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Bernard Fox

Bernard Fox brought a wonderfully adaptable screen presence to more than four decades of film and television. Whether playing a flustered officer, an eccentric doctor, a suspicious servant or a veteran airman, he had a knack for making formality part of the joke without losing the character underneath it. Born in Port Talbot in 1927, Fox was a fifth-generation performer and the son of stage actors Queenie Barrett and Gerald Lawson. His film career began when he was just 18 months old, and by 14 he was working as an apprentice assistant manager at a theatre. After serving with the Royal Navy during World War II and the Korean War, he returned to acting and appeared in more than 30 cinema films between 1956 and 2004. Fox’s film work ranged widely. He appeared briefly as lookout Frederick Fleet in A Night to Remember, delivering the warning, “Iceberg, dead ahead sir!”, then returned to the Titanic story 39 years later as Colonel Archibald Gracie IV in Titanic. His comedy credits included Yellowbeard, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo and The Private Eyes, while his voice work as the Chairmouse connected The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. In The Mummy, he played Winston Havelock, a former Royal Flying Corps airman eager for another adventure. Television gave Fox some of his most distinctive recurring parts. He played Dr. Bombay across 18 episodes of Bewitched, later reprising the character in Tabitha and Passions. On Hogan’s Heroes, he appeared as the bumbling Colonel Rodney Crittendon. His guest work also took him through Columbo, The Andy Griffith Show, Perry Mason, M*A*S*H, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Murder, She Wrote and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Fox made his final screen appearance in 2004’s Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes. He died in 2016, leaving behind a career shaped by range, comic timing and a reliable ability to enliven a supporting role.