In 1955 he recorded the novelty song “Pity the Downtrodden Landlord”.

His stage career included plays by Shakespeare and Shaw. During the 1950s he continued to direct shows at Unity, and on one occasion appeared in court (along with Vida Hope) charged with putting on a play without a licence. His stage work also included an adaptation of Gogol’s short story “The Bespoke Overcoat”, transposed to the East End of London, which was filmed by Jack Clayton in 1956, and won the Oscar for best short. Bass also took over from Chaim Topol in the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof on the West End stage

Bass appeared as a poacher rescued by Robin in the first episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene. He also appeared in a later episode during season two titled “The Goldmaker’s Return” as Lepidus, the roguish alchemist, rescued from the Sheriff by Little John (Archie Duncan). He appeared in The Army Game (1957–61), a British TV comedy series, as Private Montague ‘Excused Boots’ Bisley, and its sequel Bootsie and Snudge from 1960–63 (there was also a one series revival in colour in 1974) working at a Gentleman’s Club with Bill Fraser as ‘Claude Snudge’ and Clive Dunn as ‘Henry Beerbohm Johnson’. Bass played the character in another spin-off, Foreign Affairs in 1964. Bass also played Lemuel “Lemmy” Barnet in the third and fourth series of the landmark 1950s science fiction radio series Journey into Space.

He was a subject of the television programme This Is Your Life in March 1970 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

Bass also appeared in the “Pride” segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971) and had a leading role in the 1977 sex comedy Come Play with Me. He has had many cameo roles, such as the Indian restaurant doorman in the Beatles’ film Help! (1965), as Clouseau’s seafaring informant in Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and in Moonraker (1979), in which he was cast as a heavy smoking hard drinker. Bass had a small part in I Was Monty’s Double as a non-speaking passenger on a train.

Bass appeared in a 1979 episode of the ITV Drama series Danger UXB: Just Like a Woman, as a family man with an unexploded bomb in his back garden.

Bass died of a heart attack on 15 July 1987 in Barnet, London. His last home was in Well End, a suburb of Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.