Brittish Actors
Barbara White (11 December 1923 – 6 February 2013) was a British actress. She played several leading roles during a brief film career during the 1940s. She also appeared on stage in Lesley Storm‘s Great Day amongst others. She married the Irish actor Kieron Moore whom she acted with in The Voice Within (1946).
Dave Berry (born David Holgate Grundy, 6 February 1941) is an English rock singer and former teen idol during the 1960s. His best-remembered hits are “Memphis, Tennessee“, “The Crying Game” (1964) and his 1965 hit “Little Things“, a cover version of Bobby Goldsboro‘s Stateside top 40 success.
Dave Berry, real name David Holgate Grundy, was born in the Woodhouse ward of Sheffield, South Yorkshire on 6 February 1941. His father, a bricklayer, was also a professional jazz drummer, and taught Dave how to play the instrument. Berry attended Woodhouse County Council School and left school at age sixteen and worked as a welder
Berry’s first band that he led was called The Cruisers. A big fan of American rock and roll musician Chuck Berry, Dave Grundy changed his surname to “Berry”, and when he signed onto Decca Records with the Cruisers in 1963, after being spotted at a ballroom in Doncaster, his debut single was a cover of the Berry’s song “Memphis, Tennessee“. The song went to number nineteen in the United Kingdom in September 1963. The following year, his song “Little Things“, originally recorded by Bobby Goldsboro, went to number five in the UK and number one in the Netherlands. “This Strange Effect” (1965), written by Ray Davies, became a number one hit for him in the Netherlands and Belgium, countries where he still enjoys celebrity status, having received an award from Radio Veronica, Netherlands, for their best selling pop single of all time. B. J. Thomas‘s sentimental “Mama” (1966) and “Don’t Gimme No Lip Child”, the latter is the flip to Berry’s No. 5 hit single, “The Crying Game”, in 1964, and covered by the Sex Pistols, were other notable recordings.
Berry released five singles during the 1970s: “Change Our Minds” (1970), “Chaplin House” (1970), “Moving On (Turning Around)” (1972), “I Can Make You Cry” (1973), and “Night of the Fly” (1977), and released his final two in the 1980s: “Anyone Else but You for Me” / “Pebble to Pearls” (1980), and a cover of The Rolling Stones song “Out of Time” (1982). In 1987, he released his first studio album in nineteen years titled “Hostage to the Beat”.
The Geoff Stephens-penned song “The Crying Game” brought Berry’s voice to his biggest international audience in 1992, when it was used as the theme song for the film The Crying Game. In the final quarter of 2010, “Little Things” was used in an advertisement campaign on British television by Andrex toilet paper.[1] Berry also regained some recognition when he was the surprise hit of the annual Alexis Korner Tribute in 1995. In 1998 “This Strange Effect” was covered by the Belgian band, Hooverphonic, on their album, Blue Wonder Power Milk.
In 2004, Berry released his sixth and currently latest studio album called “Memphis…In The Meantime”, under Blues Matters records.
In May 2009, Berry toured the UK and appeared in a cameo role in a theatrical production, The Mod Crop. In August that year, RPM Records issued a double CD anthology of Berry’s earliest recordings for Decca, entitled This Strange Effect (The Decca Sessions 1963–1966). The package added two previously unissued tracks made in 1963 (before Berry signed with Decca) with producer Mickie Most: “Easy To Cry” and “Tongue Twisting”. Berry’s illustrated autobiography, Dave Berry – All There Is To Know, was published in 2010 by Heron Publications Ltd. It included contributions from Joe Cocker, Ray Davies, Tony Iommi, Peter Stringfellow and Bill Wyman.
A double compilation, Picture Me Gone – The Decca Sessions 1966–1974, was released in January 2011. Berry is still touring as of 2023, and is a recurring act in the Sixties Gold tour. Currently in his backing band, the Cruisers, are Daniel Martin (lead guitar since 2010), Adrian Fountain (rhythm guitar since late 2011), Dan Wright (drums, from January 2013) and Brian Wood (bass guitar, joined 24 years ago, the longest serving member of the band).
He had an unusual ambition for a pop performer trying to make a name for himself – to appear on television completely hidden by a prop. In his own words, to “not appear, to stay behind something and not come out”. He often hid behind the upturned collar of his leather jacket, or wrapped himself around, and effectively behind, the microphone lead. His stage act, which drew on the work of Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent, provided an inspiration for Alvin Stardust.
He currently lives in Dronfield, Derbyshire, with his wife Marthy, who comes from Amsterdam, Netherlands, who have been married for over 50 years.
In addition to music, Berry also runs an antique business, where he mainly sells small furniture and rock memorabilia. He has opened two antique shops, one in his hometown of Sheffield, and another near his current residence in Derbyshire
Joanna Pettet was born in Westminster, London, England, daughter of Harold Nigel Egerton Salmon and Cecily J. Tremaine, who were married in Chelsea, London in 1940. Her father, a British Royal Air Force pilot, was killed in the Second World War in 1943.[3]After the war, her mother remarried and settled in Montréal where young Joanna was adopted by her stepfather and assumed his surname of “Pettet”.
When Pettet was 16, she moved to New York City.
Pettet studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, as well as at the Lincoln Center, and made her debut, aged 19, on Broadwayin Take Her, She’s Mine (December 21, 1961-December 8, 1962). She also appeared on Broadway in The Chinese Prime Minister, and Poor Richard.
Beginning in 1964 with an episode of Route 66, she began making guest appearances in several US dramatic television series of the mid-sixties, including The Doctors, The Nurses, The Trials of O’Brien, The Fugitive, A Man Called Shenandoah, and Dr. Kildare.
In 1966, she was cast in writer/producer Sidney Buchman‘s 1966 adaptation of Mary McCarthy‘s novel The Group. The success of that film launched a film career that included roles in The Night of the Generals (1967), as Mata Bond in the James Bondspoof Casino Royale (1967), Peter Yates’s Robbery (1967) with Stanley Baker, Blue (1968) with Terence Stamp, and the Victorian period comedy The Best House in London (1969).
