1939–1945, and Australia Service Medal 1939–1945. Tingwell remained a reservist into the 1950s. Post-war life and acting career Australia After returning to Australia, Tingwell married his childhood sweetheart, Audrey May Wilson, who died in 1996. They had two children. He joined Doris Fitton's Independent Theatre company and appeared on stage from the mid-1940s in such classics as The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman and Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot In 1946, Tingwell was given his first film role, in Smithy, cast as an RAAF control tower officer – winning the role since he could supply his own RAAF uniform. Tingwell had an excellent supporting role in Bitter Springs (1950), made by Ealing Studios with Chips Rafferty; Tingwell played Rafferty's bigoted son. He had a similar role in Kangaroo (1952), a Hollywood-financed film shot in Australia for 20th Century Fox. He then appeared in I Found Joe Barton (1952), the first TV show filmed in Australia. Fox liked Tingwell's work in Kangaroo and invited him to Los Angeles to play the role of Lt. Harry Carstairs in The Desert Rats, in which he appeared opposite Chips Rafferty, James Mason and Richard Burton. They offered him a long-term contract but Tingwell turned it down because he wanted to return to Australia. Tingwell played the lead in King of the Coral Sea (1954) alongside Rafferty. In 1954, he co-starred with Gordon Chater in Top of the Bill, the first of the famous satirical revues staged at Sydney's Phillip Street Theatre. England The Australian film and radio industry slumped with the advent of television and Tingwell decided to move to the UK. He used the opportunity of a role in Ealing's The Shiralee (1957), which was filmed in Australia and London. Tingwell travelled to England to complete his scenes and decided to stay. The following year, he took on his first recurring television role, as Australian surgeon Alan Dawson in the live TV serial Emergency – Ward 10 and its film spin-off Life in Emergency Ward 10 (1959). He had small roles in Ealing's Dunkirk (1958), then Bobbikins (1959), Cone of Silence (1960), and Tarzan the Magnificent (1960). Tingwell played the role of Inspector Craddock in all four films of the Miss Marple series, starring Margaret Rutherford, from 1961 to 1964: Murder, She Said (1961), Murder at the Gallop (1963), Murder Most Foul (1964) and Murder Ahoy! (1964). For Hammer Films he appeared