Good Will hunting
MARION MCMULLEN looks at how the BBC found the ideal boy to play Just William in the shape of a young Dennis Waterman
PLAYING a cheeky-faced scamp was one of Dennis Waterman’s early successes as a child actor. BBC series William, based on the popular Just William books, was first broadcast 60 years ago this month and saw Dennis as schoolboy William Brown.
The future star of The Sweeney and Minder appeared in six of the black and white episodes but only one, William and the Leopard Hunter remains.
Dennis, who passed away this month at the age of 74, once called the role one of his biggest breaks. He said: “I was 13. It seemed more important to everyone else than it did to me. It may be a class thing, but I’d never read the books. My mates and I were reading what we thought were ‘dirty’ books, not classics. I had no idea how famous the character was, but it got me noticed.”
Dennis was born in 1948 in Clapham, south-west
London and was the youngest of nine children. His father was a ticket collector at Clapham Junction and Dennis was surrounded by arts at a young age thanks to his older sister Joy, who ran her own amateur dramatics society and encouraged the rest of her siblings to join. His mother also dabbled in music by playing the piano in a way which Dennis once described as an “East End knees-up job”.
He joined the Corona Theatre School in 1959 following a suggestion from another one of his sisters and soon got
work in the industry.
His film debut came in 1960 in the Night Train for Inverness and he was 12 when he was invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratfordupon-avon. Television series William brought him to the attention of viewers and he appeared in episodes boasting titles like William and the Parrots and William and the American Tie.
He later went to Hollywood to work on a TV series called Fair Exchange and Denis Gilmore took over the role of William Brown for the second series of William.