Peter Fontaine
Versatile supporting actor who fought in the Burmese jungle
PETER FONTAINE, who has died aged 95, was a versatile character actor on stage and screen and appeared in films ranging from The Third Man (1949) to Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974) and
For Your Eyes Only (1981); he also served in Burma during the war and was one of the last surviving officers who attended the VJ Day 70th anniversary celebrations in 2015.
Peter Fontaine was born Peter Harold Pexton at Edmonton on July 21 1920. His parents divorced three years later, after his brother Geoffrey was born, and the two boys were split up, one to each parent. Peter’s brother was cared for briefly by his father, but was then given up for adoption. Peter was sent to his grandmother after his mother remarried.
Entertainment ran in the family. His paternal greatgrandfather was Bartholomew Pexton, the inventor and manufacturer of the Cremoniene reed organ. His grandfather, Chatham Pexton, so-called because the family believed they were the illegitimate descendants of the Earl of Chatham, was a supplier of magic lanterns and maker of lantern slides, the Victorian precursor to cinema.
Peter was a bright, but not academic, pupil and after leaving school he attended the London School of Drama. When war broke out he joined the Royal Corps of Signals, serving in Ireland, Scotland, Africa, India and Burma.
At an Army camp concert, where he played Romeo in
Romeo and Juliet, he was spotted as having leadership potential by his commanding officer, also a keen amateur actor, who sent him to Catterick for officer cadet training. His first professional performance was during a week’s leave at the Belfast Opera House in a play called Young Madame Conti.
When asked about his war days, Fontaine was fond of saying that he had played a lot of bridge. In fact, Captain Pexton (as he then was) fought the Japanese in the Burmese jungle and had some close shaves, including becoming lost during a mission to fix a telegraph line, after which he had to spend the night in hiding, with the enemy only yards away.
As part of General Slim’s “Forgotten Army” he did not return to England until July 1946. By night he then appeared with repertory
companies, by day he started various businesses, including catering vans on blitzed building sites in London.
Having taken the name Peter Fontaine, he appeared in more than 200 plays during the course of the following six years. In the 1980s he was in No Sex
Please, We’re British at the Garrick. His last West End role was playing Mr Cool in
London Assurance, directed by Sam Mendes, which transferred to the Theatre Royal Haymarket from Chichester in 1989.
In 1955 he met his wife Myra and moved with her to Hollywood, where he saw much of his friend Roger Moore, whom he had met when the Bond star was starting out on the modelling circuit, posing for knitting patterns.
Back home, Fontaine starred in several classic television advertisements such as one for Harmony Hairspray, as one of two bowler-hatted men in a cab arguing about whether the lady cycling alongside was wearing hairspray.
He also tried his hand as a theatrical producer.
He appeared in more than 100 films. In For Your Eyes
Only he played the captain of a fishing trawler which reveals itself to be a hightech British spy vessel armed with a nuclear bomb.
Fontaine’s television credits included The Saint, The Avengers, Z Cars, The
Liver Birds and Hi-de-Hi!. He toured in plays until he was aged 80, his last show being The Kingfisher (2000).
In 2015 he marched down Whitehall as a Burma Star veteran. As his wife and daughter helped him walk out of Horse Guards and the crowds cheered, he said: “How bloody embarrassing.”
Peter Fontaine enjoyed tennis, and played golf with the Actors’ Golf Society.
He is survived by his wife and their son and daughter.
Peter Fontaine, born July 21 1920, died June 7 2016