Anton Rogers Has Gone To Heaven

[Si Hunt]

This is tragic news.

Anton Rodgers, the actor and director who died on Saturday aged 74, brought a stylish light touch and an engaging personality to scores of stage and television characters; he is probably best known to the wider public for two of his roles on the small screen - as William Fields in the 1980s sitcom Fresh Fields, and as Alec Callender in May to December, which ran from 1989 to 1994.

Rodgers was a finely disciplined and versatile character comedian who could strike a sinister, baleful or astringent note.

With his long face, aquiline features and gently lugubrious manner, he ranged from contemporary comedy and satirical farce to Restoration comedy, Ibsen, Shaw and Wilde, and he bestowed on the plays of Peter Nichols an especially rich vein of emotional irony.

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He also directed numerous plays in the regions and on the fringe.

Anton Rodgers was born at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, on January 10 1933 and educated at Westminster. He began acting professionally while still a schoolboy, making his first stage appearance at the age of 14 in Bizet's opera Carmen (Royal Opera House, 1947).

As a boy he also toured as Pip in Great Expectations in 1948 and in the title part of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (1949) before periods in rep. He trained first at the Italia Conti school and then at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Much of Rodgers's early career in the theatre was devoted to the lyric stage.

He got his first West End part in Sandy Wilson's long-running musical comedy The Boy Friend (Wyndham's, 1957). His next came as Fingers in an English musical about the criminal classes, The Crooked Mile (Cambridge), by Peter Wildeblood and Peter Greenwell.

In two subsequent intimate revues, And Another Thing (Fortune, 1960) and Twists (Arts and Edinburgh Festival, 1962), Rodgers demonstrated his gift for song and dance, sharp timing and swift changes of mood and scene.

He had been on the London stage for five years before he landed his first "legitimate" role - or rather, two roles - in a sexually sensational double bill by John Osborne, Plays for England (Royal Court).

In the first piece, a frivolous flop called The Blood of the Bambergs, he made little mark. But in the second, Under Plain Cover, which depicted a couple of devoted sado-masochists inventing new sex games with corsets and commodes, Rodgers was more prominent as a knicker-fetishist who turned out to be his female partner's brother.

Then it was back to musical comedy, as Mr Jingle to Harry Secombe in the title role of Wolf Mankowitz's Pickwick (Saville, 1963), a role he repeated on Broadway two years later.

Going "legitimate" again - this time at the Chichester Festival in 1967 - Rodgers spent a classical season as Francis Archer in Farquhar's The Beaux Stratagem, as Randall Utterword in Shaw's Heartbreak House, and as Fadinand in Labiche's Italian Straw Hat.

Returning to regional rep, he took the title role in Henry V (Belgrade, Coventry) and that of Vladimir in Waiting for Godot (University Theatre, Manchester). Later in 1968 he began directing, taking on new plays at Leatherhead, including Joyce Rayburn's Piece of Cake and Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford's Grass Roots.

At Hampstead Theatre in 1969 Rodgers devised and co-directed We Who Are About To…, an entertainment on marriage in eight short plays by different writers. This was modified and transferred to the West End in 1969 as Mixed Doubles (Comedy).

Rodgers then directed at Hampstead, with Claude Chagrin, the American musical comedy The Fantasticks, taking the production to the Ibiza Festival with N Richard Nash's The Rainmaker, which he also directed.

Back in rep in 1970, Rodgers staged two plays for the Northcott in Exeter - The Roses of Eyam, by Don Taylor, and The Taming of the Shrew - before returning to Hampstead as Gerald in a revival of Frank Marcus's Formation Dancers.

In Peter Nichols's semi-autobiographical memory play, Forget-Me-Not Lane (Greenwich and Apollo, 1971) he gave what one critic called "the performance of his career" as the middle-aged hero-narrator, Frank, looking back wryly on his life as a son and husband.

After playing Macheath in Brecht and Weill's Threepenny Opera for the Stratford (Ontario) Festival, Rodgers returned to the West End as Dr Rank to Claire Bloom's Nora in Ibsen's Doll's House (Criterion, 1973) before joining the National Theatre Company to tour Australia as Hildy Johnson, the reporter in Hecht and MacArthur's Front Page.

Back in England Rodgers played Lord Henry Wotton in Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray (Greenwich, 1975) before another stint as a director, this time of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at Oxford Playhouse, where he also played Astrov in Uncle Vanya.

His next West End role was a splendidly sinister and taunting Jack Massingham in Patrick Hamilton's Gaslight (Criterion, 1976); and the following season he was also praised for his production of Eric Bentley's play about the American postwar inquiries into Left-wing activists in the arts, Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been… ? (Bush).

Rodgers directed Garrard Thomas's Flashpoint (New End, 1978), which transferred to the Mayfair Theatre. And, still in the West End, he was the elegant narrator of Songbook (Globe, 1981), the musical parody by Monty Norman and Julian More - Rodgers was judged to have "retrieved the show from disaster" through his "sheer brilliance".

Then came his second triumph in a Peter Nichols play, as Jim, the adulterous hero's alter ego in Passion Play (Aldwych, 1981) for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Other stage credits in the 1980s included Windy City (Victoria Palace), a musical version of The Front Page in which Rodgers this time played the treacherous, irascible editor; Shaw's Saint Joan, for the National Theatre Company, in which he was the Earl of Warwick; and Ray Cooney's Two Into One (Shaftesbury, 1985).

