Period tales of derring-do were a staple of the early evening television of the time and when The Adventures of Robin Hood (starring Richard Greene) wound down at the end of the 1950s, Phillips began to perform a similar “swashbuckling” role. As the 14th-century Swiss folk hero (though speaking his lines in crisp English RP), he wielded a crossbow against the occupying forces of Emperor Rudolph of Austria in 39 episodes of the ITC series.
While shooting in Snowdonia, each day’s rushes would be screened at the only cinema nearby, at the village of Llanberis. Phillips did much of his own stunt work in the mountains and suffered several injuries.
The show was sold throughout the world, even, to Phillips’s surprise, behind the Iron Curtain: “I think there was the association with the wartime resistance that still lingered on. It was an easy concept for people to understand: the occupation by Austria in the case of William Tell, and the occupation of most of Europe by the Nazis.”
He was born Conrad Philip Havord on April 13 1925 in south London. His father, Horace Havord, was a journalist on The Sunday Express who also wrote mystery novels under the nom de plume Conrad Phillips. He later suggested it to his son as a stage name.
Phillips attended St John’s Bowyer School, Clapham, and when war broke out joined the Home Guard. Aged 17, he volunteered for the Royal Navy, with which he served as an able seaman manning a gun on landing craft. Invalided out of the service in 1945, he enrolled at Rada on a ex-serviceman’s grant. “My audition was, to say the least, committed,” he said. “I threw myself around the stage with passion and secured a place as a student for two years.” His fencing lessons at Rada would later come in useful while filming The Adventures of William Tell.
During the 1950s he alternated theatre work with television and film roles, including an appearance alongside Peter Finch in Powell and Pressburger’s The Battle of the River Plate, before winning the part of William Tell.
After the series ended Phillips and Peter Maxwell, one of the programme’s directors, formed Arriba Productions and worked together on the B-movie Impact (1963), about a crime reporter framed for a robbery. Maxwell directed while Phillips starred as the wronged man.
Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s he continued to appear on stage, including a run with the ENO at the Coliseum, on the small screen (Fawlty Towers, Heidi, Callan), and in cinema. By the mid-1970s he was balancing an acting career with the management of a hill farm in Scotland.
During the 1980s Phillips’s credits included The Return of Sherlock Holmes; Emmerdale; Howard’s Way and Hannay. He returned to the story of William Tell for Crossbow (1987-88) in which he played Stefan, the protagonist’s mentor. “Stefan was a much older and grizzled character,” Phillips recalled. “I had far more action in my series but I enjoyed the challenge [of being] an arthritic warrior.”
He retired from acting in the early 1990s and in later life lived in Chippenham, Wiltshire. In 2013 he published his memoirs, Aiming True (2013). “I’ve had quite a bouncy life,” he wrote.
In 1949 Phillips married Jean Moir, who also studied at Rada. The marriage was later dissolved and in 1968 he married, secondly, Jennie Slatter, who survives him with their two daughters. A son from his first marriage predeceased him.
Conrad Phillips, born April 13 1925, died 13 January 13 2016
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