 With a distinguished stage career and several accomplished lead performances in films of the 1940s, Mervyn Johns is best remembered as one of Ealing Studios' most prolific players and for a string of character parts into the 1950s and beyond, notably his put-upon clerk Bob Cratchit to Alastair Sim's miser in Scrooge (d. Brian Desmond Hurst, 1951).
Born in Pembroke, Wales, he came to acting comparatively late, having trained as a medical student at London Hospital before serving with the Royal Flying Corps during WWI. Encouraged by his first wife, concert pianist Alys Steele, he went to RADA, graduating with a Gold Medal. After eight years in repertory at Bristol, he won acclaim for his stage performances in Shaw comedies, including The Doctor's Dilemma and Pygmalion. From the mid-1930s he took minor roles in films; one of his earliest credited appearances was in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939).
Too old to serve in WWII, he became a stalwart of Ealing Studios, thriving in the studio's semi-repertory company of character players and demonstrating his range in 12 features between 1940 and 1946. He was a German spy in The Next of Kin (d. Thorold Dickinson, 1942), a machine-gun toting church warden in Went the Day Well? (d. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942), a spiv-turned-fireman in The Bells Go Down (d. Basil Dearden, 1943), a heroic ship's engineer in San Demetrio London (d. Charles Frend, 1943) and a stern Victorian patriarch in Pink String and Sealing Wax (d. Robert Hamer, 1946). He was a key player in some of Ealing's more fantastical projects: a cackling psychopath in the Will Hay comedy My Learned Friend (d. Hay/Basil Dearden, 1943), a ghostly innkeeper (alongside his daughter, Glynis) in The Halfway House (d. Dearden, 1944) and the architect whose alarmingly prophetic dreams structured the horror compendium Dead of Night (d. Cavalcanti/Charles Crichton/Basil Dearden/Robert Hamer, 1945).
His post-Ealing roles were rarely so central, but an uncanny knack for inhabiting his characters meant his performances always lingered in the memory. In addition to a superlative Cratchit - equally intimidated by Scrooge reformed as by Scrooge the misanthrope - his Friar Lawrence in particular stood out among Romeo and Juliet's (d. Renato Castellani, 1954) starry international cast.
Having made his television debut in a live production of Pride and Prejudice (BBC, tx 22/5/1938), he largely avoided the small screen until the mid-1950s, when he suddenly became ubiquitous. Memorable characterisations included Samuel Pepys in 'Ninety Sail' (Sunday Night Theatre, BBC, tx. 17/10/1954) and Mr Jarvis Lorry in A Tale of Two Cities (BBC, 1957); he took the lead in crime drama Leave It to Todhunter (BBC, 1958). In the 1960s he enjoyed guest roles in the likes of No Hiding Place (ITV, tx. 31/8/1964), Danger Man (ITV, tx. 8/12/1964), The Avengers (tx. 25/12/1965) and The Saint (tx. 13/4/1968); his performances typically offered variants on the now-established personae of meek, troubled underdog or other-worldly eccentric.
By the late 1970s such appearances had become less frequent, and his final role came in the Shoestring episode 'Knock for Knock' (BBC, tx. 7/10/1979). His last years were spent in retirement with his second wife, actress Diana Churchill; his death at 93 in 1992 left behind a legacy of minutely-observed character work spanning five decades.
Richard Hewett
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FILM & TV CREDITS
