[BITList] Harry H. -- Steptoe and Son

[John Feltham]

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Corbett, Harry [known as Harry H. Corbett] (1925– 1982), actor, was born in Rangoon, Burma, on 28 February 1925, the youngest of seven children of George Corbett (1885/6–1943), a staff sergeant in the South Staffordshire regiment stationed in Burma, and his wife, Caroline Emily, née Barnsley (1884–1926). Following his mother's death a year after his birth, he and two brothers were shipped from the comparative comfort of Rangoon to working-class Ardwick in Manchester, where an aunt, Annie Williams, became a surrogate mother. Corbett's early experiences there informed his political attitudes later in life, and also led to his notable involvement in charity work.

Corbett attended Ross Place county primary school in Ardwick, and then Benchill primary and Sharston high school, both in Wythenshawe. He early on developed a passion for the cinema, and was also encouraged by a school teacher at Sharston to take up amateur dramatics. He went on a school outing organized by her to see 1066 and All That, and this convinced him that acting was his calling. He left school at fourteen in 1939, finding work in a biscuit factory. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Marines in 1942, and saw service in the north Atlantic and the Far East.

In the immediate post-war period Corbett had various labouring and building jobs, and developed an interest in medicine, attending a course on radiography. He maintained his love of acting, took voice lessons, and at twenty-three managed to get acting work at Chorlton Repertory Theatre Club, where he also learned about stage management, lighting, and generally how the theatre operates. He became engaged to (Mildred) Avis Bunnage (1923–1990) who was also in the company, and who went on, like Corbett, to become a stalwart of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop.

In 1951 Littlewood hired Corbett in Manchester and he proved himself an invaluable actor. Littlewood later offered him leading and classical roles, claiming that for him film-going had been his acting school. Corbett was a moving Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and when the company settled in London in the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in 1953 he was given the lead in Richard II, and main roles in Le Malade imaginaire and Arden of Faversham. It was while working with the company that he developed an abiding interest in the methods of Rudolf Laban and Constantin Stanislavsky. Despite an uneasy relationship developing between Littlewood and Corbett she allowed him to direct Alun Owen's Progress in the Park, which he did successfully, and he also played Sherlock Holmes in James Goldman's They Might Be Giants. Kenneth Tynan disliked the company's touring version of Brecht's Mother Courage (1955), but recognized Corbett's ability—‘abounds in hints of the performance this actor might have given in more favourable surroundings’ (Tynan, 230). Elsewhere Tynan had already termed him ‘an actor of genius’ (Corbett, 128).

Although politically Corbett was sympathetic to Theatre Workshop's ethos he left the company in 1955. He remained in touch, however. When Margaret Bury, one of the Theatre Workshop company, started East 15 Acting School, Corbett bought a barn in Ditchling, Sussex, and paid for its transportation to the school in 1965. This became the school's Corbett Theatre.

Corbett worked on and off in the West End and at the Royal Court, though his political opinions had hitherto seen him turning down parts in non-left wing theatre. For an actor with only empirical training his was a remarkable trajectory. Having played classical leads for Joan Littlewood, he was now offered parts in The Family Reunion, Peter Brook's Hamlet, The Power and the Glory, and The Way of the World.

Corbett's film career started soon after the Workshop period, initially with small parts in a variety of features—Floods of Fear (directed by Charles Crichton, 1958), Nowhere to Go (Seth Holt, 1958), a slightly larger role in Sammy Going South (Alexander Mackendrick, 1963), and a substantial comedy role as a scoundrel property developer thwarted by working women in C. Pennington-Richards's underrated Ladies Who Do (1963).

Corbett had also featured in television drama from 1955, and in the meantime, in line with Equity rules, had added the ‘H’ between his first and last names to avoid confusion with the children's television puppeteer of the same name. Various television roles, usually of a gangster/low life nature, had flowed in since he left Littlewood's company: his was a muscular and imposing presence, with a generous, flashing smile and both innocence and wickedness in the eyes.

