From Wales to Bombay

Yet another of television’s familiar faces on comedies in 1970s belonged to a man who found occasional employment as the bumbling Colonel Crittendon (Hogan’s Heroes) and the lady-killing Dr. Bombay (Bewitched).

Bernard Fox’s break in North America came on another show.

Back in the U.K., Fox, Michael Medwin and George Rodney played layabouts in the ITV series The Love of Mike, then took the same characters in 1961 and turned them into radio and TV repairmen in Three Live Wires. Fox soon decided to cross the Atlantic to see what he could do, after picking up a role in the movie The Longest Day, stole the show as a clumsy waiter in Sid Melton’s nightclub on The Danny Thomas show in late 1962.

Thomas was produced by Sheldon Leonard. The next thing, Fox was cast in two other Leonard series, The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

An awful lot of Fox’s career was taken up with stage work in Canada and the U.S. A production of Beginner’s Luck in El Paso reunited him with Bob Crane. Fox was interviewed by the Herald-Post. If he was there to publicise the play, he somehow doesn’t seem to have got around to it in a rambling interview. This saw print May 12, 1972.

Whatever It Is That Makes You Relax, Bernard Fox Has It.
By JOAN QUARM
The actor may have no technique, no diction, and very little deportment, but still you know — you relax when he comes on-stage. He has something bigger than style, and unless he has that something, ari the style in the world cannot help him. Bernard Fox, who ought to know, firmly holds to this opinion, and he has five generations of theater family in his blood to back him up. Whatever it is which makes you relax, he has it, as well as a fund of theater stories which make an outstanding history of the art, seen through the eyes of one almost literally born backstage in a basket, and quite literally reared on the circuit, playing Blessed Infant parts from blessed infancy onward.
ACTUALLY, it is difficult to sort out an interview with the Welsh-born actor who is this week appearing at the Marquee Theater. He is not only a raconteur of distinction, a mimic of any accent mentioned, and a fund of information on all things theatrical. He is also distractingly familiar with pages of dialogue. Remarking that he played the child in "East Lynne," on the road in his father's company when he was a little boy, Bernard Fox reproduced two entire pages at least of the death scene from that Victorian tragedy, in the high, piping tones of the moribund lad, and the soprano moans of the heart-stricken Lady Isobel Vane, ending with her famous "Dead, and never called me Mother!" " As if that were not startling enough, from a rosy-faced, husky, moutached middle-aged man, he went into some minutes of musical Welsh when "The Corn is Green" was mentioned, recalling the part he played in that lovely show on tour in England. Gradually, I learned to avoid discussing plays, in order to talk to the player about himself. It wasn't easy, for the temptation was to enjoy an afternoon of delicious excerpts, and let work be forgotten.
Delving into family history, it emerged that Mr. Fox's great-grandmother belonged to the famous Proctor's Pepper's Ghost Company, which toured Britain very early in the nineteenth century, startling the rustics by having a "real" ghost appear through concealed mirrors angled in a box below the stage. That was on his mother's side of the family, but his father, who was his own producer-manager and, incidentally, Wilfred Lawson's brother, is of equally interesting lineage: as well as having owned his own stock company, which produced such classics as "Richard III," (Mr. Fox and his sister appearing as the Princes in the Tower) and a variety of styles.
"MY FATHER'S old basket in the attic at home is full of interesting things," recalls Bernard Fox. They include some of historical value, such as the very sword Sir Henry Irving used in "Hamlet," (what I wouldn't give for that, if I had it!) and authentic World War One English and American army uniforms. All actors used to dress themselves, and their baskets were their pride. In the course of time, they collected costumes of all periods, as well as wigs and hand props such as fans, lorgnettes and snuff-boxes. Thatrical [sic] papers would carry such advertisements as "At liberty, crocodile — own skin." Own skin was so important that if an actor lost his basket, he considered himself as good as ruined.
Sometimes he lost it temporarily, of course, if a dishonest manager absconded without paying the company, and a landlady impounded its effects until her rent was paid. Such hazards were part of the game, and Mr. Fox well remembers being stranded in Ireland as a child with his mother, who sensibly went to the priest for help. That gentleman produced a pound note as soon as her first words, "We are from the theatrical company, Father . . .” were heard, so he must have been accustomed to starving actors.
More recently, stranded similarly in Rome, Mr. Fox merely wired home to England for a check. Times change, he said, but actors are still always hungry, particularly atfer [sic] the show. Somehow the interview ended with delicious mutual memories of Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. If it was an interview? Or was I reading Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby," and in company with the famous Vincent Crummles himself? I must go back and see "Beginner's Luck" again, to make quite certain; and to enjoy that relaxation when the actor comes onstage.

What about his well-known TV roles?

This story appeared in the Houston Chronicle,April 26, 1998.

Come back
One-shot roles lead to regular gigs
By DAVID MARTINDALE
When it came to Dr. Bombay, laughter was positively not the best medicine.
His laugh ranks among the most memorably horrible in TV history. Bombay — the skirt-chasing, bad-pun-telling "witch doctor" of Bewitched fame — could crack mirrors with that hideous sound of hilarity.
But Bernard Fox, the British-born actor who played Bombay with bombastic charm, says that bad laugh brought him nothing but good luck. In fact, he considers that laugh to be the character's calling card.
"Dr. Bombay started out as just a one-shot role," Fox says. "I was playing this character, and I wanted to bring another facet to him, which I did when I had to tell this bad pun. I followed it with that awful laugh, which I picked up from somebody in a hotel many years ago in England.
"I was sitting with a lady, chatting away, and all of a sudden, in this other room, there was this raucous and tune-less laugh. The lady I was with, even today I only need to do that laugh and she's gone, laughing hysterically. Well, I suddenly remembered it while doing Dr. Bombay. And evidently that touched off the writers' imagination, and they continued writing for him."
By the time Bewitched ended its eight-year run (1964-72), Fox had been invited back to play Bombay another 17 times.
"I recently heard a piece of tape of me doing that laugh and I'm astonished at the amount of energy I put out at that time."
Although he was never a regular player on an American TV series, Fox also played memorable recurring roles in The Andy Griffith Show as mild-mannered Malcolm Merriweather) and Hogan's Heroes (as crazy Colonel Crittenden).
"What's funny is the same thing happened basically on both of those shows," he says. "Malcolm Merriweather was intended to be a one-time role, but they kept asking me back. And Crittenden was only supposed to appear in one episode, but it turned into one of my favorite characters. He was such a big, blundering idiot, a delight to play."
If there could be a sequel to Titanic, it's a safe bet Fox would be invited back for that as well. He was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for his supporting role in the movie.
"Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet got the brunt of the water work, which could be excruciating. But the hardest part for me was just waiting to be called in. They would pick me up from hotel at about 3:30 and take me down to the studio. Then you would have breakfast. That was in the afternoon. Then you went into your makeup and wardrobe and you could literally sit there until 5 in the morning and you wouldn't get released because they never knew when they might want you. In the meantime, poor Leo and Kate are splashing around and freezing their butts off."
Fox's first Bewitched episode as Bombay, titled "There's Gold in Them There Pills," is at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday on Nick at Nite.

Fox was 89 when he passed away in Los Angeles in 2016.