Alfie Bass

Durable, diminutive, immensely endearing character player of British and international films. Bass made his film debut in 1945's "Johnny Frenchman" and soon became a valuable fixture in often comical supporting roles, typically as feisty, working-class, often Cockney blokes. He was very fine as one of a group of soldiers keeping the news of imminent death from a hospitalized comrade in the touching "The Hasty Heart" (1949), but Bass is perhaps most fondly remembered as Shorty, a delightfully larcenous member of "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1951). He was busiest in films in the 1950s and 60s in