (1970) as Satterjee

    Scramble (1970) (uncredited)

    Simon, Simon (1970) as 1st Workman

    The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971) as Guest Appearance (segment "Sloth") (uncredited)

    Hide and Seek (1972) as Milkman

    A Day at the Beach (1972) as Pipi

    Not Now, Darling (1973) as Painter (uncredited)

    Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman (1973) as Charlie Vincent

    Where's Johnny? (1974) as Professor Graham

    The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) as Pepi

    I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight (1976) as Hotel M.C.

    Pure as a Lily (1976) as Detective Mike

    The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) as Hotel Clerk

    Gulliver's Travels (1977) (voice)

    Hardcore (1977) as Inspector Flaubert

    Crossed Swords (1977) as Jester

    Let's Get Laid (1978) as Inspector Nugent

    What's Up Nurse! (1978) as Carthew

    Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) as Professor Auguste Balls

    The Prisoner of Zenda (1979) as Erik

    Le Pétomane (1979) as Defence Counsel

    There Goes the Bride (1980) as Bernardo Rossi, Headwaiter

    The Sea Wolves (1980) as Manners

    Hawk the Slayer (1980) as Sparrow

    Victor/Victoria (1982) as Waiter

    Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) as Hercule Lajoy

    Superman III (1983) as Blind Man

    Curse of the Pink Panther (1983) as Bored Waiter

    Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984) as Blind Man

    Blind Date (1987) as Jordan the Butler

    Jane and the Lost City (1987) as Tombs

    Son of the Pink Panther (1993) as Professor Auguste Balls

    The Incredible Adventures of Marco Polo (1998) as Old King