William Arnold Ridley (7 January 1896 – 12 March 1984)[3] was an English playwright and actor, earlier in his career known for writing the play The Ghost Train and later in life in the British television sitcom Dad's Army (1968–1977) as the elderly bumbling Private Godfrey, as well as in spin-offs including the feature film version and the stage production.
Early life
William Arnold Ridley was born in Walcot, Bath, Somerset, England, the son of Rosa Caroline (née Morrish, 1870–1956) and William Robert Ridley (1871–1931).[4] His father was a gymnastics instructor and ran a boot and shoe shop. He attended the Clarendon School and the Bath City Secondary School where he was a keen sportsman. A graduate of the University of Bristol,[5] he studied at the Education Department, and played Hamlet in a student production. Ridley undertook teaching practice at an Elementary School in Bristol.[6]
Military service
Ridley was a student teacher and had made his theatrical debut in Prunella at the Theatre Royal, Bristol when he volunteered for service with the British Army on the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. He was initially rejected because of a hammer toe.[7] In December 1915, he enlisted as a private with the Somerset Light Infantry, British Army.[8] He saw active service in the war, sustaining several wounds in close-quarter battle. His left hand was left virtually useless by wounds sustained on the Somme;[7][9] his legs were riddled with shrapnel; he received a bayonet wound in the groin; and the legacy of a blow to the head from a German soldier's rifle butt left him prone to blackouts after the war.[7][10] He was medically discharged from the army with the rank of lance corporal in May 1917.[8] He received the Silver War Badge having been honourably discharged from the army due to wounds received in the war,[11] and was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal for his service.[8]
Ridley rejoined the army in 1939 following the outbreak of the Second World War.[10] He was commissioned into the General List on 7 October 1939 as a second lieutenant.[12] He served with the British Expeditionary Force in France during the "Phoney War", employed as a "Conducting Officer" tasked with supervising journalists who were visiting the front line. In May 1940,[13] Ridley returned to Britain on the overcrowded destroyer HMS Vimiera, which was the last British ship to escape from the harbour during the Battle of Boulogne.[14] Shortly afterwards, he was discharged from the Armed Forces on health grounds.[10] He relinquished his commission as a captain on 1 June 1940.[15] He subsequently joined the Home Guard,[10] in his home town of Caterham, and ENSA, with which he toured the country.[14] He described his wartime experiences on Desert Island Discs in 1973.[16][17]
Acting career
After his medical discharge from the army in 1916, Ridley commenced a career as a professional actor. In 1918 he joined the company of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, staying for two years and playing 40 parts before moving on to Plymouth, where he took a break from the stage when his war injuries began to trouble him.[5]
After being stranded for an evening at Mangotsfield railway station, near Bristol, Ridley was inspired to write the play The Ghost Train (1923),[10] a tale of passengers stranded at a haunted railway station in Cornwall, with one of the characters being an incognito British Government agent trying to catch Bolshevik revolutionaries active in Great Britain. The play was produced on stage, and became a hit, with 665 performances being staged consecutively in London's West End, and two revivals. The first credited filmed version was a German-British silent film co-production The Ghost Train in 1927. The Ghost Train was also filmed in 1931 and again in 1941 when it starred Arthur Askey. Ridley also wrote more than 30 other plays including The Wrecker (1924), Keepers of Youth (1929), The Flying Fool (1929) and Recipe for Murder (1932).[18][19]
During his time in military service in the Second World War he adapted the Agatha Christie novel Peril at End House into a West End play that premiered in 1940. Ridley's post-war play, Beggar My Neighbour, was first performed in 1951[20] and adapted for the Ealing Comedy film Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953).
Ridley worked regularly as an actor, including an appearance in the British comedy Crooks in Cloisters (1964). He also played Doughy Hood, the village baker, in the radio soap opera The Archers and the Rev. Guy Atkins in the ATV soap Crossroads from the programme's inception in 1964 until 1968. However, he became a household name only after he was cast as Private Godfrey, the gentle platoon medic in the television comedy series Dad's Army (1968–1977). He continued to appear into his eighties, and was appointed an OBE in the 1982 Queen's New Year Honours List, for services to the theatre.[5]
Ridley was married three times. His first marriage lasted from January 1926 to 1939, and was followed by a short marriage to Isola Strong, an actress (It's Hard to Be Good), at Kensington in 1939,[22] before his final marriage to actress Althea Parker (1911–2001) on 3 October 1945;[23] they had one son, Nicolas (b. 1947).[24] He was a Freemason, and belonged to the Savage Club Lodge in London.[25][26][27] The actress Daisy Ridley is his great-niece.[13]
A keen rugby player in his youth, he was President of Bath Rugby from 1950 to 1952.[28]
Death
Ridley died in hospital in Northwood in 1984 at the age of 88 after falling at his residence in Denville Hall, a home for retired actors.[29] His body was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium and an urn holding his ashes was buried in his parents' grave at Bath Abbey Cemetery.[10] His collection of theatrical memorabilia was left to the University of Bristol and has been made available online.[30][31]
^"Death Index entry". FreeBMD. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 6 October 2021. Register of Deaths: 1984. Surname: Ridley. Given Name: William Arnold. DoB: 07 Ja 1896. District: Hillingdon. Registered: 06.84. Volume: 13. Page: 0934.
^Bates, Stephen (10 November 2011). "Silver war badge recipients revealed online". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 August 2023. Among those receiving such badges were Arnold Ridley, the actor who went on to play the decrepit Private Godfrey in Dad's Army in the 60s and 70s, who was badly wounded on the Somme in 1916. It must have been an irony for Ridley that in one episode of the TV show his character was accused of cowardice, only to have been shown to be a hero during the previous conflict. In reality, as a 20-year-old private, he had received shrapnel and bayonet wounds which disabled his arm and a fractured skull after being hit by a German rifle butt, ending his military service.
^Amnon Kabatchnik Blood on the Stage, 1975–2000: Milestone Plays of Crime 2012 -. – Page 554 "A dastardly blackmailer is shot and poisoned simultaneously in Arnold Ridley's Recipe for Murder (1932)."
