- Born: Aug 27, 1929 in Elizabeth, New Jersey
- Died: Apr 18, 2007
- Occupation: Writer, Actor
- Active: '60s-'70s, '90s
- Major Genres: Comedy, Science Fiction
- Career Highlights: Girls of Latin Quarter, The Two Ronnies, Space Patrol
- First Major Screen Credit: Girls of Latin Quarter (1960)
Biography
Dick Vosburgh is a man of many parts and several overlapping careers, as a radio, television, stage, and film actor, comedy writer, lyricist, playwright, and comedian. Depending upon an audience member's age, he might be most closely associated with the classic children's science fiction/adventure show Space Patrol (aka Planet Patrol), the hit Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical A Day in Hollywood, a Night in the Ukraine, Monty Python's Flying Circus, the Carry On movies, or London's West End theater district.Dick Vosburgh was born in Elizabeth, NJ, in 1929, and set his sights on a theatrical career. Toward that end, he went to London in 1949 to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and ended up staying. He worked as an actor, journalist, comedian, and lyricist, for a time using the name "Richard Kennedy" for his theatrical performances. Vosburgh's lone theatrical film job of any note in his early career was as the screenwriter of Alfred Travers' low-budget musical Girls of the Latin Quarter (1959). He also wrote gags for David Frost, Tommy Cooper, the Two Ronnies, and Danny LaRue, among other performers.
In 1963, Vosburgh -- who had done a lot of radio work throughout the late '50s -- got his first major job as a television actor, in the British children's science fiction/adventure series Space Patrol (retitled Planet Patrol in America). The program used beautifully articulated marionettes and fantastic sets, and Vosburgh was hired to do the voice of the series' hero, Captain Larry Dart, for 39 episodes. Though the program disappeared from distribution after the mid-'60s, it was a major influence on the makers of subsequent science fiction series, including J. Michael Straczynski, the creator/producer of Babylon 5. Vosburgh did voices for other proposed children's series that never made it on the air, but also became more visible as a writer on programs such as The Frost Report and as an actor on programs such as We Have Ways of Making You Laugh and in John Cleese's 1968 television special How to Irritate People. Vosburgh subsequently became associated with Monty Python's Flying Circus through various bits of writing, and an appearance in the episode entitled "Owl Stretching Time."
It was during the 1970s that Dick Vosburgh enjoyed his first major, lasting success as a playwright with A Day in Hollywood, a Night in the Ukraine. Inspired by his longtime love for the work of the Marx Brothers, whose comedy he had known since first seeing Go West as a boy, this musical/comedic homage enjoyed an 18-month run on Broadway and a brace of Tony nominations, though it was beaten out for Best Score and Best Book by Evita -- it is still revived regularly more than two decades later, and it brought Vosburgh back to America for the first time in decades, as a successful lyricist and playwright. Vosburgh fared somewhat less well with his next musical, Windy City, based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play The Front Page, featuring music by veteran British pop composer Tony Macaulay, which opened in London in 1982 but was never successfully transferred to America, despite being nominated for several Laurence Olivier Awards. He subsequently wrote the stage piece Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood, and was involved with several late-era Carry On movies as well as a series of stage adaptations of their ribald, slapstick humor. His next work included the West End musical A Saint She Ain't, which is steeped in allusions to 1930s movies and popular culture.
Vosburgh has continued to perform on-stage in topical sketch comedy of his own, and showed up as the narrator in the 1991 documentary Chuck Amuck: The Movie, a tribute to cartoonist Chuck Jones. He also contributed to the script of the 1990 feature film Strike It Rich, starring Robert Lindsay, Molly Ringwald, and Sir John Gielgud. Since the 1980s, Vosburgh has been regarded as something of a comedic institution in England, a peer of such figures as the Monty Python troupe, if not as well-known overseas, apart from his success on Broadway. The rediscovery of prints of Space Patrol/Planet Patrol in the late '90s, and their re-release on videocassette and DVD in England, ensures that yet another generation of young viewers can learn to hang on his every word as Captain Larry Dart. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
