RICHARD BEBB was an erudite actor on stage, screen and radio whose deep interest in the history of acting turned him into a distinguished collector and student of the recorded theatrical voice.

He also formed what is probably the most comprehensive collection of operatic 78s in this country, and he possessed a famous collection of models of actors and singers, now on exhibition at the Garrick Club.

While his wife, Gwen Watford, whom he married in 1952, was a far more accomplished performer on stage and television until her death in 1994, Bebb’s passionate concern as a connoisseur of acting and its history took him to different levels of achievement.

As an actor he had a natural bias towards singers who demonstrated true feeling, fine enunciation and a subtle command of nuance. He was famously intolerant of bad intonation, vulgar overemphasis or selfconscious artistry.

Richard Bebb Williams was born in London. He changed to his mother’s surname to avoid confusion with another player. Educated at Highgate School and Trinity College, Cambridge (1944-47), he took an MA in English literature. That same year he played the “cream-faced loon” and one of the two watchmen in Macbeth with Michael Redgrave (Aldwych), and for the next two years joined Anthony Hawtrey’s repertory company at the Grand Theatre, Croydon, and the Playhouse, Buxton.

That led to roles in plays at the Embassy, Swiss Cottage, including Strindberg’s The Father (1948-49) and Jerome K. Jerome’s The Passing of the Third Floor Back.

After taking the lead opposite Watford in a revival of You Can’t Take it with You (Buxton), he moved in 1950 to the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, where he played Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice and Lucretio in The Taming of the Shrew.

In that year he also began working regularly in radio and television. He shared the narration with Richard Burton in the original wireless production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and appeared in more than 1,000 broadcast plays.

A prolific TV and film actor he often played doctors or upper-class figures. He made his TV debut in 1951 playing Octavius to Walter Hudd’s Julius Caesar and appeared in a string of drama series including Dangerman, Softly, Softly, Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green. For several years he played Dr Harvest in the ITV lunchtime soap, Compact. He was Dr Orlov in Anna Karenina (1977) and Dr Stanhope in The Barchester Chronicles (1982).

His many films credits included Pope Joan (1972), with Liv Ullmann in the title role, and King Ralph (1991) with Peter O’Toole. In recent years he was a regular face (and voiceover) in the Poirot series.

His stage work continued at the same time; mainly at first in plays with his wife at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, and the Belgrade, Coventry. “The greatest pleasure of my life was to see her in one of her plays 20 or 30 times and help her to polish it to perfection. My only aim was to make our acting better, and we were fiercely critical of each other in the most loving way,” he said. “I miss the total honesty we had with each other.

“My wife never understood that to have a passionate collector as a husband guarantees faithfulness. Everything I know and love is in London: Lord’s, Arsenal, art galleries, the Garrick. But Gwen loved the country. She got cottage-itis. Luckily I was left some money in a will and was able to buy her one in Warwickshire.”

In 2003 Bebb was the narrator of the 12 CD set Forgotten Voices of the Great War, and as an authority on Middle English he recorded, only six weeks before he died, a complete version of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for Naxos.

Bebb lectured on theatrical and operatic subjects at universities and institutions, among them Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the Smithsonian and Leicester. He also wrote stage obituaries for The Independent, compiled numerous programmes for Radio 3, including studies of the voices of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving (after his discovery of four unknown private cylinder recordings), Giovanni Martinelli, Maggie Teyte, Eva Turner and Reynaldo Hahn.

Bebb was among the foremost collectors of 78rpm discs in the world. His priceless collection boxed the compass of singers. Although he had a personal preference for those of the French school, he was a connoisseur of every type of voice and style. He owned every record made by the pioneer of lieder interpretation, Elena Gerhardt, and, a particular love of his, all the discs made by the magical if idiosyncratic composer-singer Reynaldo Hahn. He also owned many originals of the unique Yvonne Printemps.

He was a stickler for perfect copies of discs, and went to a deal of expense and trouble to obtain these. As a result when the old discs were gradually being transferred to LP and later to CD, he was often the source of originals. He was also one of the founders of Historic Masters, an organisation devoted to the reissue on vinyl of early discs in EMI’s vast archives. This continuing project has been a godsend for those looking for rare or even previously unpublished material.

Before that Bebb was an important figure in the British Institute of Recorded Sound, then housed in South Kensington, and sat for years on its committee. (It is now the National Sound Archive and is part of the British Library.) He was always in demand to legislate on what speed a particular disc should be played at in its transfer at the right pitch on to CD. In this matter his views could be controversial. As singers of old often transposed items to suit their voices, identifying what key they sang them in was frequently in dispute. Bebb pronounced magisterially on the matter, intolerant of opposing opinions; he was always the arch pontificator.

He possessed one of the most important of the Edison machines, on which to play cylinders, in private hands. He relished his large library of books relating to singing, opera and recordings. He also owned signed photographs of thousands of artists, all carefully mounted in albums.

Bebb also collected model figures of actors and singers. He was lately engaged in marketing a series of ten bronze resin figures that he commissioned from a Czech sculptor. These ranged from Sir John Gielgud (on whose biography Bebb was working), Sir Ralph Richardson, Lord Olivier, Paul Scofield, Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland.

He leaves two sons.

Richard Bebb, actor and collector, was born on January 12, 1927. He died on April 12, aged 79.