British actor Eric Lander, 75
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Eric Lander
Actor who on television starred in No Hiding Place and
on the stage worked with Gielgud and Quayle
ERIC LANDER, the actor who has died aged 75, was
most familiar to television viewers as Detective Sergeant
Harry Baxter in the long-running 1960s police series No
Hiding Place.
The programme, which ran for 236 episodes between 1959
and 1967 and was noted for its authenticity, became perhaps
the best-known of ITV's early police dramas, and on many
occasions drew the station's largest audience of the week. It
spawned a board game and a hit theme tune, and such was
the uproar when it was initially taken off the air in 1965 that
ITV was forced to bring it back for a further two seasons.
No Hiding Place grew out of two other series, Murder Bag
and Crime Sheet, which starred Raymond Francis as the
snuff-taking Chief Detective Superintendent Tom Lockhart. In
No Hiding Place, his beat was widened to include
investigations of crimes other than murder, and he acquired as
his young, keen assistant the character played by Lander.
So popular was Lander with viewers - particularly female
ones - that in 1961 Sgt Baxter was given his own series, Echo
Four-Two, in which he and his men patrolled London's mean
streets in unmarked squad cars.
The series' producers assiduously sought to make it difficult
for children to pick up any tips about criminal acts from the
programme, but it made a sluggish start in the ratings and
halfway through its run was badly affected by an actors'
strike. The series was abruptly cancelled and Baxter returned
to No Hiding Place.
Lander left the series in 1963 lest he became typecast; he was
replaced by Johnny Briggs, who went on to find stardom as
Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street.
Nevertheless, for many people Lander still remained
associated with the part of Baxter. Some years after he had
left the programme, he and Colin Baker (the Dr Who actor)
were stopped for speeding on a motorway. A police officer
looked through the window and said to Lander: "Don't I know
you? Didn't you used to be one of us?". The pair escaped with
a warning.
Arthur Eric Lander was born at Rugby on May 27 1924, of
Cornish stock. His father was a Wesleyan Methodist minister,
and young Eric grew up in Derby. He went to Bemrose
School, and first became interested in acting through a local
church youth club.
He worked briefly as an apprentice at Rolls-Royce, but soon
came to loathe engineering, absconding instead to sit with his
sandwiches in the parks and cinemas of Derby. He was then
drafted into the Marines, and celebrated his 21st birthday in a
landing craft passing through the Strait of Messina.
In 1946, Lander was awarded the Alexander Korda
scholarship to Rada. Possessed of striking good looks and a
deep, mellifluous voice, Lander began his acting career with
the Arthur Brough Players at Folkestone in 1949.
The next year, Lander appeared as Claudio in John Gielgud's
production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Shakespeare
Memorial Theatre. Gielgud played Benedick to Peggy
Ashcroft's Beatrice; others in the cast included Paul Scofield,
Anthony Quayle, Robert Shaw and the young Claire Bloom.
Lander was quickly noticed by casting agents, and he soon
won a number of small parts in films that included The Colditz
Story (1954) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960). He also
appeared in several television programmes, among them the
lurid millennial drama 2,000 minus 60 (1957), in which crazed
scientist Charles Lloyd Pack threatened London in 1999 with
a guided missile.
His best role, however, was as the young Scottish doctor
treating an outbreak of typhoid in the Rhondda in a 1960
adaptation of A J Cronin's The Citadel.
"Lander's accent indicates that he has seen little of the
Scottish Highlands," thought The Daily Telegraph's critic, "but
he manages to convey the honest integrity of the new doctor
armed with diploma and gleaming scalpel and anxious to set
the world aright."
After leaving No Hiding Place, Lander began to work again in
the theatre, notably with George Murcell's company at the St
George's Theatre in Tufnell Park, north London. He appeared
there in productions of Macbeth, As You Like It and Richard II,
while on television he was seen in episodes of The Avengers,
in Coronation Street (as Ronald Cook), and in Crossroads (as
the surgeon who saved Benny's eyesight).
He was also in General Hospital (described as "Crossroads
with blood") and was often heard on the radio, where he used
his bass voice to advantage. When Guinness wanted an actor
to record an advertisement for the West African market,
where their brew is sold as an aphrodisiac, they selected
Lander, who was encouraged to employ as deep a voice as he
could conjure.
Lander's last part was on the stage, as the detective sergeant
in The Business of Murder (Mayfair), a part he played from
1983 until 1986, when he suffered a severe stroke. For some
years since he had also been afflicted by a rare neurological
condition, whose manifestations he bore with fortitude and
dignity.
Off-stage, Lander was quiet and unassuming. He was a keen
gardener, watcher of football and cricket, and keeper of
Yorkshire terriers. He had recently moved to Cornwall.
He is survived by his wife Janet (nee Mills), whom he married
in 1974.
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