- Stanley Holloway, Passport to Pimlico, 1948. Already booked for another tale of the Huggetts family (making him the #1 UK box-office star by 1950), Warner had to pass on the first of the famous Ealing comedies. Another ex-music hall star took over the town councillor trying to make the London borough of Pimlico into… an independent state! Holloway did so well – and in the following Lavender Hill Mob – that he was chosen for Alfred Dolittle, Julie Andrews’ dustman father in My Fair Lady on stage and screen – a role made for Warner, the eternal paterfamilias! Then again, by then Jack had the most successful post-war TV series, Dixon of Dock Green.
- John Longden, Quatermass 2, 1956. A change of Inspector Lomax for the Hammer sequel version of the BBC TV serial. And necessary. The UK public would have had difficulty in accepting Warner as a police inspector when he was the most famous bobby in the land – Dixon of Dock Green, TV, 1955-1976 – about an ordinary London copper – resurrected by the author, Lord Ted Willis, after being shot dead in the 1949 film, The Blue Lamp. His killer was Dirk Bogarde (No, really!). By the time the TV series ended, Warner was 80 – and a sergeant, still in uniform but usually behind a desk – to hide the fact that he was wearing his slippers
Birth year: 1895Death year: 1981Other name: Casting Calls: 2