Mario Fabrizi

An English comedian and actor, Mario Fabrizi was born in Holborn, London, in 1924 to Italian parents and was known for a luxuriant mustache. He worked in Britain during the 1950s and the early 1960s. Television made him familiar to ITV viewers through The Army Game, a popular Granada Television series, in which he played Corporal Moosh Merryweather, and he appeared as a regular in the ensemble of the BBC sitcom Hancock's Half Hour, which starred Tony Hancock. His most notable film part came in Hancock's 1963 film The Punch and Judy Man, where he played the photographer Neville Shanks. His collaborators also included Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. Not long before his death he had said that he was giving up entertainment for a career in advertising, having been out of work for four months. Fabrizi died in 1963.