In the 1970s her feature film appearances became sporadic and included roles in the cult horror films Welcome to Arrow Beach(1974) and The Evil (1978). Pettet re-emerged as the star of over a dozen television movies, including The Weekend Nun (1972), Footsteps (1972), Pioneer Woman (1973), A Cry in the Wilderness (1974), The Desperate Miles (1975), The Hancocks (1976), Sex and the Married Woman (1977), Cry of the Innocent (1980) with Rod Taylor, and The Return of Frank Cannon (1980).
She guest-starred four times on the classic Rod Serling anthology series Night Gallery, appearing with her then-husband Alex Cord in the episode “Keep in Touch – We’ll Think of Something”. She starred in the NBC miniseries Captains and the Kings (1976), starred in the episode “You’re Not Alone” from the 1977 NBC anthology series Quinn Martin’s Tales of the Unexpected (known in the United Kingdom as Twist in the Tale),[citation needed] was a guest on both Fantasy Island and The Love Boat (appearing three times on each series), and had a recurring role on Knots Landing in 1983 as Janet Baines, an LAPD homicide detective investigating the murder of singer Ciji Dunne (played by Lisa Hartman).
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Pettet made appearances on the television series Harry O, Banacek, McCloud, Mannix, Police Woman, Knight Rider, Tales of the Unexpected (the UK series) and Murder, She Wrote. In 1984, she appeared as herself in a James Bond tribute episode of The Fall Guy with ex-Bond girls Britt Ekland and Lana Wood.
Her final role was in the 1990 thriller Terror in Paradise, after which she retired from acting, still in her 40s.
On 8 August 1969, Pettet had lunch at the home of actress Sharon Tate, hours before the crimes were committed at that residence by members of the Manson Family. This event is illustrated in the fictional/alternate-reality 2019 film Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, in which Pettet is portrayed by Rumer Willis.
In 2003, actor Sir Alan Bates bequeathed Pettet £95,000 (equivalent to £189,712 in 2023) upon his death. The two had been friends for many years, and Pettet provided support and companionship during his final months after he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2002. Pettet was quoted as saying: “It was a very touching gesture because he had done everything while he was in hospital to make sure I would be looked after following his death.”
Pettet won a Theatre World Award for 1964–1965 for her work in Poor Richard
Margaret Lockwood was not by any means a great screen actress, but she was spirited and likeable. The British public queued to see her until blatant mishandling ruined her career. Possibly (age apart) she might not have retained her popularity. There was something about her South-London-bred personality that suited the 40’s and by the mid-50’s she and her fellows – Phyllis Calvert, Patricia Roc and Jean Kent were passe as far as the cinema was concerned. One can only speculate as to what they might have been like had they ever had good scripts or first-rate directors, though Milton Shulman in the ‘Evening Stand’ in 1946 had little doubt; in an open letter to Mr Rank he claimed that he could find five girls as pretty and talented as this bunch by watching the secretaries get off the escalators in Leicester Square Station. He could’nt, of course” – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The Golden Years”. (1970).
Margaret Lockwood was the most popular actress in British films in the 1940’s. She was bron in 1916 in Karachi, Pakistan. She began her film career in 1934 and the following year she had a major role in “Lorna Doone”. In 1938 she starred in the Alfred Hitchcock classic “The Lady Vanishes” and was soon on her way to Hollywood. She made two movies there “Susannah of the Mounties” with Randolph Scott and Shirley Temple and “Rulers of the Sea” with Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. However she was soon back in England and her career went from strength to strength. Her major movies include “The Stars Look Down” in 1939, “Night Train to Munich” “The Man in Gray” , “The Wicked Lady” in 1945, “Love Story”, “Madness of the Heart” and ” Cast a Dark Shadow”. In 1971 she won critical acclaim for her television performances in the series “Justice”. She died in 1990. Her daughter is the actress Julia Lockwood.
Philip French’s excellent article on Lockwood in the Guardian:
She was born in India, a daughter of the Raj, brought up in England by a cold, domineering mother, and was an experienced child actor before studying at Rada. Playing costume heroines, career girls and socialites, this brunette beauty became a sort of movie star in Carol Reed’s debut Midshipman Easy (1935), the first of seven collaborations with Reed, and a real star as the bored heiress in Hitchcock’s comedy-thriller The Lady Vanishes (1938). This brought her to Hollywood’s attention. But after two unsuccessful films there in 1939, she returned home for good to become the greatest British star of the 1940s, starting with Reed’s The Stars Look Down as the upper-middle-class wife of working-class Michael Redgrave.
This unsympathetic role was the first of numerous seductive femmes fatales, mostly with James Mason, Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger and Patricia Roc. The most famous was her Lady Barbara Skelton, the aristocrat moonlighting as an 18th-century highwayman in The Wicked Lady (1945). She caused problems for the Hollywood Production Code with her provocative cleavage. A 1948 editorial in the polemical magazine Sequence, co-edited by Lindsay Anderson, sarcastically noted: ‘Mr Harold Wilson was recently recorded … presenting Miss Margaret Lockwood with a heavy, silver-plated ornament, thus bestowing official sanction on to the British people’s judgment that Miss Lockwood is their finest actress. Indeed, as Mr Wilson smilingly remarked, this comes to the same thing as saying: “The finest actress in the world.”‘
Her film career went downhill following her appeal to J Arthur Rank that she was ‘sick of sinning’. She refused the title role in Forever Amber but sunnier parts proved unpopular, especially her jolly Nell Gwynne in Cardboard Cavalier. Joining the company run by Herbert Wilcox, husband of her rival, Anna Neagle, she fared no better, and gave up films to enjoy much success in the theatre (she was an excellent Eliza in Pygmalion) and on TV. She made an impressive comeback as a barmaid in Lewis Gilbert’s Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), and after an absence of 20 years played the evil stepmother in Bryan Forbes’s The Slipper and the Rose (1976). Her reclusive life was interrupted by a visit to Buckingham Palace on being made a CBE in 1980.
