Wickham in Pride and Prejudice (1938) and Le Bret in Cyrano de Bergerac (1938). The onset of the Second World War interrupted his acting career, and he joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1940. He served with the regiment until 1946, by which time he had attained the rank of major. Major film and television roles Morell returned to the theatre after the war, including another period at the Old Vic in the 1951–52 season. The New Statesman's critic T. C. Worsley wrote of his performance in a star-studded revival of King Lear that "Mr Morell's Kent is the best I remember since Sir Ralph Richardson's." Of his performance in the title role in Tyrone Guthrie's production of Timon of Athens, the Daily Mail wrote: "From his stage and screen performances we know him already as an eminently dependable actor, but last night he became a spectacular actor." The same profile quoted Morell's catholic approach to stage assignments: "If a part is a good part and I feel I can enjoy playing it, it doesn't matter whether it's Shakespeare or modern farce … I'd hate to be bogged down in Shakespeare or classic theatre all my life. It's a good thing for an actor to do many different kinds of theatre, because it keeps his imagination stimulated." However, he now increasingly began to win leading parts on television, and in 1953 was cast by the television director Rudolph Cartier in a play called It Is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer. Cartier was impressed with Morell's performance in this play, and offered him the leading role in a science-fiction serial he was preparing with the writer Nigel Kneale, entitled The Quatermass Experiment. Morell considered the not-yet-completed script, but decided to decline the offer; the part went instead to his co-star from It Is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer, Reginald Tate. He did take one of the leading parts in another Cartier and Kneale production the following year, when he played O'Brien in their version of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, opposite Peter Cushing as Winston Smith. This was a successful and controversial production which provoked much comment and debate; Morell's part in it has been praised for his "coolly menacing performance [that] is at least equal to Cushing's." This successful collaboration with Cartier and Kneale resulted, four years later, in him once again being offered the role of Professor Bernard Quatermass for the pair's third