The actor Gary Waldhorn had many faces. One of his best known was that of the pompous Councillor David Horton in The Vicar of Dibley, looking down his high, domed forehead and passionately spouting John of Gaunt’s patriotic speech in King Richard III —“This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
Indeed as a Shakespearian actor Waldhorn, who has died aged 78, won critical acclaim for a very different role, wearing the gold crown and cross as the beleaguered Henry IV, opposite Timothy West and Samuel West at the Old Vic in 1997. It was a performance described by The Sunday Times as “magnificent”.
Playing Henry lV at the Vic must have been literally the crowning glory for the actor whose ambitions dated back to a childhood trip to that theatre where watching Richard Burton in Henry V there proved a life-changing moment. He said: “I came home and told my parents I want to be a Shakespearian actor”.
Meanwhile the family was moving far from London’s Old Vic, to New York in 1956. He ploughed his barmitzvah money into helping finance his family’s passage, and there he attended Yale School of Drama, where he was noted for his performances in new plays by Lillian Hellman. It was there, too that he met his future wife, fellow student Christie Dickason, daughter of Indiana University academic David Howard Dickason, who would become a successful playwright and novelist. They married and had one son, Josh, who was born in 1970, but they divorced ten years later.
A break came in 1972 when Waldhorn toured Australia and New Zealand in Harry M Miller’s production of Sleuth, playing opposite Richard Todd. Work in West End theatres followed. Although his cultured voice and cynical smile made him a natural attraction for the world of comedy and TV sitcoms, his son Josh Waldhorn acknowledged in a tribute, that his true love was theatre: “Classically trained, it was the theatre where he truly flourished and he leaves a legacy of entertainment that saw him frequent the boards of Broadway, the West End and our living rooms on the telly!” he said.
The actor was particularly admired for his pivotal role in The Vicar of Dibley, but during the 1980s and 90s, he appeared in other TV favourites, such as The Sweeney, Brush Strokes, Lovejoy and Gallowglass, and in the comedy sketch show French and Saunders.
Arguably one of his most challenging roles was playing the Jewish psychiatrist Maurice on Broadway in CP Taylor’s unnerving Holocaust play, Good. Commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1981, it describes the slow moral decline of the good German, the liberal Professor and writer John Halder, played by Alan Howard, who is fatefully and irrevocably drawn into the Nazis’ orbit. He ends up rationalising the Final Solution, abandoning Maurice to deportation and inevitable death.
London-born Gary Waldhorn was the only child of Viennese-Jewish refugees, Liselotte (née Popper) and Siegried Waldhorn, an interpreter for German prisoners of war in Britain, who later became an executive vice-president of American Express. Leaving London for New York, the young Gary might have felt he was leaving more than his home city behind him, the place which nourished his Old Vic dreams. After Ohio University he graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 1967 and he and Christie opted to return to London where he appeared in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Berjerac, both at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park and at the National Theatre.
Waldhorn starred with some of the leading actors of his generation, and in some of the greatest plays of the era. At the National he also appeared alongside John Gielgud and Irene Worth in Peter Brook’s version of Senca’s Oedipus with its highly eccentric set featuring a massive golden phallus. Other roles were opening up for him, including John Dexter’s 1979 all-male As You Like It, Ben Johnson’s Volpone and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He was also the takeover lead in Anthony Schaffer’s Sleuth at St Martin’s in 1975.
From the mid ‘70s he played opposite Paul Schofield and Eleonor Bron in Ronald Harwood’s The Family, and as Lucky in Waiting for Godot, disregarding Beckett’s instruction to slow down his great speech, preferring to interpret it in his own way.
Despite his love of great theatre, it was TV serials which lured him well before the uproarious Vicar of Dibley. He played opposite Maureen Lipman in All at No 20, 1986 and in the early series of Brush Stroke, 1986-9. His powerful 1988 performance as Malvolio at the Royal Exchange was highly praised and in 2002 he played Leonato in the RSC production of Much Ado About Nothing.
But it was as Horton in The Vicar of Dibley, the millionaire farmer first battling Dawn French, the newly installed Rev Geraldine Grainger, then succumbing to her charms, that he is best known. He is both cynically suave and infuriating in Richard Curtis’ 1994 ecclesiastical sitcom, a timely response to the Church of England’s decision to ordain women clergy. The series was placed third in the 2004 list of best sitcoms, won three British Comedy Awards, a National Television Award in 1998 and was nominated for six Baftas.
Waldhorn was described by the BBC as an “incredibly talented actor”, while Samuel West, who appeared with him in Henry IV recalled “a lovely man and a terrific actor.” Another actor he had worked with, Robert Lindsay. tweeted that he had “such great memories”of working with him, while another wrote – “you gave light to every scene you were in.” Aside from his acting, Waldhorn was a patron of Malawi Dream, a British registered charity in aid of the people of Malawi, Africa. He is survived by his son Josh and two grandsonsCooper and Bayley.
Gary Waldhorn: born July 9, 1943. Died January 10, 2022
