 Alfie Bass (born in London on 12 April 1920) was a quintessential Cockney player of over 60 British films, as well as a stage career which began at the Unity Theatre in 1939 and considerable TV popularity in the '60s and '70s, from which he is remembered for The Army Game (ITV, 1957-1961) and Bootsie and Snudge (ITV, 1960-1963). On screen, short, furrow-browed Bass appeared in several documentaries before his feature debut in The Bells Go Down (d. Basil Dearden, 1943); hovered notably on the wrong side of the law in such Ealing films as It Always Rains on Sunday (d. Robert Hamer, 1947, as Dicey Perkins - the name says it all), and as the timid gang-member of the
The Lavender Hill Mob (d. Charles Crichton, 1951); and was a memorable Jerry Cruncher in A
Tale of Two Cities (d. Ralph Thomas, 1958). Repeating his stage role, he co-starred with David Kossoff in the award-winning short, The Bespoke Overcoat (d. Jack Clayton, 1955), and stayed close to his Cockney and Jewish roots for most of his career. He epitomises the foundation of character-playing on which the palmy days of British cinema were built. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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FILM & TV CREDITS
