Arthur Veary Treacher (July 23, 1894 – December 14, 1975) was an English actor born in Brighton, East Sussex, England. He was a veteran of World War I.
After the war he established a stage career and in 1928 he went to America as part of a musical-comedy revue called Great Temptations. He began his film career in the 1930s, which included a role in three different Shirley Temple films: Stowaway (1936), Heidi (1937), and The Little Princess (1939). Scenes intentionally put the six-feet-four Treacher standing or dancing side-by-side with the tiny child actress, which could only make her cuter. Treacher filled the role of the ideal butler, and he portrayed P.G. Wodehouse's perfect valet character Jeeves in two movies, Thank You, Jeeves! (1936) and Step Lively, Jeeves (1937). He also played a valet or butler in several other films including: Personal Maids, Mister Cinderella, Bordertown, and Curly Top.
Treacher played the role of Constable Jones in Mary Poppins and made many guest appearances on U.S. television, in addition to being Merv Griffin's announcer and sidekick on the The Merv Griffin Show in the mid-1960s and early-1970s ("...and now, here's the dear boy himself, Meeeer-vin!") When Griffin switched from syndication to CBS, the network brass insisted that Treacher was too old for the show. Griffin fought to keep Treacher, but eventually relented and announced Treacher's retirement. No replacement was hired.
In 1964 Treacher played the role of Arthur Pinkney in two episodes of the TV series, The Beverly Hillbillies. His role was that of a stuffy English butler who mistakenly believed the hillbillies were the domestic servants of the family he was hired by to improve the quality of the eastates live-in staff, while the hillbillies believed Pinkney to be a boarder at their Beverly Hills Mansion. Once found out that he was at the wrong millionaire's home,it was concluded that Pinkney should remain as the boarder at the Clampet residence in hopes introducing the backwoods family to culture and refinement. It still remains two of the funniest episodes written for the TV show.
Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips was also a popular restaurant chain in the 1970s named after him, although it is unclear if he had any financial investment in the chain. The chain continues to exist, though with only 45 franchises left throughout the United States.
Partial filmography
Curly Top (1935)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Magnificent Obsession (1935)
Anything Goes (1936)
Hearts Divided (1936)
Satan Met a Lady (1936)
Thank You, Jeeves! (1936)
Stowaway (1936)
Thin Ice (1937)
Heidi (1937)
Mad About Music (1938)
Up the River (1938)
The Little Princess (1939)
Barricade (1939)
Forever and a Day (1943)
In Society (1944)
National Velvet (1944)
Swing Out, Sister (1945)
That Midnight Kiss (1949)
Mary Poppins (1964)
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Arthur Treacher
Arthur Treacher at the Internet Movie Database
This article about a United Kingdom film and TV actor or actress is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 573/1000000
Post-expand include size: 4594/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 1709/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 1/500
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Treacher"
Categories: 1894 births | 1975 deaths | English film actors | British television actors | Deaths from cardiovascular disease | Hollywood Walk of Fame | People from Sussex | Television personalities | United Kingdom screen actor stubsHidden category: Articles needing additional references from July 2007
Views
Article
Discussion
