Who Is Harry H. Corbett?

Who Is Harry H. Corbett?

Harry H. Corbett, OBE (28 February 1925 – 21 March 1982) was an English actor.

Corbett was best known for his starring role in the popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 1970s. Corbett was regarded as one of Britain's first Method actors and early in his career he was dubbed "the English Marlon Brando" by some sections of the British press.

Corbett was born in Rangoon, Burma, where his father, George, was serving as a company quartermaster sergeant in the South Harry H. Corbett, OBE (28 February 1925 – 21 March 1982) was an English actor.

Corbett was best known for his starring role in the popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 1970s. Corbett was regarded as one of Britain's first Method actors and early in his career he was dubbed "the English Marlon Brando" by some sections of the British press.

Corbett was born in Rangoon, Burma, where his father, George, was serving as a company quartermaster sergeant in the South Staffordshire Regiment of the British Army, stationed at a cantonment as part of the Colonial defence forces. Corbett was sent to Britain after his mother Mary died of dysentery when he was 18 months old. He was then brought up by his aunt, Annie Williams, in Earl Street, Ardwick, Manchester and later on a new council estate in Wythenshawe. He attended Ross Place and Benchill Primary Schools; although he passed the scholarship exam for entry to Chorlton Grammar School, he was not able to take up his place there and instead attended Sharston Secondary School.

After serving with the Royal Marines during the Second World War, Corbett trained as a radiographer before taking up acting as a career, initially in repertory. In the early 1950s, he added the initial "H" to avoid confusion with the television entertainer Harry Corbett, known for his act with the glove-puppet Sooty. He joked that "H" stood for "hennyfink" – a Cockney pronunciation of "anything".

Scriptwriters Galton and Simpson, who had been successful with Hancock's Half Hour, changed Corbett's life. In 1962, at their request Corbett appeared in "The Offer", an episode of the BBC's anthology series of one-off comedy plays, Comedy Playhouse, written by Galton and Simpson. He played Harold Steptoe, a rag-and-bone man living with his irascible widower father Albert (Wilfrid Brambell), in a junkyard with only their horse for company. Corbett was at the time working at the Bristol Old Vic where he appeared as Macbeth.

Although the popularity of Steptoe and Son made Corbett a star, it ended his serious acting as he became irreversibly associated with Steptoe in the public eye. Before the series began Corbett had played Shakespeare's Richard II to great acclaim; however, when he played Hamlet in 1970 he felt both critics and audiences alike were not taking him seriously, because they could only see him as Harold Steptoe. Corbett found himself only receiving offers for bawdy comedies or loose parodies of his alter-ego Harold. Production of the sitcom was in the last few years stressful as Brambell was an alcoholic often ill-prepared for rehearsals, forgetting his lines and movements. A tour of a Steptoe and Son stage show in Australia in 1977 proved a disaster due to Brambell's drinking. During the tour the pair appeared in character in an advert for Ajax soap powder.

The TV episodes were remade for radio, often with the original cast − it is these that were made available on tape and CD. After the Steptoe and Son series officially finished, Corbett played the character again on radio (in a newly written sketch in 1978) as well as in a television commercial for Kenco coffee. The two men reunited in January 1981 for one final performance as Steptoe and Son in a further commercial for Kenco.

A heavy smoker all his adult life, Corbett had his first heart attack in 1979. He appeared in pantomime at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley, within two days of leaving hospital. He was then badly hurt in a car accident. He appeared shortly afterwards in the BBC detective series Shoestring, his facial injuries obvious.

Corbett's final role was an episode of the Anglia Television/ITV series Tales of the Unexpected, "The Moles". It featured a man who planned to tunnel into a bank, only to find the bank was closed due to industrial action and there was no money in the vaults. Filmed shortly before his death, it was transmitted two months afterwards, in May 1982.

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