William Hartnell - biography

“All my life, I’ve wanted to play an older character in films, and I’ve never been allowed to, except on one occasion prior to being offered Doctor Who...  the part of the old boy in This Sporting Life.”

“I have had two narrow escapes from death when filming - numerous accidents (my back has been injured twice).”

“I have walked onto the stage and played a scene which ended by my pulling a revolver out of my pocket to shoot someone, and I found I had forgotten to put the gun in my pocket - so I had to strangle them instead!”

“I come from a very old family.  There are three hundred years of us.”

“I don’t really have any hobbies.  I think my hobbies are reading and fishing.  Fishing might be useful.”

“Not only was there no tradition in my family for the theatre, but it wasn’t even my first ambition - horses were.  Race-horses.”

“When I was fifteen, I ran away from boarding school because I wanted to be a jockey!”

“I must admit that I was two years in the crowd before I was ever allowed to appear in a film.  I did numerous films, quickies of those days.  If you had ten pages of dialogue in one take and if you fluffed...  well, you had to ad lib and then carry on.”

“I stayed with The Army Game for the first year, and then I thought I would give it a rest and try and do something else, I was away from it for two years making films again.  And then I quite by accident met the producer in a train one evening and he asked me if I’d come back to the show.  I said yes - at a price.  He agreed and I went back for another year.  Then I thought: I’d better leave now before I do go into a mental home.”

“I’d say my first break in films would have been Carol Reed’s The Way Ahead, in which I played the tough sergeant.”

“My first job in the theatre was luckily to be with Sir Frank Benson, a wonderful Shakespearian actor and teacher whom we all called Pa Benson.”

“Doctor Who leaves me no time to do anything else and I think I’ll be doing it for many years.  They’ve pretty well given me carte blanche and as a matter of fact Verity [Lambert, producer] has said: ‘when the time comes, we will give you a bath-chair free.’ I said: ‘I might take you up on that one day.’”

“I was so pleased to be offered the part of Doctor Who.  To me kids are the greatest audience and the greatest critics in the world.”

“I’m not tired of Dr Who.  It’s a wonderful part to play.”

“One day I shall come back.  Yes, I shall come back.  Until then there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties.  Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.  [From Episode 6 of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, re-used for The Five Doctors]”

“Space travel?  Quite honestly, it scares me to death.  I haven’t the slightest wish to get in a rocket and zoom through the stratosphere.  Somebody else can be the first man on the moon.  It doesn’t interest me at all.”

“There was the occasion when I arrived at an air display in the TARDIS and the kids were convinced I had flown it there!”

“This will run for five years.”

“Verity Lambert, a very charming a loveable person.”

“We did Doctor Who for forty-eight weeks a year but I loved it.  I couldn’t go out into the street without a bunch of children following me, like the Pied Piper.  People used to take it terribly seriously.”

“You’ll both wind up burnt cinders floating in Spain...  uh, space.  [Fluffing his lines in Doctor Who - The Chase]”

“[His favourite Doctor Who story] The French Revolution [a.k.a.  The Reign of Terror, 1964]”

William Hartnell has appeared in the following films:
Say It with Music (1932)
I’m an Explosive (1933)
Follow the Lady (1933)
The Lure (1933)
Swinging the Lead (1934)
The Perfect Flaw (1934)
Seeing Is Believing (1934)
While Parents Sleep (1935)
The Guv’nor (1935)
Nothing Like Publicity (1936)
Parisian Life (1936)
Midnight at Madame Tussaud’s (1936)
Farewell Again (1937)
They Drive by Night (1938)
Too Dangerous to Live (1939)
Murder Will Out (1940)
They Came by Night (1940)
Freedom Radio (1941)
The Peterville Diamond (1942)
Flying Fortress (1942)
They Flew Alone (1942)
Suspected Person (1942)
The Goose Steps Out (1942)
Sabotage at Sea (1942)
The Bells Go Down (1943)
The Dark Tower (1943)
Strawberry Roan (1944)
Headline (1944)
The Way Ahead (1944)
The Agitator (1945)
Murder in Reverse (1945)
Appointment with Crime (1946)
Odd Man Out (1947)
Temptation Harbour (1947)
Brighton Rock (1947)
Escape (1948)
Now Barabbas (1949)
The Lost People (1949)
Double Confession (1950)
The Dark Man (1951)
The Magic Box (1951)
The Ringer (1952)
The Pickwick Papers (1952)
The Holly and the Ivy (1952)
Will Any Gentleman...? (1953)
Footsteps in the Fog (1955)
Josephine and Men (1955)
Tons of Trouble (1956)
Private’s Progress (1956)
Doublecross (1956)
Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst (1957)
Hell Drivers (1957)
The Hypnotist (1957)
Date with Disaster (1957)
On the Run (1958)
Carry on Sergeant (1958)
The Night We Dropped a Clanger (1959)
Strictly Confidential (1959)
Shake Hands with the Devil (1959)
The Mouse That Roared (1959)
The Desperate Man (1959)
Jackpot (1960)
And the Same to You (1960)
Piccadilly Third Stop (1960)
This Sporting Life (1963)
The World Ten Times Over (1963)
Heavens Above! (1963)
To Have and to Hold (1963)
Tomorrow at Ten (1964)