Blue plaque marks Chi’s Alan Badel
Celebrated actor Alan Badel has now been remembered with a blue plaque on the house where he lived in Chichester.
The plaque has been placed at 1A St Martin’s Square – much to the delight of his daughter Sarah Badel who followed him into the profession: “It means that I can walk past and have the privilege of looking up and seeing his name and knowing that even all these years later he is still remembered. I feel tremendous gratitude and pride that this is happening.”
Alan, who died on March 19 1982, would have celebrated his 100th birthday on September 11 this year. He moved to Chichester after Sarah moved to the city when she was invited to work at the Festival Theatre by artistic director Sir John Clements after he took over from Laurence Olivier.
Alan – known as Blade from the nickname he was given, Lord Blade of Grass – was always Alan or Blade to Sarah: “And he was just such a wonderful actor. He absolutely inhabited whoever it was he was playing. Living at home with him you never knew who was going to come out of the bathroom, whether it was going to be Macbeth or King Kong or Rat ty from The Wind In The Willows. He would totally be that person. One day I saw his mouth twitching and I realised he was practising Ratty!
“He had always wanted to be an actor. He was born in Manchesterand he just loved the theatre. He wrote to Robert Don at as a very young man and Robert Don at very kindly encouraged him. He encouraged him togo to RAD A and he did. Alan was 16 and it was the outbreak of the war and he got a scholarship through Robert Donat coaching him – though Donat said ‘You've got to get rid of that Mancunian accent!’ He was 16 and he was two years at RADA where he met my mother who was also 16. His parentslet him goal one to London at the outbreak of war at that young age but he left RAD A having won the Bancroft gold medal and my mother won the silver medal. He would have been jolly cross if it had been the other way round!”
Then the war intervened. Alan served as a paratrooper and saw action on D-Day. Alan was demobbed in 1947 and came back to a very different world where there was a new realism in the theatre: “He was a complete chameleon and could have done anything but the realism was not really his thing .” The reallycrucial role was The Count of Monte Cristo on TV in 1964: “He was suddenly launched and everybody fell for him .”