Edward Chapman

Acting

Edward Chapman

Born 1901-10-13 · Harrogate, Yorkshire, England, UK

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Edward Chapman (13 October 1901 - 9 August 1977) was an English actor who starred in many films and television programmes, but is chiefly remembered as "Mr. Wilfred Grimsdale", the officious superior and comic foil to Norman Wisdom's character of Pitkin in many of his films from the late 1950s and 1960s. Chapman was born in Harrogate, Yorkshire, England. On leaving school he became a bank clerk but later began his stage career with Ben Greet's Company in June 1924 at the Repertory Theatre, Nottingham, playing Gecko in George du Maurier's Trilby. He made his first London stage appearance at the Court Theatre in August 1925 playing the Rev Septimus Tudor in The Farmer's Wife. Among dozens of stage roles that followed, he played Bonaparte to Margaret Rawlings's Josephine in Napoleon at the Embassy Theatre in September 1934. In 1928 he attracted the attention of Alfred Hitchcock, who gave him the role of "The Paycock" in the 1930 film, Juno and the Paycock. In the same year he also made an appearance in Caste (of which no prints are known to exist). He had a role in The Citadel in 1938 and appeared alongside George Formby in the Ealing Studios comedy Turned Out Nice Again in 1941. During the Second World War he took a break from acting and joined the Royal Air Force. After training he was posted to 129 (Mysore) Squadron as an intelligence officer. This Spitfire squadron was based at Westhampnett and Debden. The squadron was heavily engaged in combat during this period and many of Chapman's fellow squadron mates were killed in action. Chapman first starred alongside Wisdom in 1957's Just My Luck in the role of Mr. Stoneway, but the next year in The Square Peg he appeared as Mr. Grimsdale for the first time opposite Wisdom's character of Norman Pitkin. In 1960 he and Wisdom acted together again in The Bulldog Breed, playing the roles of Mr. Philpots and Norman Puckle - Mr. Grimsdale and Pitkin in all but name. Wisdom appeared alone as Norman Pitkin in On the Beat in 1962, while Chapman branched out, starring in the Danish folktale Venus fra Vestø, but Grimsdale and Pitkin were reunited for 1963's A Stitch in Time. Their final performance together was in The Early Bird in 1965, Wisdom's first film in colour. In all, he appeared alongside Norman Wisdom in five films. After Sir John Gielgud was arrested for "persistently importuning male persons for immoral purposes", Chapman started a petition to force him to resign from Equity. Sir Laurence Olivier reportedly threw Chapman out of his dressing room when he solicited his signature for the petition. From 1965 Chapman played mostly characters roles on television. His final role was as Mr. Callon for nine episodes of the BBC's seafaring melodrama The Onedin Line between 1971 and 1972. Chapman died of a heart attack in Brighton, East Sussex, England at the age of 75. Description above from the Wikipedia article Edward Chapman, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Acting credits

X: The Unknown poster
6.1

Army radiation experiments awaken a subterranean monster from a fissure that feeds on energy and proceeds to terrorise a remote Scottish village. An American research scientist at a nearby nuclear plant joins with a British investigator to discover why the victims were radioactively burned and why, shortly thereafter, a series of radiation-related incidents are occurring in an ever-growing straight line away from the fissure.

X: The Unknown

1956

Things to Come poster
6.5

The story of a century: a decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel.

Things to Come

1936

Murder! poster
5.9

When actress Diana Baring is found in a daze beside her colleague’s murdered body, all evidence points to her guilt. During the trial, juror Sir John Menier doubts the verdict, but yields to pressure. Haunted by remorse, he launches his own investigation.

Murder!

1930

The Card poster
7.0

A charming and ambitious young man finds many ways to raise himself through the ranks in business and social standing - some honest, some not quite so. If he can just manage to avoid a certain very predatory woman.

The Card

1952

Night and the City poster
7.5

Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.

Night and the City

1950

Joey Boy poster
6.2

While posters urge austerity and vigilance in wartime Britain, 'Joey Boy' Thompson has never had it better. In a cellar beneath his East London fish shop, a gambling club thrives – and austerity provides a nice black-market sideline. But the dolce vita crumbles when police arrive in a lightning raid, and offer Joey and his fellow reprobates a stark choice: sign up for active service, or face another stint inside. Thus the lads find themselves heading off to Italy, determined to make the best of it...

Joey Boy

1965

Gone to Earth poster
6.2

Hazel Woods, a beautiful and young Welsh girl, lives a wild, rustic life and loves animals — in particular, her pet fox. She is hotly desired by Jack Reddin, a fox hunting squire who vies for her affection and pursues her, despite the purer amorous intentions of the local pastor.

