Charters and Caldicott

*** Latest Updates ***

Night Train to Munich - more cast names and bio links added.

Crook's Tour screenshots added

As War Begins - new Charters and Caldicott book published

Charters and Caldicott were two movie characters played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, originally in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) and followed shortly after by Night Train to Munich (1940) and Crook's Tour (1941)

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New

Charters and Caldicott - As War Begins covers the period in Charters’ and Caldicott’s screen life between 1938 and 1943 covering their first four film appearances - The Lady Vanishes, Night Train To Munich, Crook’s Tour and Millions Like Us - all classic films. This book brings together - for the very first time - all the scenes that they appeared in - telling the story of what Charters and Caldicott saw, what they said and what they understood to be happening. It tells the humorous way that Charters and Caldicott saw the world and the funny and exciting adventures that happened to them during this very turbulent time in world history.


To purchase the book, click on the link below

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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charters-Caldicott-As-War-Begins/dp/151777876X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3W3UU8LF7M8J6&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7oeU2ozwVdIYpVHx0Vje62ehAO0WKO9vPQeM_CgzpPkgbfWL3JQ6YaqvJAauecTC.BLFGHgVX2NtW85S1QHBfl5sVsRj0hxHl-BJIGH0Z3pM&dib_tag=se&keywords=charters+and+caldicott&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1736790271&s=books&sprefix=charters+and+caldicott%2Cstripbooks%2C66&sr=1-2

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Radio appearances

The two characters played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne had a flourishing radio career in addition to their many film appearances.  Paired as similar characters to their movie roles, they performed in  several radio shows.  Their final appearance together was in 1952's Rogue Gallery; the pairing tragically brought to an end when Basil Radford collapsed in mid production and tragically died of an heart attack.  An image of the an article from 152, prior to Radford's death is reproduced below, alongside the text.

Cigarette Cards

Cigarette cards were collectable trade cards issued by tobacco manufacturers to stiffen cigarette packaging and advertise cigarette brands.  The two images below, featuring Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne were issued in the early 1950s by Carreras  Cigarettes.  The cards were issued in sets of a particular theme, sometimes as many as 50 or 100 in each particular set.  These two were from  Carreras Radio and TV Favourites set

Basil Radford - Carreras Cigarette Cards - Radio and TV Favourites

Naunton Wayne - Carreras Cigarette Cards - Radio and TV Favourites

TV Appearance

Charters and Caldicott made a TV aapearance in a 1985 BBC mystery series titled Charters and Caldicott but updated to the 1980s. It featured six 50 minute episodes broadcast on BBC1  from 10 January to 14 February 1985.
The story shows the pair in their retirement. Charters is a widower living in a cottage near Reigate whilst Caldicott lives in Viceroy Mansions in Marleybone.  
Charters and Caldicott regulalry meet up in London; Charters travels to his Pall Mall club via a Green Line bus (hailing it on the street as if it were a taxi).
The TV series has Charters and Caldicott as retired from the 'Foreign Services.  However, Sidney Gilliat (of Launder and Gilliat - the creators of Charters and Caldicott) was not happy about how the characters had developed or were being represented and consequently wrote to the national press expressing his surprise and hence disapproval.

Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as Charters and Caldicott

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This website is operated as a fans appreciation of the two great movie characters of Charters and Caldicott.

By purchasing your Charters and Caldicott DVDs, posters and other movie memorabillia from our retail partners (use the links provided) you will help to keep this website running.

Thank you for your continued support

Charters and Caldicott are amongst film history's most famous and favourite comedy duo.  Full of English idiosyncrasies, Charters and Caldicott represent a bygone era of the 1930's and 1940's.   These two English gentlemen are happy being English, have a love of cricket and are sticklers for upholding proper standards of dress, decorum and behaviour.
Whilst they frequently travel around Europe, they are generally clueless about foreigners and their language and customs. 

Charters and Caldicott, played brilliantly by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, first appeared in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes; the characters were created by Frank Launder  and Sidney Gilliat .  The duo, whilst well groomed and educated at Oxford, were snobbish and self-regarding.  At first glance they appear as a pair of bumbling upper class fools travelling around Europe ambivalent to the events developing around them in the period leading up to the second world war and during the period known as the 'Phoney War'.  It appears as though they were dreamt up by the German high command as a derogatory cameo of English foolishness.    What they actually reflect, is the British stiff upper lip in the face of adversity; they move almost seamlessly from their own cricket obsessed world to become enduring defenders of the British way of life by directly engaging the enemies in whichever adventure they get caught up in.  Their dry humour, gently making light of foreigners is an absolute delight to watch.

Wherever they are, Charters and Caldicott only want to be left alone in their own private English way.  Mostly, they manage to travel, enjoying their own company and conversations of cricket matches played and yet to be played.  When events around them come to the fore, they are initially reluctant to become involved, in the fear that they may be delayed to get to watch their next cricket match.  But each time, their sense of fair play overcome any initial doubts they have and  they come to defend the defenceless, quietly becoming the heroes of the hour.  Idiosyncratic as they are, Charters and Caldcott, retire quietly back to their world of cricket and conversations of past glories on the crease.  In truth, and behind their unstated humour, they represent how Britain alone, stood up to the might of the German Third Reich jack booting across Europe. 

https://x.com/chartersandc?mx=2

Film appearances


Following their first appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes  in 1938,, they proved popular with audiences and returned in the Gilliat-and-Launder films Night Train to Munich (1940, also starring Margaret Lockwood) and  Millions Like Us (1943), and in the 1941 BBC radio serials Crook's Tour (made into a film later that year also called Crook's Tour) and Secret Mission 609 (1942).

