Friend and collaborator of both Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock.
RIP Graham Stark
Ah what a shame. Loved him as Clouseau's assistant.
RIP Graham Stark.
I see he had his own sketch series in the 1960s.
Sad news if a good age.
I love those Pink Panther films.
A good age. Had a flair for visual comedy, check out his Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins.
Forever Dr. Auguste Balls.
A worthy header I would have thought.
Quote: Tim Azure @ October 31 2013, 8:49 AM GMTHe also wrote the silent piece Simon Simon. His biography of Peter Sellers includes his own photographs. He was 91 when he died. RIP.
Good post Tim, I did not know Stark had written a biog of Sellers, was it a good one do you know? Also you have reminded me I want to watch Simon Simon one day although the reviews were mixed on this.
I saw him the other day in a forgettable sixties war film, stuffed full of famous faces, about blowing up German ships in a neutral harbour, and wondered if he was still with us. Never a top name, but a very funny man.
Roger Lewis, who penned a somewhat critical biography of Peter Sellers in the 1990s, did not rate Stark too highly, putting him in the Jimmy Saville basket of child abusers: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10806464/The-stark-truth-of-Peter-Sellers-sidekick.html
I did not know all that - shocking! Oh dear, he has certainly gone down in my estimation.
Apart from that comment - I think I may have mentioned elsewhere on this site, but years ago my wife bought me a set of audio tapes of Graham Stark relating some of his tales about Peter Sellers and the "he'd even allowed Sellers to lock him in the boot of his car, on the pretext of getting him to locate the source of an annoying squeak." anecdote was exactly the same as Milligan related about Sellers on I believe one of the Parkinson shows. In both instances it was a brand new Rolls Royce that had an annoying squeak coming from the boot area and so Spike/Stark both had to get in the boot with a piece of chalk and mark where the noise was coming from.
And I think my point at the time is can you trust showbiz anecdotes?
I recall that after Stark's death, his heirs or beneficiaries put a lot of his personal possessions up for sale on eBay quick smart, signed Goon-related memorabilia and the like. The folk interested in maintaining the content of Stark's Wikipedia page have deleted the allegations made by Roger Lewis on the grounds of Lewis being the only source.
Would these be "familiar" allegations? I don't really want to ask.