Clive Dunn


Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn was an English actor, comedian, artist, author, and singer. He played the elderly Lance Corporal Jones in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army.

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. 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, and Good Morning, Boys. 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. However, the regiment was forced to surrender after it was overrun. Dunn was among 400 men who were taken as prisoners of war.
Dunn was held as a POW in Austria for the next four years. He remained in the army after the war ended, and was finally demobilised in 1947.

Acting career

Dunn resumed his acting career in repertory theatre. But he soon made his first television appearance. 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 on 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 and Sgt. Claude Snudge find work after leaving the Army. In the early sixties he also 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, which many of the other cast members were no longer capable of.
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 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 had previously had a number one hit single with the song "Grandad" on his fifty-first 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 the cancellation of Grandad in 1984, he disappeared from the screen, and retired to Portugal. Following the success of the "Grandad" record, Dunn released several other singles, but Dunn never hit the charts again.
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1971, when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

Personal life

He married fashion model Patricia Kenyon in London in 1951. The couple divorced in 1958. He married actress Priscilla Pughe-Morgan in June 1959. They had two daughters, Polly and Jessica.
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.
Dunn's cousin Gretchen Franklin was a television actress, best remembered as Ethel Skinner in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. Dunn inherited a share in her estate upon her death in 2005.
He spent the last three decades of his life in the Algarve, Portugal. He occupied himself as an artist painting portraits, landscapes and seascapes until his sight failed.
Dunn purported that he was a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party. He claimed his outspoken socialist beliefs often caused him to feud with his long time Dad's Army co-star, Arthur Lowe, who was a Conservative. As a schoolboy, he and his classmates briefly affiliated with the British Union of Fascists. Dunn rejected the party once he learned of their anti-Semitic ideology.

Death

Dunn died in 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 and Pamela Cundell in 2015, leaves only two surviving major cast members from Dad's Army: Ian Lavender and Frank Williams, the former of whom is the only surviving cast member to have played a character in the platoon.
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

Television roles

Singles