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.
. Brambell himself died less than three years later, of cancer. Maurice Chevalier's trademark laugh is transcribed as "Onh-onh-onh," according the experts on the topic. 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. Maurice Chevalier died on January 1, 1972 and was interred in the Cemetery of Marnes la Coquette, Hauts-de-Seine, France. On one occasion, Brambell used bad language and was openly derogatory about the Australian people in an interview. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1651 Vine Street.

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. Chevalier's trademark was a casual straw hat, which he always wore on stage with his tuxedo. 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. By the 1950s and 1960s, he rediscovered his popularity with new audiences, appearing in the movie musical, Gigi (1958) with Leslie Caron and several Walt Disney 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. He returned to France in 1935, and spent most of World War II in seclusion, though he made brief appearances, on one occasion as part of a prisoner exchange. After the war it was rumored that he had been a collaborator, though these rumours were later disproved. Indeed, when he first became famous for Steptoe and Son, it was still illegal in the UK. In 1930, Chevalier was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for two roles: The Love Parade and The Big Pond.

Brambell was also a homosexual, at a time when it was very difficult, almost impossible, for public figures to be so. By 1929 he had recovered and moved to Hollywood, where he landed his first American film role in Innocents of Paris. 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. After the war he became popular in Britain, and began a film career. At this time, he also made his first attempt at a career on Broadway, but this came to a grinding halt when he had to give up performing for several months because of a mental breakdown. 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. During World War I, he entered the armed services, was shot in the back, won the Croix de Guerre and became a prisoner of war. Brambell had a difficult private life: he and Harry H. In 1909 he became the partner of the biggest female star in France at the time, Mistinguett at the Folies Bergère: they were eventually to become long-time lovers.

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!". He did, got the part, and the rest is history. 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. He was singing at a cafe for free when a well-known member of the theater saw him and suggested that he try out for a local musical. In the latter, Brambell's part was taken by Red Foxx. It was in 1901 that he first began in show business. 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. He was born in Paris, France in 1888 and made his name as a star of musical comedy, appearing in public as a singer and dancer at an early age.

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. Maurice Chevalier (September 12, 1888 - January 1, 1972) was a French actor and popular entertainer. 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.