1. Alfie Bass was born in Bethnal Green, London, the youngest in a Jewish family with ten children; his parents had left Russia many years before he was born.
22 Facts About Alfie Bass
1. 2.
Alfie Bass appeared in a variety of stage, film, television and radio productions throughout his career.
3.
Alfie Bass was born Abraham Basalinsky in Bethnal Green in London's East End.
4.
Alfie Bass was the youngest of ten children of Jacob Basalinsky, who had fled Jewish persecution in Russia, and his wife, Ada Miller.
5.
Alfie Bass was active in the labour movement and often attended union meetings.
6.
Alfie Bass was later called up into the Middlesex Regiment as a despatch rider.
7.
Alfie Bass maintained his interest in acting by appearing in concert parties and in Army Film Unit documentaries.
8.
Alfie Bass appeared in a number of feature films including The Lavender Hill Mob, Hell Drivers, A Tale of Two Cities and Alfie starring Michael Caine and Shelley Winters.
9.
Alfie Bass starred in Roman Polanski's vampire film The Fearless Vampire Killers as innkeeper Yoine Shagal with his daughter Sarah played by Sharon Tate.
10.
Alfie Bass had a small part in I Was Monty's Double as a non-speaking passenger on a train.
11.
Alfie Bass appeared as a poacher rescued by Robin Hood in the first episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene, in episode 2 "The Moneylender", as well as in episode 10 of the first series which was titled "The Ordeal".
12.
Alfie Bass appeared in two later episodes during season two titled "The Goldmaker" and "The Goldmaker's Return" as Lepidus, the roguish alchemist, rescued from the Sheriff by Little John.
13.
Alfie Bass appeared in The Army Game, a British TV comedy series, as Private Montague 'Excused Boots' Bisley, and its sequel Bootsie and Snudge from 1960 to 1963, working at a Gentlemen's club with Bill Fraser as 'Claude Snudge' and Clive Dunn as 'Henry Beerbohm Johnson'.
14.
Alfie Bass additionally played the character in another spin-off, Foreign Affairs, in 1964.
15.
Alfie Bass played Lemuel "Lemmy" Barnet in the third and fourth series of the landmark 1950s science fiction BBC Radio series Journey into Space.
16.
Alfie Bass was a subject of the television programme This Is Your Life in March 1970, when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.
17.
Alfie Bass appeared in a 1979 episode of the ITV drama series Danger UXB: Just Like a Woman, as a family man with an unexploded bomb in his back garden.
18.
Alfie Bass played a memorable Silas Wegg in the BBC's 1976 adaptation of Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.
19.
Alfie Bass guest starred in two episodes of the British comedy television The Goodies, in which he appeared as the "Town Planner" in Camelot, and as the "Giant" in The Goodies and the Beanstalk.
20.
In 1955, Alfie Bass recorded the novelty song "Pity the Downtrodden Landlord".
21.
Alfie Bass died on 16 July 1987 in Barnet General Hospital, north London, following a heart attack.
22.
Alfie Bass was survived by his wife and their son and daughter.