On celluloid in the 30s he was famous for his scowling schoolmaster impression, known variously as Smart Alec, William Potts and Dr Benjamin Twist.
Come off it, that’s Will Hay
There’s no fooling you is there? Teesside astronomer William Hay played a range of disastrous schoolmasters forever scowling, sniffing, losing his pince-ne* and being prised out of ridiculous scrapes by geriatric Moore Marriot and fat boy Graham Moffat.
What do you mean astro-nomer?
In 1933, Hay discovered a white spot on Saturn and in 1935 was made a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
You’re joking
Fact is always stranger than fantasy. He also spoke six languages including Latin and Afrikaans. The fictional Hay was less admirable though, a nincompoop whom he described as “an inefficient man doggedly trying to do a job of which he is utterly incapable”.
As Smart Alec, Hay was a prison teacher who unexpectedly became head of Narkover, a boys’ public school of very little distinction. Later, as Benjamin Twist, he took his pupils off to Paris where they foiled a gang of thieves and in The Ghost of St Michael’s, Hay ventured into Scooby Doo territory, tackling the phantom bagpiper whose playing always presaged a death in the staffroom.
Not exactly an accurate depiction of British educational practices during the inter-war period?
It got wilder once World War Two was declared. In The Goose Steps Out, Hay (aka William Potts) was the double of a Nazi general flown to Germany to take over a Hitler Youth college, creating havoc among the young brownshirts (including baby-faced Peter Ustinov and Charles Hawtrey).
What exactly had Will Hay got against teachers?
He always made fun of them right from the beginning in 1909 with a revue sketch called “Bend Down”, which later became The 4th Form at St Michael’s. Hay did play a lawyer once and is famous as the would-be stationmaster of Buggleskelly in Oh Mr Porter! but his main target remained the teaching profession - a refuge of the pompous and incompetent. He once admitted “the character I play is really a very pathetic fellow”.
It’s all right for him - he was earning a small fortune Actually the last laugh was on Hay. After The Goose Steps Out he volunteered to help the war effort. Because of his astronomical expertise he ended up in the Navy’s navigation school - as a teacher.
