Ian Gillett Carmichael (18 June 1920 – 5 February 2010) was an English actor who worked prolifically on stage, screen and radio in a career that spanned seventy years. Born in Kingston upon Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but his studies—and the early stages of his career—were curtailed by the Second World War. After his demobilisation he returned to acting and found success, initially in revue and sketch productions.
In 1955 Carmichael was noticed by the film producers John and Roy Boulting, who cast him in five of their films as one of the major players. The first was the 1956 film Private's Progress, a satire on the British Army; he received critical and popular praise for the role, including from the American market. In many of his roles he played a likeable, often accident-prone, innocent. In the mid-1960s he played Bertie Wooster in adaptations of the works of P. G. Wodehouse in The World of Wooster for BBC Television, for which he received mostly positive reviews, including from Wodehouse. In the early 1970s he played another upper-class literary character, Lord Peter Wimsey, the amateur but talented investigator created by Dorothy L. Sayers.
Much of Carmichael's success came through a disciplined approach to training and rehearsing for a role. He learned much about the craft and technique of humour while appearing with the comic actor Leo Franklyn. Although Carmichael tired of being typecast as the affable but bumbling upper-class Englishman, his craft ensured that while audiences laughed at his antics, he retained their affection; Dennis Barker, in Carmichael's obituary in The Guardian, wrote that he "could play fool parts in a way that did not cut the characters completely off from human sympathy: a certain dignity was always maintained".
Biography Early life
Ian Gillett Carmichael was born on 18 June 1920 in Kingston upon Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He was the eldest child of Kate ( Gillett) and her husband Arthur Denholm Carmichael, an optician on the premises of his family's firm of jewellers. Carmichael had two younger sisters, the twins Mary and Margaret, who were born in December 1923. Robert Fairclough, his biographer, describes Carmichael's upbringing as a "privileged, pampered existence"; his parents employed maids and a cook. His infant education included one term at the local Froebel House School when he was four, but this was curtailed after his parents were shocked at the "alarmingly foul language he began bringing home", according to Alex Jennings, Carmichael's biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
In 1928 Carmichael was sent to Scarborough College, a prep school in North Yorkshire, which he attended between the ages of seven and thirteen. He did not like the spartan and authoritarian regime at the school. He described the discipline as "Dickensian", with corporal punishment used for even minor infringements of the rules; ablutions in the morning and evening were conducted with cold water—which often had a film of ice on the top during winter.
In 1933 Carmichael left Scarborough College and entered Bromsgrove School, a public school in Worcestershire. He soon concluded that "the new curriculum was not arduous", which gave him the opportunity to focus on matters that were of more interest for him: acting, popular music and cricket. In the late 1930s Carmichael decided to go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. His parents would have preferred he went into the family jewellery business, but accepted their son's decision and supported him financially when he left Yorkshire for London in January 1939.
Early career and war service, 1939–1946
Carmichael enjoyed his time at RADA, including the fact that women outnumbered men on his course, which he described as "heady stuff" after his boys-only boarding school. He remembered the time at RADA in the late 1930s fondly in his autobiography, describing it as:
A period of unconfined joy, occasioned by my finally shaking off the shackles of school discipline and being able to mix daily with young men and young women who shared my interests and enthusiasms. This joy was, nevertheless, being tempered by the worsening European situation. The fear that now, just as I was standing on the threshold of a future that I had dreamed about for years, the whole thing might be snuffed out like a candle was too unbearable to contemplate.
During his second term Carmichael had his first professional acting role: as a robot in Karel Čapek's R.U.R. at the People's Palace theatre, in Mile End, East London. He recalled the experience as "a dull play performed in a cold and uninspiring theatre and my particular contribution required absolutely no acting talent whatsoever". He then appeared as Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream at RADA's Vanbrugh Theatre. The opening night was 1 September 1939, the day Hitler invaded Poland. After the play's second performance its run was ended, as RADA shut down in anticipation that war was about to be declared; the following day the UK joined the war. Carmichael returned to his familial home and completed the forms to join the Officer Cadet Reserve, hoping to be commissioned as an officer. He helped gather the harvest in a nearby farm until 2 October, when he was attested into the army; he was told he would have to wait until he was twenty—on 18 June 1940—before he started training.
