David Kossoff

Published Monday 4 April 2005 at 12:25

Actor David Kossoff, who memorably created the Jewish tailor of Wolf Mankowitz’s The Bespoke Overcoat on stage, and on television co-starred with Peggy Mount in the original version of the hit comedy series The Larkins, died on March 23, aged 85.

Acting was David Kossoff’s third career choice, after first working as an interior designer and then as an aviator draughtsman. On stage from the early forties, Kossoff exploited his Slavic name and mittel-European bearing in dozens of ‘foreign’ character roles.

He won a BAFTA award for his role in the film A Kid for Two Farthings and in the early sixties he began reading bible stories on BBC radio. His readings were so successful that they spawned a TV series and a host of bestselling books. He wrote a prayer book entitled You’ve Got a Moment, Lord? and in the eighties he published Stories From a Small Town, based on the folk tales of 19th century Jewish Russia.

Kossoff was born on November 24, 1919 to Russian parents in the East End of London. He made his first stage appearance in 1942 at the left wing Unity Theatre in the Spanish Civil War play The Spanish Village. He stayed with the Unity Theatre company for three years, both as an actor and director and in 1945 joined the BBC Repertory Company, where he remained for six years, appearing in hundreds of radio plays, including the sci-fi series Journey Into Space.

On the London stage he scored notable success in Peter Ustinov’s The Love of Four Colonels and other memorable theatre appearances included No Sign of the Dove, The World of Sholom Aleichem and Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn. In 1970 he played Morry Swartz in Bernard Kops’ Enter Solly Gold and three years later, he appeared as Aaron Bromberg in Bunny opposite Eartha Kitt at the Criterion Theatre.

Throughout the fifties he was prominent on TV notably as the hen-pecked Alf in The Larkins and in the sixties as Marcus Lieberman, boss of the family furniture company in A Little Big Business. He also took the role of the Sheriff of Nottingham in a 1953 version of Robin Hood and appeared in the very first Armchair Theatre production, The Outsider, in 1956, among other plays.

Kossoff often played roles older than his real age and his many memorable film appearances included the part of Carrington the junk dealer in the 1956 version of 1984 and befuddled nuclear scientist Professor Kokintz in The Mouse That Roared in 1959. He played Freud’s father in John Huston’s Freud (1962) and his last film was Staggered (1994).

He had great success with several one-man shows, both on the London stage and on Broadway, including With One Eyebrow Slightly Up (1957) and A Funny Kind of Evening With David Kossoff (1964).

Tragedy struck in 1976 when his younger son, Paul, lead guitarist in the rock group Free, died of drug-induced heart failure. The 25-year-old had a history of drug abuse and Kossoff went on to passionately campaign against such dangers. He performed an acclaimed one-man show, The Late Great Paul, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and on a tour of universities and schools.

His wife, Margaret Jenkins, died in 1995. He is survived by his other son and a daughter.

Patrick Newley