Obituary: Milo Sperber

Milo Sperber, actor, director, writer, born Poland 20 March 1911, died London 22 December 1992.

IN THE 1930s Milo Sperber had seem set to become a leading actor in Germany. As a child, he had escaped with his family from persecution in Poland and was taken to Vienna. There he attended a Jewish school, then trained as a lawyer but also enrolled as one of the first students in Max Reinhardt's drama school. Martin Esslin, a fellow student, recalls that Milo played The Boy in Six Characters in Search of an Author and Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, touring with Reinhardt's company and playing in the theatre in Vienna. His small stature, agility and expressive face contributed to his success.

In 1939, he and his parents fled Hitler's Germany and came to England as refugees. He was held (as were other Jews) in a detention camp as an 'enemy alien'. After earning a living doing hard, heavy work, he started on a varied, creative career. Early in the war, recommended by the actor Martin Miller, he joined the Oxford Pilgrim Players. With their slogan 'Plays Any Time Anywhere' they played, sometimes in the Blitz, in schools and colleges, churches and cathedrals, Welsh miners' institutes, converted stables and East End air-raid shelters. The Company was subsidized by CEMA (wich later became the Arts Council); it was run on co-operative lines, with a weekly meeting; all members received their 'keep' plus the pay of a private. Notable among Sperber's parts were Tobias and later Tobit in James Bridie's Tobias and the Angel and Hell in Charles Williams's House by the Stable. He directed the Company in Case 27 VC on tour and for a season at the Comedy Theatre, in London.

Security regulations prevented Sperber joining the Company's ENSA tour but he became involved in anti-Nazi propaganda programmes at the BBC. Later he played in the West End, in cabaret, films and televison. To earn his living he occasionally appeared in soap operas, and also played in Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man and other television plays. He taught for some years at RADA, directing students in productions. A number of his students - they included Glenda Jackson - became well known on stage, screen and television and at Havima, the National Theatre of Israel.

Sperber turned his hand to script-writing, working for the BBC's English by Radio German-language service. He also wrote a highly original television programme, Zarabanda, to teach Spanish by means of a thriller. his last West End appearance was in 1984 at the Albany Theatre, with Anthony Quayle, in The Clandestine Marriage.

In his last years he travelled giving readings from the works of his elder brother, the distinguished writer Manes Sperber. He was working on a new programme of readings of his brother's work on Dostoevsky until shortly before his death.

(Photograph omitted)