- He was the voice of the polar bear which advertised "cool, clear and minty" Fox's Glacier Mints on television in the 1970s and 1980s.
- Heavyweight character actor, first acted on stage in 1943. For several seasons in repertory, including a stint with the Old Vic in Bristol. Was known for his 'villainous gourmands', particularly Landburger Gessler in 'William Tell' on TV and Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' on stage. Also a memorable Mr. Bumble in he 1962 BBC miniseries 'Oliver Twist'.
- King-sized character actor from England who began his career with the Oxford Playhouse in 1943.
- Resembled Alfred Hitchcock.
- He made his stage debut in a 1943 revival of Shaw's Saint Joan, and spent the next few seasons in repertory -- his performance in Donald Pleasence's 1952 play Ebb Tide elicited favorable comparisons with Robert Morley.
- His career was curtailed by arthritis, but he was a keen supporter of his local cricket club.
- As if to show how Goddard's corpulence was not always meant as a joke, his playing of a north countryman in John Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (Old Vic, 1984) left the house wonderfully straightfaced in the most straightfaced of modern plays.
- During a tour overseas in 1968 for the Prospect Players, he found himself playing Sir Toby and claimed to have lost "eight inches round the middle". It was due to a complaint he caught in Cairo.
- He was a ubiquitous figure on British television, turning up as a sadistic gang leader on The Invisible Man, as Mr. Bumble in a 13-part non-musical Oliver Twist serial adaptation (with Max Adrian as Fagin), and Sir Geoffrey Norton in The Man In Room 17 in the mid-1960s -- as well showing up simply as "large man" in Carry On Cruising, or as the president in The Millionairess on theater screens.
- The actor openly acknowledged himself as "one of the fatties in the business".
- He never failed to command in his characterisation of a favourite figure of Shakespeare's - Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night.
- In 1958-59 he loomed up on the small screen in 39 episodes, alarmingly but at his best, as Landburger Gessler, the hated Austrian leader against Conrad Phillips' William Tell and the poor people of 14th-century Switzerland. In the tale of crossbow markmanship, Goddard failed to arrest Tell, who fled to the mountains, which meant that Gessler would never get his man. Instead he was seen to find his solace in eating close-up vast quantities of food with scene after scene of Gessler's face as he stuffed it with meat.
- Much as he preferred the theatre, it was television and the odd film that kept him going, and in shows such as Drake's Progress (1957) and the Charlie Drake Comedy Hour he appeared in his more amusing moments.
- He was a British character actor whose conspicuous rotundity nearly always played a significant part in his stage and television career of more than 40 years. In roles as judge or professor, landlord or chairman, his figure may have been bulky, but there was something to add to it: his height.
- In 1974 he was the woman-shy landowner Bolshintsov in Turgenev's A Month in the Country at Chichester, and in Donald Sinden's Othello he showed more of his famous teamwork with the RSC in 1980 as the Duke of Venice.
- As Mr Bumble in the Broadway transfer of Oliver!, Goddard was rated "wonderfully fat and bullish"; and back in London as an amusing Marmaduke Muleygrubs JP, in the Victorian musical Jorrocks.
- Goddard did not put himself forward as a grotesque. He was, in fact, a most gentlemanly actor: game for anything.
- After seasons in repertory, especially at the Bristol Old Vic, he played the evangelist Attwater in Donald Pleasence's Ebb Tide with what the critic WA Darlington called "an unction worthy of Robert Morley".
- His vast girth and his weight -- over 300 pounds at times -- and almost equally imposing height put him in a league with such rotund screen figures as Francis L. Sullivan, Sydney Greenstreet, Robert Emhardt, Ronald Long and Robert Middleton.
- Goddard's range proved that he was just as adept at comedy - appearing alongside Charlie Drake in the sketch shows Drake's Progress (1957-58) and The Charlie Drake Comedy Hour (1972), as well as an episode of the sitcom The Worker (1970) - and he played the art thief Tun-Ju in a story in the children's fantasy series Ace of Wands (1970).
- In Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1960), Goddard was judged by Caryl Brahms to be a Wolsey who constituted "the fleshliest cardinal in the business," but why (she always wanted to know) was he not also cast in the film of Oscar Wilde.
- Many of his other character roles were as judges, doctors and clergymen.
- One critic observed that Belch was "so comfortable and substantially in the picture as to deserve painting in his alcoholic haze". Goddard became one of the best of useful Shakespeareans.
- He made his first stage appearance as the Steward in Oxford Playhouse's 1943 revival of Shaw's Saint Joan.
- If he had not been quite so busy on the small-screen, and so closely associated with British television, he might well have ended up on the short-list of possible candidates for the role of corpulent villain Auric Goldfinger in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content