Actor known as Dibley bore
Film, television and stage roles ranged from Shakespeare to broad farce
Actor John Bluthal was one of Spike Milligan’s regular comedy partners and a familiar face in a string of British film farces of the 1960s and ’70s. But in recent years he was perhaps best known for his portrayal of Frank Pickle, the bowtied bore on the parish council on the BBC sitcom The Vicar of Dibley.
Bluthal died on Nov. 15, his talent agency said. He was 89.
Pickle’s gormlessly staring eyes, droning voice and lack of insight into how others see him provided Bluthal with a rich seam of comedy. As parish secretary, he took down the minutes with excruciating pedantry. In one episode he is asked if it is true that he had bored his parents to death.
“That was never proved,” he replies. “I just happened to be outlining parish council procedure, when hand in hand they leaped out of the open window.”
On one occasion he does genuinely astonish Dawn French’s vicar, the Rev. Geraldine Granger, when during a broadcast on Dibley radio he reveals that he is gay. Unfortunately, such is his reputation for dullness that Geraldine is his only listener.
On learning of Bluthal’s death, French posted on Twitter: “Tons of happy laughs remembered today. Cheeky, naughty, hilarious. Bye darlin Bluey.”
Bluthal was born Isaac Bluthal into a Jewish family at Jezierzany on Poland’s southern border (now called Ozeryany in Ukraine) on Aug. 12, 1929. In 1938, aged nine, he fled the Nazis with his parents and sister to Melbourne, Australia.
At school there he discovered a flair for clowning and joined David Herman’s Yiddish Theatre, before studying speech and drama at the University of Melbourne. Through the 1950s he toured in comedies and revues, with spells in Britain but chiefly in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Among these was N. Richard Nash’s The Rainmaker, featuring his fellow Australian Leo Mckern.
In 1959, Bluthal moved to Britain to settle. In the West End he took over from Ron Moody in Oliver! and that was followed by Shakespearean roles at the National Theatre.
On television he made his mark early on in Sykes and A Bath, a classic 1961 episode of the Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques series Sykes and A ....
Sykes, who has trapped his toe in a bath tap, meets Bluthal in the hospital waiting room: His head, apart from his mouth, is stuck inside a tin pot. Although his normally expressive features are concealed, Bluthal’s comic timing is impeccable in exchanges such as: “What happened to you then, mate?” “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
But it was in Thames Television’s hugely popular sitcom Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width (196771) that he won wide recognition. Written by Vince Powell and Harry Driver, it was a rag-trade comedy with a running joke about religious differences, starring Bluthal as a Jewish tailor in a fractious business partnership with his Irish Catholic counterpart (Joe Lynch).
On the big screen, he exploited his gift for farce in dozens of comedies, including three Carry On films and two of the Beatles’ feature films. In Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964) he plays a nervous car thief who finds the vehicle he has just broken into commandeered by the police in pursuit of the Fab Four. In Help! (1965), he is a member of an exotic eastern cult. His final feature film role was as Prof. Marcuse in the Coen brothers’ 2016 comedy, Hail, Caesar!
Bluthal, who returned to live in Australia in 1999, had married actress Judyth Barron in 1956. They separated but remained friends before she died in 2016. He is survived by their two daughters.