DUDLEY SUTTON

(6 April 1933 - 15 September 2018)

The British actor Dudley Sutton, who has died at the age of 85 from cancer, generally played renegades, outsiders with problems, out of which he made a very successful career. After service in the RAF he joined Rada but was subsequently expelled for liking rock ’n’ roll. Early on he joined Theatre Workshop with Joan Littlewood at Stratford East. Following a couple of small roles in the films A Night to Remember (1958) and Go To Blazes (1962), he was cast in a couple of important films by director Sidney J. Furie. In The Boys he played one of several bad lads up in court on a murder charge, and in The Leather Boys (1964) he was a biker in the gay film. The latter, a bold production based on the novel by Gillian Freeman (writing as Eliot George), threw light on the subject of homosexuality well before its time and was certainly more believable than Victim of a few years earlier. Dudley Sutton also played the title role in the first stage production of Joe Orton’s similarly ground-breaking Entertaining Mr Sloane. He worked steadily in both films and television right up to his death. On TV he was in Coronation Street, Dixon of Dock Green, The Baron, The Avengers, EastEnders, Casualty, Emmerdale, Holby City, Doctors among many other series. He will be remembered for playing Tinker Dill, Ian McShane’s sidekick, in the long-running series of Lovejoy, all seventy episodes. Among the other films Dudley Sutton did were Crossplot with Roger Moore, The Walking Stick with David Hemmings, One More Time with Sammy Davis Jr, A Town Called Bastard with Telly Savalas, Ken Russell’s The Devils, Valentino and The Rainbow, Ken Loach’s Family Life, The Stud with Joan Collins, Fellini’s Casanova, Michael Winner’s remake of The Big Sleep, Brimstone and Treacle with Sting, Lamb with Liam Neeson, Derek Jarman’s Edward II, The Football Factory with Danny Dyer, Dean Spanley with Peter O’Toole and Cockneys vs Zombies, etc. There are still three more films awaiting release: Steven Berkoff’s Tell Tale Heart, Sacha Bennett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and When the Devil Rides Out, with Oliver Tobias. Dudley Sutton married American actress Marjorie Steele in 1961. They have a daughter and divorced in 1965. He married again three times and fathered two sons.

MICHAEL DARVELL