![]() Wild is survived by his wife, Claire Harding. “My lifestyle had made me a walking time bomb,” he said last year. When their 1999 Artful Dodger track Re-Rewind with Craig David took them from struggling to pay the rent to doing Top of the Pops every other week it caught them completely off-guard. ![]() The actor blamed his cancer on years of heavy drinking and smoking. Picture: Getty 16-year-old Jack Wild became an international teen heartthrob after playing the cheeky Artful Dodger in Oliver, and he was even nominated for an Oscar. After struggling to sober up through most of the 1980s, he returned to the screen in 1991 in Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” More recently, he had worked steadily in regional theater in England. ![]() His career was derailed in the late 1970s by severe alcoholism. He reprised his role in the 1970 movie “Pufnstuf.” The series ran from 1969 to 1971 and made Wild a teenage idol. Pufnstuf,” in which he appeared opposite the Sid and Marty Krofft Puppets. Wild’s success as the Artful Dodger led to the lead role in the children’s fantasy television series “H.R. Heres what the worlds been missing: Artful Dodger (Columbia Records PC 33811) The bands self-titled 1975 debut is brimming with tight, cocksure hooks, soulful yearning and pristine melodies. “Jack Wild is a beguiling lad in the best tradition of Peck’s Bad Boy or maybe an urban Huck Finn,” former Times movie critic Charles Champlin wrote in a 1968 review of “Oliver!” Wild was soon cast in a London stage production of “Oliver!” - the musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel “Oliver Twist,” about a boy who runs away from an orphanage and falls in with a gang of young hooligans.Īs the pint-sized sidekick of the villainous Fagin in the stage and screen versions of the musical, Wild won raves, particularly for his rendition of the show-stopping song “Consider Yourself.” He received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. The son of mill workers in Manchester, England, Wild was spotted by talent agent June Collins as he played soccer with her son, future rock star Phil Collins. It premiered at the Wimbledon Theatre, southwest London in 1960 before opening in the West End, where it enjoyed a record-breaking long run. The musical is based upon the 1838 novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Jack Wild, the English actor whose portrayal of a cheeky pickpocket named the Artful Dodger in the 1968 movie musical “Oliver!” gained him international notice and an Oscar nomination at 16, died of mouth cancer, his agent, Alex Jay, told the Associated Press. An unsung power pop band of the 70s, Artful Dodger existed in the mid-70s gap that separated the Raspberries from Cheap Trick. Oliver is a coming-of-age stage musical, with book, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart.
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