Peter Paul Wyngarde (born Cyril Goldbert; circa 1926 or 1927 – 15 January 2018), until 1945 called Cyril Louis Goldbert, was a British actor who spent his early life in the Far East. He had a successful career on stage from the mid-1940s and slowly gained screen roles, especially in television in the 1950s and 1960s, before becoming well known for portraying the character of Jason King in the television series Department S (1969) and Jason King (1971). His acting career came to an end in the 1990s, but he had occasional appearances in the 21st century.
Wyngarde's flamboyant dress sense and stylish performances led to his becoming a style icon in Britain and elsewhere in the early 1970s. Various details of Wyngarde's early and personal life, including his place and date of birth, birth name, family and ethnic background, and sexual orientation, have been disputed.
Name
Wyngarde's name as a child was Cyril Goldbert, and in reporting his death, BBC News gave his full name as Cyril Louis Goldbert.
Date and place of birth
By his own account, Wyngarde was born on 23 August 1933. However, in an interview in 1993 he said he did not know his age. On 14 December 1945, he arrived in England on the SS Arawa, and the ship's passenger list gives his age as 18, suggesting he was born before 15 December 1927. On official documents related to sea voyages in 1960, his date of birth was given as 28 August 1929 for a voyage into San Francisco, then as 27 July 1929 on the way home to England in October. In 2003, The Encyclopedia of British Film gave the year as 1927, and the registration of his death states his date of birth as 23 August 1927.
A biography published in 2020 which draws on personal knowledge of Wyngarde and on a large archive gives his date of birth as 28 (not 23) August 1928. Most official documents state the year as 1927 or 1929, while the more informal sources have reported a range between 1924 and 1937.
After speaking to his mother in September 1956, The Straits Times said he was then aged 26.
Wyngarde was first included on an electoral register at Belsize, Hampstead, in 1948, which might support 1927 as his year of birth, as only those aged 21 and over were allowed to vote in the United Kingdom at that time.
Wyngarde's mother seems to have told The Straits Times that he was born in Marseilles, France, and Wyngarde said he was born at an aunt's home in Marseilles. His death registration states his birthplace as Singapore, and for the sea voyages in 1960 his place of birth was also stated as Singapore. In July 1972, he spent ninety minutes at Changi International Airport, Singapore, waiting for a connecting flight to Athens, and commented on this "I don't believe I have been to Singapore". Throughout his life, Wyngarde gave Marseilles as his place of birth, and this is the view taken by the biography published in 2020.
Family
When Wyngarde travelled from Shanghai to Britain by sea in 1945, as Cyril Goldbert, the records of the ship, Arawa, name his next of kin as "Mr. H. Goldbert, c/o Ministry of Shipping, London", and the biography published in 2020 names him as Henry Goldbert. A citizen of the Russian Empire by birth, in October 1919 Goldbert was naturalized as a British subject in Singapore, with The Straits Times reporting that he had lived in the Straits Settlements for nineteen years. Born in 1897, his parents were Marco Goldbert and Rosa Klivger, and in April 1904 Mrs Goldbert took over the license of the Singapore Hotel in North Bridge Road.
In 1910, her licence was moved to another address. In December 1906, Henry Goldbert won a school prize for "Scripture (Jews)", and in 1913 he was taking YMCA Engineering Classes and was about to sit for a Board of Education South Kensington certificate.
Wyngarde's mother was Marcheritta Marie Goldbert, born Ahin (1908–1992), known as Madge. In interviews, Wyngarde said she was French. There was a Eurasian family called Ahin living in Singapore. In 1947, she stated the name and nationality of her father as Andrew Nicolich Ahin, deceased, Swiss. She and Henry Goldbert were separated by 1937.
On 6 March 1929, The Straits Echo reported that Mr H. Goldbert was leaving his position as branch manager of the United Motor Works, Seremban, and that he and his wife were about to leave for Singapore on the night mail train.
In June 1934, in Singapore, a "V. Ahin", described as a young Eurasian mechanic and a brother of Mrs Golbert (sic), was fined fifteen Straits dollars for his behaviour in March in trying to stop the posting of a summons on his sister's door in Kim Yean Road. A Victor Ahin was noted in 1941 as a nephew of Mr P. A. Ahin, chief engineer in the dredging section of the Public Works Department.
Wyngarde had two younger Goldbert siblings: Adolphe Henry Peter Goldbert (1930–2011), and Marion Colette Simone Goldbert (1932–2012). In 1946, they also came by ship from Shanghai to England, arriving at Southampton on RMS Strathmore on 30 April 1946, aged sixteen and thirteen, both stating their destination as Prenton, Birkenhead. In England, Adolphe dropped his first name and was known as "Joe". Henry Goldbert was in England at the time and arranged for his younger children to be fostered by a family in Liverpool. He then set off for Bombay on the Franconia, intending to return to his life in the East. Wyngarde met his brother and sister after their arrival, but had little further contact with them or their children.
Henry Goldbert had an older brother, Cyril Arthur Goldbert, born in 1895 in Mykolaiv, now in Ukraine, who died in 1958 in Australia. A sea port of the Russian Empire, in the later 19th century about a fifth of Mykolaiv's population was Jewish, and although the community suffered a pogrom in 1899, the same was true in 1926. The surname Goldbert is rare, with only some 118 people worldwide known to be using it in 2025, almost half of them living in Israel. If Cyril and Henry Goldbert's family were Jewish, conversions to Christianity were then common in the Russian Empire, and Wyngarde's biographer reports that Henry Goldbert was a Roman Catholic.
Henry Goldbert sailed on the RMS Britannic from Port Said to Liverpool in August 1944, giving his age as 47 and his occupation as Marine Engineer, then some months later from Manchester to New York City, arriving there in May 1945. Social security records in the United States give his date of birth as 1897 and his birthplace as "Hicolieff", Soviet Union, and name his parents. At the time of the 1950 United States census, Henry Goldbert was living in San Francisco, California, with his much older sister Esther Reggoch, both giving their native land as "Russia", and was the owner of a barber shop. His age was given as 53, and he stated his marital status as "separated". Esther Risoff Goldbert had been naturalized as a US citizen in California in 1938. Perhaps coincidentally, Wyngarde visited San Francisco in July 1960.
Wyngarde said that Henry Goldbert was one of his three stepfathers, and that his father was an Englishman named Henry Wyngarde, whose career in the British Diplomatic Service was in Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and India, before he became an importer and exporter of antique watches living in Eaton Square, London. No such person has been traced in public records. The biography
of 2020 says Henry and Madge Goldbert had a business buying and selling antique watches in Shanghai in the 1930s, that they divorced in 1937, and that Wyngarde's mother soon married Charles Leo Juvet and had a son called Paul Edouard Juvet, born in 1938. There was a Swiss horological family called Juvet based in Shanghai. It was first reported in April 1950 that Wyngarde was a maternal nephew of the French actor-director Louis Jouvet, and this was still being written about twenty years later. Evidence that his mother was a sister or sister-in-law of Louis Jouvet is lacking, and Jouvet appears to be unrelated to the Swiss Juvet family. However, when…