Actors
A 2002 Channel 4 television documentary, When Steptoe Met Son, told the story of how Brambell and Corbett were like chalk and cheese—similar to their on-screen characters. Corbett felt he had a promising career as a serious actor, but was trapped by his role as Harold and forced to keep returning to the series after typecasting limited his choice of work. Brambell was in reality homosexual, Sodomy was illegal in the UK, even between consenting adults, until 1967 when the "Sexual Offences Act" legalised such acts in private between adults over the age of 21 in England and Wales (and in Scotland officially from 1980), prior to this homosexuality in men had been a jailable offence, and thus driven underground. The documentary went on to describe an ill-fated final tour of Australia, and claimed that the actors' relationship broke down for good, a fact disputed by Corbett's family and writers Galton and Simpson.
Both of the main actors used voices considerably different from their own. Wilfrid Brambell—despite being Irish—spoke with a prestige Received Pronunciation English accent. Brambell was aged 49 when he accepted the role of Albert, only 13 years older than Corbett. For his portrayal, he acquired a second set of "rotten" dentures to accentuate his character's poor attitude to hygiene.
Read more about this topic: Steptoe And Son
Famous quotes containing the word actors:
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