Bernard Fox, ‘Bewitched’s Dr. Bombay, Dies At 89

Bernard Fox, known to TV fans as Dr. Bombay on Bewitched and Col. Crittendon on Hogan’s Heros, has died or heart failure at 89.

BERNARD FOX DIES AT 89

Fox appeared on a number of film and television shows, inducing The Mummy, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, The Dick Van Dyke Show, McHale’s Navy and Columbo. He also played Col. Archibald Gracie in James Cameron‘s Titanic. He provided guest appearances on such shows as Perry Mason, F Troop, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Murder, She Wrote.

The mustachioed Welsh-born actor once spoofed his own work as magical Dr. Bombay on a 1989 episode of Pee Wee’s Playhouse, as Dr. Jinga-Jinga. In a ’98 interview, Fox said he drew inspiration for the Bewitched character from a man he served in the Royal Navy with during WWII.

“He was the officer in charge of the camp that we were in, and it was an all-male camp, and one evening, I was on duty and we got six Women’s Royal Naval Service arrived to be put up,” he recalled. “So I went to this officer and said, ‘What shall I do?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, give ’em a hot bran mash, some clean straw and bed ’em down for the night.’ And I thought, ‘What a great way to play [Dr. Bombay.]’ And that’s the way I played him, and [the Bewitched writers] just kept writing him back in,” he continued. “If I’d just gone for an ordinary doctor, you wouldn’t have heard any more about it. But because I made him such a colorful character, that’s why they wanted him back; he was easy to write for. They came up with the idea of him coming from different parts of the world all the time and in different costumes; that was their idea. The puns, I came up with, and in those days, they let you do that.”

Fox is survived by his wife Jacqueline, daughter Amanda, daughter-in-law Lisa, and two grandchildren David-Mitchel and Samantha.