Occasionally there's someone whose campaigning style makes an impact because, untypically, it is so self-effacing. Jerry Stovin, who died peacefully, aged 82, at his twin brother's, Bob's, home in Canada on 10 September, worked patiently at winning those causes that most interested him. He was tenacious but also gentle in this, even if the cause sometimes became a lost one.
Jerry (or Gerald) Stovin lived for twenty-five years in a 1970s flagship housing estate called Maiden Lane, in the London Borough of Camden. Once the recipient of architectural awards, the estate later dropped into social despair because of council neglect. When household refuse was not being collected, Jerry helped organise a demonstration in which the rubbish was dumped on the steps of Camden Town Hall. Since its inception, Jerry was a member of the estate management board, and for two years he was its chairman, a challenge that he grasped in his late 70s with typical determination. Privately he commented on how lucky he was that his housing was subsidised, although he was not content simply to consider his own good fortune.
Born in Unity, Saskatchewan, on 11 October 1922, the Stovin family moved to the provincial capital Regina in 1929. After attending various educational establishments including Davin School, Central Collegiate and Balfour Technical, Jerry Stovin's life switched across different directions. He joined Imperial Oil and then Regina City Police in a clerical capacity. In his spare time he enjoyed acting at the Regina Little Theatre. From 1942 to 1946 he served in the Canadian Army, after telling the recruiting psychologist that he would never kill anyone. He was accordingly put to work translating Nazi communications into French. He later acted as a guard on captured German airstrips. After the surrender, Corporal Stovin remained stationed with the occupation forces for a year.
His father, Horace Stovin, who was a pharmacist, had been also the part-time operator of a commercial radio station from 1922. He became manager of CKCK Radio, and later joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This interest was obviously shared by his son, who after his military service joined CFOR, a radio station in Orillia, Ontario. However, after a year Jerry was accepted in 1947 into the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, known as "Carnegie Tech", where he graduated with a Fine Arts degree in Drama. Other students at that time included Sada Thompson, Nancy Marchand from "The Sopranos", Carl Betz and Jean Stapleton, who was notable in the TV series "All in the Family", the US version of "Till Death do us Part". After graduation, it was an honour for Jerry to perform in 1952 in the "Theatre Under the Stars" season in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the ambitious young actor was able to express his skills as the Scarecrow in the "Wizard of Oz".
Concerned by the lack of opportunity in Canada, by 1955 Jerry had crossed the Atlantic to advance as an actor in Britain. His good nature and resilience probably sprang from this career, where the knocks can come thick and fast. A song and dance man at heart, he loved musical theatre, and retained a comprehensive memory of his favourite tunes and lyrics. In Britain, his talent was soon recognised. Appearances in radio and television - including "Hancock" shows in both media - and a long-running part in the live TV serial "Emergency Ward 10" followed. In films such as "The War Lover" and "Lolita", he usually played an American. On the West End stage he was in "The Sport of my Mad Mother" and "The Ides of March". His CV is extensive, but here were of course the inevitable periods without work. However, whenever an American was required, for a character in "Danger Man", "The Saint", or another small screen crime drama, he was one of a small band of transatlantic actors in Britain who was usually cast. Invariably he was the four-star General or the brash U.S. businessman.
By contrast, Jerry was receptive to the calming influences of Eastern spirituality. He ran the London office of the movement for transcendental meditation, and visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh in India in 1968, where he found himself in glamorous company with the Beatles and Mia Farrow. He remembers John Lennon complaining that no marmalade was available at the ashram breakfast! On the wall at the foot of his bed in the flat on Maiden Lane estate was an evocative photograph of the Avatar Meher Baba, whose teachings he had also studied. Guests for dinner often had to wait until Jerry had completed his meditation.
Whenever the acting work dried up, Jerry took a succession of "resting" jobs. He demonstrated his manual skills as a prop-maker for theatre productions. Later, one of his temporary jobs became more or less permanent. From 1985 he was employed as an administrative assistant at Levitt Bernstein, the architectural practice, to which he would often walk to work listening to Radio 4 with headphones clamped to his ears. As a receptionist or clerk he was respected for his kindliness and modesty, his congenial company and for his compassionate treatment of the plants in the office.
Always keen to extend his thinking, Jerry studied economics at the School of Economic Science, but soon developed an interest in the principles of the 19th century American social reformer and economist Henry George. Henry George had developed the radical idea of Land Value Tax, as a method of raising public revenue based on the rental value of land. He believed that this was fairer than any other system, and would also benefit the environment. Jerry, who for some years was a volunteer editing the letters column in the Henry George Foundation's magazine, would patiently explain this alternative scheme to anyone who wished to hear, and was not averse to slipping a pamphlet from the Foundation into his correspondence on other matters. When the Foundation staged some social event, Jerry shone in the mini-plays or charades that were performed.
For thirty years Jerry also enjoyed another distraction, ceramics. He was a regular student at the Adult Education Institute near where he lived. He has described the skills that he gained here as "taking me away from domestic ware into the higher reaches of art". His "raku" fired pots and other work was held in high esteem, and he exhibited at Morley Gallery with the London Potters, a group which he had joined since its inception. To one of its exhibitions came Paul McCartney. Jerry asked if he remembered him from Rishikesh, and was astonished to hear McCartney say that he did, and that Jerry was then "becoming a much-acclaimed actor at the time, and that all of our wives and girlfriends seemed to like you better than us". Embarrassed, Jerry then asked if McCartney remembered that he had requested that if he had a daughter he might name her after his own mother, Beatrice. McCartney assured him that in 2003 he and his wife Heather had produced a daughter, and she was indeed named Beatrice.
In March 2005 the adult education ceramics class was threatened with closure, but his campaigning spirit had not faded, even at the age of 82. "I would wither away if the classes were to fold", he said. The class did fold, but Jerry did not wither. He moved on to the next campaign. His political views were sometimes unexpected, including his brief espousal of UKIP, because of his fears of corruption in the European Union.
Jerry had been living on Maiden Lane estate since 1980, after a period in rented lodgings. In later years he was vehemently opposed to Camden's funding options for this estate, whether through the Private Finance Initiative or an Arm's Length Management Association, which the government has maintained are the only methods that would raise sufficient capital sums to tackle the huge cost of improvement that was required. He believed, like an old-fashioned socialist, that it was the responsibility of an accountable local authority to maintain and manage its own housing estates. With unlikely allies Jerry was vindicated, and neither option went forward.
One of Jerry's last visits to the theatre he so loved was to see "Bloody Sunday", the dramatisation of the Saville Enquiry, for which he had arranged a block booking for friends. He laid great store in natural justice. These varied enthusiasms took their toll, and his health suffered. He was a campaigner until there was no strength left.
Jerry Stovin never married. He remembered fondly a girl from his youth, but since her he has said that he never found the right person.
After a period in hospital, his family from Canada arrived at Maiden Lane to rescue Jerry Stovin. They celebrated with him an "Aloha" ("hello and goodbye") party in the garden of his council flat. They then flew him back to Calgary and have ensured that his last few weeks were spent with people he loved and who loved him. Around his bedside they joined him in songs like "The sun has got his hat on, Hip hip hip hooray", of which he knew all the verses. Just before he died, he dreamed that he had been offered a part in a play, and that he had to get in touch with "the Equity" immediately to renew his subscription.
GERRY HARRISON