The 70s dandy who inspired Austin Powers
Peter Wyngarde: 1927-2018
ASTYLE legend to the end, actor Peter Wyngarde was still laying down the law on fashion from his hospital bed in his final days. The Jason King star, whose medallionman dress sense ruled the 1970s and helped spawn Austin Powers, remained adamant that a shirt collar should always remain unbuttoned.
But beyond the sideburns, chest hair, lapels and moustache was the sharp mind of a former inmate of a Japanese prison camp whose life was as eventful as any of the shows he starred in.
After Peter died on Monday, aged 90, manager Thomas Bowington said: “Peter was one of the most unique, original and creative actors that I have ever seen.
“There were few things in life he didn’t know. I sometimes called him the King because he simply knew everything.
“He was a mentor on everything, from sports cars to how to make a good cup of tea and how to do a tie and shirt.
“Even in hospital he was saying that you shouldn’t button the upper button on a shirt. He was the most exceptional person I met in my life and a great mentor and teacher.”
Peter’s real name, the date and place of his birth and his parents’ nationalities and occupations are unclear.
But the most commonly accepted story is that he was born Cyril Goldbert at his aunt’s home in Marseilles in 1927.
His parents split and his dad - believed to have been a British diplomat - took him to Shanghai in 1937, months before war broke out between China and Japan.
Peter was imprisoned by the Japanese invaders aged 16 in 1943, possibly having been mistaken for his father, who was away working and had left Peter with a neighbouring Swiss family.
He once recalled: “I was herded into a truck for an internment camp for civilians about 40 miles outside Shanghai.
“All the other children were members of British families, but I was alone.”
He spent the rest of the war as a Japanese prisoner alongside novelist JG Ballard, who later wrote Empire of the Sun about their experiences. Peter
became a runner in the camp, passing news to inmates in neighbouring huts, until he was caught. As punishment a guard broke both his feet with a rifle butt and he had four weeks in solitary confinement. But he continued to pass on coded messages in plays staged in the prison canteen. He said: “The main character, Macbeth, was Churchill. “Some important news event, like the D-Day Landings, would become, ‘Our heroes have arrived among the Gauls and taken over Brittany.” At the end of the war he sailed to Liverpool, where the prisoners were welcomed home by King George VI, who shook Peter’s hand - and, he later claimed, pinned a medal on his chest.
The malnourished teen was sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland to recover. On his return he studied law at Oxford University for three months, before winning a place at RADA.
There he trained as an actor alongside Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole and Alan Bates - who became his flatmate.
One of his first small film roles put him alongside Bette Davis, who asked to see him between shoots.
He said: “She had a cigarette in a holder. From behind a huge plume of smoke I heard her snarl, “I hear you have a big c**k”. And with that, she handed me a note: ‘Be here at 8.30!’
“It had the address of her hotel and the room number. Apparently she went through every actor and technician under the age of 25 at the studio.”
Peter was in 1956 film Alexander the Great with Richard Burton, and in
the 1960s appeared in The Avengers and The Saint. But his big break came in 1969 when he got the role of novelist-turned-detective Jason King in spy series Department S.
His character was written as a deskbound Oxford professor, but Peter had other ideas. He said: “I thought it was a bit dull.
“I had the bright idea of basing him on Ian Fleming. The clothes were sort of an extension of me. I’d go to the tailor with my designs. I was a bit of a peacock.”
His wide-lapelled three-piece suits, turned-back cuffs and matching shirt-and-tie combos helped inspire Mike Myers’ spoof spy Austin Powers.
Peter became a heart-throb and style-setter, once beating Cliff Richard and George Best to be crowned Britain’s best-dressed man.
Soon he was the star of his own spin-off show, Jason King, with love interests played by actresses including Kate O’Mara, Felicity Kendal and Stephanie Beacham.
Peter said of them: “They were the television equivalent of a Bond girl.”
He told how he “fell in love with” Felicity on her first day, saying: “She is and was one of the most attractive things around.”
He enjoyed a brief music career, but his 1970 spoken-word album When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head, including a single entitled Rape, was branded “inappropriate” and withdrawn from sale after four days. It did not dent his popularity, though, and in Australia he was mobbed by 30,000 female fans at Sydney Airport.
But Peter’s career was destroyed after he was convicted of “gross indecency” with a lorry driver in the toilets
There were few things he didn’t know. He was exceptional THOMAS BOWINGTON PETER’S MANAGER
of Gloucester bus station in 1975. Married to actress Dorinda Stevens for three years in the 1950s, Peter said he was straight and denied claims of a relationship with Alan Bates. He said: “I’ve never had any doubt about my sexuality. I’m mad about women.”
But he disappeared from television and battled alcoholism, admitting later: “I drank myself to a standstill.”
After quitting booze he made a comeback in the 1980s, in Doctor Who: The Planet of Fire, and as General Klytus in Flash Gordon.
Manager Mr Bowington said the star continued working until the end and had several roles and appearances lined up before he passed away.
But he never returned to the peak of his powers, and said his career was ruined by “small-minded people”.
He died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in Central London having been ill for several months - an uncharacteristically ordinary end to a most extraordinary life.