Wayne and Radford played similar double acts in several more movies, such as Dead of Night (1946, directed by Charles Crichton), A Girl in a Million (1946, Francis Searle) and Quartet (1948, directed by Ralph Smart).   Another recurring cricket-mad pairing played by them were Bright and Early in It's Not Cricket (1949, Alfred Roome), Helter Skelter (1949, Ralph Thomas) and Stop Press Girl (1949, Michael Barry).  They also made an appearance in the Ealing classic film Passport to Pimlico (1949) where they played the two civil servants Gregg and Starker charged with the responsibility of resolving the differences of the breakaway state.

It is also known that they were intended to reappear as Charters and Caldicott in I See a Dark Stranger (1945, Launder), but the actors and producers couldn't agree on the larger roles that Radford and Wayne demanded.   This resulted in the actors opting out of the film and consequently two similar but differently named characters were substituted.   However, this disagreement left Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne contractually prevented from portraying the characters under the names "Charters" and "Caldicott".  Subsequent films with the two actors as the same characters as Charters and Caldicott but with different names.

Carol Reed, when preparing for The Third Man (1949) movie also seriously considered using Radford and Wayne as the Charters and Caldicott characters again - alas it was not to be.  The script prepared by Graham Greene was amended and the parts merged into one - played by Wilfred Hyde-White.

​Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne made a number of stage appearances as characters similar to those of Charters and Caldicott.

OBITUARIES

1952

Mr BASIL RADFORD

THE ETERNAL ENGLISHMAN

Mr Basil Radford, who died yesterday in hospital in London at the age of 55, was a versatile actor best suited, on the stage and on the screen, to the medium of light comedy

He endeared himself to theatrical and film audiences as the Englishman of a popular romantic convention.  No great shakes as a thinker, this Englishman never lost his sense of values, and in the thick of fearful hazards was less dismayed by the likelihood of imminent capture than by the news that England had collapsed in the second innings.  These parts showed the eternal small boy twinkling through the wrinkles of middle age; but Radford’s range was much wider than is suggested by his successful hold on a single type.  Indeed, versatility was, perhaps, his foible.

He believed that an accomplished actor should be capable of dealing effectively with emotional as well as comic situations.  As the distraught Salathiel in John Drinkwater’s Biblical play, A Man’s House, and in other pieces, he made good his theory; but when he chose to represent men of the world, eminent lawyers and the like, a sense of strain sometimes appeared and the emotional effects came by contrivance rather than through a complete identification of self with part.  There was always something irrepressible boyish in his playing, and he was happiest in those comedies which helped him to exploit this amiable quality.

The first film in which Radford appeared was Barnum Was Right in 1929, but it was not until several years later that his real chance came on the screen, and good use he made of it.  In such films as The Lady Vanishes and Dead of Night, he portrayed, in partnership with Mr. Naunton Wayne, the dim-witted but dogged, and amiable, sportsman with a good effect, which was less easy to sustain when transferred to the medium of broadcasting.  That his place in film comedy was secure is shown by his appearance recently in such successful productions a Passport To Pimlico and Whisky Galore.

Basil Radford was born at Chester, on June 25 1897, and was educated at St. Peter’s, York.  He was on active service 1915-18, and on his return to civil life studied for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, making his first appearance on the London stage in July, 1924, in Collusion at the Ambassadors’.  From 1927 until 1931 he was abroad, first touring New Zealand in The Ghost Train, and there after at San Francisco and Los Angeles.  For nearly two years he played with the British Guild Players at Vancouver, and then, returning to England, reappeared at the Strand, in May, 1932, in The Love Pirate.  From then on he appeared in a great variety of plays, notably Night Must Fall and Spring Tide.  Since the last war he has played in Clutterbuck, Blind Goddess, and The White Falcon.  In the summer of last year, his health began to give trouble, and he decided to take a holiday.  He made several gallant attempts to resume acting, but after several collapses, the last of which occurred last August, he was compelled to relinquish his career.

In 1926, he married Miss Shirley Deuchars.  They had one son.

1970

Mr NAUNTON WAYNE

IN THE ‘TWEENIES’

Naunton Wayne, who died yesterday at Tolworth Hospital, Surrey, after a long illness, was a finely accomplished player of considerable charm and individual wit.  Though he played many parts well, giving them sufficient character to fit nicely into the production as a whole, it was his personal style that gained him his success.

The style was an adroitly controlled and expressed blending of gently ironic wit, often accompanied by a look of surprise, a splendidly organised method of throwing away a line in order to make it suddenly sharply effective, and the use of smooth charm, at one and at the same time boyish and sophisticated.

Naunton Wayne was born at Llanwonne, Glamorgan, in 1901, the son of Thomas and Annie Davies, and was educated at Clifton College.  He first appeared in the theatre at the Pavillion, Barry Island in 1920 as an entertainer in the ‘Tweenies’ concert party, and in the best concert party sense an entertainer he remained, developing and polishing his art until it became practically faultless in technique and sureness of aim.  Some of his very best work was in cabaret and as compere in review and variety.

He made his first London appearance at the Victoria Palace in 1928.  He was compere for “Streamline” at the Palace in 1934, appeared in “1066 and All That” at the Strand in 1935 and at the Lyric in 1937 played his first great part, Norman Weldon in “Wise Tomorrow”.  He also played Mortimer Brewster in “Arsenic and Old Lace” at the Strand for four years.  Other notable parts included Julian Pugh in “Clutterbuck” at Wyndham’s, Rodney Pennant at the Savoy, Sir William Benedick-Barlow in “The Bride and the Bachelor” at the Duchess, and, one of his most amusing performances of all, the Earl of Lister in “The Reluctant Peer”, also at the Duchess.

He was frequently seen in films and television, and was a leading member of the Stage Golfing Society.