Laugh-In's Englishman

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In burst forth onto the scene at the start of 1968 and made stars of the regular cast members.

Well, almost all of them.

As a Toronto newspaper asked in 1983, whatever happened to Roddy Maude-Roxby?

Unlike other players on the show, it doesn’t appear he was interviewed in print at the time it rocketed in the ratings, and he was the only regular besides Larry “Hogan’s Heroes” Hovis who didn’t return for a second season (Eileen Brennan was supposedly a regular in the first season, but didn’t appear every week).

In 1969, Maude-Roxby was back on television in England. He was a performer in the six-episode London Weekend Television series The Complete and Utter History of Britain, written by Terry Jones and Michael Palin, soon to be of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Jones was quoted in “The Pythons” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2003) he was very frustrated that Maude-Roxby would constantly ad-lib and never learn lines.

As well, Maude-Roxby was signed in May 1969 (according to Hollywood Citizen-News) to voice the villainous English butler in the Disney feature The Aristocats. It would appear much of the rest of his career was on the stage, which is where he came from (in New York, he appeared in a comedy directed by Mike Nichols) before joining the Laugh-In gang.

Maude-Roxby wasn’t only a comedian. One of Australia’s newspapers, The Age, of October 10, 1968 revealed:

Roddy has a connection with Melbourne and indeed with this newspaper dating back to 1947 when he came to Australia with his brother, Chris, who worked as a cadet journalist on “The Age.”
For a short period during the three years the brothers stayed in this country, Roddy drew a weekly cartoon strip—Bulgy the Frog—for “Junior Age” know in those days as “The Age” Junior Section.
He also appeared in a local children’s radio series. When the brothers returned to England, Roddy enrolled at the Royal College of Art.
Apart from his work in the theatre, in cabaret and on television, he has exhibited his paintings (described as abstract-cum-figurative) in London.

The closest thing to a biography about him I’ve found is in the Ottawa Journal of April 9, 1977. He was part of a four-man improv comedy group that was brought to Canada from England at the behest of the Ottawa Board of Education drama consultant. We’ve snipped out extraneous copy to focus on Maude-Roxby’s past.

Theatre Machine
Wheeling and dealing in free-form comedy
By Jean Southworth
Journal Arts Writer
When Roddy Maude-Roxby was studying at the Royal College of Art in London, England, in the late 1950s he found that his main interest lay in theatre. His imaginative work with the student drama group at the college led to a professional engagement in a West End revue, One to Another, and he has been involved in theatre ever since.
He now is active in a group called Theatre Machine which has developed a unique type of improvisational theatre. He and two other members of the group, Ben Benison and Richardson Morgan, arrived in Ottawa this week for a series of high school and university appearances. They will conclude their visit with a public performance in the University of Ottawa's Academic Hall next Saturday at 8.30 p.m. John Muirhead, the fourth member, was unable to make the trip because of commitments, in London. ...
Roddy Maude-Roxby was born in London but grew up in Somerset and attended Brambletye School in Devon. When he was in his early teens he produced two books containing stories and drawings for children. On leaving school he went to Australia with his two brothers. He got some acting experience there through working for a children's newspaper which sponsored a radio program. When he returned to England he did a period of national service and took up art studies.
He explained in an interview that there was a connection between the Royal College of Art and London's Royal Court Theatre, which had become primarily a "writers' theatre". When he staged Beckett's Endgame at the college, for instance, he was able to borrow the dustbins which had been used in the original Royal Court production of the play.
During the 1960s he took part in various plays at the theatre in Sloane Square. These included the original productions of N.F. Simpson's One-Way Pendulum and Joe Orton's Erpingham Camp, and a production of Chekhov's The Three Sisters in which Glenda Jackson, Marianne Faithful and Avril Elgar played the title roles. He said the Simpson play received unfavorable reviews when it opened in Brighton but it was a success at the Royal Court. ...
Some years ago Maude-Roxby performed in New York with The Establishment, a company based in the Soho section of London. He went on to Hollywood to appear in the Laugh-In TV series. He also spoke the part of the butler in the Walt Disney animated feature film The Aristocats.
During 1973-74 he played in Habeas Corpus, with Alec Guinness, at the Lyric Theatre in London's West End. He appeared in Relatively Speaking at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield in 1975 and returned there last fall to play Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady.

The Establishment appeared once on TV. A one-hour special, written by Peter Cook, aired on March 30, 1964, taped in New York and broadcast on WNEW-TV and at least two other stations in syndication. Maude-Roxby, Peter Bellwood, Francis Bethencourt, Carole Simpson and non-Brit Alexandra Berlin appeared in satirical sketches that targeted heterosexuality, which seems pretty daring for 1964. Kay Gardella of the Daily News said Maude-Roxby “was at his best portraying a confused cabinet minister called upon to explain why he was seen dressed in nothing but a Masonic apron waving a speckled trout over the heads of two kneeling persons. His description of an art film, ‘Adam and Eve,’ was for [far] more suited to the bistro environment than TV.” The New York Times reported an hour and 45 minutes was taped, and four-letter words were the first thing taken out to bring the revue to time.

Maude-Roxby had one more crack at a regular TV series in the U.S. Jay Sandrich directed him in a pilot for a proposed show based on the 1967 movie To Sir With Love (Hari Rhodes played the Sidney Poitier part from the movie, Maude-Roxby had the role of a French teacher). It was not picked up, but CBS aired the half-hour on April 19, 1974.

Laugh-In liked to have a Brit component every once in a while. Monte Landis appeared in the pilot but when it became a series, Maude-Roxby was brought in. Writer Jeremy Lloyd was part of the cast for a year, and Richard Dawson also appeared on the show. Then there was Judy Carne, the former co-star of Love on a Rooftop, who tired of the show and left after periodic appearances in the third season. Maude-Roxby moved on to other endeavours before that.