TELE-FOLKS DIRECTORY - WHO'S A FAN OF VICTOR WOOLF?

CEDRIC DERWENT & ROBIN HOOD

Actor Victor Woolf may have been the hardest working man in the TV series 'The Adventures of Robin Hood'.  He had two established characters (which I will be combining into one.) plus other roles - sometimes even playing several in the same episode.

In fact, in at least two episodes Woolf played four roles!  Here's an example:

"QUEEN ELEANOR"
1.  At the table with the Sheriff of Nottingham

2.  A forester when fighting the ambushers

3.  The baker, bringing his bread to Nottingham

4.  Innkeeper at the Blue Boar

Woolf's two main characters were members of Robin Hood's gang of "Merry Men" - Cedric and Derwent.  But I think we could say that they are one and the same man - that his full name was Cedric Derwent.  Perhaps he was named after his father, but we'll have more on that rogue later.

Not of all of Victor Woolf's other characters on the show had names.  They would only be listed in the credits by their description.  But here's a list of those others he played whose names were revealed:

• Hugh of the Wood
  (Hugh may be the villager in "The Ordeal" who accused Edgar of murder.)
  
  
  
  
• Alfred the Innkeeper
  (I'm assuming his inn was the Blue Boar....)
• The Abbott of Whitby
  (Could the monk he played in earlier episodes have been elevated to that post?)
  
  
  
  
• Peter the Cobbler
• Albert the Barber
• Andrew Limpus the Ironsmith
• Mat Maynard
• Sir Henry

As you can see, I tried to combine other characters with those so named who had similar lots in Life, just to keep things tidy.

And then there were a slew of other characters, background fodder as it were.  And although several of them are listed only once - for instance, the Soldier, the Monk, the Tramp - they appeared in several episodes each......

• A Forester
• A Squire
• A Monk
• A Tax Collector
• A Tramp
• A Soldier
• A Jailer
• A Prisoner
• A Court Clerk
• A Pilgrim
• A Master Armourer
• A Goldsmith

Imagine if the jailer had to keep watch over his own look-alike!

I've also determined that every character he played who was only listed as "Outlaw" was in actuality Cedric Derwent.

By the time the series reached its third season, Woolf's output on the series began to wane until he was only playing Derwent - if he appeared at all.  I have seen it suggested online that he may have asked for a raise for doing double and triple duty, and that led to a reduction in his workload.

But now comes the second bit of televisiology associated with Victor Woolf on this show.

None of those characters listed above ever knew it probably, but they were all half-brothers!  (Some of them may have been acknowledged as twins of the same mother.  I'd like to think the Soldier and the Monk, and perhaps the Goldsmith and the Master Armourer, came from the same families.)

It's the Toobworld contention that there is a character never seen on the series who played an important role - as the "father" of Cedric Derwent and all of those other characters.  And by "father" I just mean he was the sperm-donor, a regular Little Johnny Happyseed.  He wooed a lot of lonely housewives throughout the Nottingham countryside and then left them behind, impregnated with his future sons.  Those women would be left on their own to explain how they got pregnant to their husbands who may have been away on the Crusades.

In this situation, Cedric Derwent, Senior was a lot like Cass Caldicott many centuries later.  In fact, it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that the elder Derwent was born to rerun as that mountain man.

It would appear that the DNA strain of Derwent the Elder was so strong that all of his offspring bore an incredible likeness to their biological father, in much the same way as happened with Cass Caldicott and with the family tree of Randolph Agarn.  So perhaps we could claim that other characters played by Victor Woolf in other TV series were descended from this one man.

Perhaps even another villager centuries later, but in "The Village" where they had given him a number, but taken away his name....

It's worth a shot....

SHOWS CITED:

• 'The Rifleman'
• 'F Troop'
• 'The Prisoner'

BCnU!

PS:

The picture of Victor Woolf to illustrate what Derwent the Elder looked like comes from the Cineverse - "Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell", Mr. Woolf's penultimate film........