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"He's Balmy,
But He's Bright"
Dick Dawson of Hogan's Heroes has spent his life proving both TV Guide December 23, 1967 - December 29, 1967 by Pages 26-27
"He's one of the few young Englishmen I've seen do comedy." - Ed Feldman, producer of Hogan's Heroes. Richard Dawson, 33 who plays the Englishman, Newkirk, in CBS's series about fun in a World War II German POW camp, wasn't so funny when, at 20, he made his debut as a comedian. An obscure repertory actor at the time, he wrote a London theatrical agency saying that he was "a well-know Canadian comedian" looking for an engagement while in England on vacation. Amazingly, the agency sent him a contract for six weeks at a music hall in Plymouth. "I didn't;t even have an act," he recalls. I got together a few jokes, bought a stock arrangement of "Georgia on My Mind" and reported for work. I told the jokes. Nothing. Then I announced my song and waited for the microphone to rise up from the floor of the stage. I waited and waited. Suddenly I felt a strange sensation in my right leg. The audience started to laugh/ The mike - it was on of those long thin ones - had gone up my trouser leg. I lifted my leg to try to get it out, but the mike kept coming. There I was standing out on the stage with my leg up in the air!" The microphone was finally lowered, Dawson did his song and ran off the stage in tears. As he came off, the theater manager rushed up to him grabbed his lapels and roared, "You've never even been on a stage before, have you?" After Dawson confessed what he had done, the manager, somehow mollified, turned him over to a 90-year-old comedian named Billy Bennett, who provided him with a routine and rehearsed him in it until it was time for the next show. "This time they laughed at the jokes," says Dawson. Later, when he asked why he had not just been thrown out, the manager said, "I was watching the audience - I could see they didn't hate you." Eleven months later, Dawson was playing the London Palladium. "He's balmy, but he's bright." - A friend. It took some fast thinking and lots of nerve for Dawson to become an actor in the first place. After three years as a merchant seaman (he went to sea at 14), he was ashore at the Isle of Wright when he saw a notice that the Barry O'Brien Players were looking for actors. He applied. As he waited his turn, he saw that other applicants were doing scenes from various plays for their auditions. "I didn't know any plays, but I once had a teacher who recited Shakespeare," Dawson says. "Of course, I didn't know any Shakespeare, but I did know the noise of it - the way it sounded." Thus, when his name was called, he walked on-stage and mumbled "Henry the VIII, Act Two." Then he launched into a rigmarole of high sounding double-talk which had the cadence and some of the words he remembered from Shakespeare. The manager of the company interrupted: "MR. Dawson what are you doing?" Dawson stopped and lamely answered, I don't know, sir." The manager said, "Why are you doing it?" Dawson replied, "Because I want to be an actor." The manager pondered a moment and then said, "I may be able to help you." The following week, Dawson was playing three parts - one of them a corpse - in the then current production of the Barry O'Brien Players. He traveled with the company for two years at three pounds ($8.40) a week, before writing the letter to London saying that he was a Canadian comedian looking for a vacation engagement. "He's is so literate and well-read" - A co-worker. Richard Dawson had only two years of formal education. Born in 1934, he reached school age during World War II. He and his brother were evacuated from Gosport, Hampshire, their birthplace, for the duration of the war, but they ran away and returned home because the people they lived with in the country hit them. "Our parents never did that," says Dawson. Home for Dawson now is a rambling ranch house in Beverly Hills, which he shares with his two sons, Mark, 7, and Gary, 5, their nanny, and a 185 pound Great Dane. The boys' mother is actress Diana Dors. She and Dawson were married in 1959 and parted in 1964. She now lives in England. Dawson says he sleeps only two hours a night. He attempts to read a book every night and he "writes: for an hour and a half (because he does not know punctuation he dictates short stories, comedy routines and ideas for teleplays into a tape recorder). He does not eat all day but, he estimates, he consumes 30 cups of coffee. IN the evening, he returns home for a big steak with "my rats" - the two boys. "He's amazingly sensitive and warm." - a friend. Richard Dawson was actively involved in the California campaign that raged about the controversial Proposition 14, which dealt with racial discrimination in housing. Dawson was in favor of open housing, because, he says, "I wanted everyone to have their rights." He adds: "I want the right to be against someone without being called a bigot." Click on the image to see a larger version.
Last Modified : Fri 16 May 2008 7:11 AM
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