Wylie Watson was the small man at the edge of the frame, the shifty crook or wily storekeeper with the neat moustache, and once, for Hitchcock, he made a music-hall turn the saddest thing in a chase thriller. Nothing else he did quite matched it.
Fi1m perspective
A man in evening dress stands under the lights of a music hall and takes questions from the floor. He is small, tidy, moustached, and he answers everything. That is Mr Memory in The 39 Steps (1935), and the film, which our review rightly calls brisk, does not slow down for him. Watson does not need it to. He plays the act as a man proud of the one thing he can do, and the part turns out to matter to the story far more than its size suggests, in a way we will not describe. We were sorrier for him than a chase thriller has any business making us, and it is because Watson never lets him become a joke.
He had earned the right to play a variety turn. Watson began in variety theatre in the late 1890s, a boy soprano in a family act, and did not reach films until 1929. Through the 1930s and 1940s he was a working character actor in British cinema, in Hitchcock and at Ealing, and the parts ran to type: diminutive, shifty or cunning. He was Salvation Watkins in Jamaica Inn (1939), one of the gang in Hitchcock's last British film before Hollywood. He was Spicer, the down-at-heel gangster, in Brighton Rock (1948), and Joseph Macroon, the wily storekeeper, in Whisky Galore (1949). In 1952 he emigrated to Australia, and The Sundowners (1960), as Herb Johnson, was his last film.
What he did well was give a small part a life of its own. Mr Memory is the clearest case, but Spicer and Macroon are cited for the same thing, and he was good at comedy, in wartime shorts and at Ealing. What he did less well was avoid repeating himself. The later roles are fair game for the complaint that they were less distinctive than the early ones; Tawny Pipit (1944) is the usual example. Our own review of The Sundowners, at 74, found Fred Zinnemann's outback warm and well acted and too long, and had no reason to pick Watson out of it. He is one face among many, which for an actor who once made a music hall hold its breath is a quiet way to finish.
So the recommendation is the obvious one. See The 39 Steps, and when the small man comes on in the second half of the bill, watch what he does with his hands and his pride rather than waiting for Robert Donat to come back. Then try Whisky Galore for the comedy. The rest is the honest record of a character actor who was typed early and kept working, which is most character actors, and there is no shame in it.
Biography
Wylie Watson (born John Wylie Robertson, also credited as John Wylie Francis Robertson) was a Scottish character actor. He began his career in variety and music hall before entering films in 1929.
He is best remembered for his role as the music-hall performer Mr Memory in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935). Other notable appearances include Jamaica Inn (1939), Brighton Rock (1948), Whisky Galore! (1949) and The Sundowners (1960). Watson emigrated to Australia in the early 1950s and died there in 1966.
