Anthony Sharp


Dennis Anthony John Sharp was an English actor, writer and director.

Stage career

Anthony Sharp was a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and made his stage debut in February 1938 with HV Neilson's Shakespearean touring company, playing the Sergeant in Macbeth at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea. Repertory engagements in Wigan, Hastings, Peterborough and Liverpool were followed by war service, after which he resumed his stage career at the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate in September 1946, playing Hansell in Tangent.
He first appeared in the West End in Family Portrait at the Strand Theatre in February 1948. Among his many subsequent appearances were Cry Liberty, Who Goes There!, For Better, For Worse, Small Hotel, No Time for Sergeants, The Edwardians, She's Done It Again, The Avengers and Number One.
Other London credits included The Rivals, She Stoops to Conquer and several appearances at the Open Air Theatre Regent's Park. There he played Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing in 1958 and Malvolio in Twelfth Night the following year, rejoining the company in 1978 for such plays as The Man of Destiny.

Writer and director

Sharp was also a playwright. His stage version of the Thomas Love Peacock novel Nightmare Abbey was a big hit at the Westminster Theatre in 1952, opening there on 27 February. "Anthony Sharp's altogether delightful adaptation provided one of the most unusual as well as most amusing offerings of the season," commented Theatre World editor Frances Stephens. After a try-out in Sheffield, the historical drama The Conscience of the King was remounted at the Theatre Royal Windsor, starting on 14 March 1955; Sharp himself played 17th century parliamentarian John Hampden. A third play, Tale of a Summer's Day, was written in 1959.
In addition Sharp was a prolific director, particularly of comedy-thrillers and 'boardroom' dramas. His credits included Any Other Business, Caught Napping, Wolf's Clothing, Billy Bunter Flies East, The Gazebo, Guilty Party, Critic's Choice, Act of Violence, Devil May Care, Difference of Opinion, Hostile Witness, Wait Until Dark, Justice is a Woman and Harvey. He also directed several productions in Hong Kong and Australia.

Cinema, television and radio

Cinema

Sharp was frequently cast as supercilious professional or aristocratic types, notably in the Stanley Kubrick films A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon. Other film credits include Cornel Wilde's No Blade of Grass, two for Michael Winner, Russ Meyer's Black Snake and the Disney film One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing. His only starring role in a feature film was the homicidal priest Father Xavier Meldrum in Pete Walker's 1975 horror picture House of Mortal Sin.
His final feature film, in which he played foreign secretary Lord Ambrose, was the James Bond picture Never Say Never Again, released in 1983.

Television

In 1977 he had a leading role in the children's television series The Flockton Flyer. Other TV dramas in which he appeared included Angel Pavement, The Plane Makers, Doomwatch, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Crown Court, Upstairs, Downstairs, Schalcken the Painter and The Life and Times of David Lloyd George. He also played numerous cameo parts in sitcoms, notably Dad's Army, Steptoe and Son, Nearest and Dearest, Man About the House, Rising Damp, George & Mildred and To the Manor Born. He worked frequently with such TV comedians as Benny Hill, Morecambe and Wise, Frankie Howerd and Bernie Winters, and towards the end of his life appeared in the early-1980s alternative comedy programmes The Young Ones and The Comic Strip.

Radio

In 1978, he appeared as both Garkbit, the waiter at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and The Great Prophet Zarquon, in Fit the Fifth of the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 1981, he appeared as the town clerk of the fictional Frambourne Town Council in the pilot episode of It Sticks Out Half a Mile, the radio sequel to Dad's Army; it was in that episode that Arthur Lowe reprised his role of Captain Mainwaring for the very last time several months before his death. In 1982–84 Sharp was a regular as Major Dyrenforth on the Radio 2 series The Random Jottings of Hinge and Bracket, his last few episodes being broadcast posthumously.

Personal life

He was born Dennis Anthony John Sharp in Highgate in 1915 and was an insurance policy draughtsman before training as an actor. From 1940 to 1946 he served with the Royal Corps of Signals and the Royal Artillery in North Africa, Italy and Austria. "Once the war was over," he recalled, "I wangled a transfer to the Army Broadcasting Service and helped run radio stations at Naples and Rome. These were very full and very pleasant days—announcing, script-writing, disc-jockeying, organising programmes, producing, acting." He married the actress Margaret Wedlake in July 1953 and a son, Jonathan, was born in 1954. In Who's Who in the Theatre he listed his favourite part as Malvolio and his recreations as church architecture and watching cricket. He died of natural causes aged 69 in his native London; at the time of his death he was playing the Doctor in the West End production of Jean Anouilh's Number One at the Queen's Theatre.

Selected filmography