Philip French’s article in The Guardian can also be accessed on-line here.
“The Times” obituary:
Margaret Mary Lockwood, the daughter of an English administrator of an Indian railway company, by his Scottish third wife, was born in Karachi, where she lived for the first three and a half years of her life. In 1920, she and her brother, Lyn, came to England with their mother to settle in the south London suburb of Upper Norwood, and Margaret enrolled as a pupil at Sydenham High School. Her childhood was repressed and unhappy, largely due to the character of her mother, a dominant and possessive woman who was often cruelly discouraging to her shy, sensitive daughter. As a result, Margaret took refuge in a world of make-believe and dreamed of becoming a great star of musical comedy. After becoming a dance pupil at the Italia Conti school. she made her stage debut at 15 as a fairy in ” A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Holborn Empire. A year later, she played another fairy, for 30 shillings a week, in “Babes in the Wood” at the Scala Theatre. The excitement of “walking on” in Noel Coward’s mamouth spectacular, “Cavalcade”, at Drury Lane in 1931 came to an abrupt conclusion when her mother removed her from the production after learning that a chorus boy had uttered a forbidden four-letter expletive in front of her.
In 1933, she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she was seen in Leontine Sagan’s production of “Hannele” by a leading London agent, Herbert de Leon, who at once signed her as a client and arranged a screen test which impressed the director, Basil Dean, into giving her the second lead in his film, “Lorna Doone” when Dorothy Hyson fell ill. Seven ingenue screen roles followed before she played opposite Maurice Chevalier in the 1936 remake of “The Beloved Vagabond”. A year later, she married a man of whom her mother disapproved strongly, so much so that for six months Margaret Lockwood did not live with her husband and was afraid to tell her mother that the marriage had taken place. In 1938, Lockwood’s role as a young London nurse in Carol Reed’s film, “Bank Holiday”, established her as a star, and the enormous success of her next film, “The Lady Vanishes“, opposite Michael Redgrave, gave her international status
visit to Hollywood to appear with Shirley Temple in “Susannah of the Mounties” and with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in “Rulers of the Sea” was not at all to her liking. She returned with relief to Britain to star in two of Carol Reed’s best films, “The Stars Look Down”, again with Redgrave, and “Night Train to Munich“, opposite Rex Harrison. In 1941, she gave birth to a daughter by Leon, Julia Lockwood, affectionately known to her mother as “Toots”, who was also to become a successful actress. The Leons separated soon after her birth and were divorced in 1950. Lockwood gained custody of her daughter, but not before Mrs Lockwood had sided with her son-in-law to allege that Margaret was “an unfit mother.” The turning point in her career came in 1943, when she was cast opposite James Mason in “The Man in Grey”, as an amoral schemer who steals the husband of her best friend, played by Phyllis Calvert, and then ruthlessly murders her. Spectral in black, with her dark, dramatic looks, cold but beautiful eyes, and vividly overpainted thin lips, Lockwood was queen among villainesses. The film inaugurated a series of hothouse melodramas that came to be known as Gainsborough Gothic and had film fans queueing outside cinemas all over Britain.
In 1944, in “A Place of One’s Own”, she added one further attribute to her armoury: a beauty spot painted high on her left cheek. It became her trade mark and the impudent ornament of her most outragous film “The Wicked Lady”, again opposite Mason, in which she played the ultimate in murderous husband-stealers, Lady Skelton, who amuses herself at night with highway robbery. The amount of cleavage exposed by Lockwood’s Restoration gowns caused consternation to the film censors, and apprehension was in the air before the premiere, attended by Queen Mary, who astounded everyone by thoroughly enjoying it. The film’s worldwide success put Lockwood at the top of Britain’s cinema polls for the next five years.
After poisoning several husbands in “Bedelia” (1946), Lockwood became less wicked in “Hungry Hill”, “Jassy”, and “The White Unicorn”, all opposite Dennis Price. She complained to the head of her studio, J. Arthur Rank, that she was “sick of sinning”, but paradoxically, as her roles grew nicer, her popularity declined. She refused to return to Hollywood to make “Forever Amber”, and unwisely turned down the film of Terence Rattigan’s “The Browning Version”. Her contract with Rank was dissolved in 1950 and a film deal with Herbert Wilcox, who was married to her principal cinema rival, Anna Neagle, resulted in three disappointing flops. In 1955, she gave one of her best performances, as a blowsy ex-barmaid in “Cast a Dark Shadow”, opposite Dirk Bogarde, but her box office appeal had waned and the British cinema suddenly lost interest in her.
An unpretentious woman, who disliked the trappings of stardom and dealt brusquely with adulation, she accepted this change in her fortunes with unconcern, and turned to the stage where she had a success in “Peter Pan”, “Pygmalion”, “Private Lives”, and Agatha Christie’s thriller “Spider’s Web”, which ran for over a year. In 1965, she co-starred with her daughter, Julia, in a popular television series, “The Flying Swan”, and surprised those who felt she had never been a very good actress by giving a superb comedy performance in the West End revival of Oscar Wilde‘s “An Ideal Husband”.
After what she regarded as her mother’s painful betrayal at the custody hearing, the two women never met again, and when a friend complimented Mrs Lockwood on her daughter’s performance in “The Wicked Lady”, she snapped: “That wasn’t acting. That was natural.” Lockwood never remarried, declaring: “I would never stick my head into that noose again,” but she lived for many years with the actor, John Stone, whom she met when they appeared together in the 1959 stage comedy, “And Suddenly It’s Spring”. Stone appeared with her in her award winning 1970s television series, “Justice”, in which she played a woman barrister, but after 17 years together, he left her to marry a theatre wardrobe mistress. This last blow, coupled with the sudden death of her trusted agent, Herbert de Leon, and the onset of a viral ear infection, caused her to turn her back gradually on a glittering career.
