Guest Actor Biography
Page 91 of 127

   

Garfield Morgan

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by Pete Stampede

Garfield Morgan's villainous roles in The Avengers are a real surprise to TV fans of my generation, for whom the balding, dour-faced actor will always be Haskins from The Sweeny (Thames, 1975-78), the long-suffering superintendent (or "guvnor" in Sweeny-speak) given an ulcer by the antics of the Flying Squad boys. Seemingly born to play policemen, Morgan was actually born in Birmingham in 1931, but never seems to play Brummies, and despite his Welsh-derived name, has rarely played Welshmen. One of his first sightings, unbilled but already in his accustomed role, was at a Scotland Yard desk in The Informers (1963, US: Underworld Informers), a terrific little policer with a different Avengers face on view every few minutes.

The 60's saw him becoming one of the small screen's most regular supporting actors, in a constant succession of filmed and videotaped series, beginning with an Armchair Theatre, "Dumb Martian" (ABC, 1962), also with Ray Barrett, which turned out to be the pilot for Irene Shubik's SF anthology series Out Of This World, produced at the behest of Avengers creator Sydney Newman. Then, Ghost Squad, "The Grand Duchess", (ATV, 1963), with William Gaunt from "Traitor in Zebra" also guesting, and later in the same series (with a slight name change), G.S.5, "Dr. Ayre", (ATV, 1964), written by Brian Clemens; Undermind, "The New Dimensions" (ABC, 1965), a quite forgotten serial about mind control and an official conspiracy, here guesting along with Judy Parfitt; R3, "And No Birds Sing" (BBC, 1965), another obscure telefantasy series, co-starring a pre-stardom, slim and sober Oliver Reed; and The Baron, "Night of the Hunter" (ATV/ITC, 1966), an episode set in an unnamed Mediterranean dictatorship, in which the casting director seemed to think that everyone living in Mediterranean dictatorships is bald. In his ITV Encyclopaedia Of Adventure, Dave Rogers noted that "Ten years before actor John Thaw donned his kipper ties to make life tough for villains as Detective Inspector Jack Regan in The Sweeney, he could be found equally well at home wearing the white-belted uniform of the Royal Military Police (Special Investigation Branch)", in the title role of Redcap; and Morgan, his future boss, was in one episode, "The Killer" (ABC, 1966), playing Sergeant O'Keefe—I don't know whether this was another military policeman, but wouldn't bet against it! Another nod towards Morgan's future was his first regular role as a cop, a (presumably Welsh) inspector called Gwyn Lewis, in the early episodes of Softly Softly (BBC, 1966-76), Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor's successful spin-off from Z Cars (I've a feeling Morgan was probably in the latter series at some stage too, but frustratingly, a proper episode guide for Z Cars seems impossible to find).

In yet another police role, Morgan was in my all-time favourite episode of Man In A Suitcase, "The Sitting Pigeon", (ATV/ITC, 1967), one of the best and most realistic episodes of one of the best and most realistic ITC series, right from the pre-credits sequence, forcing the mumbling, magnificent McGill (Richard Bradford) into a car bound for Scotland Yard, apparently under arrest; McGill ends up being coerced by the police into minding cowardly, loudmouthed villain George Sewell (another mainstay of British crime dramas), whose role, preparing to testify against his gangster brothers, was clearly based on Charlie Kray, less successful brother of the notorious twins. Anyone catching the scene early on where Morgan beats Sewell up in prison, with a Liverpool-accented warder prepared to look the other way, could be forgiven for thinking they were watching a genuine gritty British crime series, not a glossy transatlantic-aimed ITC product. More in character for that company was The Saint, "The Art Collectors", (ATV/ITC, 1967) with "Escape in Time" guests Peter Bowles and Geoffrey Bayldon, and Morgan hiding behind a pair of spectacles and a mittel-European accent; Out Of The Unknown, "1+1=1.5", (BBC, 1969), in the SF anthology series, was a satire on overpopulation with Morgan as a bemused parent; and Department S, "Spencer Bodily is 60 Years Old", (ATV/ITC, 1969) found him involved with the mystery of the youthful corpse of the title, perplexing Jason King (Peter Wyngarde) and associates.

