Ray Huntley; British Comedy Character Actor

Raymond Huntley, a character actor who specialized in comedy roles ranging from smug businessmen to debunkers of pompous officialdom in a 65-year career on the stage, in movies and on television, has died. He was 86.

Huntley died Friday in London’s Westminster Hospital. No cause of death was given in the family’s announcement Monday.

Among his best-known roles was that of Sir Geoffrey Dillon, the crusty family lawyer in the British TV series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” made from 1970 to 1975.

Huntley, whose first stage role dated to 1922 and first film to 1934, was seldom the star of any show, but his performances as a supporting actor were noted for their polish and professionalism. He made his first stage appearance in Birmingham, the industrial city in central England where he was born.

His first featured film credit was in “Rembrandt” in 1937. His other movies included the sharply satirical 1959 farce “I’m Alright Jack” by the film-making brothers John and Roy Boulting, about Britain’s disastrous industrial relations at that time; “Room at the Top” in 1959, and “Hostile Witness” in 1968.

A tall man with a mustache, Huntley during his long career played judges, bank managers, churchmen, bureaucrats and other figures of authority.

His role as the bank manager in the 1949 movie “Passport to Pimlico” launched him as a noted film comedy actor.

Apart from “Upstairs, Downstairs,” his television work included his own series, “Uncle Charles,” in which he played a bachelor uncle, and “That’s Your Funeral,” a 1973 comedy about a firm of morticians.

On Broadway, he was seen in “The Venetian Glass Nephew” in 1931, “Young Madame Conti” in 1937 and “Black Chiffon” in 1950.