by Hal Erickson
biography
British actor/writer Reginald Beckwith was a playwright and film critic in the years before the war. From 1941 through 1945, Beckwith was a BBC war correspondent; coincidentally, his first film as an actor was the 1940 flag-waver Freedom Radio. His best known play was the serio-comedy Boys in Brown, concerning a British borstal (boys' reformatory) and its kindhearted headmaster; apparently Beckwith had written the latter role with himself in mind, though it would be played by Jack Warner in the film version. From the late 1940s onward, Reginald Beckwith was a full-time character actor, playing variations on the fussy, nervous upper-class and executive types so popular in British films of the period.
