The Avengers Dossier, Page Twenty-Two

Many of Britain's top film and television actors of the 1950s and 1960s can be seen guest-starring in episodes of "The Avengers." Here's another brief look at one such guest-star.

THORLEY WALTERS

In "What the Butler Saw", character actor Thorley Walters was an bulter with a ruthless streak, one of the 150 characters he portrayed in film and on television.

Thorley Walters was born in 1913, the son of a clergyman. With his parents' blessing, he pursued a career in acting. After brief experience in the theatre (where he mostly appeared in supporting roles in Shakespearean plays, but also had a few starring turns as romantic leads), he turned to films in 1935 and never looked back.

Walters' early film career was spent in low-budget comedies where he almost immediately found a niche playing comic parts, and he was more often than not a featured player. Filmgoers may not have immediately known his name, but they relied on him to make them laugh during the war years and throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

As he aged, Walters became a familiar face in horror films, historical dramas, and literary adaptations. He had supporting roles in some of the best films from Hammer--among them being "Frankenstein Created Women" (1967) and "Vampire Circus" (1972)--and he made an excellent Dr. Watson in four different, completely unrelated Sherlock Holmes adaptations--including the awful "Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace" (1962)--and he appeared in several different adaptations of John Le Carre novels, both on television and on the big screen.

During the 1980s, Walters almost exclusively played incompetent law enforcement officers and bumbling government officials on television, with recurring roles on series such as "Strangers" (1980 - 1982) and "Bulman" (1985 - 1987) (where he played the character off Bill Dugdale on both series) and "Crown Court" (1975 - 1984). He continued working right up until shortly before his death in 1991 at the age of 78.