A wholly eccentric entry in the mystery field was Judge Dee (Granada, 1969), based on a real-life character in first-century China; just to show that The Avengers wasn't the only series with dubious rules on casting performers from ethnic minorities, ALL the actors in this, including Michael Goodliffe in the title role, and Morgan, another regular as a character called Tao Gan, were Caucasians under make-up. Perhaps it's not surprising that this only ran for one series, and its last produced episode ended up never being broadcast at all. By contrast, working in a still popular series, Morgan did two episodes, as different characters, of Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased), "The House on Haunted Hill" (ATV/ITC, 1969), strangely not as a cop or a crook, but a worried client of Randall's, and a bigger role in "You Can Always Find a Fall Guy" (1969), with Adam Adamant's girlfriend Juliet Harmer (also in "The Town of No Return"), as a nun up to no good. Callan, "Breakout", (Thames, 1970), had him as a Soviet agent whom Edward Woodward, as British Intelligence's unwilling killer, has to spring from prison and then eliminate, while The Persuaders, "Take Seven", (ATV/ITC, 1971) was the usual Roger Moore-Tony Curtis pratting around, so little attention was paid to scripting on this series that a later episode, "To the Death, Baby", used exactly the same plot.

Somewhat surprisingly, Morgan was also a regular in several sitcoms, generally still playing impassive figures of authority though. Dear Mother...Love Albert (Thames, 69; YTV, 70-1972) was a vehicle for Rodney Bewes, the fatter and less amusing half of The Likely Lads, here as a milksop from the North working in a sweet factory in London, run by Morgan as a charcter called A.C. Strain; it was notable on the production side, in that Bewes also co-wrote and co-produced it, and that it changed networks after a year. I'm sure Morgan turned up at least once in On The Buses (LWT, c. 1970), as a bigwig from the bus company leaning on the dreaded Blakey (Stephen Lewis) and his idiot crew. He turned up in Mike And Bernie's Show (Thames, 1971), a special for second-string double act Mike and Bernie Winters (catchphrase; "Eeeehh, chuchie face"), which purported to tell their life story; the brothers split up later that decade, and Bernie took to performing with a large dog called Schnorbitz, arguably a more talented replacement. The Train Now Standing (LWT, 1973) starred Bill Fraser, seen in "Small Game for Big Hunters" and an expert at comic grouches, as a pompous station master on an out-of-the-way railway line, regularly given grief by Morgan as an officious area manager.

More in Morgan's usual line was a rare US TV appearance in Madigan, "The London Beat", (NBC/Univeral, 1972), inevitably as a Scotland Yard man, briefing visiting cop Richard Widmark on imported gangster David Bauer; a role in another anthology series, Menace, "The Judas Goat", (BBC, 1973), again with William Gaunt, and relevantly, Special Branch, "Something About A Soldier", (Thames, 1974), as a Major under observation in a series starring the aforementioned George Sewell, 70's medallion-man Patrick Mower (seen in "A Sense of History"), and Paul Eddington. At the risk of repeating myself from my entry on Eddington, it's true to say that Special Branch was to The Sweeney what Police Surgeon was to The Avengers, being made on film (by Thames' newly formed division Euston Films), employing a lot of the same production personnel, and being a more realistic effort than the ITC film series were. More to the point, another of Morgan's Sweeney co-stars, Dennis Waterman, not yet started on his career path of yelping "Guv!" every few minutes, had been in the previous episode.

Morgan played Frank Haskins right from The Sweeney's TV movie pilot, Regan (Thames, 1974), which saw Thaw, in the title role, taking solving a police colleagues's killing into his own hands and, starting as he meant to go on, slamming the phone down on Haskins on more than one occasion. By the time The Sweeney proper had hit the screens, in the first week of 1975, with "Ringer", seeing the Flying Squad geezers squaring up to a strong guest villain trio of Ian Hendry, Brian Blessed and Alan Lake, Morgan had attained regular billing on the opening titles. Despite this, he didn't actually appear in every episode; for example, he was absent from my absolute favourite, "Supersnout" (1975), which had, of all people, Bill Maynard (former stand-up and star of such epoch-making sitcoms as Oh No It's Selwyn Froggitt) as a blazer-wearing poltroon called Quirk, standing in for Haskins "while he's in Toronto" and obsessed with catching the non-existent Post Office Gang. And looking again at Regan, it's possible that at that early stage, white-haired, craggy-faced Morris Perry (seen in "Tunnel of Fear", "Dragonsfield" and "Killer Whale"), who played Maynon, another senior Flying Squad man, could have been intended as the series' principal "guvnor"; the inevitable end scene of Regan being reprimanded on his methods—"the days of the one man band are over"—here takes place with Maynon, not Haskins. Perry played Maynon in a few later episodes, having roughly equal screen time with Morgan in "Queen's Pawn" (1975; featuring Julian Glover and Tony Caunter) as they discuss the wisdom of giving Regan 48 hours to nick a wrong 'un. Just for the record, the Flying Squad were and are a real-life division of Scotland Yard, with particular responsibility for large-scale crime, and the show's title, as the logo announcing commercial breaks would helpfully explain, derives from Cockney rhyming slang—"Sweeney Todd" = Flying Squad.

