Actor Willoughby Goddard, 81
Posted: Monday, April 14th, 2008 3:18 pmWidely remembered for his excessive corpulence on stage and television, Willoughby Goddard spent over 40 years never trying to disguise it. It brought him authority, variety, monotony and joy. Whether he was genial or aggressive, alarming or soothing, he could be cast in all sorts of moods. Sometimes he played up self-consciously to his weightiness; sometimes it hardly mattered. He could play judges, professors, mayors, landlords, managing directors and chairmen; he could also play sundry characters of no importance whatever. …
He was the the bulky Mr Holmes in Jack Roffey’s whodunnit, No Other Verdict (Duchess, 1954), and as the “massive vulgarian” Gowing in The Diary of a Nobody (Arts), six chapters of the book by George and Weedon Grossmith, Goddard was able to “talk to his hosts with conviction” in a show adapted by Basil Dean and Richard Blake.
On television he created first a fine impression as Professor Mark Harrison in The Voices; and in the Adventures of William Tell he put the shivers up watchers as the hero’s splendidly weighty main protagonist. … Read full obituary
