My Great Uncle Bear wasn't really my great uncle, and unsurprisingly, he was not called Bear! His real name was William Arnold Ridley, but the world knew him as Arnold Ridley. Most British people of my generation (born in the '70s) knew him much better as Private Godfrey, the character in the '70s BBC sit com "Dad's Army".
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| Arnold Ridley, c1921 |
William Arnold Ridley was related to me by marriage. His wife, born as Althea Parker, was always known to me as my Great Aunty Althea, although she was not in fact an aunt either! Althea Helen Parker was the cousin of my grandfather. Her mother, Helen Mina Rose had married Edward Parry Gambier in Cheltenham, in 1868. They had four daughters altogether; Helen Mina (1870-1941), Ivy Eleanora (1875-1904), Ruth Constance (1876-1955), and Hilda Florence (1878-1884). Ruth Constance Gambier was to marry George Edward Newell, and together they were my great grandparents. Meanwhile Helen Mina Gambier married twice. Her first husband, with whom she had no issue, was a captain in the 2nd Leicestershire Regiment, and died from cholera in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1902. Helen married again in 1908, this time to a Henry Charles Frederick Cunliffe Parker, another military man. Henry Parker was in the navy, and held the office of Paymaster. They married in Malta, and it is my guess that Helen met Henry through my great grandparents Ruth and Ted. I know that Ted served in the navy in Malta around that time, and it would make sense that a young lady might meet her intended naval officer via her sister's naval officer husband. I haven't confirmed this by records, but a study of ships they both served in might confirm this suspicion.
So, my Great Aunty Althea was actually my 1st cousin, twice removed, and my Great Uncle Bear was her husband. The nickname "Bear" was apparently due to how he looked rather bear-like. As he aged the nickname morphed into 'Old Bear'. As a small child I always pictured him always cuddled up with a teddy bear, which I found comforting; the idea that an adult is allowed to continue loving their teddy bear, well after childhood was a relief!
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| Althea Parker (date unknown) |
Uncle Bear was a great playwright and author, who wrote one of Britain's best known stage plays, The Ghost Train. The Ghost Train is a fabulous tale about a group of people who get stranded at a station in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. As the station master departs he warns the group about the ghost train that haunts the station. Since the play is just over 100 years old I don't think I need to issue spoiler alerts, but still, here it comes... It turns out that the 'ghost' is actually a group of communists who use the story of the ghost train to get away with their smuggling weapons into Britain. The play is a series of great character studies, and a few twists and turns in the plot allow it to continue to be a firm favourite with audiences. The reason behind its success at the time was due to the special effects used behind the scenes to lend the illusion of a train actually travelling by the stage. At a time when such special effects were not so easy to come by, it allowed the play to become a great attraction, and it remained in production at the West End for an extraordinary sixteen months, from November 1925 to March 1927.
The Ghost Train went on to be made into a film several times over, including versions in French, German, and Dutch. In 1941 this version was filmed, starring a star comedian of the age, Arthur Askey, where the communists were reimagined into Nazi 5th Columnists.
The play has also been recorded by the BBC as a radio play, which makes for a great listen. It is no longer available on the BBC website, but it can be heard via this Youtube link;
Uncle Bear was a fairly prolific writer, and wrote many other plays; sadly none that gave him the same success as his first play.
Outside of his life on the stage Bear had served in the army in both world wars. In WWI, as a young man Arnold Ridley had fought at the front, going over the top, and somehow managing to survive, but eventually being medically discharged before the end of the war. He lived to tell the tale, but not without some serious a life long injuries, both physical and mental. In the years between the wars Arnold found success with his writing and acting, so much so that he started working on his very own movie production business. Whilst he may have been a great actor, writer, and movie maker, he was no businessman, and before he knew it, he had lost everything.
By the time WWII started in 1939 Arnold was a divorcee, and living alone in Surrey; his occupation recorded in the 1939 Register as 'dramatic author, producer and film director. Within the following month Arnold was to marry his second wife.
Arnold's first wife was, by his own account, a mistake, made when both he and she were too young. The were married in 1926, and were divorced in 1939. In the book 'Godfrey's Ghost' by my cousin, and Arnold's son, Nic Ridley, Arnold is quoted as saying, "Although we remained married until the spring of 1939, it would be useless to pretend that the union was ideally happy, even in the early years. There were too many things against success. The most important reason for the failure was that neither of us- both only children- had the remotest experience of the other sex."
