Gordon Jackson was one of the stalwarts of British television in the 1970s, although he also had extensive stage and screen experience going back to the 1940s. A Scot, he began his career playing small parts in a series of war films made by the Ealing Studios and others:Initially typecast as a weakling, Jackson gradually won recognition as a useful character actor, specializing in stern, well-mannered gents of the "stiff upper lip" variety, often lacking in a sense of humor. His rich Scottish accent, however, balanced this with a certain charm; it was this combination of sternness and warmth that characterized most of his roles on stage and screen.

     During the 1950s, Jackson continued to develop his film career and was also busy in repertory theater, making his debut on the London stage in the farce Seagulls over Sorrento in 1951. Other acclaimed roles on the stage included an award-winning Horatio in Tony Richardson's production of Hamlet in 1969, Tes­man in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, and Malvolio in Twelfth Night. In the cinema he gradually moved from young soldiers and juvenile leads in the likes of Millions Like Us (1943), Whisky Galore (1949), Tunes of Glory (1960) to major supporting parts in such films as The lpcress File (1965), starring Michael Caine, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), which was adapted from the novel by Muriel Spark. By the 1960s, it was apparently automatic for Jackson's name to crop up whenever a genial, but crusty Scotsman was required, whether the production under discussion was a wartime epic or something more homely.

     As a television star, Jackson really came into his own in 1971, when he made his first appearances in the role of Hudson, the endearingly pompous butler in the classic period-drama series Upstairs, Downstairs. Over the next five years, Jackson, as one of the central characters in this hugely popular series about Edwar­ dian life, became a household name-a status formally acknowledged in 1975 when he won the Royal Television Society's Best Actor Award (followed later by his being made an Officer of the British Empire). As Hud­ son, a character the actor himself professed to dislike, Jackson was in turn supportive and dependable and dour and infuriating, not least through his old­-fashioned attitudes to the other servants and any inclination they showed to forget their station.

     Not altogether dissimilar in this regard was Jack­ son's other most famous television role, the outwardly contrasting part of George "The Cow" Cowley in the action adventure series The Professionals, which was first seen in 1977. As Cowley, a former MIS agent and now head of the specialist anti-terrorist unit CI5, Jackson combined a hard-bitten determination and patience with his wayward operatives Bodie and Doyle (Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw) with genuine (if grudging) concern for their well-being when their lives were in danger. This show became favorite viewing for peak-time audiences in the I 970s, as much through the

     chemistry of the three main performers as through the somewhat formulaic car chases and action sequences that were included. The series did have its critics­ many people protested at the violence of many episodes (leading the producers to limit explosions to two per story), and others refused to accept that Jack­ son, still firmly associated in their minds with the stuffy Mr. Hudson, could ever be convincing as a tough anti-terrorist chief, notwithstanding his early experience in the Ealing war films.

     Also worthy of note were Jackson's always reliable appearances in other classic television programs, which ranged from Doctor Finlay's Casebook to the Australian-made A Town Like Alice and Stars on Sunday (as host).