Television This article is more than 7 years oldObituaryJohn Carson obituary
This article is more than 7 years oldStalwart film and television actor with a talent for playing snarling villainsJohn Carson, who has died aged 89, was a busy actor whose velvet voice and distinguished looks could flit easily between cold villainy or testy eccentricity. This made him much in demand on screen in many popular television series and during his cinematic association with Hammer Films.
Having secured his big break (two shows a week for £40 per week) as Dr Donald Latimer in the popular hospital soap opera Emergency Ward 10 (1959), he was unable to use London Underground due to constant recognition by the public. In the final series of the long-running oil industry drama The Troubleshooters (1971), he played James Langley, the liberal deputy chairman of Mogul Oil who knocked heads with Geoffrey Keen’s scheming and hard-nosed autocrat Brian Stead.
His aptitude for snarling villains made him perfect casting as the evil squire in Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966) and he also appeared in Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), and in Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974), achieving second billing for his turn as the tragic Dr Marcus (enduring an unsuccessful staking and hanging in order to prevent his metamorphosis into one of the undead).
Although he had a memorably saturnine face with deep blue eyes which could burn with malevolence or twinkle on demand, his voice was just as recognisable. Described by the Guardian as having “the languid opulence of a falling £10 note” it was put into good service on a number of television advertisements, notably when his seductive tones – which often found him mistaken for the similar sounding James Mason – accompanied John Barry’s score on the advertising campaign for Sunsilk shampoo.
Son of British parents, Elizabeth and Cyril Carson-Parker, he was born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where his father worked on tea and rubber plantations. Educated in Australia during the second world war, John went to Britain to do national service as an artillery officer in an anti-aircraft regiment in 1944-45. After a period as a pianist’s page turner at Covent Garden (where he got his first taste for the theatre), he studied law at Queen’s College, Oxford, and then left for New Zealand.
While there he performed in amateur theatre before working in professional radio drama, learning all facets of the business from acting to music selection. He then joined the theatre company the New Zealand Players before working his way back to the UK.
Having established himself with seasons at Sheffield in the late 1950s he then limited his stage work, though it included playing Will Roper in the original production of A Man For All Seasons at the Globe theatre in London (1960), with Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More. One of his favourite roles was the well-meaning Freddie for Michael Blakemore in the premiere of Peter Nichols’s A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Comedy theatre, 1967, transferring to Broadway in 1968).
He appeared in the film Quentin Durward in 1955 and then moved on to television fare, including Sword of Freedom (1957) and Ivanhoe (playing numerous guest roles in 1958 and 1959). After the fame Emergency Ward 10 gave him he enjoyed a healthy three decades on TV and was rarely out of work. His parts included Monks in a 13-episode Oliver Twist with Max Adrian as Fagin, 1962, Count von Stauffenberg, Hitler’s would-be assassin, in the Wednesday Play The July Plot (1964), Mr Dombey in Dombey and Son (1969), Mr Knightley in a six-part version of Emma (1972), Heatherstone in Children of the New Forest (1977) and two Dennis Potter plays, Paper Roses (1971) and Shmoedipus (1974). Between his appearances in The Avengers (1963-1965) and Poirot (1989-2005) he appeared as the guest lead in practically every popular drama on television.
In 1983 he moved to South Africa for family reasons. Not being well known there, he had to build a career again but was soon playing leading roles. With no sympathy for apartheid, he found his phone was bugged (his second wife, Luanshya Greer, was a writer whose historical novels explored themes of racial division) and he was under government surveillance – something he found especially pertinent when playing Thomas Becket in a 1992 stage production of Murder in the Cathedral, at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. He was very useful to visiting film and television productions, appearing in the TV mini-series Shaka Zulu (1986) and Rhodes (1996, with Martin Shaw).
His last major film roles were as a forgetful old actor in The Deal, with William H Macy, and in Neil Marshall’s Doomsday (both 2008). His return to Britain in 2007 saw more television appearances – Doctors (2011), Silent Witness (2012) and Midsomer Murders (2013) – but he eventually went back to South Africa.
He is survived by Luanshya and their two children, Ben and Suzanna, and by four children, Richard, Chris, Katie and Harry, from a previous marriage, which ended in divorce.
John Carson (John Derek Carson-Parker), actor, born 28 February 1927; died 5 November 2016
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