Gone to Earth

1950

Convoy poster
5.6

A tale of life on board a Royal Navy cruiser assigned to protect the vital convoys between America and England during WWII.

Convoy

1940

The Citadel poster
6.4

Young, idealistic, newly qualified Scottish doctor Andrew Manson arrives in Wales and takes his first job in a mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its cause are thwarted, he moves to London. His new practice does poorly, but when a friend shows him how to make a lucrative practice from rich hypochondriacs, it will take a great shock to show him what the truth of being a doctor really is.

The Citadel

1938

The Man Who Haunted Himself poster
6.1

Executive Harold Pelham suffers a serious accident after which he faces the shadow of death. When, against all odds, he miraculously recovers, he discovers that his life does not belong to him anymore.

The Man Who Haunted Himself

1970

The Man Who Could Work Miracles poster
6.0

An ordinary man, while vigorously asserting the impossibility of miracles, suddenly discovers that he can perform them.

The Man Who Could Work Miracles

1936

Juno and the Paycock poster
4.6

In the slums of Dublin during the Irish Civil War, the Boyle family’s fragile stability collapses after news of an unexpected inheritance lures them into a false sense of prosperity. Captain Boyle, a boastful idler, squanders their meager resources, while his wife Juno holds the household together. When the fortune proves illusory, the family faces ruin, betrayal, and tragedy.

Juno and the Paycock

1930

Bhowani Junction poster
6.1

Anglo-Indian Victoria Jones seeks her true identity amid the chaos of the British withdrawal from India.

Bhowani Junction

1956

Poison Pen poster
6.7

The inhabitants of a peaceful village begin receiving mysterious hate mail penned by someone with malicious thoughts.

Poison Pen

1939

The Skin Game poster
5.4

An old traditional family and a modern family battle over land in a small English village.

The Skin Game

1931

Mandy poster
7.1

London, the early 1950s. Born deaf, Mandy is mute for most of her childhood. As she reaches school age her family itself is in danger of breaking up. Christine, Mandy's mother, has heard of a residential school for the oral education of the deaf.

Mandy

1952

Innocent Sinners poster
7.5

A neglected girl in post-World War II London befriends street urchins who help her build a tiny garden in a bombed-out church.

Innocent Sinners

1958

It Always Rains on Sunday poster
6.6

During a rainy Sunday afternoon, an escaped prisoner tries to hide out at the home of his ex-fiance.

It Always Rains on Sunday

1947

The Square Peg poster
6.5

Norman Pitkin and Mr Grimsdale are council workmen mending the road outside an Army base when they come into conflict with the military. Shortly afterwards, they get drafted and fall into the clutches of the Sergeant they have just bested. They are sent to France to repair roads in front of the Allied advance but get captured. Pitkin takes advantage of a useful similarity to impersonate General Schreiber and manages to return a hero

The Square Peg

1958

Marigold poster
8.0

Marigold is a 1938 British drama film set in Scotland in the Victorian era. It was filmed in Edinburgh. It was based on a 1914 play of the same title by Lizzie Allen Harker and Francis R. Pryor.

Marigold

1938

The Bulldog Breed poster
6.1

Norman Puckle, a well-meaning but clumsy grocer's assistant, can't seem to do anything right. After being rejected by Marlene, the love of his life, he attempts suicide, but can't even do that. He is saved from jumping off a cliff at 'Lover's Leap' by a Royal Navy petty officer. He persuades Puckle to join the Royal Navy, where he'll meet 'lots of girls'. Life in the Navy proves not to be as rosy as it's been described, and Puckle fails at every task during basic training. But despite this, he's regarded by the Admiral in charge of a rocket project to be a 'typical average British sailor', and chosen to be the first man to fly into outer space in an experimental rocket.

The Bulldog Breed

1960

Lisbon poster
6.4

For Capt. Robert John Evans, smuggling black-market goods is nothing out of the ordinary. But one day he's hired by Aristides Mavros for a more involved assignment -- sneaking an imprisoned American out of communist-controlled territory. The job seems challenging enough, but when he meets the prisoner's sultry wife, Sylvia, he realizes his mission comes with a startling catch: Not only must he rescue this man, he must bring him back from the dead.

Lisbon

1956

The October Man poster
6.2

Jim Ackland, who suffers from a head injury sustained in a bus crash, is the chief suspect in a murder hunt, when a girl that he has just met is found dead on the local common, and he has no alibi for the time she was killed.

The October Man

1947

The Magic Box poster
6.5

Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once young and handsome William Green. He changed his name to include his first wife's for the photographic portrait work he excelled at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.

The Magic Box

1952