Majorca: N.p., 1959

4pp. ALS, secured with staple to top left corner.

4pp. ALS FROM JACK WARNER TO FELLOW DIXON OF DOCK GREEN ACTOR ANTHONY PARKER, WISHING HIM WELL ON HIS DEPARTURE FROM THE SHOW.

The BBC TV show Dixon of Dock Green ran from 1955 to 1976, for a total of 432 episodes. Jack Warner, who played Dixon, appeared in every single one. The character first appeared in the 1950 film The Blue Lamp, where Warner's kindly bobby was famously shot dead by a hoodlum played by the young Dirk Bogarde. The character was resurrected for a stage show the following year which was co-written by Ted Willis. It was Willis who supervised the transfer to television, and between 1955 and 1963 he wrote 201 episodes of the show.

Anthony Parker joined the show in 1957 to play the naive young recruit PC Bob Penney, and stayed for two years before leaving in an attempt to avoid typecasting. (His subsequent acting career failed to scale the heights, and he became a successful television producer.) PC Penney was killed off to facilitate Parker's departure from the show, and in this letter to Parker, Jack Warner (on holiday in Majorca at the time) writes: 'My Dear Tony, To start with this is just to thank you for all you did in the two series that you were with us at the "Green". We shall all miss you very much, but I hope that your 'demise' will bring you lots of luck in the same way that mine did after 'The Blue Lamp'!' [...] We are having a wonderful rest & Mollie [Warner's wife] joins me in sending you & your own love & kindest wishes always & thanks again for your grand contribution to our efforts at the "Green". As ever, Jack "P.C. Dixon"'.

A fond letter -- and one which manages to reference not one but two major landmarks of British screen crime history.

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