Ben Aris | | The Guardian

Ben Aris

With his height, diffident manner, lean figure, slim face and moustache, the character actor Ben Aris, who has died aged 66, moved among the upper classes on stage and screen with charm and authority. On television, he brought postwar, old-world charm to Crimpton-on-Sea in the BBC1 holiday camp comedy series, Hi-de-Hi!

An accomplished horseman, he enjoyed fleeting triumph in Tony Richardson's film of The Charge Of The Light Brigade (1967), as the braying Captain Maxse dying a spectacular death before the Russian guns. He was also nimble on his feet; as the solitary male dancer among a line of high-kicking women in Richard Harris's Stepping Out (Duke of York's, 1984-85), his performance was polite but assured.

Though he had played in television roles since childhood, Aris is best remembered in the medium for the period-piece sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, drawn from the real-life experiences of the series' writers, Jimmy Perry and David Croft, about the trials and tribulations suffered by an entertainment troupe at a typical British holiday camp at the end of the 1950s.

In the last three of its eight series (1985-88), Aris appeared as the snobbish dance instructor Julian Dalrymple-Sykes, dazzling admirers with his special buck-and-wing dancing, a form of tap, eccentric yet elegant. By then, he had made the small screen a regular outlet for his breed of toffs, poets, tutors and others trying to keep their ends up in a resolutely downgraded world.

Born in London, Aris was the son of an insurance executive father and a painter mother. As a child, he trained at the Buddy Bradley school of dancing. He studied drama at the Arts Educational School, and began his film career, at 13, in Tom Brown's Schooldays. At 16, he toured in the musical Zip Goes A Million and, after national service as an army second lieutenant, he worked both in rep and the West End.

Few actors were readier to admit to popular failure and to rejoice in shortlived disasters. Among early London musicals were John Osborne's The World Of Paul Slickey (Palace, 1959), which got the bird as resolutely as Lionel Bart's Twang! (Shaftesbury, 1965).

He had more luck as a protean in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (Strand, 1963), and in the transfer from Leatherhead of the musical play about a British matchbox factory, Strike A Light (Piccadilly, 1966). He also relished Peter Cook's One Over The Eight (Duke of York's, 1961).

From the 1970s, his presence on stage became more serious. His Rosencrantz to Nicol Williamson's Hamlet (Round House, Chalk Farm, following Tony Richardson's 1969 film version), his Dr Gordon Jayde in Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (Lyttelton), his Desmond Curry, a bumbling solicitor, in Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (Lyric, Hammersmith), and the Rev Samuel Gardner in Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession (Orange Tree, Richmond) all won praise. His last West End performance came as Leo Fairchild, opposite Maggie Smith in Alan Bennett's The Lady In The Van (Lyric, 1999-2000).

Aris used to claim modestly that, as a character actor, he could do no more than "swell a scene". What mattered was how he did it, and that he rarely overdid it. Overacting appalled him. Among more recent film cameos were Charles in Relative Values (1999) and the Colonel in Up At The Villa (1998). He also appeared in Lindsay Anderson's If... (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1973), Get Carter (1971), as the Rev Simpson in Ken Russell's rock opera, Tommy (1975), and as Mr Glozing in Christine Edzard's The Fool (1990).

For a busy actor, Aris was wide-ranging in his interests. Apart from charity work, as vice-chairman of the Royal Theatrical Fund, he took a great pride in birdwatching and wine-tasting.

He is survived by his wife, Yemaiel Oven, a ballet dancer, whom he married in 1966, and their son and daughter.

· Benjamin Patrick Aris, actor, born March 16 1937; died September 4 2003

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