She had one last film role, as the stepmother with the sobriquet, “wicked”, omitted but implied, in Bryan Forbes‘s Cinderella musical, “The Slipper and the Rose” in 1976. Her final stage appearance, as Queen Alexandra in “Motherdear”, ran for only six weeks at the Ambassadors’ Theatre in 1980.
That year, she was created CBE, but her appearance at her investiture at Buckingham Palace accompanied by her three grandchildren was her last public appearance. For the remaining years of her life, she was a complete recluse at her home in Kingston upon Thames, rejecting all invitations and offers of work.
In spite of this, she was warmly remembered by the public. When the author Hilton Tims, was preparing his recent biography, “Once a Wicked Lady”, a stall holder from whom he was buying some flowers for her, snatched up a second bunch and said, “Give her these from me. I used to love her films.”
Phyllis Calvert was one of the Gainsborough ladies who were the leading lights of 40’s cinema in Britain. Margaret Lockwood was the leading light followed coosely in popularity bu Phyllis Calvert and then Patricia Roc and Jean Kent. Ms Calvert was born in Chelsea, London in 1915. She made her London stage debut in “A Woman’s Privilege” in 1939. Her breakthrough role on film came with “The Man in Gray” in 1943. Other film highlights include”2,000 Women”, “Fanny by Gaslight”, “Madonna of the Seven Moons” and “The Magic Bow”. She made three films in Hollywood including “Appointment With Danger” in 1951 with Alan Ladd where she played a nun who witnesses a murder. In 1952 she received widespread critical acclaim for “Mandy”. She continued working well into her eighties. Phyllis Calvert died in 2002 at the age of 87
Eric Shotter’s obituary in “The Guardian” :
Phyllis Calvert, who has died aged 87, made her way to the top of British cinema in the 1940s through niceness. As a well-bred, Kensington-accented cornerstone of Gainsborough costume epics, she vied with Margaret Lockwood at the box office.
Regency romps, they were known as. Utter nonsense, with heart-throbs like Stewart Granger and James Mason served up with grace and charm, was quintessential to Calvert’s artistic durability – but to keep it up, without growing dull, required a determined personality and an exceptional talent. It saw her through a long and respectable career in films, plays and television.
The only great dramatic part that ever came Calvert’s way was Madame Ranevskya in The Cherry Orchard, for the Oxford Playhouse on tour in 1971. Yet, within her permitted range, was a talent which served writers from Terence Rattigan (Flare Path, 1942), JM Barrie (Peter Pan, 1947), Roger MacDougall (Escapade, 1953) and Graham Greene (The Complaisant Lover, 1959), to Noel Coward (Present Laughter, 1965, Blithe Spirit, 1971, Hay Fever, 1973), William Douglas Home (The Reluctant Debutante, 1975), Edward Albee (All Over, 1973), Denis Cannan (Dear Daddy, 1976) and Rodney Ackland (Before The Party, 1980).
Whether as bored wives realising how much their boring husbands need them, long-suffering matriarchs tied to bombastic pacifists or in flight from their rowdy families, or just het up because cook had handed in her notice, Calvert’s galère of gracious British womanhood was hard to take your eyes off. Her sense of comedy never failed her in its dry, sarcastic discipline, and there was always that expressive lower lip, with which she stirred our feelings in the feeblest part
child dancer until an injury forced her to switch to acting, she was born Phyllis Bickle in London, and educated at the Margaret Morris school of dancing and the Institut Français. She first appeared on the stage aged 10, at the Lyric, Hammersmith, with Ellen Terry in Walter de la Mare’s Crossings (1925). She got her chance in films at 12 and, during six or seven prewar years in weekly rep, made a few forgotten talkies.
In Max Catto’s Punch Without Judy (1939), she met her future husband, Peter Murray Hill, better known later as a publisher. With him as Hook, she also acted Peter Pan in the annual Scala revival of 1947. The golden wartime days at Gainsborough studios, with James Mason or Stewart Granger dancing attendance in such epics as The Man In Grey (1943), Fanny By Gaslight (1944), Madonna Of The Seven Moons (1944) and They Were Sisters (1945) had long gone; though she regularly went on making films of even more variable quality for another quarter of a century.
One of the best of the bunch was probably Mandy (1952), in which Calvert got all our tear-ducts going as the mother of the deaf-and-dumb heroine.
Her work on stage and television – especially as a woman’s page writer in the series Kate, and plays like Death Of A Heart (1985) and Across The Lake (1988) – stood her in better stead because it had the backing of years in rep. It gave her a technique of little use before the camera, but invaluable on stage.
As a parent-turned-novelist in Felicity Doulkas’s It’s Never Too Late (1954), Calvert took over from Celia Johnson. As the Countess in Anouilh’s The Rehearsal (1961), she superciliously condoned her husband’s affair with Maggie Smith’s young Lucile; and, as Mrs Arbuthnot in Wilde’s A Woman Of No Importance (1967), she showed how beans could be spilled with style.
It was, however, as Queen Mary – in succession to Wendy Hiller – that her stage authority rose exquisitely to the social occasion in Royce Ryton’s Crown Matrimonial (1973). Struggling – first, as a mother through the constraints of court behaviour, and, second, as an actor through her natural niceness – to speak to her son, Edward VIII (Peter Barkworth), she brought emotional eloquence to the task of reproaching him for putting personal happiness before the monarchy.
She made her final stage appearance at the Chichester festival in 1989, in Henry James’s The Heiress, when she was 74, and came out of retirement to appear in her last film, Mrs Dalloway, in 1997.
The only other times I recall Calvert risking loss of sympathy for an apparent lapse of taste, grace or charm was at the Lyric in 1963, and at the Duke of York’s in 1964. In the first, as Marius Goring’s wife in Ronald Duncan’s Ménage à Trois, she condoned his misconduct – as long as it took place off the premises, herself departing as a lesbian with his mistress as the curtain fell. Then, as the cold, insensitive stepmother in James Saunders’s A Scent Of Flowers, she left no trace of “the rose that sings”. Was it purely coincidental that neither show ran?