In Thames Television's Fresh Fields Rodgers starred as William, the hard-working, suburban middle-class husband exasperated by the tireless quest for self-improvement on the part of his wife Hester (Julia McKenzie). In 1989 there was a sequel, French Fields, in which the couple relocated to France.

In the popular BBC series May to December Rodgers was Alec, the senior partner in a solicitors' firm at Pinner with a passion for musicals and Perry Mason.

Among Rodgers's many other television credits were Ukridge; The Elusive Pimpernel; The Old Curiosity Shop; Affairs of the Heart; Secret Agent; Red Letter Day; The Flaxborough Chronicles; Disraeli; and After the Dance.

More recently he had appeared in Noah's Ark, Midsomer Murders, Where the Heart Is and Longford.

His film credits included Rotten to the Core; The Man Who Haunted Himself; Scrooge; The Day of the Jackal; East of Elephant Rock; The Fourth Protocol; Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; Impromptu; and Son of the Pink Panther.

Anton Rodgers had a son and a daughter with his first wife. With his second wife, the actress Elizabeth Garvie, he had three sons. She and his children survive him.

There will never be another series of "May to December", even if Leslie Dunlop was willing.

We feel genuinely shocked. Only the other month he was in something with Julia McKenzie. Now the only hope is that one day they will be pottering about together in Heaven (when she gets up there as well).

Truly though, who was expecting this? We loved him. Rest in Peace.

Si.

[SiHart]

That's really sad news. We seem to be losing a lot of very talented people just at the moment, don't we?

I really loved May to December at the time (I don't think I've seen it since it was first broadcast) and so i was always a bit of a fan of his work. To be honest I never thought he was that old, but then you don't, do you?

He was a great Number Two in The Prisoner too.

RIP.

Si xx

[Si Hunt]

It's the sort of comedy that you love at the time but don't think much of later. But do you know what? Both P-Bal and ourselves have got the initial series on DVD (even before it got really good when the lost ginger woman was in it) and they're actually really good! We truly enjoyed them! There's even a notable guest spot for Sylvia Sims in one. We were only saying the other day we're gutted they don't seem to be releasing them past Series 2.

And he never got to be in Who! He's exactly the sort to pop up in New Who or Torchwood, and now he never will.

I think it's fair to say that when we were children, a bit of Anton Rogers was inside all of us.

Si.

[Andrew Curnow]

I suppose if I'd thought about it I would have realised he must be in his 70s, but somehow I always picture him as he was in Fresh Fields, and especially May to December. I know he had a wide-ranging career before then (as Si's post demonstrates) and he'll probably pop up over Christmas in "Scrooge"! But he really was superb in May to December - it maybe went on a few years too long, but the first two seasons (with Eve Matheson) are just beautifully put together, and he plays it just to perfection. For some reason he always reminded me of my Grandpa in that show, and although 74's not a bad age, it's still a real shame and a sad loss.

RIP Anton Rogers.

[WhiteCrow]

He was really an actor with a great voice behind him, when you try to think of him, it's a great big powerful, disembodied voice which seemed to have have a life and presence of its own. He did some voice over work didn't he?

If you believe in a God, you could well believe he uses Anton Rodgers voice.

[Carol Baynes]

I was hoping this wasn't true.

I was discussing "The Golden compass" with a work colleague on our break just this Monday. Nothing to do with Anton Rodgers there, you say. Well, I got onto comparisons between that and the "Narnia" books (which I'm not even going to go into here) and I mentioned that there had also been a brilliant drama of CS Lewis' later life on TV a year or two ago, where Anton had played Lewis, but I couldn't remember Anton's name. It was really bugging me, and I had to get myself out of the memory blank.

I looked up "Fresh fields" on Google and got Anton Rodgers' name, so putting me out of my misery. Piqued to remind myself what else he'd been in I saw that Wikipedia was saying he had died on the 1st December!

"Bollocks", I said to my colleague, "It doesn't say anything anywhere else" (I was checking the news by this stage).

Anyway, break ended and I had to get back to the students...and I put it down to an error.

But it appears to be true. He was just one of those faces and voices that we take for granted. I'll miss him. RIP Anton.

[Captain Tancredi]

However you look at it, that's one heck of an acting career, and quite possibly more than most people would have realised- he seemed to settle into playing bank manager types about 20 years ago and probably found his niche. Although some of his 1960s roles are edgier- Number Two, for example, and I think I remember seeing him as the murderer in a Maigret from the same era. One of those actors who could give a reliable performance in anything and earned a measure of public affection as a consequence.

[Dirk Gently]

This is sad news, I first saw Anton in Fresh Fields but wasn't a regular viewer & then again in May to December which I watched quite regularly.

I mentioned that there had also been a brilliant drama of CS Lewis' later life on TV a year or two ago, where Anton had played Lewis

That was truly brilliant! It's the last thing I saw Anton do & I was pleased I made the time to see it. An excellent drama.

Sad loss, R.I.P Anton.

[Si Hunt]

"Bollocks", I said to my colleague, "It doesn't say anything anywhere else" (I was checking the news by this stage).

The moral of the story is: check Planet Skaro every day, and you'll have found a better way!

Si.

[Pip Madeley]

Hence our old tagline:

planet skaro. a better way of life.

[P-Bal]

Anton Rogers no more.

So sad.