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Samuel John Kydd (15 February 1915 – 26 March 1982) was a British actor.[1] He made over 290 films, more than any other British actor[citation needed], including 119 between 1946 and 1952.
Sam Kydd
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|---|---|
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| Born | Samuel John Kydd (1915-02-15)15 February 1915 |
| Died | 26 March 1982(1982-03-26) (aged 67)
London, England
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| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1945–1982 |
| Spouse |
(m. 1952) |
| Children | Jonathan Kydd |
His best-known roles were in two major British television series of the 1960s, as the smuggler Orlando O'Connor in Crane and its sequel Orlando. He also played a recurring character in Coronation Street.[2][3] Kydd's first film was The Captive Heart (1946), in which he played a POW.[4]
An army officer's son, Kydd was born on 15 February 1915 in Belfast, Ireland,[5] and moved to London as a child. He was educated at Dunstable SchoolinDunstable, Bedfordshire.[6] During the mid-1930s Kydd was an MC for the Oscar Rabin Band and one of his "Hot Shots". He would warm up audiences with jokes, impressions (Maurice Chevalier was a favourite) and tap dance routines before introducing the singers and attractions on the bill. During the late 1930s he joined the Territorial Army serving with the Queen Victoria's Rifles and when war broke out he was called up for active service.
Early in the Second World War, he went to France with the British Expeditionary Force but was quickly captured, spending the rest of the war in Stalag XX-A, a camp in ToruńinGerman-occupied Poland.[7] Kydd later wrote of his experiences as a POW in his autobiographical book For You the War Is Over.[8] While held in a forced labour subcamp in Wyrzysk, he learned various Polish phrases through contact with the local Polish population.[9]
During his internment in the German prisoner-of-war camp, where he remained for the next five years, he took command of the camp's theatrical activities, devising and staging plays.[3] He felt so strongly about his work there that, when he was offered repatriation after three years, he turned it down to continue with his theatrical work. In recognition of his valuable services during these years, he was awarded a pair of drama masks, made by the Red Cross from barbed wire.
Returning to Britain after the war, Kydd auditioned for the film The Captive Heart (1946), which was about life in a prison camp, and as this was an area where he had much experience, he got a part as an advisor cum actor. He went on to appear in more than 290 films and 1,000 TV plays and series, including such films as The Blue Lamp (1950), Father Brown (1954), The 39 Steps (1959) and I'm All Right Jack (1959).[1]
He often played the part of a strong and resilient cockney. He appeared as a character actor in films such as Chance of a Lifetime (1950), The Cruel Sea (1953), Reach for the Sky (1956), The Yangtse Incident (1957), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), Too Many Crooks (1959), Sink the Bismarck! (1960), Smokescreen (1964), Island of Terror (1966), Too Late the Hero (1970), Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973), and Eye of the Needle (1981).[10] He also appeared in the big-screen versions of Dad's Army and Till Death Us Do Part.
In 1963, Kydd appeared as the lovable smuggler Orlando O'Connor in Crane starring Patrick Allen as a Briton who moved to Morocco to run a cafe and had an aversion to smuggling.[11][12] The programme ran for 39 episodes and was watched each week by over 16 million viewers. Sam's character was so popular that when Crane finished he was given his own programme, Orlando, a children's adventure series which ran for 126 episodes 1965–1968.[2]
He also appeared on TV in The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Pickwick Papers, Mess Mates, The Arthur Askey Show, The Benny Hill Show, The Charlie Drake Show, The Harry Worth Show, The Expert, Dixon of Dock Green,[13] Fossett Saga, Curry and Chips,[1] The Tony Hancock Show, Minder, Crossroads, Coronation Street (playing the part of Mike Baldwin's father, Frankie), The Eric Sykes Show, and Follyfoot.[14]
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1974 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.[citation needed]
He married Pinkie Barnes, an ex-international table tennis champion (she was World Doubles Finalist in 1948) and one of Britain's first women advertising copywriters.[15] Their son, Jonathan Kydd, followed his father into the acting profession.[16]
Sam Kydd died of emphysema on 26 March 1982, aged 67. Jonathan Kydd reported that his father smoked up to 80 cigarettes a day.
Jonathan Kydd has edited 4 volumes of his father’s memoirs, Sam Kydd: The Unpublished Memoirs, the first of which to be published was Volume 1: Be a Good Boy Sam,1945–1952 in 2021.[17]
