San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Prolific British actor in dozens of films, TV hits
Bernard Cribbins, a British actor who had roles on “Doctor Who” and “Fawlty Towers” and whose contributions to children’s programs delighted young audiences over a career that spanned seven decades, has died, his agent said Thursday. He was 93.
In a statement, the management and talent agency, Gavin Barker Associates, did not say when or where Cribbins died.
Cribbins worked well into his 90s, the agency said, in a career that influenced some of the best-known comedy, drama and children’s programs in Britain. He started acting at the age of 14 in the Oldham repertory company. This period of onstage work broadened into other media, including television and film, for which he became widely known, according to the Internet Movie Database.
He was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 2011 for his contributions to the arts. In addition to dozens of roles in film and television, he recorded the 1960s novelty song “Right Said Fred.”
For three decades, Cribbins was regularly featured on “Jackanory,” a BBC children’s program in which an actor read books to young audiences. The program, which ran between 1965 and 1996, was meant to arouse an interest in reading.
In one of his more than 100 readings, this one of “The Wizard of Oz” in 1970, Cribbins infused the voices of Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Wizard and other characters with a full dramatic repertoire of whispers, tremors and shrieks. When he was awarded a BAFTA Special Award in 2009, he grew serious in an interview when asked about the hugely popular “Jackanory” and how it had influenced young audiences.
“All you have to do,” he said, “is look down the lens, find
one child, and just talk to that child. And you pull them in.
“It really works, and you think all over the country there will be little kids saying, ‘Just a minute, Mum,’ and they will be looking. And the stories, as I said before, were wonderful,” he said.
Cribbins was born in Oldham, England, just outside Manchester, on Dec. 29, 1928, according to IMDb. After his early stage career, he narrated “The Wombles,” a 1970s animated television program created from a series of books about underground creatures, and joined the cast of the science-fiction TV series “Doctor Who” from 2007 to 2010. He had also appeared in a Doctor Who movie, “Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.,” in 1966.
In the TV series, which the producer Russell T. Davies revived in 2005, Cribbins played a recurring role as the grandfather of one of the doctor’s companions, Donna Noble, played by Catherine Tate. In an Instagram post on Thursday, Davies wrote that Cribbins “loved being in Doctor Who. He said, ‘Children are calling me grandad in the street!’ ”
Davies wrote that Cribbins had once “turned up with a suitcase full of props, just in case, including a rubber chicken.” He added, “He’d phone up and say, ‘I’ve got an idea! What if I attack a Dalek with a paintball gun?!’ Okay, Bernard, in it went!”
A list of survivors was not immediately available. Cribbins’ wife, the actor Gillian McBarnet, died in October last year.
In the interview after receiving the BAFTA award in 2009, Cribbins and his “Doctor Who” co-star Tate spoke about how quickly time had gone by during his long career.
“I can remember a lot of things with total clarity, total recall,” he said, before adding jokingly, “I’ve got stories I haven’t even thought of yet.”