The part which was to make Corbett a household name came about as the result of a successful BBC television Comedy Playhouse episode, ‘The Offer’, broadcast in January 1962. This led to the commissioning of a series, Steptoe and Son, first broadcast in June 1962. As Harold Steptoe he was the son of Albert— Wilfrid Brambell, the Irish veteran of stage and screen—both of them in what was then termed the ‘rag-and-bone’ business. Corbett's ability to play comedy and believable pathos made him a suitable match for Brambell's self-pitying and sly old man. Scripted by Alan Simpson and Ray Galton, who had made a national institution of the comedian Tony Hancock on radio and television, Steptoe ran from 1962 to 1967, 1970 to 1976, and a single repeat episode—watched by over 13 million viewers—in 1988.

The strength of the Steptoe writing was reflected in the casting. Harold is constantly trying to break out of the shabby, working-class mould in which he is trapped, always undermined by his father, by his own inadequacies, or simply by circumstances. Corbett brought a sympathy to the part with which the viewer identified, the sadness of his situation never far below the comedy surface. In this respect the character shares something of what Simpson and Galton created for Hancock —the little man with aspirations, the assumed right to meet the bourgeois world on an equal footing. The Times, in its obituary of Corbett, said rightly, that the programme ‘was a profound statement about human relationships’ (23 March 1982).

Two film spin-offs— Steptoe and Son (Cliff Owen, 1972) and Steptoe and Son Ride Again (Peter Sykes, 1973)— were not up to the standard of the small-screen shows. In the meantime, however, Corbett had made better films, also in starring roles: The Bargee (Duncan Wood, 1964), based closely on the Harold Steptoe character, and Rattle of a Simple Man (Muriel Box, 1964), based on Charles Dyer's hit play. His fame and familiarity on television were such that he guested as the lead in Carry On Screaming (Gerald Thomas, 1966). Among other films he appeared in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977); and also James Kenelm Clarke's Hardcore (1977), in which Corbett's (and everyone else's) talents are hardly used.

Corbett married twice. His first marriage, on 20 October 1958, was to the South African comedian and actor Sheila Frances Steafel (b. 1935), daughter of Harold Steafel, engineer. They divorced in 1965. He married, second, on 2 September 1969, the actor Maureen Patricia Blott (stage name Maureen Crombie) (1943–1999), who had previously adopted the surname Corbett; she was the daughter of Sydney Blott, clerk, and was formerly married to Anthony Boden, from whom she was divorced. They had two children, Susannah and Jonathan.

Corbett was awarded an OBE in 1976. A severe heart attack in 1979 stopped him only temporarily from working. He died at St Helen's Hospital, Hastings, Sussex, of a second attack, on 21 March 1982, and was buried in the churchyard at Penhurst, near to his home at Ashburnham in the Sussex Weald. From the general public's point of view he was identified solely with Harold Steptoe. At one level this denies him a richer legacy as a versatile actor; but at another it indicates the great affection in which he was held by the many millions who knew Harry H. as Harold.

Colin Sell
Sources   S. Corbett, Harry H. Corbett: the front legs of the cow (2012) · The Times (23 March 1982), 10 · P. Gambaccini and R. Taylor, Television's greatest hits (1993) · J. Littlewood, Joan's book, new edn (2003) · S. Neale and F. Krutnik, Popular film and television comedy (1995) · K. Tynan, Tynan on theatre (1964) · m. certs. · d. cert.
Archives    FILM  BL NFTVA, interview footage · BL NFTVA, performance footage 
Likenesses   photographs, 1959–82, Rex Features, London · photographs, 1960–69, Camera Press, London · photographs, 1960–74, Mary Evans Picture Library, London · photographs, 1960–74, Getty Images, London · photographs, 1962–70, PA Images, London · photographs, 1963–76, Photoshot, London · photograph, 1970 (on right, with Wilfrid Brambell), Getty Images [see illus.] · N. Osborne, double portrait, caricature (with Wilfrid Brambell), Corbis, London · photographs, repro. in Corbett, Harry H.Corbett 

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