Obituary

JAMES BOOTH made a memorable impression as the reluctant hero Private Henry Hook in Zulu (1964), but although it was a major part in a classic movie and Booth had leading roles, often as charming rogues, in other films in the 1960s and early 1970s he never quite cemented his position

as a top-flight star.

In Zulu he got the role of the cockney malingerer in preference to Michael Caine, who played an effete, upper-class officer instead. But, fearing the dangers of typecasting as a Cockney, Booth subsequently turned down the title role in Alfie (1966), which ironically went to Caine and completed his transformation into one of Britain's biggest international stars.

Lead roles dried up, and Booth endured fallow periods, but he kept bouncing back in films and on television in the UK and US, with recurring roles in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (1986) and Twin Peaks (1990-91). During the 1980s he also found work as a script writer on action movies, such as American Ninja 2: The Confrontation (1987).

Booth was born David Geeves in 1927 in Croydon, Surrey. His father worked for the Salvation Army and he had a peripatetic childhood, living where his father's work took the family. After his father's death, they moved from the East End of London to Southend, where Booth first became involved in amateur drama, although he was well into his twenties before he considered acting as a career.

He had a stint in the Army and trained for management in a foreign mining company's London offices, before winning a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He got his first professional acting job when the stage manager Paula Delaney asked RADA to suggest someone who might be appropriate for a role as a gangster. Several years later Booth and Delaney married, and the union lasted until his death.

After a spell as a "spear- carrier" in a series of Shakespeare plays at the Old Vic in London, Booth joined Joan Littlewood's celebrated Theatre Workshop company in Stratford East in the late 1950s. There one of his biggest successes was the musical Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be. It was a straightforward drama, without music, a portrait of seedy life in Soho, when it arrived unheralded

at Littlewood's offices.

Booth recognised the name of the author, Frank Norman, as that of an ex-convict who had recently written the book Bang to Rights, and showed the manuscript to Lionel Bart, who added songs. It opened at the company's Theatre Royal in 1959 and transferred to the West End, where it ran for two years. Booth played a pimp.

His film career began in 1959 when he played the gangster Spider Kelly in two comedies, Jazzboat and In the Nick. He had a small role in The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) and starred in Littlewood's comedy-drama film Sparrows Can't Sing (1963), playing the role of a returning seaman, with Barbara Windsor as the unfaithful wife.

Then came Zulu, the epic celebration of Rorke's Drift, one of the most famous battles in British military history when about 130 British soldiers successfully defended a mission station against 40,000 Zulu warriors. He played Private Hook, the drunken malingerer who shows true courage under fire and wins the Victoria Cross -the characterisation proved controversial with claims that Hook was really a model soldier.

Booth starred in Ken Russell's comedy French Dressing (1964) as a deckchair attendant who undertakes to give a dull seaside resort a new image, and he then played a hapless village bobby who climbs the career ladder by accident in The Secret of My Success (1965), with Shirley Jones, Stella Stevens and Honor Blackman.

He was reunited with Bart on Twang!!, a musical about Robin Hood. It tied him throughout 1965 and he had a percentage deal, but the show flopped, bankrupting Bart and setting Booth's career back years. "I was just known as `that actor who'd been in Twang!!'," he said in one interview. "Nobody wanted to know." He was out of work for a year before getting back together with his Zulu co-star Stanley Baker in the thriller Robbery (1967).

The comedy The Bliss of Mrs Blossom (1968) gave him a plum role as Shirley MacLaine's lover.

It took a true story from the early 20th century - about a woman who lived with her husband but

kept a lover in the attic - and adapted it for the Swinging Sixties, with Richard Attenborough as

the husband.

Other films include Revenge (1971), in which he co-starred with Joan Collins; the comedy Rentadick (1972); That'll Be the Day (1973), playing David Essex's father; the thriller Brannigan (1975), with John Wayne, and the sex comedy I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight (1976).

By the mid-1970s his career appeared to be stalling. He had a reputation as a hellraiser, he lost a fortune in the property crash and he decided to start afresh in the US. There were supporting roles in Airport '77, The Jazz Singer (1980) and Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981), while he also worked as a scriptwriter, mainly on genre action movies.

His most notable later performances were on the small screen in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, in which he played the expat crook Kenny Ames, and Twin Peaks, as Ernie Niles, a newcomer with a shady past.