Noel Howlett

Noel Howlett
Born	(1902-12-22)22 December 1902 Maidstone, Kent, England, UK
Died	26 October 1984(1984-10-26) (aged 81) Hammersmith, London, England, UK
Nationality	British
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1936-1984

Noel Howlett (22 December 1902 – 26 October 1984) was an English actor, principally remembered as the incompetent headmaster, Morris Cromwell, in the ITV 1970s cult television programme Please Sir!. He was the subject of infatuation by Deputy Head Doris Ewell, played by Joan Sanderson.

Howlett was born in Maidstone, Kent, and began his career as Richard Greatham in Noël Coward's Hay Fever . At Northampton Repertory Theatre in 1930 he played Sherlock Holmes. He also appeared as Mr Williams in the 1948 film The Winslow Boy, starring Robert Donat. At Stratford-on-Avon in 1953, he played Old Gobbo (father to Donald Pleasence's Launcelot Gobbo) in The Merchant of Venice, Edward IV (brother to Marius Goring's Richard III), Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew and Gloucester in King Lear.

He appeared as Professor Rushton in a one-off 1967 edition of the The Avengers entitled 'Mission Highly Improbable' and also as the Reverend Simon Blanding in a one-off 1967 edition of Man in a Suitcase called 'Dead Man's Shoes'. Other screen appearances include Softly, Softly and Danger Man, both 1960s TV shows. He also appeared in one 1976 episode ('I Talk to the Trees') of the BBC situation comedy The Good Life as slightly eccentric allotment gardener Mr Wakeley.

He also frequently broadcast and did a spell for the BBC as a member of their Drama Repertory Company (now the Radio Drama Company), one of his appearances being as Inspector Walter Neider in the 1965 Paul Temple radio episode, "Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery".

Selected filmography

• A Yank at Oxford (1938)
• Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948)
• The Winslow Boy (1948)
• Scott of the Antarctic (1948)
• Your Witness (1950)
• Cloudburst (1951)
• Laughter in Paradise (1951)
• One Good Turn (1955)
• Lust for Life (1956)
• Serious Charge (1959)
• The Scapegoat (1959)
• The Battle of the Sexes (1959)
• Victim (1961)
• Mary Had a Little... (1961)
• Murder at the Gallop (1963)
• The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
• Woman of Straw (1964)
• Tomorrow at Ten (1964)
• The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965)
• Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
• The Bushbaby (1969)
• Some Will, Some Won't (1970)
• Please Sir! (1971)

External links

• Noel Howlett at IMDb
• Noel Howlett at Find a Grave