- Born
- Died
- Birth nameWilliam Arnold Ridley
- Young Arnold Ridley was forced to give up a budding acting career and turn to writing. He hit the jackpot with 'The Ghost Train' which was a great West End success, and has been filmed several times. This was followed by a number of other plays during the 1920s and 1930s. In later life he returned to acting, often as kindly and gentle old men such as his most famous role as Private Godfrey in the BBC comedy series Dad's Army (1968) from 1968 to 1977.
Ridley's acting career began before World War I while he was a student at Bristol University when he was paid a pound a week for, in his own words, "playing bits and pieces" at the Theatre Royal in Bristol (now the Bristol Old Vic). Having been "rather badly knocked about" in World War I (he fought at the Battle of the Somme and was injured three times, with one serious bayonet wound leaving him with no strength in his right arm) he returned to England but could find no acting work and went instead to work for his father's boot company in Bath. Still keen on pursuing a life in the theatre he turned to writing. He wrote a lot of what he called "serious plays," claiming that he didn't like thrillers very much, but after one of these was rejected by London producers, he went to the theatre to pass the evening before returning to the West Country the following morning.
He saw "an American thriller which I didn't like a bit, and I thought to myself, 'If that's the sort of tosh they'll put on, I'll write one of those only I'll try to make mine a bit better than that.'" The result was "The Ghost Train" which was a West End hit and whose popularity endures over 80 years on. He wrote several other plays in the 1920s and '30s, directing in the theatre and on film, and running both a theatre and film company (which went bust). When times were hard in the late-1920s he sold the amateur rights to "The Ghost Train" for 200 pounds, a decision he later regretted, believing that he had "lost a fortune" by selling the rights to such a popular play. He was wounded again in World War II and returned to acting, appearing in numerous television shows through the 1950s and '60s until he was cast as the kindly, retired shop assistant Mr Godfrey in Dad's Army (1968). Colleagues from the show commented that he had been "forced" to work long into his old age by financial circumstances, but he said himself that his great fear was being forced to retire.
He continued to work until the show ended in 1977, by which time he was 81. He was made an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in the 1982 Queen's New Years Honours List, for services to drama, and died two years later.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Allen Dace and IMDb staff
- SpousesAlthea Parker(October 3, 1945 - March 12, 1984) (his death, 1 child)Isola Strong(1939 - ?) (divorced)Hilda Cooke(January 1926 - 1939) (divorced)
- Great uncle of Daisy Ridley.
- He got the idea for his most famous play, The Ghost Train, when he was at a deserted Mangotsfield Station, on the outskirts of Bristol, waiting hours for his connection to Bath. The station buildings have since largely disappeared, though it's possible to see the remains via the Bristol to Bath railway path, which has replaced the railway line.
- He was the oldest cast member of Dad's Army (1968). He was 72 when it began and 81 when it ended.
- Played "Doughy" Hood, the baker during the 1960s in the long running BBC radio series, "The Archers".
- Like his Dad's Army (1968) character Private Charles Godfrey, he served in the Home Guard during World War II.
- I wrote "Ghost Train" in 1927 and they have been rewriting it ever since.
- We in the ranks had never heard of tanks. We were told that there was some sort of secret weapon and then we saw this thing go up the right hand corner of Delville Wood. I saw this strange and cumbersome machine emerge from the shattered shrubbery and proceed slowly down the slope towards Flers.
- I went round one of the traverses, as far as I remember, and somebody hit me on the head with a rifle butt. I was wearing a tin hat, fortunately, but it didn't do me much good. A chap came at me with a bayonet, aiming for a very critical part naturally and I managed to push it down, I got a bayonet wound in the groin. After that I was still very dizzy, from this blow on the head presumably. I remember wrestling with another German and the next thing I saw, it appeared to me that my left hand had gone. After that, I was unconscious.
- I thought I was doing my duty for my country. I didn't know I was going to be treated like a convict. Did it make better soldiers of the callow youths we were then? I doubt it.
- It wasn't a question of if I get killed, it was merely a question of when I get killed.
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