The three Dickies: More about Malcolm Saville on Children's Hour

We've seen that the third actor to play Malcolm Saville's child character (and my first literary hero) Dickie Morton was tried for murder at the Old Bailey as a young man.

That was Cavan Malone, who was acquitted within minutes by the jury on the grounds of self-defence. He continued acting for some years and played the first bridegroom in Coronation Street - he married Annie Walker's daughter - but was to die in 1982 aged only 45.

But who were the first two actors to play Dickie? 

The second Dickie was a woman. Elaine Macnamara took the part in adaptations of The Gay Dolphin Adventure and Seven White Gates, which were both first broadcast in 1946.

She had started acting in BBC Radio productions the previous year and did so regularly until 1961. As far as I can tell from the cast lists, she always played children - both boys and girls.

Besides a couple of stage appearances in Scotland before the war, that is all I can discover about her.

[Later. Thanks to a reader, I can tell you more about Elaine Macnamara.]

BBC Radio's common practice now, as it seems to have been when radio drama began, is to have boys' parts played by boys. But after the war it was more usual to give such roles to an adult actress.

Why that was the case may be explained by the first boy to play Dickie. 

That was Peter Mullins, who played him in an adaptation of Mystery at Wichend broadcast in October 1943,

The cast list reveals a couple of familiar names. Harry Fowler, the chirpy cockney evacuee in Went the Day Well? and star of Hue and Cry, sounds just right for Tom Ingles. David Morton, however, was played by Charles Hawtrey.

Charles Hawtrey?

Before you decide this dramatisation must have been a sort of Carry On Up the Lone Pine - and Hattie Jacques would have made a wonderful Miss Ballinger - I had better point out that as a young man Hawtrey often played children on the radio and even on film.

In 1943 Peter Mullins was becoming a regular for the BBC, acting in everything from Children’s Hour serials to Marlowe's Edward II.

You can see Mullins in a clip above playing Bruno, a German Jewish refugee boy, in Mr Emmanuel, a 1944 propaganda film. Perhaps he's not helped by the German accent he was obliged to adopt.

As small boys will, Mullins got older, with the results that he played the older brother David Morton in the two 1945 adaptations where Elaine MacNamara played Dickie, He was also Guy Standing when Children’s Hour dramatised Malcolm Saville’s Redshank’s Warning in 1948.

But it was another of his roles that may have led to the BBC to conclude that it was less trouble to cast women as boys. Charles Hawtrey and Peter Mullins also played brothers in the first series of Norman and Henry Bones - Boy Detectives, which was again broadcast as part of  Children's Hour in 1943.

This proved hugely popular and was to run to more than 120 episodes, with the result that Peter Mullins was soon replaced by Patricia Hayes, presumably because he didn't sound like the younger brother any more.

I remember reading about the casting of Billy Barratt in the BBC television drama Responsible Child a few years ago - I raved about his performance at the time,

One of the challenges was that they had to leave it late to find their young lead, because if you cast the perfect 12-year-old six months before filming starts, he may no longer be perfect when he turns up on the first day. 

Peter Mullins went on acting for BBC Radio into the early 1950s, by then playing adult roles in the classics.

There are two Peter Mullins on the IMDb. Peter Mullins (I) has half a dozen credits for children’s roles in the 1940s, including Caravan (1946), which features the future DJ Pete Murray, and another Malcolm Saville story, Trouble at Townsend, from the same year.

He also has a couple of credits as a stage manager for TV plays from 1952. This, surely, is the Peter Mullins who played Dickie Morton.

Peter Mullins (II) on IMDb is an art director and production designer, with credits including Where Eagles Dare and a couple of Pink Panther films. He worked continuously from 1947 (when he was credited as an apprentice) until 2001.

But if you look at his entry carefully, you will see that this Peter Mullins also has a couple of credits as a child actor in the 1940s - for Hue and Cry (1947) and The Boys in Brown (1949).

As it's not such a common name, I'm happy to conclude that Peter Mullins (I) and Peter Mullins (II) are the same person. Which means that the original radio Dickie Morton is still alive at the age of 92.