Early life , Dorset, which Le Mesurier disliked intensely Le Mesurier was born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley in
Bedford on 5 April 1912. His parents were Charles Elton Halliley, a
solicitor, and Amy Michelle ( Le Mesurier), whose family were from
Alderney in the
Channel Islands; both families were affluent, with histories of government service or work in the legal profession. While John was an infant the family settled in
Bury St Edmunds, in
West Suffolk. He was sent to school, first to Grenham House in
Kent, and later to
Sherborne School in Dorset, where one of his fellow pupils was the mathematician
Alan Turing. Le Mesurier disliked both schools intensely, citing insensitive teaching methods and an inability to accept individualism. He later wrote: "I resented Sherborne for its closed mind, its collective capacity for rejecting anything that did not conform to the image of manhood as portrayed in the ripping yarns of a scouting manual." From an early age Le Mesurier had been interested in acting and performing; as a child he had frequently been taken to the
West End of London to watch
Ralph Lynn and
Tom Walls perform in the series of
farces at the
Aldwych Theatre. In his childhood in Bury St Edmunds, the family lived less than 300 yards from the Theatre Royal, and his autobiography records meeting actors from that theatre as his earliest childhood memory. These experiences fuelled an early desire to make a career on the stage. his performance won him a
British Academy of Film and Television Arts "Best Television Actor" award. and had two sons,
Robin and Kim. Jacques began an affair in 1962 with her driver, John Schofield, who gave her the attention and support that Le Mesurier did not. When Jacques decided to move Schofield into the family home, Le Mesurier moved into a separate room and tried to repair the marriage. He later commented about this period: "I could have walked out, but, whatever my feelings, I loved Hattie and the children and I was certain—I had to be certain—that we could repair the damage." The affair caused a downturn in his health; he collapsed on holiday in
Tangier in 1963 and was hospitalised in Gibraltar. He returned to London to find the situation between his wife and her lover was unchanged, which caused a relapse. During the final stages of the breakdown of his marriage, Le Mesurier met
Joan Malin at
the Establishment club in Soho in 1963. The following year he moved out of his marital house and that day proposed to Joan, who accepted his offer. Le Mesurier allowed Jacques to bring a divorce suit on grounds of his own infidelity, to ensure that the press blamed him for the break-up, thus avoiding any negative publicity for Jacques. Le Mesurier and Malin married in March 1966. A few months after they were married, Joan began a relationship with Tony Hancock and left Le Mesurier to move in with the comedian. Hancock was a self-confessed alcoholic by this time, and was verbally and physically abusive to Joan during their relationship. After a year together, with Hancock's violence towards her worsening, Joan attempted
suicide; she subsequently realised that she could no longer live with Hancock and returned to her husband. Despite this, Le Mesurier remained friends with Hancock, calling him "a comic of true genius, capable of great warmth and generosity, but a tormented and unhappy man". Without Le Mesurier's knowledge, Joan resumed her affair with Hancock and, when the comic moved to Australia in 1968, she planned to follow him if he was able to overcome his
alcoholism. She abandoned these plans and remained with Le Mesurier after Hancock committed suicide on 25 June 1968. Le Mesurier was a heavy drinker but was never noticeably drunk. In 1977 he collapsed in Australia and flew home, where he was diagnosed with
cirrhosis of the liver and ordered to stop drinking. Until then he had not considered himself an alcoholic; he accepted that "it was the cumulative effect over the years that had done the damage". It was a year and a half before he drank alcohol again, when he avoided spirits and drank only beer. Jacques claimed that his calculated vagueness was the result of his dependence on
cannabis, His remains were cremated, and the ashes buried at the Church of St. George the Martyr, Church Hill, Ramsgate. His
epitaph reads: "John Le Mesurier. Much loved actor. Resting." His self-penned death notice in
The Times of 16 November 1983 stated that he had "conked out" and that he "sadly misses family and friends". After Le Mesurier's death fellow comedian
Eric Sykes commented: "I never heard a bad word said against him. He was one of the great
drolls of our time". Le Mesurier's fellow ''Dad's Army'' actor
Bill Pertwee mourned the loss of his friend, saying, "It's a shattering loss. He was a great professional, very quiet but with a lovely sense of humour". Director
Peter Cotes, writing in
The Guardian, called him one of Britain's "most accomplished screen character actors", while
The Times obituarist observed that he "could lend distinction to the smallest part".
The Guardian reflected on Le Mesurier's popularity, observing that "No wonder so many whose lives were very different from his own came to be so enormously fond of him". A memorial service was held on 16 February 1984 at the "Actors' Church",
St Paul's, Covent Garden, at which Bill Pertwee gave the eulogy. ==Approach to acting==