Nevertheless, for both tele-obsessives like me and casual viewers, Morgan is inseparable from his appearances as Haskins, tight-lipped, narrow-eyed and more often than not struggling to keep Thaw as Regan, and to a lesser extent, Waterman as the younger, easier-going Sergeant George Carter, in check. The recurring image is of him seated at his desk while they stood in front of him, and snapping out lines like "You're off the case, George! You're emotionally involved" and Waterman pleading "But Guv...". Or, "The Fifth Floor won't be happy, Jack—you've broken every rule in the book", and Thaw replying, with exaggerated body language to the fore, and preferably cigarette in mouth, "You seem to have forgotten that I nicked a villain, Guv!" Particularly in the early episodes, Haskins' office scenes would feature him gulping down glasses of milk to pacify his ulcer, which couldn't help but add to the gap between him and his charges; for Regan and Carter, the solution to all ills was always a large Scotch.

During a tricky undercover mission in "The Placer" (1975), when reminded of Haskins' insistence on being informed with constant progress reports, the professional loose cannon Regan moans, "Haskins is doing for the Sweeney what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen!" And in "Abduction" (1975), when Regan's 8-year old daughter is kidnapped, he gets a dressing-down from Haskins, after withholding information in rescuing her; when another officer present says that he's informed Haskins of his official complaint first, Regan, who spends the whole scene shouting even more than usual, spits, "If I was making a complaint against another officer, I'd go to the engine driver, not his oil rag!", confirming the always present suspicion that he regards his boss as a pen-pusher. This comes to the fore in "Thou Shalt Not Kill!" (1975), with Ronald Lacey as one of two villains taking hostages in a siege at a bank. By the time Haskins arrives on the scene, Regan has already lined up police marksmen to zero Lacey and cohort, all they need is Haskins' go-ahead; but, in a sequence of close-ups, tensely directed by Douglas Camfield, doubts play over Morgan's face, he does not give the order, and the marksmen don't get their chance. For the rest of the episode, Thaw regards him with even more of his patented surly looks than usual, and at the end, when Haskins ruefully surveys the scene after Lacey kills one hostage, permanently disfigures the other and is discovered whimpering insanely—not for the only time in that actor's career—over his accomplice's corpse, Regan snarls, "He was handed it on a plate! We gave him his inch—and he took his mile."

Indeed, Haskins rarely seemed to be seen outside the station (or "factory" as it was often termed); it came as a surprise to find, in "Contact Breaker" (1975), that he'd once had his jaw broken by a tear-away (Warren Clarke, seen in "Invasion of the Earthmen"). Equally out of character was his participation in the pre-credits sequence of "Pay Off" (1976), lying in wait for a pack of villains with the inevitable car chase and shoot-out following; and at the end of the sequence, when Haskins runs out of ammo, it looks as if Morgan is mouthing a naughty word, just as the opening titles come crashing in! Another exception was in "Faces" (1975), where Haskins unexpectedly turns up when Regan and co. prepare to ambush a group of terrorists; Morgan here got to point a gun at fellow "Take-Over" guest Keith Buckley while uttering the immortal words, "Drop it, you're nicked!", before getting into a punch-up with gang leader Barry Stanton (seen in "Hostage"). In the aforementioned "The Placer", Haskins, perhaps chastened by Regan's remarks, had a go at undercover work himself, trailing Stanley Meadows and fellow villain on the golf course; unfortunately for him, when the surveillance tape is played back at HQ, it picks up one of them saying, "Here comes that prat that keeps following us around!", much to Carter's amusement.

