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Tony Hancock Filmography
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Tony Hancock: Hancock's Peak Years
Working with scripts from Ray Galton and Alan Simpson the show lasted for five years and over a hundred episodes, featuring Sid James, Bill Kerr,
Kenneth Williams and over the years Moira Lister and Hattie Jacques. In the radio series the James character would often be dishonest and exploit Hancock's apparent gullibility, rather than be the friend of the television series.
Hancock's television career as star began in 1956, initially on ITV, but it was the BBC-TV version of
Hancock's Half Hour (later Hancock) that established him in the medium.
The classic Hancock characterisation referred to himself as "Anthony
Aloysius St John Hancock" - being a larger-than-life version of Hancock's real self. In the TV series the regular cast was reduced to Hancock and James, allowing the humour to come from the interaction of the two men. James was the realist of the two, but also with an unpretentious personality who would puncture Hancock's pretensions. Hancock was to become anxious that his work with James was turning them in to a double act, and the last BBC series in 1961 was without James. Despite the contemporary criticism of Hancock, many consider this to contain the best of Hancock's BBC work.
Two of the episodes of Hancock's last BBC television series are probably his best remembered work. The Blood Donor, in which he goes to a clinic to give blood. This contains famous lines such as, "A pint? Why, that's very nearly an armful!" (The doctor's response: "You won't have an empty arm... or an empty anything!") Another well-known episode is
The Radio Ham, in which Hancock plays a ham radio enthusiast who receives a mayday call from a ship in distress, but his incompetence prevents him from taking its position. Both of these episodes were later re-recorded for a commercial 1961 LP in the style of radio episodes, and these versions have been continuously available ever since. The original TV versions have since been released as part of VHS and DVD compilations, and the soundtracks have also (a little confusingly) been released on CD.
Shortly before recording the original version of "The Blood Donor" Hancock was involved in a minor car accident. He was not badly hurt, but his confidence was shaken and he was unable to learn his lines, with the result that the recording was made with Hancock using teleprompters (TV monitors displaying the relevant sections of script) so that he could read the lines instead. Viewers of the programme may notice that he is not looking where, logically, he ought to be. Hancock came to rely on teleprompters instead of learning scripts whenever he had career difficulties.
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