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Laurence
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TONY HART
« Thread Started on Jan 18, 2009, 1:58pm »

Artist and children's presenter Tony Hart has died, aged 83.

Hart, who lived in Surrey, had suffered from health problems for a number of years, including two strokes. His family said he died peacefully. Hart appeared on art programmes for nearly 50 years before retiring in 2001 because of health problems. He first appeared on Saturday Special as an illustrator before fronting his own shows such as Vision On, Take Hart and Hartbeat.

Tony Hart was born in Maidstone, Kent on October 15, 1925 and showed a talent for drawing from an early age. When he left school in 1944 he tried to sign up for the royal Air Force but failed the sight test. Instead, he signed up with the Indian Army serving as an officer in the 1st Gurkha Rifles. After the war he attended the Maidstone College of Art graduating in 1950 and becoming a display artist in a London store.

Hart's break into television came in 1952, after his brother persuaded him to attend a party where he met a BBC children's TV producer. After an interview, in which Hart drew a fish on a napkin, Hart became resident artist on the Saturday Special programme. Subsequent TV shows included Playbox, Titch and Quackers, Vision On, Take Hart, Hartbeat (which attracted an average audience of 5.4 million viewers), Artbox Bunch and Smart Hart From the 1970s, he often appeared alongside the animated Plasticine stop-motion character Morph. Hart also created the original design for the Blue Peter badge.

Hart's mailbag varied between 6,000 and 8,000 per week, needing a large team of senior citizen's to deal with it. His programmes have sold in all parts of the world, often dubbed into foreign languages. He was approached by a fan in Los Angeles, one night, who told him "I was watching you on TV in Montreal last night, you were speaking French". In the USA, the Daughters of the American Revolution gave a commendation in the form of a plaque to every TV station showing Vision On. Tony Hart appeared in several TV programmes in the USA.
Hart received two BAFTA awards. His first came in 1978 for a series of comic shorts about a plasticine character named "Junfan" (a spin off from Morph, a similar character who was the star of animated shorts on Hart's TV shows), he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. He retired from regular TV work in 2001.

Wilf Lunn who starred in Vision On said, "His legacy was the fact he really started all these children's programmes, Art Attack and all that, and he was the guy, right at the beginning. And he was the guy who had all these little tricks that teachers used to use because they make things look easy, and we got people into doing it. And he was such a nice man."

Tony Hart died on January 18, 2009

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iwarburton
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Re: TONY HART
« Reply #1 on Jan 19, 2009, 1:03pm »

Very sad news. He was part of my childhood (1950s) and that of my children (1980s). My sympathy to his family.

Ian.

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snowey1964
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Re: TONY HART
« Reply #2 on Feb 2, 2009, 12:26pm »

It is indeed very sad news that Tony Hart has died, He was apart of my childhood of the late 1960's and the 1970's with Vision On and Take Hart.

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R.Dore

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Re: TONY HART
« Reply #3 on Feb 6, 2009, 4:23pm »

83 was a very good age. I hope he was happy to the end.

I remember the "Gallery" very well. The number of pictures we sent in from school was amazing.

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