Clive Dunn

Clive Dunn OBE
Dunn in Surprise Attack (1951)
Born	Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn (1920-01-09)9 January 1920 Brixton, London, England
Died	6 November 2012(2012-11-06) (aged 92) Faro, Algarve, Portugal
Nationality	British
Education	Sevenoaks School
Alma mater	Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts
Occupations	Actor artist author comedian singer
Years active	1935–1984
Known for	Lance Corporal Jones
Notable work	See below
Television	Dad's Army
Spouse(s)	Patricia Kenyon ​ ​ (m. 1951; div. 1958)​ Priscilla Morgan ​ (m. 1959)​
Children	2
Relatives	Gretchen Franklin (cousin)
Military career
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	Royal Armoured Corps, British Army
Rank	Trooper
Unit	4th Queen's Own Hussars
Battles/wars	Battle of Greece

Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn OBE (9 January 1920 – 6 November 2012) was an English actor, artist, author, comedian and singer. Despite being only 48 and one of the youngest cast members, he was cast in a role many years his senior, as the elderly Lance Corporal Jones in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army, which ran for 9 series and 80 episodes between 1968 and 1977.

Dunn started his acting career in 1935, but this was briefly interrupted by the Second World War, where he served as a trooper in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars. In 1941 the regiment was forced to surrender after it was overrun and Dunn was held as a POW in Austria for the next four years.

After the war, Dunn resumed his acting career in repertory theatre. He made his first television appearance in 1951 as the man in the pub in Surprise Attack, a short film commissioned by the Ministry of Health. Dunn appeared in both series of The Tony Hancock Show and made many appearances with Tony Hancock, Michael Bentine, Dora Bryan and Dick Emery, among others, before winning the role of Jones in Dad's Army in 1968.

After Dad's Army ended, Dunn capitalised on his skill in playing elderly character roles by playing the lead character Charlie Quick, in the slapstick children's TV series Grandad, from 1979 to 1984.

Dunn retired in 1984 and died in Portugal, aged 92, in 2012, where he had settled in the region of Algarve, on 6 November 2012 as a result of complications from an operation that had taken place earlier that week.

Early life

Born in Brixton, south London, Dunn was the son of actor parents, and the cousin of actress Gretchen Franklin. Dunn was educated at Sevenoaks School, an independent school for boys (now co-educational). After leaving school, Dunn studied at the independent Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, in London.

He had a few small film roles in the 1930s. While still attending school, he appeared with Will Hay in the films Boys Will Be Boys (1935), and Good Morning, Boys (1937). In 1939, he was the stage manager for a touring production entitled The Unseen Menace. However, the detective play was not a success because the billed star of the show, Terence De Marney, did not appear on stage and his dialogue was supplied by a gramophone recording.

Military service

With the outbreak of the Second World War, Dunn joined the British Army in 1940. He served as a trooper in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars. The regiment was posted to the Middle East arriving on 31 December 1940 and as part of the 1st Armoured Brigade in the 6th Australian Infantry Division which fought in the Greek Campaign. Dunn fought in the rearguard action at the Corinth canal in April 1941. The regiment was forced to surrender after it was overrun and Dunn was among 400 men (including all the regiment's senior officers) who were taken as prisoners of war.

Dunn was held as a POW in Austria for the next four years. Towards the end of the war, as Germany was losing, the prisoners were force marched into Germany, and on the journey, Dunn got talking to a New Zealand soldier named Bill Hughes. In the 1970s Dunn toured New Zealand, and went to look for Mr. Hughes, only to find he had died a few years earlier. He remained in the army after the war ended, until finally demobilised in 1947.

Acting career

Dunn resumed his acting career in repertory theatre. But he soon made his first television appearance. In 1951 he appeared as the man in the pub in Surprise Attack, a short film produced by the Crown Film Unit and commissioned by the Ministry of Health.

In 1956 and 1957, Dunn appeared in both series of The Tony Hancock Show and the army reunion party episode of Hancock's Half Hour in 1960. In the 1960s, he made many appearances with Tony Hancock, Michael Bentine, Dora Bryan and Dick Emery, among others, before winning the role of Jones in Dad's Army in 1968.

From early in his career, his trademark character was that of a doddering old man. This first made an impression in the show Bootsie and Snudge, a spin-off from The Army Game. Dunn played the old dogsbody Mr. Johnson at a slightly seedy gentlemen's club where the characters Pte. "Bootsie" Bisley (Alfie Bass) and Sgt. Claude Snudge (Bill Fraser) find work after leaving the Army. In the early 1960s he made regular appearances on It's a Square World, including as the first parody of Doctor Who on New Year's Eve 1963.

In 1967, he made a guest appearance in an episode of The Avengers, playing the proprietor of a toy shop in "Something Nasty in the Nursery".

At 48 Dunn was one of the younger members of the Dad's Army cast when he took on the role of the elderly butcher whose military service in earlier wars made him the most experienced member of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard, as well as one of the most decrepit. Jack Haig and David Jason had previously been considered for the role. His relative youth, compared with most of the cast, meant that he was handed much of the physical comedy in the show, of which many of the other cast members were no longer capable.

Dunn's staunch socialist beliefs often caused him to fall out with Arthur Lowe, who played Captain Mainwaring and who was an active Conservative. When Dunn was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1975, it was reported that Lowe would only accept a higher-rated honour from the Queen.

