Ralph Bellamy

Bellamy has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6542 Hollywood Boulevard. He was seventy-three. News of his death received far less attention than that of his co-star, and his funeral was sparsely attended. He died as a result of a lung ailment in Santa Monica, California. Brambell himself died less than three years later, of cancer. He continued working regularly and gave his final performance in Pretty Woman ( 1990). 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. In 1984 he was presented with a Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild, and in 1987 received an Honorary Academy Award "for his unique artistry and his distinguished service to the profession of acting.". On one occasion, Brambell used bad language and was openly derogatory about the Australian people in an interview.

An Emmy Award nomination for the mini-series The Winds of War (1983), and a role as a conniving billionaire alongside Don Ameche in Trading Places (also 1983) brought him back into the limelight. 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. He appeared in Sunrise at Campobello (1960) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) before turning to television during the seventies. 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. Highly regarded within the industry, he served four years as President of Actor's Equity. 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. He played detective Ellery Queen in a few films during the forties, but as his film career had not progressed, he returned to the stage, where he continued to perform throughout the fifties. Indeed, when he first became famous for Steptoe and Son, it was still illegal in the UK.

He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Awful Truth (1937) and played a similar role in His Girl Friday (1940). Brambell was also a homosexual, at a time when it was very difficult, almost impossible, for public figures to be so. In 1931 he made his film debut and worked constantly throughout the thirties, establishing himself as a capable supporting actor. 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. He began his acting career on stage, and by 1927 owned his own theatre company. 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. Bellamy was born in Chicago, Illinois. Brambell had a difficult private life: he and Harry H.

Ralph Bellamy (June 17, 1904 - November 29, 1991) was an American actor. 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.