When his Merchant Navy freighter was torpedoed and sunk en route to Malta in 1942, the 17-year-old Frederick Treves saved several shipmates and was awarded the British Empire Medal for bravery. He carried that hard-won courage and authority with him into an acting career that lasted almost six decades, and in which he distinguished himself as a character actor of enormous presence.
He was born on March 29, 1925, to a doctor-father and was a great-nephew of his namesake surgeon uncle, who famously treated the ‘Elephant Man’, Joseph Merrick. On returning to civilian life, he trained at Rada (where he won the Emile Littler prize) and joined the Newquay Repertory Theatre in 1948. He made his West End debut, in Rattigan’s Adventure Story, at the St. James Theatre the following year.
He performed extensively in regional theatre, notably in the Birmingham Rep’s Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2, which was also seen at the Old Vic (1953), in The and for a number of years in the late 1950s and early 1960s regularly appeared with the “Sunday play-producing society”, the Repertory Players, at the Strand Theatre.
Other West End appearances saw him again at the Strand (and later on a national tour) in Maigret (1965), alongside Trevor Howard in The Devil’s General at the Savoy Theatre (1953), in the Tom Stoppard double bill Dirty Linen and New Found Land, which transferred from the Almost Free Theatre to the Arts Theatre in 1976, and with the Prospect Company at the Old Vic in Shaw’s Saint Joan (1977).
He joined the National Theatre in 1978 for David Hare’s Plenty and went on to make memorable contributions to Bill Bryden’s The Passion (1980), in Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Peter Gill (1981), and Peter Hall’s Coriolanus with Ian McKellen (1984).
In 1983, he played opposite Celia Imrie in Willy Russell’s Educating Rita at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley, and appeared in a production of The Voysey Inheritance directed by William Gaskill at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh in 1992.
His first role - of more than 100 - on television came in 1956 in the BBC soap The Grove Family. He went on to make memorable contributions to Maigret (1960), as the father in The Railway Children (1968), in Alun Owen’s Lucky (1974), and in The Naked Civil Servant (1975). Later appearances included Suez 1956 by Ian Curteis (1979), an adaptation of Kipling’s Stalky & Co (1981), the six-part family saga The Cazalets (2001), and in episodes that spanned the gamut of primetime and children’s programmes, including Follyfoot, The Regiment, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Jewel in the Crown, The Bill, Jeeves and Wooster, and Yes, Prime Minister.
His film work included Sweeney 2 (1978), The Elephant Man (1980), Defence of the Realm (1985), Paper Mask (1990) and Sunshine (1999).
As a member of the BBC Radio Drama Repertory Company, he was a familiar voice in countless plays, including Rattigan’s French Without Tears (1973), and David Edgar’s Destiny (1979). He also had a number of his own plays broadcast on radio, including My Favourite Broad (1969), and Operation Pedestal, based on his experiences of being sunk by a Nazi U Boat in the war, in 1974.
He died, aged 86, on January 30, 2012, and is survived by his wife and three children. His son, Simon Treves, is also an actor and playwright.
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