Peter Murray Hill died in 1957. Calvert is survived by her son and a daughter.
· Phyllis Calvert, actor, born February 18 1915; died October 8 2002
Carol White was one of the gifted young actors who rose to prominence with the rise of British cinema in the 1960’s. She made a huge impact in the television programme “Cathy Come Home” directed by Ken Loach. She went on to work with Loach again in “Poor Cow” opposite Terence Stamp in 1968. The following year she went to Hollywood and made a tense triller “Dayy’s Gone A Hunting” but sadly her career tapered off significantly thereafter. She died in reduced circumstances in 1991 in Miami at the age of 48.
Her obituary from Bob Meade’s website:
CAROL WHITE, the actress who has died in Florida aged 49, was celebrated for her powerful performance in the title role of Cathy Come Home, Jeremy Sandford’s coruscating account of homelessness on BBC Television, which caused a national sensation in the 1960s. Cathy Come Home was not so much a television play as fierce propaganda. Sandford traced the painful downhill journey of a young couple who began their married life full of hope and gaiety and ended it, separated from their children, as casualties of the Welfare State. After an accident cut the husband’s earnings, the couple lived with unfriendly relations, were evicted from squalid tenements, were driven out of a caravan site and found refuge in a rat-ridden hostel. For all its overemphasis, the production showed with compassion the raw degradation of hostel life. In a tour-de-force of naturalistic acting the highly photogenic Carol White succeeded in making Cathy likeable and eventually extremely moving as the courage and optimism in her wasted away. The diminutive Miss White, a London scrap merchant’s daughter who had already made her mark in the television version of Nell Dunn’s Up the Juction (1965), consequently became something of a Sixties icon. She went on to bring warmth and a plausible innocence to the film Poor Cow, a raw and realistic picture of South London life which opened with a graphic scene of Miss White giving birth while reflecting on the shortcomings of her absent husband (“He’s a right bastard”).
Subsequently Miss White was rather miscast as a jolly virginal girl in Michael Winner’s all too forgettable I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name. However, she made a good impression — when she remembered to substitute a Gloucestershire accent for her native Cockney — as a comely country lass in Dulcima (1971) adapted from a story by H. E. Bates
Miss White showed promise of better things as an actress opposite Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde and lan Holm in the film of Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer. Her performance as Raisl Bok won her a Hollywood contract in 1968 to make Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting.
But from then on nothing seemed to go right, and the rest of her career was distinctly chequered. Miss White’s attempts to establish herself in America were dogged by ill fortune. Her name — forever bracketed with her role of Cathy — became more familiar in the press in connection with her amours, divorces, court appearances, drink and drugs than with her acting. “I came to America thinking I was at the very top,” she recalled shortly before her death from liver failure, “and that no one could touch me. But pimps, pushers, liars and ex-husbands brought me crashing down.”-• In 1982 she returned to London to take over the role of Josie from Georgina Hale, in Nell Dunn’s play Steaming, but her comeback ended unhappily when her contract was terminated following several missed performances.
Carol White was born in Hammersmith, London, on April 1 1942. She described her father as “a scrap-metal merchant and a spieler in a fairground and a door-to-door salesman of the elixir of life”. At the age of 11 Carol heard about theatre schools from a hairdresser and thereafter attended the Corona. Miss White made her film debut three years later in Circus Friends and went on to appear in Carry On Teacher, Beat Girl and Never Let Go, in which she played Peter Sellers’s girlfriend. “In those days in British films,” she recalled, “brunettes were ladies and blondes were bits. I wore my hair white and painted my lips red and my eyes dark.” She then married Michael King of the King Brothers singing act and gave up acting for a few years. She returned, this time on the smaller screen in Emergency — Ward 10 and, more notably, as a bright Battersea girl in Nell Dunn’s exhilarating sketch of South London life, Up the Junction. Miss White’s later films for the cinema — not a distinguished collection — included The Man Who Had Power Over Women, Something Big, Made, Some Call It Loving, The Squeeze, The Spaceman and King Arthur and Nutcracker.
She wrote a racy volume of memoirs, Carol Comes Home (1982), in which the Swinging Sixties of purple hearts and Courreges boots gave way to the excesses of Hollywood (“the assault course of a hundred different bedrooms . . . with broken hearts and broken promises left at every corner”), as well as a beauty book, Forever Young. After her divorce from King she married Dr Stuart Lerner, a psychiatrist, and then Michael Arnold, a musician. She had two sons from her first marriage. Jeremy Sandfbrd writes: In her early films Carol captured powerfully the quality of the urban girl-next-door from the less prosperous areas. And in Cathy Come Home she seemed the archetypal young mother, every mother who has ever struggled not to be separated from her children. I last saw her some 10 years ago when she had come over to London and asked me to help her write her autobiography. She had devastating tales to tell about double-dealing Hollywood psychiatrists. Unknown to her, she told me, hers had been paid double her fee by an ex-boyfriend, to “muck her up”. She told me she had come home for good to live the simple life back in Hammersmith, and I never dreamed she would go back to America. She later wrote the book with help from another writer and I have regretted since that it wasn’t me. It seems the classic tale of the pretty but unsophisticated girl who goes to Hollywood. There is no simple moral, though, because Carol, besides being pure and straight, was always reckless, always something of a life gambler.
September 20 1991
The above obituary can also be accessed online here.
Article from Tina Aumont’s Eyes:
Known as the ‘Battersea Bardot’, Carol White used her working class background to enable her to give several natural performances in British dramas, which sometimes mirrored her own turbulent life. Unfortunately, a later problem with alcohol and drug abuse would harm her career, and ultimately end her life.
