Harry H. Corbett

Harry H. Corbett was an English actor whose reputation became dominated by his role as Harold Steptoe from the long-running British television comedy, "Steptoe and Son." The son of an army officer, Corbett himself eventually served in the military during World War II before turning to stage acting. By the mid-1950s he began appearing on television, and he had his first film part just a few years later. Early roles include a recurring character on the TV series "The Adventures of Robin Hood," and a small part in the 1959 James Cagney IRA-based drama, "Shake Hands with the Devil." It was then in 1962 when Corbett -- who had added the ''H'' to his name to avoid confusion with Harry Corbett the creator of the well-known Sooty the puppet -- teamed up with writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson to launch "Steptoe and Son," which had evolved out of BBC's "Comedy Playhouse." Corbett and co-star Wilfrid Brambell, who played his curmudgeonly father, played a pair of ragamuffins living in a junkyard. The series helped earn Corbett a Best Actor BAFTA Award for TV in 1963, and was later adapted in the U.S. as "Sanford and Son" in 1972, while the original was still running. Though his image was essentially chained to the Steptoe character the remainder of his career, Corbett worked steadily in film and television into the early 1980s. His most intriguing film project was arguably his co-starring role in Terry Gilliam's 1977 fantasy-adventure, "Jabberwocky."