William Hartnell
William Henry Hartnell was an English actor. While Hartnell made numerous stage and television appearances and acted in over 75 British films, he is best remembered today as the First Doctor in BBC Television's Doctor Who, which he played from 1963 to 1966. He was also well known for his roles as Sergeant Grimshaw, the title character of the first Carry On film, Carry On Sergeant in 1958, and as Company Sergeant Major Percy Bullimore in the sitcom The Army Game from 1957 to 1961.
Early life
William Henry Hartnell was born on 8 January 1908 in the slums of the district of St Pancras, London, England, the only child of Lucy Hartnell, an unmarried mother. Hartnell never discovered the identity of his father, whose particulars were left blank on his birth certificate, despite his efforts to trace him. In various interviews, he claimed that he was born in Seaton, Devon, and that his father was a dairy farmer and later was a soldier turned stockbroker.He was brought up partly by a foster mother, and also spent many holidays in Devon with his mother's family of farmers, from whom he learned to ride horses. Reportedly, Hartnell had a fall and was kicked by a horse. An unspecified person applied disinfectant to the open wound in an apparent attempt to cleanse it. The disinfectant however was of a type unsuitable for first aid purposes and caused blisters. The end result was a worse wound than would otherwise be the case. This left him with a large scar on his temple, which is actually visible in some of his stills shots even though it was covered with make-up during filming. He was a second cousin of the fashion designer Norman Hartnell.
He left school without prospects and dabbled in petty crime. At the age of 16, Hartnell met the art collector Hugh Blaker, who later became his unofficial guardian, arranged for him to train as a jockey and helped him to enter the Italia Conti Academy. Theatre being a passion of Blaker's, he paid for Hartnell to receive some "polish" at the Imperial Service College, though Hartnell found the strictures too much and ran away. When Hartnell married, he and his wife continued to live in one of Blaker's adjacent properties at Isleworth; their first child, Heather, was born there in 1929.
Career
Hartnell entered the theatre in 1925 working under Frank Benson as a general stagehand. He appeared in numerous Shakespearian plays, including The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Hamlet, The Tempest and Macbeth. He also appeared in She Stoops to Conquer, The School for Scandal and Good Morning, Bill, before performing in Miss Elizabeth's Prisoner. This play was written by Robert Neilson Stephens and E. Lyall Swete. It featured the actress Heather McIntyre, whom he married during the following year. His first of more than 60 film appearances was in Say It With Music.Radio work also featured in his career, with his earliest known performance – in a production of Chinese Moon Party – being broadcast by the BBC on 11 May 1931.
From the outbreak of the Second World War, Hartnell attempted to volunteer for the RAF. He served in the British Army in the Tank Corps, but he was invalided out after 18 months as the result of suffering a nervous breakdown and returned to acting. In 1942 he was cast as Albert Fosdike in Noël Coward's film In Which We Serve. He turned up late for his first day of shooting, and Coward berated him in front of the cast and crew for his unprofessionalism, made him personally apologise to everyone and then sacked him. Michael Anderson, who was the first assistant director, took over the part.
Hartnell continued to play comic characters until he was cast in the robust role of Sergeant Ned Fletcher in The Way Ahead. From then on his career was defined by playing mainly policemen, soldiers and thugs. This typecasting bothered him, for even when he was cast in comedies he found he invariably played the "heavy". In 1958 he played the sergeant in the first Carry On comedy film, Carry On Sergeant. He appeared as Will Buckley, another military character, in the film The Mouse That Roared, which starred Peter Sellers, and he played a town councillor in the Boulting brothers' film Heavens Above!, again with Sellers.
His first regular role on television was as Sergeant Major Percy Bullimore in The Army Game in 1957. He left after the first season and returned for the final season in 1961. Again, although it was a comedy series, he found himself cast in a "tough guy" role. He also appeared in a supporting role in the film version of This Sporting Life, giving a sensitive performance as an ageing rugby league talent scout known as "Dad".
Hartnell described himself as "a legitimate actor. I do legitimate things".
