Terence Longdon

Terence Longdon, who died on April 23 aged 88, was a character actor who specialised in seduction, lounge-lizardry and murder conspiracies; he made his name, however, as the airline adventurer, Garry Halliday. 

Longdon in 'The Return of Sherlock Holmes'  Photo: ITV / Rex Features

 

 

Longdon played Halliday, in the series of the same name, for 50 episodes. Eventually, however, its Biggles-style stories began to look dated, and it was replaced by Dr Who.

As an actor Longdon, adept with the whisky decanter and soda siphon and elegant in his tailoring, could also appear to have emerged from a bygone era. In an earlier generation, for example, his stage manners and good looks might have taken him to the very top of his profession. But by the 1950s and 1960s public affection for the smoothness of performances like his, however skilled the technique, was dwindling.

The Secretary Bird Theatre Programme None the less, his affable persona proved a reassuring presence on stage, for example as John Brownlow, the eligible (but "not unduly flash") lover in William Douglas Home's The Secretary Bird (l968-71).

In the play Brownlow is poised to steal away the wife of a writer until the potential-cuckold contrives for him to fall for a different woman instead; it proved Longdon's longest engagement, and he played the part over a thousand times during a run of 1,463 performances.

The son of Joseph Longdon and his wife Florence Violet (Tully), Terence Longdon was born at Newark-on-Trent on May 14 1922 and educated at Minster Grammar School, Southwell. He trained at Rada from l946-48 and first appeared on the professional stage aged 26, at the Lyceum, Sheffield, in The French for Love.

Parts in three West End productions soon followed: John Gielgud's revival of Euripides's Medea with Eileen Herlie in the title role; Terence Rattigan's play about Alexander the Great, Adventure Story, starring Paul Scofield; and Gielgud's production of a modern comedy, Treasure Hunt, by MJ Farrell and John Perry.
Longdon soon joined the Shakespeare Memorial Company at Stratford-on-Avon for three seasons under Anthony Quayle's direction. His roles there included Prince Hal – his favourite part of all – to Quayle's Falstaff in Henry IV part I; Oliver in As You Like It; and Cassio to Quayle's Othello. Having toured Australia with the company, he joined, in 1954, the Old Vic company for an American tour, making his New York debut that year as Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
His first West End crime play was William Fairchild's The Sound of Murder, in which he schemed with his mistress to dispose of her husband, a popular children's author (Peter Cushing). After the short-lived Golden Rivet by Laurence Dobie and Robert Sloman, and another short run as Mr Darcy in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Longdon emerged strongly in 1967 as the tall, handsome Colin, lover of his crippled brother's wife, in Somerset Maugham's The Sacred Flame.
Later that year he played opposite Faith Brook and Felicity Kendall at the Savoy in Minor Murder, based on the true story of two schoolgirl friends who murder one of their mothers when she threatens to separate the pair. The same venue then became his home for several more years for The Secretary Bird. Its success shaped his next roles and in Francis Durbridge's Suddenly At Home Longdon played the conceited but likeable Sam Blaine, a detective story writer and the former lover of a wealthy woman whose husband plots her murder.
Other West End stage credits included Mr Davenport in Rattigan's Cause Célèbre, and the farces Charley's Aunt (with Griff Rhys Jones), When Did You Last See Your Trousers? and Paris Match.
He best film role was as Drusus in Ben Hur (1959); he also appeared in several Carry On films.
Between acting engagements Longdon proved himself an unusually accomplished golfer, buttonholing colleagues at leading clubs into betting on rounds and usually winning.
He married first, in 1953 (dissolved 1960), the actress Barbara Jefford. He married secondly, in 2004, Gillie Conyers, whom he had known since 1987 and who survives him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/theatre-obituaries/8515231/Terence-Longdon.html