Charters and Caldicott started out as two supporting characters in the 1938

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featu ...

film ''

The Lady Vanishes ''The Lady Vanishes'' is a 1938 British Mystery film, mystery Thriller (genre), thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1936 novel '' ...

''. The pair of

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

-obsessed characters were played by

Naunton Wayne Naunton Wayne (born Henry Wayne Davies, 22 June 1901 – 17 November 1970), was a Welsh character actor, born in Pontypridd, Glamorgan, Wales. He was educated at Clifton College. His name was changed by deed poll#Use for changing name, deed po ...

and

Basil Radford Arthur Basil RadfordAdam Greaves, "Radford, (Arthur) Basil (1897–1952)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, May 201available online Retrieved 3 August 2020. (25 June 189720 October 1952) was an English chara ...

. The characters were created by

Frank Launder Frank Launder (28 January 1906 – 23 February 1997) was a British writer, film director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat. Early life and career He was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, ...

and

Sidney Gilliat Sidney Gilliat (15 February 1908 – 31 May 1994) was an English film director, producer and writer. In the 1930s he worked as a scriptwriter, most notably with Frank Launder on ''The Lady Vanishes'' (1938) for Alfred Hitchcock, and '' Nig ...

. The duo became very popular and were used as recurring characters in subsequent films and in

BBC Radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927. The service provides national radio stations cove ...

productions. Charters and Caldicott have also been played by other actors, and they eventually had their own

BBC television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1 January 1927. It p ...

series.

Radford and Wayne's appearances

In their first appearance, in the 1938

film ''The Lady Vanishes'', Charters and Caldicott are single minded

enthusiasts, whose only initial concern is to get back to England to see the last days of a Test match. They proved so popular with audiences that they returned in the Gilliat-and-Launder film '' Night Train to Munich'' (1940). They also appeared in two BBC radio serials, '' Crook's Tour'' (1941, also made into a film later that year) and ''Secret Mission 609'' (1942). In ''Crook's Tour'', their names are shown entered in a hotel register as Hawtrey Charters and Sinclair Caldicott. Their last screen billing as Charters and Caldicott was in '' Millions Like Us'' (1943). They were intended to reappear in '' I See a Dark Stranger'' (1946, Launder), but Launder and Gilliat refused to give them the larger roles in the film that Radford and Wayne demanded, as befitting the high-profile actors they had then become. As a result, the actors opted out of the film and two similar but differently named characters were substituted. This falling out, however, left Radford and Wayne contractually disallowed from portraying the characters under the names "Charters" and "Caldicott". Despite this, Wayne and Radford continued in the same vein, playing similar double acts in several more movies, such as '' Dead of Night'' (1945, sequence directed by Charles Crichton), '' A Girl in a Million'' (1946, Francis Searle) and ''

Passport to Pimlico ''Passport to Pimlico'' is a 1949 British comedy film made by Ealing Studios and starring Stanley Holloway, Margaret Rutherford and Hermione Baddeley. It was directed by Henry Cornelius and written by T. E. B. Clarke. The story concerns the unea ...

'' (1949, Henry Cornelius). The cricket-mad Bright and Early in '' It's Not Cricket'' (1949, Alfred Roome), are particularly similar to Charters and Caldicott. In the first draft of

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a re ...

’s screenplay for ''

The Third Man ''The Third Man'' is a 1949 film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, Alida Valli as Anna Schmidt, Orson Welles as Harry Lime and Trevor Howard as Major Calloway. Set in post-Worl ...

'', two Charters and Caldicott type characters called Carter and Tombs were originally intended to be in the film. Carter and Tombs were to be played by Radford and Wayne but by the final draft they had been condensed into one character, Crabbit, played by Wilfred Hyde-White in the final film. In Jonathan Coe's novel ''

Expo 58 Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (; ), was a world's fair held on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Brussels, Belgium, from 17 April to 19 October 1958. It was the first major world's fair registered under the Bureau Internati ...