''Doctor Who''
Hartnell's performance in This Sporting Life was noted by Verity Lambert, the producer who was setting up a new science-fiction television series for the BBC entitled Doctor Who; mainly on the strength of that performance, Lambert offered him the title role. Although Hartnell was initially uncertain about accepting a part in what was pitched to him as a children's series, in part due to his success in films, Lambert and director Waris Hussein convinced him to take the part, and it became the character for which he gained the highest profile and is now most remembered. Hartnell later revealed that he took the role because it led him away from the gruff, military parts in which he had become typecast, and, having two grandchildren of his own, he came to relish particularly the attention and affection that playing the character brought him from children. His first episode of Doctor Who was aired on 23 November 1963.Doctor Who earned Hartnell a regular salary of £315 an episode by 1966,. By comparison, in 1966 his co-stars Anneke Wills and Michael Craze were earning £68 and £52 per episode at the same time, respectively. Throughout his tenure as the Doctor, William Hartnell wore a wig when playing the part, as the character had long hair.
William Hartnell described his character the Doctor as "a wizard", and "a cross between the Wizard of Oz and Father Christmas". According to William Russell, Hartnell deliberately became occasionally tongue-tied and stumbled over words.
According to some of his colleagues on Doctor Who, Hartnell could be a difficult person to work with, though others, Russell and Peter Purves, and the producer Verity Lambert, spoke glowingly of him. Among the more caustic accounts, Nicholas Courtney and Anneke Wills have accused Hartnell of being racist or anti-Semitic, though these are, by most accounts, frequently challenged by his love for his co-workers of different backgrounds. According to his granddaughter Jessica Carney, who wrote his biography, Hartnell could be very bigoted and often came out with xenophobic comments but "all those loudly expressed opinions were contradicted by his behaviour on a personal level". Hartnell adored Carole Ann Ford and Verity Lambert who were both Jewish, and had great respect for Waris Hussein, who was Indian. According to Val Speyer, although Hartnell claimed not to like foreigners, "as one of his greatest friends on the show was half Greek and half Maltese, I didn't see how this could figure. However, if he liked someone, they weren't a foreigner, they were a friend!"
Hartnell's deteriorating health began to affect his ability to learn his lines, with the problem increasing as his time on the series progressed. In addition, he had a poor relationship with a new production team on the series following the departure of Verity Lambert. He left Doctor Who in 1966. When he departed the producer of the show came up with the idea that, since the Doctor is an alien, he could transform himself physically, thereby renewing himself. Hartnell suggested the actor who should play the new Doctor, stating that "There's only one man in England who can take over, and that's Patrick Troughton." In the fourth episode of the serial The Tenth Planet the First Doctor regenerates into Troughton's Second Doctor.
Many of Hartnell's episodes are missing from the BBC archives as a result of the BBC's purge of old shows during the early 1970s.
Hartnell reprised the role of the Doctor in Doctor Who during the tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors. When Hartnell's wife Heather found out about his planned involvement, she informed the show's crew of that his failing memory and weakening health prevented him from starring in the special. An agreement was made between the crew and Heather that Hartnell would sit down during the shoot and read his lines from cue cards. His appearance in this story was his final piece of work as an actor.
Later life and death
Hartnell's health had worsened during the early 1970s, and in December 1974 he was admitted to hospital permanently. In early 1975 he suffered a series of strokes brought on by cerebrovascular disease, and he died in his sleep of heart failure on 23 April 1975, at the age of 67. He was cremated and his ashes are buried at the Kent and Sussex Crematorium and Cemetery.Hartnell was married to Heather McIntyre from 9 May 1929 until his death. They had one child, a daughter, Heather Anne, and two grandchildren. After living at 51 Church Street, Isleworth, next door to Hugh Blaker, the Hartnells lived on Thames Ditton Island. Then in the 1960s they moved to a cottage in Mayfield, Sussex. They lived in later life at Sheephurst Lane in Marden, Kent. Heather Hartnell died in 1984.
The only published biography of him is by his granddaughter, Judith "Jessica" Carney, entitled Who's There? The Life and Career of William Hartnell. It was first published in 1996 by Virgin Publishing. To mark the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who Carney, with Fantom Publishing, revised and republished the book in 2013.
For the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who in 2013 the BBC broadcast An Adventure in Space and Time, a dramatisation of the events surrounding the creation of the series, which featured David Bradley portraying Hartnell.
A blue plaque marking Hartnell's work in film and television was unveiled at Ealing Studios by his granddaughter, Jessica Carney, on 14 October 2018.