John Laurie

John Laurie’s jealous crofter makes the cottage in The 39 Steps (1935) an uneasy place to interrupt a chase. Alfred Hitchcock gives John the Crofter and Peggy Ashcroft’s character enough attention for their lives to matter independently of Hannay’s escape. We were moved by this passage because Ashcroft’s warmth makes a brief encounter feel worth staying with. Laurie supplies the severity beside her, but neither actor lets us forget that these people have concerns beyond the stranger passing through.

That is the Laurie we rate: a supporting actor whose intensity makes it harder to treat a small part as disposable. His gaunt face and dour manner lent themselves to Scotsmen, farmers, clergymen and authority figures, and there is an obvious limit to that kind of casting. A familiar severity can tell us what to expect too quickly. In The 39 Steps, the jealousy gives it a particular cause, while Ashcroft keeps the scene from belonging only to his suspicions.

The 39 Steps was his breakthrough, following a film debut in Hitchcock’s Juno and the Paycock (1930). The subsequent supporting work put him with directors who had room for such an emphatic presence: Powell and Pressburger in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), and David Lean in Hobson’s Choice (1954). His Shakespearean stage experience also found a direct use with Laurence Olivier, who cast him in all three of his Shakespeare films. In Henry V (1944), Laurie played Jamy.

Television became regular work in the 1950s, eventually giving him his best-known part, Private James Frazer in Dad’s Army (1968–1977). There is also his appearance as The Vet in the series Steptoe and Son (1962), though our affection for that programme rests chiefly on Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell. Frazer gave the pessimism a regular comic setting. We prefer the crofter, whose jealousy makes that familiar dourness less comfortable to watch. Start with The 39 Steps; the detour to the cottage deserves as much attention as the pursuit.