Born Carole Joan White in Hammersmith, London, on April 1st 1943, Carol studied drama at the Corona Stage Academy. This led to early minor appearances in many of the UK’s best known products at the time. There were ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ parts in ‘Doctor at Sea’(1956), ‘Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s’(1957), ‘Carry on Teacher’, and ‘The 39 Steps’( both 1959). After another dozen or so bits in mainly sexy background roles, Carol’s breakthrough came in Ken Loach’s 1966 social drama ‘Cathy Come Home’, a ground-breaking production, shot as part of ‘The Wednesday Play’ television series. White’s performance was so realistic that for many years afterwards, Carol would quite often be stopped in the streets by people believing her to be Cathy, and offer her money to help her out.
Following ‘Cathy Come Home’, Ken Loach cast Carol as Joy in what would become White’s signature film, the mostly improvised ‘Poor Cow’ (1967). Carol was superb once again as a struggling young mother, married to an abusive criminal (John Bindon). Carol’s final scene where her character gives an interview to camera is astonishingly real and powerful, leaving the viewer with a slight hope of optimism for the much put-upon Joy. The success of ‘Poor Cow’ had everybody knocking on White’s door, with Frank Sinatra and Warren Beatty just two of Carol’s famous new fans.
Travelling to America, White’s Hollywood career got off to an interesting start. Taking the lead role in Mark Robson’s stalker flick ‘Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting’ (1969), the film has gained a cult reputation over the years. A pretty good thriller, it tells the exciting story of a woman who is menaced by the man whose baby she once aborted.
Favourite Movie: The Squeeze
Favourite Performance: Poor Cow
Jeremy Spenser (born Jeremy John Dornhurst de Saram; 16 July 1937) is a British actor who is widely known for his work in film and television from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s. He made his screen debut aged 11 in Anna Karenina (1948).
The following year he played in the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets as the young Louis Mazzini. He played the young King Nicolas in The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe and in Ferry to Hong Kong with Orson Welles.
In the 1960s, the role offers began to slow down. His last film role was in 1966’s Fahrenheit 451 directed by François Truffaut, after which Spenser retired from acting
John Fraser, who has died aged 89, was a British film star who captured the public’s imagination when he appeared in The Dam Busters as Flight Lieutenant JV “Hoppy” Hopgood, taking part in a daring Second World War RAF operation – and offering a pint of beer to the beloved dog of his wing commander
He followed the 1955 box-office hit two years later by taking the role of Inigo Jollifant in The Good Companions, a screen musical version of the JB Priestley play. He and Janette Scott acted the romantic leads, with his schoolteacher-turned-songwriter joining her in a touring variety troupe.
The film, an attempt to compete with American musicals, flopped with cinemagoers but helped to give Fraser heart-throb status and launch a brief singing career. He released “Bye Bye Love” in 1957, but it failed to chart – in a year when several other versions were released, notably the Everly Brothers’ first hit.
Fraser’s star was on the rise again when he appeared in the biopic The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) as Lord Alfred Douglas, known as “Bosie”, poet lover of Peter Finch’s title character. One critic praised his “suitably vain, selfish, vindictive and petulant” portrayal of the Marquis of Queensberry’s son.
Fraser, who acted opposite Hollywood legends such as Sophia Loren over the years, believed his own homosexuality held back his career in an industry where discretion was paramount during the days when it was illegal.
In Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales, his 2004 autobiography, Fraser spilled the beans on his own sexual exploits and those of some of the film world’s most famous names.
He had a six-week fling with Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev that ended only when his agent told him: “If you don’t stop this madness instantly, your career will be over!”
Producer Jimmy Woolf had “taken a serious shine” to Fraser, according to the actor’s memoirs, and showered him with presents while considering who to cast in the title role of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), the epic directed by David Lean. He resisted the advances and Woolf gave the part to Peter O’Toole.
Meanwhile, he wrote, Woolf was known to be the lover of Laurence Harvey, who “kept marrying to further his career”.
Living a lie like this made Fraser want to shun Hollywood and, while promoting The Good Companions in Los Angeles, he turned down an offer by an American producer to further his career.
He observed how having different private and public personas affected one major star’s life when, in the late 1950s, he was invited to supper at the mansion of Dirk Bogarde, who kept out of the public eye his long-term relationship with Tony Forwood, whom he simply described as his business manager.
“Do you and Tony still make love?” Fraser asked Bogarde, who replied: “We’ve been together a long time. Now, we’re like brothers.” So Fraser asked what the star did for sex – embark on casual affairs, perhaps? “God, no,” said Bogarde. “How could I possibly in my position? I can’t go anywhere without being recognised.”
Then, Bogarde took Fraser to the loft to reveal his pride and joy, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle standing on a plinth – his substitute for sex.
Fraser confronted his own sexuality by visiting a brothel and consulting a psychiatrist with the idea of changing his sexual orientation but eventually resigned himself to being what was then described euphemistically as a “confirmed bachelor”.
He saw his career out in television and brought his intelligent insights to print as the author of several novels and autobiographical books.
John Alexander Fraser’s life began in poverty on a Glasgow council estate in 1931. At the age of 11, he was sexually abused by a soldier.
Two years later, the death of his father, John, an alcoholic who ran an engineering business until being hospitalised, was followed within six months by that of his mother, Christina (née MacDonald). He and his two sisters were brought up by an aunt.
On leaving Glasgow High School aged 16, he joined the city’s Park Theatre company as an assistant stage manager and was soon landing acting parts.
Following national service as a lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Signals on the Rhine, he became a member of the new Pitlochry Festival Theatre company, set up by the director of the Park Theatre after its closure.
In 1952, Fraser made his television debut by starring as David Balfour in a BBC serialisation of Kidnapped.
It led to a seven-year contract with the Associated British Picture Corporation, which thrust him into the spotlight in Valley of Song (1953), romancing Maureen Swanson, a fellow Glaswegian who later became a lord’s wife.
Fraser’s other significant film roles included a Scottish piper in Tunes of Glory (1960), alongside Alec Guinness and John Mills; Prince Alfonso in El Cid (1961); and Catherine Deneuve’s ill-fated suitor in the psychological thriller Repulsion (1965), directed by Roman Polanski.
