Terry-Thomas

Terry-Thomas (born Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens;[1] 14 July 1911 – 8 January 1990) was an English actor and comedian.

Terry-Thomas in 1961

Some of his best known roles were in Private's Progress (1956), The Green Man (1956), Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957), I'm All Right Jack (1959) and Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959). From the early 1960s, Terry-Thomas began appearing in American movies such as Bachelor Flat, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and How to Murder Your Wife. Although there were exceptions, Terry-Thomas's screen characters were generally similar; Geoff Mayer wrote that "although there would be variations, he would remain the 'rotter', a pretentious, elitist, seedy, sometimes lecherous cad with an eye for quick money and the easy life".[98] Eric Sykes, with whom Terry-Thomas shared a number of screen moments, said it was "always the same character and always funny".[163] Andrew Spicer, writing for the British Film Institute, called him "the definitive postwar cad or rotter".[125] Terry-Thomas himself agreed with the view he presented, writing in the 1980s that "T-T with his permanent air of caddish disdain ... bounder ... aristocratic rogue ... upper-class English twit ... genuine English eccentric ... one of the last real gentlemen ... wet, genteel Englishman ... high-bred idiot ... cheeky blighter ... camel-haired cad ... amiable buffoon ... pompous Englishman ... twentieth-century dandy ... stinker ... king of the cads ... All those descriptions added up to my image as Terry-Thomas" Among the cads that he plays:

• Sir Percy Ware-Armitage in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines 1965
• Percy son Sir Cuthbert Ware-Armitage in Monte Carlo or Bust! 1969
• Captain Sir Harry Washington-Smythe in Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon 1967

In 1971, Terry-Thomas was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He died at a nursing home on 8 January 1990 in Godalming, Surrey at the age of 78.