John Le Mesurier military branch British Army
In July 1935, Le Mesurier was hired by the Oldham repertory company, based at the Coliseum Theatre; his first appearance with them was in a version of the Wilson Collison play, Up in Mabel's Room; he was sacked after one week for missing a performance after oversleeping. In September 1935, he moved to the Sheffield Repertory Theatre to appear in Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, and also played Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Le Mesurier later commented on the slow progress of his career: "had I known it was going to take so long, I might well have given the whole thing up". In 1937 he joined the Croydon Repertory Theatre, where he appeared in nine productions in 1936 and 1937. During this period Le Mesurier changed his professional name from John Halliley to John Le Mesurier; his biographer Graham McCann observes that "he never bothered, at least in public, to explain the reason for his decision". Le Mesurier used his new name for the first time in the September 1937 production of Love on the Dole.Le Mesurier first appeared on television in 1938, thus becoming one of the medium's pioneering actors. His initial appearance was in a production of The Marvellous History of St Bernard in which he appeared as Seigneur de Miolans in a play adapted from a 15th-century manuscript by Henri Ghéon. Alongside the television appearance, he continued to appear on stage in Edinburgh and Glasgow with the Howard and Wyndham Players, at least until late 1938 when he returned to London and re-joined Croydon Repertory Theatre.
His second spell with the troupe ended a few months later when, from May to October 1939 he appeared in Gaslight, first in London and subsequently on tour. The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian considered that Le Mesurier gave "a faultless performance", and that "the character is not overemphasised. One may praise it best by saying that Mr. Le Mesurier gives one a really uncomfortable feeling in the stomach".From November to December 1939, Le Mesurier toured Britain in a production of Goodness, How Sad, during which time he met the director's daughter, June Melville, whom he married in April 1940. After spending January and February 1940 in French Without Tears at the Grand Theatre in Blackpool, he returned to London where he was employed by the Brixton Theatre, appearing in a series of productions. In his time in repertory, Le Mesurier took on a variety of roles across several genres; his biographer Graham McCann observed that his range included "comedies and tragedies, thrillers and fantasies, tense courtroom dramas and frenzied farces, Shakespeare and Ibsen, Sheridan and Wilde, Molière and Shaw, Congreve and Coward. The range was remarkable".In September 1940 Le Mesurier's rented home was hit by a German bomb, destroying all his possessions, including his call-up papers. In the same bombing raid, the theatre in Brixton in which he was working was also hit. A few days later he reported for basic training with the Royal Armoured Corps; in June 1941 he was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment. He served in Britain until 1943 when he was posted to British India where he spent the rest of the war. Le Mesurier later claimed that he had had "a comfortable war, with captaincy thrust upon me, before I was demobbed in 1946".
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