As the early months of the war were marked by limited military action, RADA reassessed its closure, and decided to reopen. Carmichael returned to London and shared lodgings with two fellow RADA students, Geoffrey Hibbert and Patrick Macnee; Carmichael and Macnee became lifelong friends. Between June and August 1940 Carmichael was on a ten-week tour of Nine Sharp, a revue developed by Herbert Farjeon. After the tour Carmichael reported for training on 12 September at Catterick Garrison. After ten weeks' basic training, he was posted to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to become an officer cadet. He completed his training and passed out in March 1941 as a second lieutenant in the 22nd Dragoons, part of the Royal Armoured Corps.
At the end of training manoeuvres in November 1941, near Whitby, North Yorkshire, Carmichael was struggling to close the hatch of his Valentine tank when it slammed down, cutting off the top of a finger on his left hand. The surgery was botched and caused him pain for several months; he had a second operation several months later. He described it as "dashed unfortunate" and "my one and only war-wound, albeit a self-inflicted one".
In between training for the liberation of France Carmichael began producing revues and productions as part of his brigade's entertainment. On 16 June 1944, ten days after D-Day, Carmichael and his armoured reconnaissance troop landed in France. He fought through to Germany with the regiment and by the time of Victory in Europe Day in May 1945, he had been promoted to captain and mentioned in despatches.
Carmichael's regiment was part of XXX Corps and an initial post-war challenge in Germany was the welfare of the occupying forces. The corps' commanding officer was Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, who ordered a repertory company to be formed for entertainment. When Carmichael auditioned he recognised the major in charge of the unit as Richard Stone, an actor who had been a contemporary at RADA; Carmichael was taken into the company and assisted Stone with auditioning other members. One of the comedians who auditioned was Frankie Howerd, whom Carmichael thought "very gauche ... too undisciplined and not very funny either. Very much the amateur". Stone disagreed and signed the comic up to perform in a Royal Army Service Corps concert party. The corps' company was also joined by actors from Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA); Carmichael did not often appear on stage with them, but worked as the producer of twenty shows. In April 1946 Stone was promoted and was transferred to the UK; Carmichael was promoted to major and took control of the theatrical company. His leadership of the company was short-lived, as he was demobilised that July.
Early post-war career, 1946–1955 In July 1946 Carmichael signed with Stone, who had also been demobilised and had set up as a theatrical agent. Carmichael obtained his first post-war role in the revue Between Ourselves in mid-1946 before he appeared in two small roles in the comedy She Wanted a Cream Front Door— a hotel receptionist and a BBC reporter. The production went on a twelve-week tour round Britain from October 1946, and then ran at the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, London, for four months.
Between 1947 and 1951 Carmichael appeared on stage in both plays and revues —the latter often at the Players' Theatre in Villiers Street, Charing Cross. He made his debut appearance on BBC television in 1947 in New Faces, a revue that also included Zoe Gail, Bill Fraser and Charles Hawtrey. From 1948 he also began appearing in films, including Bond Street (1948), Trottie True and Dear Mr. Prohack (both 1949); these early roles were minor parts and he was uncredited. He spent much of 1949 in a thirty-week tour of Britain with the operetta The Lilac Domino. According to Jennings, Carmichael's "first conspicuous success" was The Lyric Revue in 1951; the production transferred to The Globe (now the Gielgud Theatre) as The Globe Revue in 1952. He received a positive review in the industry publication The Stage, which reported that he "hits the bull's-eye" for his comic performance in one sketch, "Bank Holiday", which involved him undressing on the beach under a mackintosh.
Carmichael spent the next three years appearing in stage revues and small roles in films. Although he enjoyed working in revues, he was concerned about being stuck in a career rut. In a 1954 interview in The Stage, he said "I'm afraid that managers and directors may think of me only as a revue artist, and much as I enjoy acting in sketches I feel there must be a limit to the number of characters one is able to create. What I would like now is to be offered a part in light comedy or a farce". Between November 1954 and May 1955 he appeared as David Prentice in the stage production of Simon and Laura alongside Roland Culver and Coral Browne at the Strand Theatre, London. The following year a film version was directed by Muriel Box; she asked Carmichael to repeat his role, while Browne and Culver's roles were taken by Kay Kendall and Peter Finch. The reviewer for The Times thought Carmichael "comes near to stealing the film from both of them". In 1955 Carmichael also appeared in The Colditz Story. He played Robin Cartwright, an officer in the Guards, and spent much of his screen time appearing with Richard Wattis; the two men provided an element of comic relief in the film, with what Fairclough describes as a "Flanagan and Allen tribute act". The Colditz Story was Carmichael's ninth film role and he had, Fairclough notes, risen to sixth in the credits behind John Mills and Eric Portman.
Screen success, 1955–1962