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| Nic's book at available at your local bookstore and from Amazon. |
Arnold's second marriage was to prove just as unsuccessful. Arnold's second wife was a young actress by the name of Isola Strong. Arnold had met Isola whilst away from home, in Scotland, working on a play of his called Recipe for Murder, which was first produced in 1932. Whilst their affair may have lasted a long while before he was legally able to marry, the marriage itself did not last long. Again, Arnold is quoted in Nic's book; "I'm quite sure she married me from a sense of loyalty rather than a keen desire to do so. We both did our best, but it didn't work. I suppose it was ridiculous to expect that it could." Uncle Bear, despite his age and WWI injuries, rejoined the army for service in WWII. He was sent to France, where is suffered terribly from PTSD. He was evacuated from Dunkirk, France, in May 1940 and did not return to active service. Instead he put his efforts into entertaining the troops, and it was doing this that my Uncle Bear met my Aunty Althea.
Aunty Althea was a great actress. She had achieved great acclaim on the stage around the country, and in the West End. In 1941 Arnold was invited to join ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) with the plan to take The Ghost Train on a tour to entertain the troops. At a casting session Arnold recalled his first meeting with Althea; "I was standing just inside the stage door when I saw a tall and handsome young woman approaching and held open an inner door for her to pass through. She swept on her way without even a murmured thank-you. 'Snooty bitch!' I muttered to myself, unaware that, when not wearing her spectacles, Althea was very nearly blind. The 'snooty bitch' and I were married at Knaresborough on October 3rd 1945." Their marriage was solid an unwavering, and included a son, Nicolas Ridley (the aforementioned cousin).
After the war Arnold continued to work at writing and acting; work that was fairly piecemeal, and did not offer the small family a reliable wage. But later in life Arnold was offered a part in a new TV sitcom, called Dad's Army, featuring a collection of interesting characters who made up a unit of the Home Guard in a fictional English town during World War 2. Arnold was the eldest of the crew, and played the part of Private Godfrey, who was a retired tailor. During WWI Godfrey had been a conscientious objector, but had earned military honours for his work as a stretcher bearer, going into no mans land to save men who had fallen at the Battle of the Somme.
The episode 'Branded', (season 3, episode 11) tells the audience a little more about his experiences in WWI and how Godfrey's objecting to the war was considered by many people in society at the time.
I never knew Uncle Bear as a funny man. He was a great comedic actor, obviously, as he was a great actor, but my memories of him are rather hazy, and more often concern us having to keep out of the living room, when we visited, because he was watching some important sports game or another. Whilst he was not particularly sporty, he was like his father, a lifelong keen sports fan (especially for Bath rugby club). Arnold's father had been a great gymnast and physical education teacher whose sporting life was cut short after an illness that affected his heart. He changed his career to a salesman, selling sports gear, and shoes, but continued to admire all sports, and participate in less strenuous sports until his death in 1931.
In researching Arnold Ridley I have come across something pretty funny, however; funny strange though, not funny 'ha ha'. I found quite a few references to the actress Daisy Ridley, on Ancestry connecting the two of them, as well as newspaper articles where Arnold was recorded as Daisy Ridley's great uncle. At first I accepted this as fact, without further checking, excited at the idea that I was a few steps, albeit by marriage, to a Star Wars star. But after a closer look at the records and a couple of emails with my cousin Nic, the only son of (William) Arnold Ridley, I've been completely unable to ascertain any familial link between Arnold Ridley and Daisy Ridley. Both Arnold's father, William Robert Ridley, and Daisy's great grandfather, Harry John Ridley (each born in 1871 and 1874 respectively) were only children. There might have been a more distant family connection, but Daisy Ridley was most certainly not Arnold Ridley's great niece. Perhaps it was a publicist's mistake, that became embarrassing to fix, so Daisy has just gone along with it. It is certainly interesting to see how many people on Ancestry have just accepted this connection whilst simultaneously adding records to their tree which clearly say otherwise.
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| Daisy Ridley, a talented actor, is unlikely to be related to Arnold Ridley. |
Uncle Bear died in 1984, when I was 13, and he was 88 years old. He left behind my aunty Althea, who was 72 when Arnold died. Arnold was cremated in London, and his ashes were interred at his parents grave in Bath.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-35491036
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009n8fn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation
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