Gerald Harper
Acting
Biography
Gerald Harper (15 February 1931 – 2 July 2025) was an English actor, best known for his work on television, having played the title roles in Adam Adamant Lives! (1966–67) and Hadleigh (1969–76). He then returned to his main love, the theatre. Harper was married to actress Jane Downs from 1957 until they divorced in 1975. In 2001, when he was in his early seventies, he began a relationship with 30-year-old actress Sarah Alexander; the relationship ended when she left him for actor Peter Serafinowicz in 2002. Harper died at the age of 94 on 2 July 2025.
Born: February 15, 1931
Place of Birth: London, England, UK
Known For
Cilla
A mostly live weekly entertainment show starring Cilla Black and her special guests.
The Punch and Judy Man
Walter Pinner is the titular Punch And Judy Man plying his trade in the seaside town of Piltdown. Unhappily married to his social climbing wife, who gets him to perform at the 60th Anniversary celebrations of the town in front of all the local dignitaries, his hatred of snobbery comes to a hilarious head.
The Caesars
The Caesars is a British television series produced by Granada Television for the ITV network in 1968. Made in black-and-white and written and produced by Philip Mackie, it covered similar dramatic territory to the later BBC adaptation of I, Claudius, dealing with the lives of the early emperors of Ancient Rome, but differed in its less sensationalist depictions of historical characters and their motives.
Public Eye
Public Eye is a British television series that ran from 1965 to 1975. It was produced by ABC Television for three series, and Thames Television for a further four series. The series depicted the investigations and cases handled by the unglamorous enquiry agent Frank Marker, an unmarried loner who is in his early forties when the series begins. In the words of an ABC trailer for the third series: "Marker isn't a glamorous detective and he doesn't get glamorous cases—he doesn't even get glamorous girls. What he does get is people who are in trouble—the sort of trouble you can't go to the police about, even if you are innocent."
The Avengers
A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - teams with various assistants throughout the series' run, including Dr. David Keel, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, to repeatedly save the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally diabolical evil-doers (among them robots and man-eating monsters).
A Night to Remember
The sinking of the Titanic is presented in a highly realistic fashion in this tense British drama. The disaster is portrayed largely from the perspective of the ocean liner's second officer, Charles Lightoller. Despite numerous warnings about ice, the ship sails on, with Capt. Edward John Smith keeping it going at a steady clip. When the doomed vessel finally hits an iceberg, the crew and passengers discover that they lack enough lifeboats, and tragedy follows.
Strangler's Web
What appears to be a cut-and-dried case of murder of an aging one time showgirl on Hampstead Heath by her lover is complicated by several factors, including a far more respectable paramour, and her insistence that a great inheritance was due her that nobody can verify.
Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant Lives! is a British television series which ran from 1966 to 1967 on the BBC, starring Gerald Harper in the title role. Proposing that an adventurer born in 1867 had been revived from hibernation in 1966, the show was a comedy adventure that took a satirical look at life in the 1960s through the eyes of an Edwardian.
Tunes of Glory
Following World War II in peacetime Scotland, brigade headquarters replaces commanding officer Major Jock Sinclair, a boisterous battalion leader, with the strict, temperamental Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow. Resentful toward his replacement, Sinclair undermines Barrow's authority and damages his successor's reputation among the soldiers. Barrow faces an uphill battle in regaining the discipline and respect of his battalion.
The League of Gentlemen
Involuntarily-retired Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, although civilian irritations do start getting in the way.
Filmography
as Todhunter
as narrator
as Greg Miles
as James Hadleigh
as Brian
as Croft
as Lucius Vitellius
as James Hadleigh
as Self
as Inspector Murray
as Deputy Commander Rae Cox
as Raymond Franks
as Sheik / Scotsman / Harold
as 1st Drunk
as Colonel Tanner
as Watts
as Colonel Corf
as Major Hugo Macmillan
as Captain Saunders
as 3rd Officer - Carpathia
as Ernest
as Dicky
as Walter "Duds" Morrison
as RAF Officer (uncredited)