John Paton Laurie was a Scottish actor. In the course of his career, Laurie performed on the stage and in films as well as television. He is perhaps best remembered for his role as Private Frazer in the sitcom Dad's Army. Laurie appeared in scores of feature films with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, and Laurence Olivier, generally playing bit-parts or supporting roles rather than leading roles. As a stage actor, he was cast in Shakespearean roles and was a speaker of verse, especially of Robert Burns.
A prolific Shakespearean actor, Laurie spent much of the time between 1922 and 1939 playing parts, including in Hamlet, Richard III, and Macbeth at the Old Vic or Stratford-upon-Avon. He featured in Laurence Olivier's three Shakespearean films, Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III. He and Olivier also appeared in As You Like It. During the Second World War, Laurie served in the Home Guard. On radio, he created the role of John the Baptist in Dorothy L Sayers' cycle of plays The Man Born to Be King, and reprised the role in two further versions of the cycle. Laurie's early films included Juno and the Paycock, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The actor's breakthrough third film was Hitchcock's The 39 Steps in which he played a crofter. Other roles included Peter Manson in Michael Powell's The Edge of the World, Clive Candy's batman in Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a gardener in Medal for the General, the farmer recruit in The Way Ahead, and the brothel proprietor in Fanny by Gaslight. In the film I Know Where I'm Going!, another Powell and Pressburger production, Laurie had a small speaking part in a céilidh sequence for which he was also credited as an adviser. In the next decade, he played the psychiatrist Dr. James Garsten in Mine Own Executioner, the repugnant Pew in Disney's Treasure Island, Angus in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, and Dr. MacFarlane in Hobson's Choice. Laurie's role as Private Frazer, the gaunt-faced, intense, pessimistic undertaker, and British Home Guard soldier in the sitcom Dad's Army remains his best known TV role, although he featured in many British series of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s including Tales of Mystery, Doctor Finlay's Casebook, and The Avengers. Laurie starred as Mad Peter in the Hammer film The Reptile, and later appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes, the Disney film One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, and The Prisoner of Zenda. One of his last appearances, looking slightly frail, was in Return to the Edge of the World, in which Michael Powell revisited his film of forty years before. Laurie's final work was in the BBC Radio 2 comedy series Tony's along with Victor Spinetti and Deborah Watling.
Personal life
Laurie was married twice; his first wife, Florence May Saunders, whom he had met at the Old Vic, died in 1926. His second wife was Oonah Veronica Todd-Naylor. Together they had a daughter, Veronica. Laurie died aged 83 from emphysema in the Chalfont and Gerrards Cross Hospital, Chalfont St Peter. His widow Oonah died ten years later.
