Warren Mitchell, 1926-2015

Web exclusive

Warren Mitchell once observed that his appearance often lead him to be cast as “a foreigner”: “I played a funny foreigner, or a sinister foreigner, or a stupid foreigner, but always a foreigner, because I look sort of dark and can do accents.” In the 1960s this was indeed Mitchell’s standard role in various TV spy series from a recurring role as a Rome taxi driver in The Saint (1962-69) and an extremely funny portrayal of Brodsky, an inept Russian spy forever bested by The Avengers (1961-69). In cinemas he might appear as a Soho-Italian magician beset by hooligans in the obscure B-film Where Has Poor Mickey Gone? (1964) or the implausibly named ‘Abdul’ in Help! (1965). But later that year he took the role of Alf Ramsey, a part turned down by Peter Sellers, Lionel Jeffries and Leo McKern, in Johnny Speight’s BBC TV play Till Death Us Do Part. By the time a full series was commissioned the part was re-named Alf Garnett and for decades afterwards Mitchell would be associated with a posturing ignorant bigot.

Mitchell was born Warren Misell and raised in an Orthodox Jewish family in Stoke Newington. After war service in the RAF – a fellow recruit was Richard Burton – he studied at RADA, and by the late 1950s he was a regular member of Tony Hancock’s radio and television repertory company – most notably as Gregory, the leader of The Poetry Society (1959) – and provided stalwart support in many British comedies, from Spencius, the slave dealing partner of Marcus, in Carry On Cleo (1964) and a comic Soviet agent in the Morecambe and Wise vehicle The Intelligence Men (1965). In the Spike Milligan comedy Postman’s Knock (1962) his underplaying was a welcome relief from the star’s posturing and Mitchell’s considerable subtlety as a character actor was sometimes cleverly deployed in his depictions of middle-class ‘little men’. In The Avengers episode The Golden Fleese (1963) he portrayed a disaffected army officer with the same conviction as his commercial traveller who witnesses a murder in Hell is a City (1960) and the father of an abducted teenager in The Night Caller (1965).

Such roles seemed to hint at a future career in depicting suburban despair and Mitchell’s short stature, bald dome and sad eyes made him ideally suited to portrayed cardigan-wearing minor officials. None of his previous screen roles anticipated the impact of Alf Garnett, the Wapping dock worker whose rantings now sound like a Daily Mail headline. The actor was proud of his association with Speight but keen to distance himself from the character’s views, which were usually prefixed by the dread phrase ‘It stands to reason’. On one occasion Mitchell, on being praised by a viewer for ‘having a go’ at immigrants, responded with “Actually, we’re having a go at idiots like you.”

Till Death Us Do Part ran from 1966 to 1975 (after a pilot in 1965), together with two spin-off films, and the series was revived in 1985 as In Sickness and in Health. There was also the stage show, The Thoughts of Chairman Alf, a logical development as Speight’s screenplays tended towards solo ranting rather than intricate plotting. Mitchell’s film career as a popular supporting actor ran parallel with his sitcom stardom, with notable supporting roles in Jabberwocky (1977) and Stand Up Virgin Soldiers (1977). In 1982 he won an Australian Film Institute Award for Norman Loves Rose and Mitchell later took out dual Australian-British nationality. Of his later television work, his Shylock for Jonathan Miller’s interpretation of A Merchant of Venice (1980) stood as a testament to a great character actor who was so much more than the stereotypical roles he almost always transcended.