Brian Rix

Lore & Background

Rix was born in Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire, the youngest of four children. His father Herbert Rix and his two brothers ran the shipping company Robert Rix in Hull. Rix had an interest in cricket and only wished to play for Yorkshire in his childhood; he played for Hull Cricket Club at 16 and after the war for the Marylebone Cricket Club, the Stage and the Lord's Taverners. Educated at the Quaker Bootham School in York, his ambitions changed. His elder sister Sheila became an actress during his school days, and Rix developed the same ambition. All four Rix children became interested in theatre because of their mother Fanny, who ran an amateur dramatic society and was lead soprano in the local operatic society. Two of them, Brian and Sheila, became professional actors.

Rix became a professional actor at 18, on deferment from service with the Royal Air Force, with Donald Wolfit's Shakespeare Company. After only four months as a professional actor, he played Sebastian in Twelfth Night at the St James's Theatre in London. He gained his first weekly repertory experience with the White Rose Players at the opera house in Harrogate, then entered the Royal Air Force, eventually ending as a volunteer Bevin Boy working down coal mines near Doncaster. After the war, he formed his own theatre company in 1947 as an actor-manager, a career he pursued for 30 years. He ran repertory companies at Ilkley, Bridlington and Margate. At Bridlington in 1949 he found the play Reluctant Heroes, later adapted for film. That year he became engaged to Elspet Gray, an actress in his company; they married six months later and were together for 64 years until her death in February 2013.

In 1950 the newly-weds toured with Reluctant Heroes until Rix persuaded the Whitehall Theatre management that this army farce was ideal to follow Worm's Eye View. Rix's productions ran at the Whitehall for the next 16 years, then moved to the Garrick Theatre, breaking many West End records. During the next 18 years, Rix presented more than 90 one-night-only television farces on the BBC, often at Christmas or bank holidays, with viewing figures often reaching 15 million. In the early 1960s, Rix was the highest-paid actor (along with Robert Morley) to appear on BBC television. Only a handful of the televised farces remain in the BBC archive.

Reader's Guide

Rix's significance lies in his record-breaking run of farces at the Whitehall Theatre and later the Garrick, which broke the previous record held by the Aldwych Theatre team. The Aldwych farces ran for 10 years, seven months and four days; Rix went on for another 16 years. In 1961 he gave a glass of champagne to every audience member who had watched Simple Spymen, served by popular actors who had been with him, to celebrate passing that record. Seven playwrights were spawned by the Whitehall farces, including Colin Morris, John Chapman, Ray Cooney, Tony Hilton, Clive Exton, Raymond/Charles Dyer and Philip Levene. Other writers who worked for Rix on television included Christopher Bond, John Cleese and Barry Took. Despite being described by Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times as 'The greatest master of farce in my theatre-going lifetime' and receiving numerous plaudits, no theatrical awards were ever forthcoming. Rix was philosophical about this lack of recognition, accepting it as the fate of low comedians before him. His legacy also includes his disability campaigning: after his first child was born with Down syndrome, he became a campaigner, entered the House of Lords as a crossbencher in 1992, and was president of Mencap from 1998 until his death.

Did You Know?

• Rix lost his trousers at least 12,000 times in the 26 years he was on stage in farces.
• He was the joint highest paid star on the BBC in the early 1960s, along with Robert Morley.
• His sister Sheila Mercier played Annie Sugden for more than 20 years in Emmerdale Farm.
• Rix's understudy at the Whitehall, John Chapman, wrote the first draft of Dry Rot while waiting in the dressing room.