After Dad's Army ended, Dunn capitalised on his skill in playing elderly character roles by playing the lead character Charlie Quick, in the slapstick children's TV series Grandad, from 1979 to 1984 (he played the caretaker at a village hall, and sang the lyrics in the theme). He had previously had a number one hit single with the song "Grandad" on his 51st birthday in January 1971, accompanied by a children's choir. The song was written by bassist Herbie Flowers. He performed the song four times on Top of the Pops. The B-side of "Grandad", "I Play The Spoons", also received considerable airplay. After cancellation of Grandad in 1984, he retired to Portugal. Following the success of the "Grandad" record, Dunn released several other singles, but never hit the charts again.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1971, when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

In 1979 he went on a tour to New Zealand, and performed with the local singer Tina Cross, and also tried to locate Bill Hughes, the Kiwi soldier he had struck up a friendship with on their forced march near the end of the war from Austria back into Germany, but Mr. Hughes was found to have passed away a few years earlier.

Personal life

He married fashion model Patricia Kenyon in London in 1951. The couple divorced in 1958. He married actress Priscilla Pughe-Morgan (born 14 January 1934) in June 1959. They had two daughters.

A 2006 article described Dunn as having eye trouble and sometimes being unable to see, but otherwise appearing to be in good health. In August 2008, he recorded a message for the programme Jonathan Ross Salutes Dad's Army, which was shown to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Dad's Army.

He spent the last three decades of his life in the Algarve, Portugal, and occupied himself as an artist, painting portraits, landscapes and seascapes, until his sight failed.

Dunn was a supporter of the Labour Party. He claimed his outspoken socialist beliefs often caused conflict with his Dad's Army co-star, Arthur Lowe, who was a staunch conservative. As a schoolboy, he and his classmates briefly joined the British Union of Fascists, but Dunn left the party once he learned of its anti-Semitic ideology.

Death

Dunn died in Algarve, Portugal on 6 November 2012 as a result of complications from an operation that had taken place earlier that week. His agent, Peter Charlesworth, said the star would be "sorely missed" and that his death was "a real loss to the acting profession". His death, and those of Bill Pertwee in 2013, Pamela Cundell in 2015, and Frank Williams in 2022 leaves Ian Lavender as the only remaining original cast member of Dad's Army.

Frank Williams, who played the Vicar in Dad's Army, said Dunn was always "great fun" to be around. "Of course he was so much younger than the part he played," he told BBC Radio Four. "It's very difficult to think of him as an old man really, but he was a wonderful person to work with – great sense of humour, always fun, a great joy really."

Ian Lavender, who played Private Pike in the show, said: "Out of all of us he had the most time for the fans. Everyone at one time or another would be tempted to duck into a doorway or bury their head in a paper; but not Clive, he always made time for fans."

Filmography

Films

Film
Year	Title	Role	Notes
1935	Boys Will Be Boys	Schoolboy watching rugby	Uncredited
1937	Good Morning, Boys	Minor role	Uncredited
1938	A Yank at Oxford	Minor role	Uncredited
1939	Goodbye, Mr. Chips	Youth	Uncredited
1949	The Hasty Heart	MacDougall	Uncredited
	Boys in Brown	Holdup Man	Uncredited
1957	Treasure Island	Ben Gunn
1959	The Treasure of San Teresa	Cemetery keeper
1961	What a Whopper	Mr. Slate
1962	She'll Have to Go	Chemist
	The Fast Lady	Old Gentleman in Burning House
1963	The Mouse on the Moon	Bandleader
1965	You Must Be Joking!	Doorman
1967	Just like a Woman	Graff von Fischer
	The Mini-Affair	Tyson
1968	30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia	Doctor
	The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom	Dr. Zimmerman
1969	Crooks and Coronets	Basil
	The Magic Christian	Sommelier
1971	Dad's Army	L.Cpl. Jack Jones
1980	The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu	Keeper of the Keys – London Tower

Television roles

Television
Year	Title	Role	Notes
1960–63	Bootsie and Snudge	Henry Johnson
1963	It's a Square World	various
1968	Inside George Webley	Ticket collector	1 episode
1968–77	Dad's Army	Lance-Corporal Jack Jones
1970	Here Come the Double Deckers!	Hodge
1974–75	My Old Man	Sam Cobbett
1979–84	Grandad	Charlie Quick

Singles

• Such a Beauty / Too Old , Parlophone, 1962
• "Grandad" / "I Play the Spoons", Columbia, 1970 (reached No. 1 in the UK in January 1971)
• "My Lady (Nana)" / "Tissue Paper & Comb", Columbia, 1971
• "Wonderful Lilly" / "Pretty Little Song", Columbia, 1972
• "Let's Take A Walk" / "Tell Us", Columbia, 1972
• "Our Song" / "She's Gone", EMI, 1973
• "Grandad" / "My Lady (Nana)" (reissue), EMI, 1973
• "My Old Man" / "My Own Special Girl", EMI, 1974
• "Holding On" / "My Beautiful England", Reprise, 1976
• "Goodnight Ruby" / "Thank You and Goodnight", Decca, 1977
• "Thinking of You This Christmas" / "'Arry 'Arry 'Arry", Sky Records, 1978
• "There Ain't Much Change From A Pound These Days" / "After All These Years" (with John Le Mesurier), KA Records, 1982.
• "Grandad" (reissue) / "There's No-One Quite Like Grandma", EMI, 1988.

Non-fiction

• Permission to Speak: an autobiography (1986).
• Permission to Laugh: my favourite funny stories (1996).

External links

• Clive Dunn at IMDb
• Clive Dunn Video on YouTube
• Clive Dunn at British Comedy Guide
• Last interview, The Oldie
• Clip of Desert Island Discs appearance – 19 June 1971