John Blythe

John Blythe was an English character actor who came into films at sixteen as a stage hand and had an uncredited part as a schoolboy in Goodbye Mr. Chips in 1939. His second screen role was Reg Gibbons in This Happy Breed (1944), the son of the characters played by Robert Newton and Celia Johnson, and he appeared briefly in Dear Murderer (1947). He became known for playing spivs and fast talking wide boys, especially in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in films including Holiday Camp (1947), Boys in Brown (1949) and Lili Marlene (1950), and played Gowan, the garage owner, in the three Huggett films. Later credits ranged from The Cockleshell Heroes (1955) to No Love for Johnnie (1961) and The VIPs (1963), along with television work in series such as Hancock's Half Hour, Dixon of Dock Green, Poldark and Sykes. He kept acting into the 1980s and died in 1993.