George Frederick Joffre Hartree (30 November 1914 – 27 October 1988), known professionally as Charles Hawtrey, was an English actor, comedian, singer, pianist and theatre director.
He began at an early age as a boy soprano, in which role he made several records, before moving on to radio. His later career encompassed the theatre (as both actor and director), the cinema (where he regularly appeared supporting Will Hay in the 1930s and 1940s in films such as The Ghost of St. Michael's), through the Carry On films, and television.
Hawtrey was born in Hounslow, Middlesex, England, in 1914, to William John Hartree (1885–1952) and his wife Alice (née Crow) (1880–1965), of 217 Cromwell Road, as George Frederick Joffre Hartree. He took his stage name from the theatrical knight Sir Charles Hawtrey, and encouraged the suggestion that he was Hawtrey's son (though his father was actually a London car mechanic).
Following study at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London, he embarked on a career in the theatre as both actor and director.
Hawtrey made his first appearance on the stage in Boscombe, a suburb of Bournemouth, as early as 1925. At the age of 11 he played a 'street Arab' in Frederick Bowyer's fairy play The Windmill Man.
His London stage debut followed a couple of years later when, aged 13, he appeared in another 'fairy extravaganza', this time at the Scala Theatre, singing the role of the White Cat and Bootblack in the juvenile opera Bluebell in Fairyland. The music for this popular show had been written by Walter Slaughter in 1901, with a book by Seymour Hicks that provided part of the inspiration for J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan.
In Peter Pan itself, at the London Palladium in 1931, Hawtrey played the First Twin, with leading parts taken by Jean Forbes-Robertson and George Curzon. This played in several regional theatres, including His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen. In 1936 Hawtrey acted in a revival of the play, this time taking the larger role of Slightly alongside the husband-and-wife partnership of Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton, playing Peter and Hook. A review in The Daily Telegraph commended Hawtrey for having "a comedy sense not unworthy of his famous name".
Hawtrey played Jerry Morton in Bats in the Belfry, a farce written by Diana Morgan and Robert MacDermott, which opened at the Ambassadors Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, on 11 March 1937. The cast included Dame Lilian Braithwaite and Henry Kendall, as well as Vivien Leigh as Jerry's sister Jessica. The play ran for 178 performances at the Ambassadors Theatre before moving to the Golders Green Hippodrome on 16 August 1937.
Hawtrey acted in films from an early age, first appearing while still a child, and as an adult his youthful appearance and wit made him a foil to Will Hay's blundering old fool in the comedy films Good Morning, Boys (1937) and Where's That Fire? (1939). In all he appeared in more than 70 films including, from this period, Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936).
Hawtrey had another stage success in 1939, when he was cast in the role of Gremio in Tyrone Guthrie's production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Old Vic, in which Roger Livesey starred as Petruchio and his wife, Ursula Jeans, as Katherine.
Hawtrey was also an accomplished musician. He recorded as a boy soprano and was billed as 'The Angel-Voiced Choirboy' even at the age of 15. In 1930 he recorded several duets with the girl soprano Evelyn Griffiths (aged 11) for the Regal label. He was a semi-professional pianist for the armed forces during the Second World War.
Hawtrey continued in music revue, starring in Eric Maschwitz's New Faces (1940) at the Comedy Theatre in London, and was praised for his "chic and finished study of an alluring woman spy". New Faces included the premiere of the song "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square", which quickly became a wartime favourite.
During and after the Second World War, Hawtrey also appeared in the West End in such shows as Scoop, Old Chelsea, Merrie England, Frou-Frou and Husbands Don't Count. Hawtrey also directed 19 plays, including Dumb Dora Discovers Tobacco at the Q Theatre in Richmond and, in 1945, Oflag 3, a war drama co-written with Douglas Bader.
By the 1940s, Hawtrey was appearing on radio during Children's Hour in the series Norman and Henry Bones, the Boy Detectives (first broadcast in 1943) alongside the actress Patricia Hayes. Later, he provided the voice of snooty Hubert Lane, the nemesis of William in the series Just William. His catchphrase was "How's yer mother off for dripping?"
Hawtrey's film career continued, but The Ghost of St. Michael's (1941) and The Goose Steps Out (1942) were his last films with Will Hay. After the latter film he asked Hay to give him bigger roles, but Hay refused.
Hawtrey directed two films: What Do We Do Now? (1946), believed lost, a musical mystery written by the English author George Cooper and starring George Moon; and Dumb Dora Discovers Tobacco (1946), featuring Flora Robson.
In 1948, Hawtrey appeared at the Windmill Theatre, Soho, in comedy sketches presented as part of Revudeville. In the same year, he was incorrectly credited as 'Major Markham' in The Story of Shirley Yorke, (but see 'Filmography', and Edit Note), using two pseudonyms.
In 1949 he appeared as the bar-hand/piano player in the Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico.