Noel Johnson

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title: "Noel Johnson" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1916-births", "1999-deaths", "english-male-radio-actors", "male-actors-from-birmingham,-west-midlands", "people-educated-at-bromsgrove-school", "20th-century-english-male-actors", "british-army-personnel-of-world-war-ii", "royal-army-service-corps-soldiers", "military-personnel-from-the-west-midlands-(county)"] description: "English actor (1916–1999)" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Johnson" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary English actor (1916–1999) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]

Field	Value
name	Noel Johnson
image	Actor_Noel_Johnson.jpg
caption	Recording Dick Barton
birth_name	Noel Frank Johnson
birth_date
birth_place	West Bromwich, England
death_date
death_place	Llandough, Wales
occupation	Actor
yearsactive	1941–1997
spouse
children	1
::

::callout[type=note] the English actor ::

| name = Noel Johnson | image = Actor_Noel_Johnson.jpg | caption = Recording Dick Barton | birth_name = Noel Frank Johnson | birth_date = | birth_place = West Bromwich, England | death_date = | death_place = Llandough, Wales | occupation = Actor | yearsactive = 1941–1997 | spouse = | children = 1

Noel Frank Johnson (28 December 1916 – 1 October 1999) was a British actor. He was the voice of special agent Dick Barton on BBC Radio and Dan Dare on Radio Luxembourg.

Life

Johnson was born 28 December 1916 in West Bromwich, England and attended Bromsgrove School, where his fictional character Dick Barton was listed on the honours boards. He married Leonora Peacock in 1942: they had one son Gareth Johnson. He died 1 October 1999.

Career

After wartime service in the Royal Army Service Corps, including evacuation from Dunkirk, he was invalided out, and joined the BBC Repertory Company in 1945. He was paid £18 per week but felt that he deserved much more for such a popular character. He returned to play Dick Barton once more in a special series in 1972.

In 1969 he appeared in a BBC seven-part David Ellis radio thriller called Find The Lady. He later played Dan Dare on the Radio Luxembourg serial, but his name was kept secret. His assured upper class voice cadence made him ideal for certain characters, notably in the BBC Radio 4 dramatic adaptation of A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. This was broadcast as 26 one-hour episodes between 1978 and 1981; Johnson played the novel sequence's narrator Nicholas Jenkins, while the younger Nicholas was played by Gareth Johnson in the first 18 episodes. In the last quarter of the series – in which Jenkins is in late middle-age – Johnson plays Jenkins alone.

His movie career included roles in Frenzy, The First Great Train Robbery, For Your Eyes Only and his last film Withnail & I in 1987, where he played a militaristic and drunken bar owner. Johnson also appeared in numerous television dramas until the mid-1990s, including A for Andromeda, The Andromeda Breakthrough, Dixon of Dock Green, Coronation Street, Out of the Unknown,Little Sir Nicholas, Doomwatch, Death of an Expert Witness, Colditz, Rumpole of the Bailey, Doctor Who (in the serials The Underwater Menace and Invasion of the Dinosaurs), Inspector Morse and A Touch of Frost, amongst many others.

Filmography

::data[format=table]

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1950	Highly Dangerous	Frank Conway	Uncredited
1951	Appointment with Venus	Clark, R.N.
1951	The Case of the Missing Scene	Crawford
1955	Little Red Monkey	Det. Sgt. Hawkins
1963	The Partner	Charles Briers
1966	Bat Out of Hell (TV series)	George Stewart	Five episodes
1972	Frenzy	Doctor in Pub
1974	Frightmare	The Judge
1974	The Swordsman	Christian Duval
1975	Royal Flash	Lord Chamberlain
1978	The First Great Train Robbery	Connaught
1979	Licensed to Love and Kill	Lord Dangerfield
1980	Love in a Cold Climate	Lord Stromboli	TV Mini-Series, 1 episode
1981	For Your Eyes Only	Jack, Vice Admiral
1986	Defence of the Realm	Club Member
1987	Withnail & I	General
::

References

References

1. Gifford, Dennis. (6 October 1999). "Noel Johnson". The Guardian.
2. ''Daily Mail'' 17 March 1947 p.3 "Dick Barton wins – at his old school!"
3. ''Daily Mail'' 5 October 1999 p 18 "Noel Johnson, voice of Dick Barton, dies at 82"
4. "David Ellis – Find the Lady". BBC Radio.
5. "BBC Radio Adaptation".
6. "Noël Johnson".
7. "Noel Johnson".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::