With his rugged looks and strong baritone voice the Canadian-born singer Edmund Hockridge was one of the West End’s biggest stars in the 1950s.

He played leading roles in a string of popular musicals including Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Can Can and The Pajama Game and had recording hits with songs such as Young and Foolish, No Other Love, The Fountains of Rome and More than Ever. A song from The Pajama Game, Hey There, gave him his biggest record hit and became his signature tune.

Immensely popular with British audiences, Hockridge eventually made his home in the UK and for more than 40 years topped bills around the country in musicals, variety, radio and TV shows.

Edmund Hockridge was born into a musical family in Vancouver in 1919. His mother was a pianist, and his father and three brothers were keen amateur singers. As a teenager Hockridge had an outstanding singing voice, and he was encouraged by the New York Metropolitan Opera star John Charles Thomas to turn professional.

He first visited Britain in 1941 with the Royal Canadian Air Force and helped set up the Allied Expeditionary Forces Network, which supplied entertainment and news for troops in Europe. He was loaned to the BBC, often working with the Glen Miller Band and the Canadian band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces led by Robert Farnon. He sang and produced more than 400 shows with the BBC Forces Network and as the war ended he sang with big bands such as Geraldo’s.

After the war he returned to Canada and had his own radio show in Toronto in which he played leading roles in operas such as Don Giovanni, La bohème and Peter Grimes as well as Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

His unexpected break came in 1951 when he returned to Britain and was invited to take over from Stephen Douglass as Billy Bigelow in Carousel at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The reviews were sensational, and audiences warmed to his larger-than-life stage prescence.

“Carousel was my favourite show,” he said. “You couldn’t sing that score for three years and not love it. It was a marvellous show and all the better because I met my future wife, Jackie, in it.”

He appeared in Carousel for 1,300 performances, and when the run ended he took over from Jerry Wayne as Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls at the London Coliseum.

“Liz Webb and I were the only two non-Americans in Guys and Dolls,” Hockridge recalled. “We felt very privileged to be in the production. Unfortunately, Sid James, the comic actor, later joined the run and he was a nightmare to work with. He ad-libbed everything and put in new comic business every night. I never knew what was going to happen. He was eccentric.”

Hockridge stayed at the Coliseum for two more shows, playing Judge Forestier in Can Can, and Sid Sorokin in The Pajama Game, the latter being a favourite show with the Royal Family.

Throughout the 1950s he recorded a host of show tune LPs and was a frequent guest star on television. He appeared in early editions of The Benny Hill Show as well as Sunday Night at the London Palladium and he starred in a six-month, sell-out variety season again at the Palladium. In 1953 he was in the Royal Variety Show along with stars such as Max Bygraves and Tommy Cooper and the same year he was Canada’s representative in the Westminster Abbey choir at the Coronation.

He made his film debut in 1944 with a brief appearance in Starlight Serenade but he had more substantial roles in the 1950s in films such as For Better, for Worse (1954), the romantic drama starring Dirk Bogarde, and King’s Rhapsody (1955), co-starring with Anna Neagle and Errol Flynn.

After his years in the West End Hockridge headlined in cabaret on the QE2’s maiden voyage and he toured Europe in revivals of musicals. He also turned to British summer seasons and Sunday concerts, the gentlemanly Canadian becoming one of Blackpool’s most popular stars. He topped the bill on Blackpool’s North Pier for seven years and appeared in several of Harold Fielding’s Opera House concerts in the 1960s. A Stage newspaper review of a 1960 appearance noted: “This glorious singer makes a tremdous impression with a selection that includes songs from his shows. His use of the stage, as well as his voice, is admirable.”

In the early 1980s he appeared in revivals of The Sound of Music and South Pacific but he made a spectacular comeback in 1986 when he played the part of the elderly Buffalo Bill in the big revival of Annie Get Your Gun, with rock star Suzi Quatro in the role of Annie. As he made his first entrance the entire audience rose in an explosive roar of welcome.

Hockridge was a devoted family man who, for many years, lived quietly in Cambridgeshire. In the 1990s he was back on the road with his show, The Edmund Hockridge Family, in which he was joined on stage by Jackie and their two sons, Murray and Stephen.

He never really retired and even in his eighties he was still making public appearances and giving talks about his long career. “I keep going,” he said, “and I’m flattered when anyone remembers me.”

Edmund Hockridge, singer and actor, was born on August 9, 1919. He died on March 15, 2009, aged 89