Ballard Berkeley

Ballard Blascheck (6 August 1904 – 16 January 1988), known professionally as Ballard Berkeley, was an English actor of stage and screen. He is best remembered for playing Major Gowen in the British television sitcom Fawlty Towers. Life and career The son of Joseph and Beatrice Blascheck, he was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He married Dorothy Long in 1929. During the 1930s he performed regularly in the so-called "quota quickies". One of his earliest roles was as the heroic lead in the 1937 film The Last Adventurers. He served as a special constable with the Metropolitan Police during the Second World War, witnessing the Blitz at first hand, including the bombing of the Café de Paris nightclub. For his service he received the Defence Medal and the Special Constabulary Long Service Medal. He appeared in the film In Which We Serve (1942) and in the Hitchcock film Stage Fright (1950). He featured as Detective Inspector Berkeley in two episodes of Edgar Lustgarten's drama series, Scotland Yard: "Person Unknown" (1956), and "Bullet from the Past" (1957).