Harry Landis(1926-2022)

Harry Landis was an English character actor of Polish parentage, born in impoverished circumstances in the Jewish East End of London. As a youngster, he worked a variety of short-lived jobs, including in a café pouring tea, as a window cleaner and as a milkman. His love of theater eventually led him to performing with a variety troupe during the war years, mostly in parks and air raid shelters. At the age of twenty and having completed his military service, Landis received a grant from the London County Council to study for three years at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He then acted with the Elizabethan Theatre Company (in Shakespearean roles) and in repertory theatre before making his screen bow in 1955. Landis was essentially regarded as a 'working class actor' and cast accordingly. One of his first leading roles was in Arnold Wesker's play The Kitchen. He later also turned to direction, notably with Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at the Unity Theatre in 1966 and in the capacity of artistic director of the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. On the screen, he tended to portray army privates, barkeeps, tradesmen, passengers and generally unassuming average Joe's. More specifically, Landis has been familiar to television audiences as the insufferable Mr. Morris in the sitcom Friday Night Dinner (2011) and as Polish barber Felix Kawalski in 53 episodes of EastEnders (1985). He also played Fagin's accomplice Toby Crackit in Oliver Twist (1962) and popped up multiple times as different characters in Dixon of Dock Green (1955). His film resume includes small roles in such wartime dramas as Commando en Corée (1956) (with a very young Michael Caine far down in the cast list), Amère victoire (1957), Dunkerque (1958) and Private Potter (1963). Landis was president of the actor's union Equity from 2002 to 2008. Between 1994 and 2001 he also served as director of the Equity Charitable Trust.