'', a pair of

Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * United ...

employees called Radford and Wayne appear, in a nod to Charters and Caldicott.

Film appearances

* ''

'' (1938) * '' Night Train to Munich'' (1940) * '' Crook's Tour'' (1941) * '' Millions Like Us'' (1943) Following are the rest of Radford and Wayne's film appearances together. Most of these movies arguably utilised Charters and Caldicott's characteristics and certainly capitalised on the popularity of the actors' partnership. The characters' names are listed with Radford's role first. * '' The Next of Kin'' (1942) as careless talkers on train * '' Dead of Night'' (1945) as Parratt and Potter * '' A Girl in a Million'' (1946) as Prendergast and Fotheringham * ''

Quartet In music, a quartet (, , , , ) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers. Classical String quartet In classical music, one of the most common combinations of four instruments in chamber music is the string quartet. String quar ...

'' (1948) as Garnet and Leslie * '' It's Not Cricket'' (1949) as Bright and Early (footage reused for the 1949 comedy '' Helter Skelter'') * ''

'' (1949) as Gregg and Straker * '' Stop Press Girl'' (1949) as The Mechanical Types

Stage appearances

Due to the success of ''The Lady Vanishes'', Radford and Wayne soon appeared on the London stage in the play ''Giving the Bride Away'' by Margot Neville (pseudonym for Margot Goyder and Anne Neville Joske in collaboration with Gerald Kirby). The play opened on 1 December 1939 and ran for 57 performances.J.P. Wearing, ''The London Stage 1930-1939: A Calendar of Productions, Performers and Personnel'', 2nd edition (Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2014 ), p. 772.

Radio appearances

As with their film appearances, Radford and Wayne appeared in various guises on radio. They were still essentially Charters and Caldicott, but with their characters renamed for rights reasons. Self-contained eight-part radio series, made roughly annually, were very popular on

BBC radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927. The service provides national radio stations cove ...

at the time and they starred in the following: * As "Woolcott and Spencer" in ''Double Bedlam'' (1946) and ''Traveller's Joy'' (1947) * As "Berkeley and Bulstrode" in ''Crime Gentleman, Please'' (1948) * As "Hargreaves and Hunter" in ''Having a Wonderful Crime'' (1949) * As "Fanshaw and Fothergill" in ''That's My Baby'' (1950) * As "Straker and Gregg", a continuation of their roles in the film ''Passport to Pimlico'', in ''May I Have The Treasure'' (1951) and ''Rogue's Gallery'' (1952) In mid-production on ''Rogue's Gallery'', Radford died suddenly of a heart attack at age 55, leaving Wayne to complete the adventure on his own.

Other portrayals

Hammer films' 1979 remake of ''

'', cast Arthur Lowe as Charters and

Ian Carmichael Ian Gillett Carmichael, (18 June 1920 – 5 February 2010) was an English actor who Ian Carmichael on stage, screen and radio, worked prolifically on stage, screen and radio in a career that spanned seventy years. Born in Kingston upon ...

as Caldicott. In 1985 they were the main characters in a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

television series '' Charters and Caldicott'', set in the modern day, with Michael Aldridge playing Caldicott and Robin Bailey as Charters. The BBC's 2013 telemovie of ''

'', was based on

Ethel Lina White Ethel Lina White (2 April 1876 – 13 August 1944) was a British crime fiction, crime writer from Abergavenny, Monmouthshire (historic), Monmouthshire, Wales. She was best known for her novel ''The Wheel Spins'' (1936), on which the Alfred Hitch ...

's novel ''

The Wheel Spins ''The Wheel Spins'' (a.k.a. ''The Lady Vanishes'') is a 1936 mystery novel by British writer Ethel Lina White. Plot Iris Carr, a young English society woman, is staying at a small hotel in ‘a remote corner of Europe’. Her friends leave on ...

'' rather than a remake of Hitchcock's film, and Charters and Caldicott are absent.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Charters and Caldicott fan site
British comedy duos Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Fictional English people