Naunton Wayne, 1901-1970

Today marks the birth anniversary of British actor Naunton Wayne. He's probably best known in America for playing Caldicott opposite Basil Radford's Chalmers. They were first paired together in The Lady Vanishes to provide some of Alfred Hitchcock's black humor: they were trying to get back to England to get the result of the cricket Test match, which is far more important to them than any disappearing woman who might be in danger. (The punchline of the story is that the match gets rained out.) The two characters proved to be so popular that they were brought back together to play Caldicott and Chalmers again in Night Train to Munich, as I mentioned back in July 2009. They were paired together as Caldicott and Chalmers in two more movies, and then worked together again in the British horror classic Dead of Night, although the two actors play differently-named characters there.

The photo above is taken from the defunct In Character blog about character actors, which doesn't seem to have been updated in two years.