Sgt. Wilson stands at ease

Source: TV Times (Australian Edition), March 9, 1974

Peter Dean talked in Brisbane with John Le Mesurier, on leave from Dad's Army to make commercials for a British airline.

Joan Le Mesurier said: "Vague? Yes, he is. Very vague." Her husband John assumed the wan, mirthless smile that has become one of his facial trademarks.

"This is Adelaide, isn't it?" he murmured to TVQ-0 Brisbane's John Crook during an interview. Le Mesurier's bemused, faintly troubled vagueness has carried him through nearly 40 years as an actor, across hundreds of film roles and a TV career that includes the part of Sgt. Wilson in Dad's Army.

He speaks in such hushed unrushed tones that it seems a gross impertinence to ask another question until you wait a full minute in silence to make sure he has completed his reply. At the same time, his memory of mutual acquaintances of more than 20 years ago, his theatrical anecdotes and his immediate grasp of what interviewers require, indicate that the vagueness is a subtle actor's tool.

Even the air of serene detachment is deceptive.

"I get very nervous at rehearsals," he said. "All sorts of things are churning around in one's tummy. But people here have been so pleasant, so easy to talk to, and have done their homework, that its all been a great pleasure. A great pleasure."

His voice trails away as he contemplates his dying cigarette. Le Mesurier came to Australia to record TV commercials for a British airline, a job he acquired after a market research survey found him to be the most popular person to succeed Captain Bristow in the role.

Robert Morley topped a similar public relations exercise in the United States. Though his forebears sprang from Aldernay in the Channel Islands, Le Mesurier was an ideal choice to play a suave and pukka Brit. He was born in Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk and attended Sherborne School in Dorset.

When he was 23 he decided to diverge from the family tradition of entering the law. He wanted to be an actor, and, with his parents' full support, he enrolled at Fay Compton's school. "There were 25 girls. Alec Guinness and me," said Le Mesurier with another wintry grin. He made his debut in Edinburgh and early in the piece appeared on a newfangled contraption called television. "Early in the war, my house in Chelsea was bombed," he said. "Everything went, including my call-up papers. So I went down to Tidworth Barracks when I thought I was supposed to."

"I happened to have my golf clubs with me, and the sergeant greeted me with 'Oh, you think you've only come for the bleep week bleep end, do yer'?"

Le Mesurier met his first wife Hattie Jacques at the Players Theatre, which in the 1940's was famous for it's old-time melodrama. Their two son's Robin, 19, and Kim, 17 live with their mother in Earl's Court, a stone's throw from the Le Mesurier's in Barons Court. "We are all on excellent terms," he said. "We get on wonderfully well. I've always treated the boys as friends. Occasionally they come to me for advice. They have an - er - musical group called Reign. Played in Germany and France. Kim is what they call the roadie; he arranges things and unloads the van."

Le Mesurier hasn't been on the stage in 20 years. Ever since Roy Boulting - whom he had known distantly at Sandhurst military college - met him again after the war and hired him for films he has concentrated on screen and TV. However, the offers have been, and are, there. "Morley wanted me for his new play in London," murmured Le Mesurier, "but I couldn't because I was coming out here. "J.C. Williamsons wanted me to do a play here, but when they asked me I couldn't think of one I wanted to do. Perhaps Priestley's An Inspector Calls? I have played the Inspector. I haven't been a romantic actor since my rep days. Er - there's a possibility of my doing a love story episode in which I play a man of my own age falling in love with a girl of 23 or 24. I'd like to do it."

Le Mesurier, 61, says it was the Boulting Brothers pictures that put him on the acting map. "But the film industry in Britain isn't very, well, healthy at the moment," he muttered. "When I go back to England I'll do a film for Val guest, but I won't tell you the title because it's absolutely ghastly." There was a silence. "He can be extremely, if gently, stubborn," said Joan Le Mesurier. He chuckled vaguely.

Of Dad's Army Le Mesurier said: "The BBC wanted me to play Sgt. Wilson like an army sergeant which was stupid. He's a fellow which looks on Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe) as an upstart with an inferior education, but he's too well bred to say so".

"Dad's Army is a success because of the nostalgia, and people find it amusing. It's straight and makes a change from the sex theme. "And, if I may say so, it's well done. We play a group of men who are trying their best and making a mess of it, but we are trying, you can't say that of everyone today. "We'll be making another series soon after I get back but without James Beck (Private Walker) of course who died last August, terrible shock."

The leonine head lowered briefly in contemplation - "We did an episode last year in which I inherited a title and Mainwaring had to refer to me as the honorable Arthur Wilson. Very good, very good." Tell me, I said, seeking the answer to a riddle. Is Wilson the father of young Pike (Ian Lavender) ? The face brightened. Le Mesurier stared out of the window at the gum trees and smiled to himself. "I don't know, I haven't any idea" He was being vague again.

Transcribed by Andy Howells from the original interview, April 2000. Thanks to David Somen for sending a copy of the interview.

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