Morgan got to give Haskins a bit more dimension in "Golden Fleece" (1975) and "Victims" (1978), both written by Avengers hand Roger Marshall, which had scenes of his home life; further distancing him from Regan and Carter's footloose lifestyle, he had a church-going wife, children at boarding school, and even wore an apron in the kitchen! The former episode had him being framed for bribery by some Australian villains, just when he's considering leaving the police to take up a security position at a clearing bank; while "Victims" centered on his wife disappearing and suffering a breakdown, and confirmed that she loathed his being a policeman. In a flashback scene in this one, Morgan got to play his younger self, with the aid of a toupee; unfortunately, this created a bit of a cock-up in continuity, as his wife had been played by a different actress in "Golden Fleece". In the last ever episode, "Jack or Knave" (1978), Regan is accused of corruption, and after being cleared, delivers a magnificent speech—"I am utterly and abjectly pissed off with this little lot!... Well yer can stuff it!"—before walking out of the station and out of the police force. With a shell-shocked Carter looking on, the final scene is of Haskins, watching Regan depart in a cab, saying "He'll be back—he needs the job like an alcoholic needs booze." Connoisseurs of series endings might like to compare this with Mother's parting words in "Bizarre."

Morgan wasn't in either of the movie spin-offs, Sweeney! (1977), which again had Morris Perry filling in as Maynon, and Sweeney 2 (1978); to be honest he didn't miss much, as both felt like inflated episodes of the TV show, and Thaw and Waterman over-acted. He later had an in-joke cameo, as a superintendent, in an episode of Waterman's next series, Minder, "Not a Sorry Lorry, Morrie" (Thames, 1988), also with Roy Kinnear and Ronald Fraser; by Sweeney standards, Waterman's character Terry McCann would have been a minor villain, although in truth he had the proverbial heart of gold, constantly sidetracked into dodgy schemes by Arthur Daley (George Cole in brilliant form). While Thaw and Waterman quickly moved on to other starring projects, there's no denying that Morgan was by now typecast as a starchy police officer, and, again unlike his co-stars, he remained in character roles, often in sitcoms. The occasional film role included the curious one of an Israeli general in The Odessa File (1974).

He was Hywel Bennett's landlord in Shelley (Thames, 79-1984), although it was never particularly funny, Bennett's layabout philosopher caught some of the mood of the depressed early 80's. An oddity was Rat Trap (HTV, 1979), a TV taping, made at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, of a stage play by Doctor Who writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin, with George Sewell (again) and former stand-up Dave King. Morgan was then "The Bishop", one of a trio of con men in West End Tales (ATV, 1981), a quite forgotten sitcom with the late Robin Nedwell, written by Keith Waterhouse (co-creator of BILLY LIAR, novelist, playwright and journalist; respected but very variable); and a Salvation Army Brigadier in Hallelujah! (YTV, 1984), a tailor-made vehicle for the indestructible Thora Hird, as an over-enthusiastic Sally Army officer. He did some self-spoofing in Alias Smith And Jones (BBC, 1987), in the days when Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones were still quite sharp and funny; they played "Porno and Bribeasy of Scotland Yard" in a regular black and white serial, with Morgan as (of course) a grumpy, desk-bound superior. Next, he was another autocratic boss, Tim Brooke-Taylor's in You Must Be The Husband (BBC, 87-1988), one of several wet, ordinary sitcoms which unfortunately characterised Brooke-Taylor's career after The Goodies' demise. The Nineteenth Hole (Central, 1989) starred Eric Sykes and was written by Johnny Speight, and was intended to satirise the snobbery and small-mindedness of golf clubs, with Morgan as the Captain; but some of the writing was just crass, it attracted so many complaints that it was dropped halfway through its run by one ITV region, and sadly, Sykes hasn't starred in a series since. (He gave an interview after it finished, stating "I am past my sell-by date.") Morgan supported again, as the Party Whip (not as exciting as it sounds, it's a parliamentary term) in No Job For A Lady (Thames, 90-1992), with Penelope Keith as an MP.

In the early 90's, newspapers reported that Morgan was seriously ill after contracting cancer. Luckily he seems to have recovered, and is still occasionally seen on screen, his most recent film being the Welsh-set The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain (1995), starring the dreaded Hugh Grant (not that I'm trying to defend the Avengers movie, but think how worse it could have been if Grant had played Steed, as suggested at one stage!) He has also taken part in more than a few charity events on the golf circuit.

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Page last modified: 5 May 2017.

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