Alan Wheatley

Alan Wheatley
Wheatley as the Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood
Born	(1907-04-19)19 April 1907 Tolworth, Surrey, England, United Kingdom
Died	30 August 1991(1991-08-30) (aged 84) Westminster, London, England, UK
Cause of death	Heart attack
Occupation	Actor and radio announcer
Years active	1936 - 1987

Alan Wheatley (19 April 1907 – 30 August 1991) was an English actor and former radio announcer. He is perhaps best known for playing the polished villain the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Richard Greene playing Robin Hood. In 1951, Wheatley had played Sherlock Holmes in the first TV series about the fictional detective, but no recordings of it are known to exist.

Born in Tolworth, Surrey, the son of a bank clerk, William Henry Wheatley and his wife, Rose (née Towers), Alan Wheatley worked as a radio announcer before turning to stage and screen acting in the 1930s, as a player during the black-and-white era of film and television. He had originally been an industrial psychologist. Wheatley made his film debut in Conquest of the Air (1936), which remained unreleased for four years. During the Second World War, he worked for BBC Radio, as both an actor and an announcer.

Wheatley starred as Sherlock Holmes in the 1951 BBC TV series, which was the first such series though not the Holmes character's first appearance on television. The program aired live for six episodes, and apparently no recordings were made. In the later Robin Hood series, Wheatley appeared regularly as the Sheriff in the first three seasons; in the fourth and final season, his role was mostly taken over by that of the Deputy Sheriff (John Arnatt) as a result of Wheatley's departure from the series. He also had roles in Danger Man and The Avengers. Wheatley played the first character to be killed on-screen by a Dalek in Doctor Who, when he appeared as Thal leader Temmosus in the 1963–64 serial The Daleks.