Wilfrid Brambell

He was seventy-three. News of his death received far less attention than that of his co-star, and his funeral was sparsely attended. Leo Carrillo died of cancer in 1961 and was interred in the Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Santa Monica. Brambell himself died less than three years later, of cancer. The Leo Carrillo Ranch Historic Park in Carlsbad, California is a registered California Historical Site. Brambell did, however appear on the BBC's television news to pay tribute to Corbett after the latter's death from a heart attack in 1982. As a result of his service to the State, the Leo Carrillo State Park, west of Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway, was named in his honor, And the city of Westminster, California named an elementary school for him. On one occasion, Brambell used bad language and was openly derogatory about the Australian people in an interview. He was eventually made a goodwill ambassador by the State Governor.

In an attempt to take advantage of this situation, they undertook a tour of Australia in the late 1970s with a Steptoe and Son stage show: however, with the pair openly despising each other, the tour was a disaster and a working relationship proved impossible. A preservationist and conservationist, Carrillo served on the California Beach and Parks commission for eighteen years, and played a key role in the state's acquisition of Hearst Castle at San Simeon, the Los Angeles Arboretum, and the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. After the final series of Steptoe and Son was made in 1974, Brambell had some guest roles in films and on television, but both he and Corbett found themselves heavily type cast as their famous characters. In Hollywood, he appeared in more than 90 films in which he played supporting or character roles. However, he is best remembered from the television show, the "Cisco Kid", on which he played Pancho, a role he had previously carried out in several films. Earlier in his life he had been married, from 1948 to 1955, to Molly Josephine, but the marriage ended after she gave birth to the child of their lodger, Roderick Fisher, in 1953. A college graduate, Leo Carrillo worked as a newspaper cartoonist before turning to acting on Broadway. Indeed, when he first became famous for Steptoe and Son, it was still illegal in the UK. Proud of his heritage, he wrote a book titled The California I Love that was published just before his death in 1961.

Brambell was also a homosexual, at a time when it was very difficult, almost impossible, for public figures to be so. The family moved from San Diego to Los Angeles then to Santa Monica, where Leo Carrillo's father served as the city's first mayor. In a series almost entirely based around the pair of them with no other regular characters, this made production of the series difficult and stressful. His great-grandfather was the first provisional governor of California, and his grandfather Pedro Carrillo had been sent east to be educated in Boston. Corbett, who played Harold Steptoe in Steptoe and Son, detested each other, and were barely on speaking terms outside of takes by the end of the programme's run. Although he played stereotypical Latinos, Leo Carrillo was part of an old and respected Los Angeles family who could trace his roots back to the conquistadores. Brambell had a difficult private life: he and Harry H. Leo Carrillo, born August 6, 1880 in Los Angeles, California - died September 10, 1961 in Santa Monica, California, was an actor and conservationist.

A running joke is made throughout the film of his character being "a very clean old man." This is in reference to his on-screen son, Harold, in Steptoe and Son constantly referring to his father as "you dirty old man!". The success of Steptoe and Son made Brambell a high profile figure on British television, and earned him the major role of Paul McCartney's grandfather in The Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night. In the latter, Brambell's part was taken by Red Foxx. There were also two feature film spin-offs, a stage show and an American re-make entitled Sanford and Son, based on the original British scripts.

Initially the role was merely a one-off for the BBC's Comedy Playhouse anthology strand: however, its success led to a full series being commissioned, which lasted throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s. It was this ability to play old men that led to his casting in his most famous role, as Albert Steptoe, the irascible father Steptoe and Son. All of these roles earned him a reputation for playing old men, though he was only at the time in his forties. His television career began during the 1950s, when he was cast in small roles in three Nigel Kneale / Rudolph Cartier productions for BBC Television: as a drunk in The Quatermass Experiment (1953), as both an old man in a pub and later a prisoner in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954) and as a tramp in Quatermass II (1955).

Wilfrid Brambell (1912-1985) (born March 22, 1912 in Dublin, Ireland; died January 18, 1985 in London, England, UK) was an Irish film and television actor, best known for his roles in the British television series Steptoe and Son and The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night.