On stage, he gained valuable experience in the classics during two seasons at the Old Vic, London (1955-57), with parts that included Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing.
There were also starring roles in the West End, but Shakespeare became his lasting love. In 1976, he was a founder member of the London Shakespeare Group, directing the actors on annual tours abroad, funded by the British Council.
His 1978 book The Bard in the Bush recounted a tour of Africa, when costumes and props for five plays were typically carried in one trunk, which doubled as the set.
Fraser also devised his own one-man stage show, JM Barrie: The Man Who Wrote Peter Pan, performed at the National’s Olivier Theatre in 1998.
His TV roles included Julius von Felden in A Legacy (1975), Lieutenant Commander “Monty” Morgan in Thundercloud (1979) and Dr Lawrence Golding in The Practice (1985-86).
By the middle of the 1990s, he had retired to Tuscany and La Contadina, the 10-room mountain-top house near Cortona that he bought in 1971, having fallen in love with Italy while playing Hedy Lamarr’s young lover in the 1954 film L’Amante di Paride (Loves of Three Queens).
“I loved the paintings, the towns, the soupy music of Puccini and Verdi and, above all, the people,” he said.
Fraser, who returned permanently to the UK in 2010, is survived by Rodney Pienaar, an artist and his partner of 42 years.
John Fraser, actor and author, born 18 March 1931, died 7 November 2020
David McCallum was born in 1933 in Glasgow. He began his career in British films in the 1950’s usually as a skinny sullen juvenile deliquent.In the early 1960’s he went to Hollywood and very soon became enourmously in the television series “The Man from Uncle”. He has since gone on to have a very lenghty career on television in the United States. His films include “A Night to Remember”, “Robbery Under Arms” and “The Great Escape”. Interview with David McCallum here.
TCM Overview:
A thoughtful, intense presence on television in America and his native United Kingdom, David McCallum was a pop culture sensation in the mid-1960s as the suave spy, Illya Kuryakin, on “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” (CBS, 1965-68) and later as the avuncular Donald “Ducky” Mallard on “NCIS: Naval Criminal Service Investigation” (CBS, 2003). The Scottish-born McCallum worked his way up the ranks in British film and television before bursting onto the American scene with “U.N.C.L.E.” His cool charm and blonde good looks made him an immediate TV idol, but failed to translate into stardom after the show left the air. McCallum settled into a steady diet of TV appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, frequently essaying mellowed professorial types or pensive government figures, before scoring his late-inning smash with “NCIS.” The rare performer with two major hits to his credit, McCallum’s image and talent ensured his fame for generations of TV fans.
Born David Keith McCallum, Jr. in Glasgow, Scotland on Sept. 19, 1933, he was the son of David McCallum, Sr., the famed principal violinist for numerous orchestras in the United Kingdom, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and cellist Dorothy Dorman. Both parents encouraged McCallum and his brother Iain, who later became a novelist, to pursue their chosen fields; for McCallum, this was initially the oboe, which he studied at the Royal Academy of Music. But when a performance from Shakespeare’s “King John” at a local theater group yielded a positive response from its audience, he switched his focus to acting while keeping music as a secondary interest. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he made his debut in a 1946 BBC Radio production of “Whom the Gods Love, Die Young.” Bit and supporting roles in British features and on television soon followed, often as troubled youth, as benefiting his brooding intensity. Among his more notable turns during his period was in 1958’s “Violent Playground,” where his psychotic gang member is spurred by poverty and rock and roll to take a classroom of school children hostage
McCallumâ’s American film debut came as the mother-fixated Carl von Schlosser in John Huston’s “Freud” (1962), with Montgomery Clift as the pioneering analyst. The following year, he played Royal Navy Officer Ashley-Pitt, who devised the method of dispersing the dirt from tunnels dug under a POW camp in “The Great Escape” (1963). His co-star in the film, Charles Bronson, later became entangled in a headline-grabbing relationship with McCallum’s wife, actress Jill Ireland. McCallum and Ireland eventually divorced in 1967, which allowed her to marry Bronson. An early American television appearance on “The Outer Limits” (CBS, 1963-65) became one of his most enduring, thanks to the eye-popping makeup applied to McCallum. His character, a bitter Welsh miner, agreed to take part in an evolutionary experiment, which turned him into a hyper-intelligent mutant with a massive domed cranium. The image was memorable enough to make McCallum a go-to for numerous science fiction efforts in the ensuing decades.
In 1964, McCallum was cast as Illya Kuryakin, a minor character on the spy series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Despite having only two lines, the producers saw that McCallum and star Robert Vaughn had considerable chemistry together, and boosted the character to co-star status. The move changed McCallum’s career forever. Kuryakin’s cool demeanor, physical proficiency with any weapon, and passion for art, music and science not to mention his wealth of blonde hair made him an immediate favorite among female viewers, whose fan mail to the actor was the most ever received in the history of MGM, which produced the show. For the series three years on the air, McCallum was at the apex of television stardom, and netted two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nod, as well as major roles in several films. He was the tormented Judas in George Stevens’s epic Biblical drama “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), and took the lead in a number of minor features, including 1968’s “Sol Madrid” and “Mosquito Squadron” (1969), many of which traded on McCallum’s popularity in “U.N.C.L.E.” by casting him in action-oriented roles. During this period, McCallum also orchestrated and conducted a trio of lush, sonically adventurous records that put unique spins on some of the period’s more popular songs
In the 1970s, McCallum was a fixture on television in both America and England. In the States, he was a staple of science fiction and supernaturally-themed TV features, including “Hauser’s Memory” (NBC, 1970), as a scientist who injected himself with a dying colleagues brain fluid to preserve defense secrets from foreign agents, while “She Waits” (CBS, 1972) cast him as the husband to a possessed Patty Duke. He also briefly returned to series work with “The Invisible Man” (NBC, 1975-76) as a scientist who used his invisibility formula to aid a government agency against evildoers. His work in England hewed more towards dramatic fare: in “Colditz” (BBC, 1972-74), he was an aggressive RAF officer who put aside his anger towards the Nazis to help organize an escape from a notorious German war prison, while in “Sapphire & Steel” (ITV, 1979-1982), he and Joanna Lumley played extraterrestrial operatives who investigated strange incidents involving the time-space continuum. In 1983, he reunited with Robert Vaughn for “The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (CBS), which saw Illya retired from espionage to design womenâ¿¿s clothing in New York. The escape of a top enemy spy brings both U.N.C.L.E. men back into action, albeit with other, younger agents. The TV-movie was intended as the pilot for a new version of the series, but the show was never greenlit.
