The Quiet Star

Having just watched the BBC’s excellent Hatti, a docu-drama about Hatti Jacques, I was left feeling sorry for her husband John Le Mesurier. It’s an emotion that he probably wouldn’t have appreciated as apparently he always felt that his life had been lovely. This British actor had also featured in another of the BBC’s life stories that dealt with Hancock’s affair with Mesurier’s third wife. In both of those recreations he is relegated to the sidelines, and unfortunately this seems to be a place he occupied in many of his films, and in British film history. Perhaps it’s time that Le Mesurier was given a documentary that focused on him and his work rather than his convoluted love life.

Le Mesurier appeared in approximately 125 films, not including his pivotal role in the acclaimed TV series ‘Dad’s Army’ . He was never really the headliner of any of these films, but every one of them benefits from his presence. In quite a few of them it’s his understated performance that is the only redeeming feature. He effortlessly moved back and forth from the comedy of the Boulting Brothers, like Private’s Progress (1956) and Brothers in law (1957), in which he appeared alongside Boulting regular, Ian Carmichael, to working with Jack Hawkins in serious fare like Gideon’s Day (1958). An odd film in that it’s a claustrophobic British police procedural directed by John Ford, a filmmaker more associated with the wide vista of the western. Le Mesurier has in fact made a least one appearance in pretty much every memorable British film series, whether it be alongside the fearful terrors of St. Trinians in Pure Hell at St. Trinians (1960), chasing the pink cat in The Pink Panther (1963), dealing with the bumbling medical staff in Doctor in Love (1960) and Doctor in Trouble (1970) or raising an eyebrow at the clowning antics of Norman Wisdom in The Bulldog Breed (1960) and The Early Bird (1965).

Le Mesurier would often play the reserved, silent member of the establishment. Be it a bank manager, a civil servant or a clerk, and according to Hatti this typecasting was one that did eat away at him. However, his portrayal of the repressed older generation came into the fore during the late 60s when the younger generation appeared to be rebelling against the attitudes of the war years. Le Mesurier’s characters would observe the chaos from the distance and deliver their lines with a wry smile. It’s easy to dismiss this laid back attitude as limitations of his acting, but to do so would be to misunderstand the craft and art that is involved. Often the best acting is not the loudest or the most visible, but is really the depth that can be found in the quiet moments, and the reactions to what is happening around them. It is often said that the majority of acting is about reacting, and nobody was more a master of that than John Le Mesurier.