(1 February 1921 - 2 June 2017)
Although the British actor Peter Sallis’s first job was, like his father, in banking, his call-up into the RAF during World War II actually led to his becoming an actor. Working at RAF Cranfield saw him taking part in amateur dramatics and that was it. He studied at RADA, then appeared in rep and in 1946 made his London stage debut. Much of his early career was spent in theatre, although his TV work began with playing Quince in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in 1947. His first film appearance was in Stranger from Venus (1954) with Patricia Neal, followed by roles in The Doctor’s Dilemma, The Scapegoat, Anastasia, Doctor in Love, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, No Love for Johnnie, The Curse of the Werewolf, The V.I.P.s, The Mouse on the Moon, Charlie Bubbles, The Reckoning, Scream and Scream Again, Taste the Blood of Dracula and many more. For Sallis the films were breaks between TV series such as Danger Man, The Avengers, Maigret, Z Cars, Doctor Who, Budgie, Callan, The Pallisers, and, of course, Last of the Summer Wine, in which Sallis played Cleggy in every one of the 295 episodes of the BBC sitcom, from 1973 to 2010. On stage he worked with Orson Welles and was in Hal Prince’s 1963 production of the musical She Loves Me (later filmed for TV), and also Baker Street, a musical on Sherlock Holmes. He was in John Osborne’s Inadmissable Evidence and the original London production of Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret, with Judi Dench. Apart from Last of the Summer Wine Peter Sallis will also be remembered as the voice of Wallace in Nick Park’s Aardmon Animation film A Grand Day Out and later The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, both of which won Academy Awards and Baftas, and also The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, another Oscar-winner. Sallis was married to Elaine Usher and they had a son, Crispian, a film set-designer. However, after many separations they divorced in 1965. Sallis was awarded the OBE in 2007.
MICHAEL DARVELL
