George Frederick Joffre Hartree, known as Charles Hawtrey, was an English comedy actor and musician. Beginning at an early age as a boy soprano, he made several records before moving on to radio. His later career encompassed the theatre, the cinema, through the Carry On films, and television. His catchphrase was ‘How yer dripping mother off?’
About Charles Hawtrey (actor, born 1914) in brief
George Frederick Joffre Hartree, known as Charles Hawtrey, was an English comedy actor and musician. Beginning at an early age as a boy soprano, he made several records before moving on to radio. His later career encompassed the theatre, the cinema, through the Carry On films, and television. He was a semi-professional pianist for the Armed Forces during the Second World War. His catchphrase was ‘How yer dripping mother off?’, which he used in the film The Ghost of St Michael’s and the television series The Boy Detectives. He died in London in 1998. He is buried in Hounslow, Middlesex. He took his stage name from the theatrical knight, Sir Charles HawTrey, whose surname was a different spelling of his own. However, his father was actually a London car mechanic. He also directed 19 plays, including Dumb Dora, Discovers Tobacco, and, in war-written by Douglas Bader 3, a war drama called Oflag 3. He appeared in more than 70 films, including from this period Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage. He also appeared in The Taming of the Shrew in 1939 at the Old Vic. He had a long career in radio, appearing on the Children’s Hour in 1940s. He later appeared in the films The Goose Steps Out and The Goose steps Out. He played snooty Hubert Lane, the nemesis of William William Lane, in the series Just William Lane. His last film role was in The Ghost Of St Michael’s, but he refused to give him bigger roles in the latter two films, but continued to appear in films such as Good Morning, Boys and Where’s That Fire? In all he appeared in over 70 films and TV shows.
He made his first appearance on the stage in Boscombe, a suburb of Bournemouth, as early as 1925. In Peter Pan in 1931 he played the First Twin, with leading parts taken by Jean Forbes-Robertson and George Curzon. In 1936 he played in a revival of the play, this time taking the larger role of Slightly, alongside the husband-and-wife partnership of Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton playing Peter and Hook. In New Faces he starred in Eric Maschwitz’s New Faces at the Comedy Theatre in London, and was praised for his ‘chic and finished study of an alluring woman spy’. He recorded several duets with Evelyn Griffiths for the Regal label, including ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, which quickly became a wartime favourite. In 1930 he was billed as ‘The Angel-Voiced Choirboy’ even at the age of fifteen. He starred in Bats in the Belfry, a farce written by Diana Morgan and Robert MacDermott, which opened at the Ambassadors Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, on 11 March 1937. The cast included Ivor Barnard and Dame Lilian Braithwaite, as well as Vivien Leigh.
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