After logging time on countless, unmemorable series like “Team Knight Rider” (syndicated, 1997-98) and “The Education of Max Bickford” (CBS, 2001-02), McCallum found his next hit with “NCIS,” a police procedural drama about Navy investigators. McCallum played Chief Medical Examiner Donald “Ducky” Mallard, an eccentric but highly efficient investigator with a knack for psychological profiling. A close confidante to Mark Harmon’s Jethro Gibbs, he served as father confessor and paternal figure for the show’s offbeat cast of characters. The show’s slow-building popularity brought McCallum back to a television audience made up in part of the children of viewers who sent him fan letters back in the “U.N.C.L.E.” days, granting him a rare burst of second stardom
At one point in the 1960s, David McCallum, who has died at the age of 90, was the hottest British actor in Hollywood. Nicknamed ‘The Blond Beatle’, he had become a pop culture phenomenon for playing a Russian spy on an American TV show at the height of the Cold War. According to MGM, McCallum received more mail from female fans than any other actor in the studio’s history, including Clark Gable and Elvis Presley. Not bad for someone who only had two lines in the pilot.
Born in Glasgow on 19 September 1933, McCallum was the son of classical musicians who settled in Hampstead when his father became leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1936. He became so proficient on the oboe that he took classes at the Royal Academy of Music. However, the thrill of being applauded as Prince Arthur in an amateur production of King John convinced the eight year-old that his future lay in acting.
In 1946, McCallum secured his Equity card after making his radio debut in Whom the Gods Love, Die Young. Several juvenile roles followed at the BBC before McCallum became an assistant stage manager at Glyndebourne on leaving school. Following National Service with the Royal West African Frontier Force, he trained at RADA from 1949 to 1951, where Joan Collins was a classmate.
Repertory stints in Frinton-on-Sea and Oxford ensued before McCallum made his television bow in The Rose and the Ring (1953). More in hope than expectation, he sent photographs to the Rank Organisation and was cast by debuting director Clive Donner as a leather-jacketed James Dean wannabe in the crime drama The Secret Place (1957). Next, he hobbled on crutches as Stanley Baker’s younger brother in the gritty realist thriller Hell Drivers, and married co-star Jill Ireland shortly after the shoot. They were paired as lovers down under in Robbery Under Arms (both 1957) before headlining the seedy crime saga Jungle Street (1960) as a mugger and a stripper.
Reuniting with Baker, McCallum impressed as another delinquent in Basil Dearden’s problem picture Violent Playground (1958). His Scouse accent was patchy, although as a gang leader he oozed surly charisma. But two parts as radio operators, in the Titanic drama A Night to Remember (1958) and war story The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961), signalled a shift towards more mature roles, and McCallum left to try his luck in Hollywood.
Although he had been cast as Judas Iscariot in the Biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), delays meant that McCallum was already established by the time it was released. Having suffered from an Oedipus complex in John Huston’s Freud and shown sailor Terence Stamp kindness as a gunnery officer in Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd (both 1962), McCallum guaranteed his place in cult movie folklore as Eric Ashley-Pitt, the POW who earns the nickname ‘Dispersal’ for devising an ingenious way of shifting tunnel soil in The Great Escape (1963).
Yet it was television that proved McCallum’s métier. He gave notice as a time-tweaking inventor and a mutating Welsh miner in two episodes of the sci-fi series The Outer Limits (1963/64). And it was as Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964 to 1968) that he became a superstar. Having only been a minor character in the feature-length 1963 pilot Solo, the Russian with a blonde mop and a penchant for black turtlenecks became equal partners with Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn), as the agents of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement sought to confound the nefarious schemes of the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, or THRUSH.
Although Kuryakin was intense, introverted and intellectual, McCallum played him with such cool charm and enigmatic wit over 105 episodes that he earned a Golden Globe and two Emmy nominations. He and Vaughn also made eight spin-off features, as well as The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair (1983), a teleplay that started with Kuryakin as a fashion designer.
A comeback series didn’t materialise, but McCallum had exploited his peak fame to record four instrumental albums with producer David Axelrod, one of which contained ‘The Edge’, which was sampled by Dr Dre and resurfaced in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver (2017). His own excursions as an big-screen action man, Sol Madrid (1968) and Mosquito Squadron (1969), underwhelmed, however, and McCallum retreated back into television.
Following the neglected TV horror movies Hauser’s Memory (1970) and She Waits (1972), McCallum returned to Blighty to play a short-fused RAF officer in Colditz (1972 to 74), Jacobite warrior Alan Breck Stewart in an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1978), and an impassive extra-dimensional detective alongside Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel (1979 to 1982). He would later team effectively with Diana Rigg in the miniseries Mother Love (1989) and steal scenes as a gambler in Howard’s Way follow-up show Trainer (1991 to 1992), during a period in which he trod the US guest star circuit following the short-lived sci-fi series The Invisible Man (1975 to 1976).
However, a cameo in the legal series JAG (2003) turned into a 20-year gig, as McCallum reached a new audience as medical examiner Dr Donald Mallard in spin-off show NCIS (2003-). Sporting a bow-tie and dispensing offbeat avuncular wisdom over 457 episodes, ‘Ducky’ so caught McCallum’s imagination that he studied pathology and attended so many autopsies in order to appear credible in the role that he became something of a forensics expert.
Anyone who knows me are aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been collecting signed photographs of my favourite actors. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I like.
