1. John Paton Laurie was a Scottish stage, film, and television actor.
12 Facts About John Laurie
1. 2.
John Laurie appeared in scores of feature films with directors including Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Michael Powell and Laurence Olivier, generally playing memorable small or supporting roles.
3.
John Laurie is well known for his role in the sitcom Dad's Army as Private Frazer, a member of the Home Guard.
4.
In only his second season at Stratford, John Laurie got the chance to play Hamlet, which was almost unheard of for someone with such little experience.
5.
On radio, Laurie created the role of John the Baptist in Dorothy L Sayers' cycle of plays The Man Born to Be King, and reprised the role in two further versions of the cycle.
6.
John Laurie played the part of MacDuff in a radio adaptation of Macbeth, with Ralph Richardson in the title role.
7.
John Laurie went on to appear in Olivier's three Shakespearean films, Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III.
8.
In 1954, John Laurie joined the Edinburgh Gateway Company to play the leading role in Robert Kemp's The Laird o' Grippy, a translation into Scots of Moliere's L'avare.
9.
John Laurie starred as Mad Peter in the Hammer film The Reptile, and later appeared in The Abominable Dr Phibes, the Disney film One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, and The Prisoner of Zenda.
10.
John Laurie was married twice, first to Florence May Saunders, whom he met while at the Old Vic; she died from meningitis in 1926.
11.
John Laurie died in 1980, aged 83, from emphysema in the Chalfont and Gerrards Cross Hospital, Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire.
12.
John Laurie's body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the English Channel.