Sydney Desmond Tester (1919 – 2002). English film and television actor, host and executive.
He made his first stage appearance at the age of 11, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1930, receiving positive reviews from London.
From 1934 he became better known as a child actor. Tester's characters were often doomed to untimely deaths in such early films as Carol Reed's Midshipman Easy (1935), Tudor Rose (1936), The Stars Look Down (1939) and Sabotage (1936). He was a musical prodigy in Robert Stevenson's Non-Stop New York (1937) and a drummer boy in The Drum (1938).
After the Second World War, he moved to Australia and embarked in careers in radio, theatre, and television. He spent fifteen years at Channel Nine, taking charge of children's programming, and became more involved behind the scenes in production and publicity. He compered "Desmond and the Channel 9-Pins" an Australian children’s television series which aired from 1957 to 1962 on Sydney station TCN-9. In 1961, Tester retired from appearing on-screen on the series, but continued to write, produce and direct the show.
On 10 November 1939 Tester was registered as a conscientious objector, conditional upon performing farm work, which he did on a pig farm, saying he liked it. He also said, "We know from history that war does not rid the world of fear. War breeds war and greater fear".
- "An alternative story is that the formidable actress-manager Nancy Price had noticed his shock of red hair and given him his first credited role..." https://elhg.org.uk/discovery/lives/lives-desmond-tester/
- "SYDNEY DESMOND TESTER, young red-haired actor who played the Highland drummer-boy with Sabu in the film "The Drum," recently appared as a conscientious objector before the South Eastern Tribunal at Southwark." https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/58975044
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