Harry H. Corbett

Corbett and his wife Maureen had two children, one of whom, Susannah Corbett, is an actress, best known for the role of Ellie Pascoe in the BBC's television adaptations of Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe detective novels. Nevertheless, he is best remembered today as one of the original action heroes of the cinema. He had died of a massive heart attack in the March of that year, at the age of fifty-seven. Crabbe's career waned somewhat in the 1950s, though he did make regular television appearances including one on an episode of the 1979 series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century where he plays a retired warrior named "Brigadier Gordon" in honor of Flash Gordon. Corbett's final acting role was in an episode of the Anglia Television anthology drama series Tales of the Unexpected, shot before his death and eventually transmitted two months afterwards, in May 1982. Crabbe starred in the television series, Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion (1955 to 1957) as Captain Michael Gallant; the adventure series aired on NBC. As with many other British comedy programmes of the era, there were also two theatrically-released Steptoe and Son films: Steptoe and Son (1972) and Steptoe Rides Again (1973). Other characters he portrayed included Western hero Billy the Kid and Buck Rogers.

Steptoe and Son did lead to Corbett gaining some work in comedy films, most notably starring in Carry On Screaming in 1966 and appearing in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977). His next major role was as Flash Gordon in the popular Flash Gordon serial (a role he reprised in two sequels). A subsequent tour of a Steptoe and Son stage show in Australia in the late 1970s proved to be a complete disaster, as any sort of working relationship between the pair of them was now impossible. In the 1933 movie, King of the Jungle the 1941's Jungle Man, and the 1952 serial, King of the Congo he played similar roles...but that's not Tarzan. Production on the series was also made stressful by Corbett's strained relationship with his co-star Brambell, and by the end of their time on the series they were not on speaking terms outside of takes. Other than a 1964 remake of the same movie, it would be the only movie in which he starred as Tarzan. Although the enormous popularity of Steptoe and Son - as the series was titled - made Corbett a star, it proved to be a dead-end to his serious acting career, as he became irreversibly associated with the Harold Steptoe character in the public eye. Crabbe's role in a 1933 Tarzan serial, also issued as a full length movie Tarzan the Fearless, launched a successful career in which he starred in over one hundred movies.

The play was a huge success and a full series was soon commissioned, which eventually ran, with some breaks, until 1974. Ironically, at that Olympics, he broke the record held by Johnny Weissmuller, whose role as Tarzan he would later assume. He played Harold Steptoe, a rag and bone man living with his irascible father Albert, played by Wilfrid Brambell, in a junkyard with only their horse for company. Raised in Hawaii, he excelled as a swimmer and participated in two Olympic Games: 1928, where he won the bronze medal for the 1,500 meter freestyle, and 1932, where he won the gold medal for the 400 meter freestyle. In 1962 he appeared in The Offer, an episode of the BBC's anthology series of one-off comedy plays, Comedy Playhouse, written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. According to the Internet Movie Database he was born February 17, 1907, and his birth name was Clarence Linden Crabbe. He also guested regularly in television dramas, appearing in episodes of popular series such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (as four different characters in four different episodes between 1957 and 1960) and Police Surgeon, the series that would later become The Avengers (in 1960). Larry 'Buster' Crabbe (February 7, probably in 1908, Oakland, California - April 23, 1983, Scottsdale, Arizona) was an American athlete turned actor, who starred in a number of popular serials in the 1930s and 1940s.

From 1958 he began to appear regularly in film roles, first coming to public attention as a very serious, intense performer, completely in contrast to the reputation he would later gain as a sitcom actor. When asked, he would often joke that the 'H' stood for "h'anything" - a manner of saying the word 'anything' once popular in some English regional dialects. In the early 1950s he added the middle initial 'H' to his name in order to avoid confusion with the then-popular television entertainer Harry Corbett, who was well known for his act with the puppet Sooty. Corbett himself served in the army during the Second World War, and following his discharge after the war's conclusion he took up acting as a career, initially in repertory theatre.

When he was very young his mother died, and Corbett was sent back to England where he was raised by an aunt in Manchester. His father was an officer in the British Army who was stationed in the country as part of the occupying forces there. Corbett was born in Burma, now Myanmar, while it was still a British colony. Early in his career he was dubbed "the English Marlon Brando" by some sections of the British press, but due to typecasting his career never really developed as a major film actor, much to his frustration.

Corbett (1925-1982) (born Harry Corbett on February 28, 1925 in Rangoon, Burma; died March 21, 1982 in Hastings, East Sussex, England, UK) was a British actor, who was best known for his starring role in the hugely popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 70s. Harry H.