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George Cole (actor)
Summary
George Edward Cole, OBE (22 April 1925 – 5 August 2015) was an English actor whose career spanned 75 years. He was best known for playing Arthur Daley in the long-running ITV comedy-drama show Minder and Flash Harry in the early St Trinian's films.
Cole was born in Tooting, south London. He was placed for adoption at ten days of age and adopted by George and Florence Cole, a Tooting council employee and charwoman (cleaner) respectively. He attended secondary school in nearby Morden. He left school at 14 to be a butcher's boy and had an ambition to join the Merchant Navy but landed a part in a touring musical and chose acting as a career. He recalled during that year (1939) he was in Dublin on the day of Britain's entry into World War II when he witnessed an effigy of Neville Chamberlain being publicly burned without interference from the local police.
Aged 15, Cole was cast in the film Cottage to Let (1941) opposite Scottish actor Alastair Sim. Sim liked Cole, and agreed with his family to take in Cole and his mother to their home. Acting as his mentor, Sim helped Cole lose his Cockney accent; Cole stayed with the Sim family until he was 27. He later attributed his career success to Sim, with whom he appeared in a total of 11 films, ending with a filmed version for television of The Anatomist (1956), from the play by James Bridie.
Cole also acted opposite Laurence Olivier in The Demi-Paradise (1943) and Olivier's film version of Henry V (1944), of which he was the last surviving cast member. Cole's career was interrupted by his national service in the Royal Air Force from 1944 to 1947, where he was temporarily a radio operator.
Returning to his acting career, he became familiar to audiences in British comedy films in the 1950s. Cole appeared with Alastair Sim in Scrooge (as the young Scrooge) in 1951, including a scene with fellow actor Patrick Macnee who played the young Jacob Marley. His best known film role was as "Flash Harry" in the St Trinian's films (two of which also star Sim), and in the comedy Too Many Crooks (1959).
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