Irene Handl was born in 1901 in London. Her father was Austrian and her mother French. She made her London stage debut in 1937. Her films included “On the Night of the Fire” in 1939, “Millions Like Us”, “Brief Encounter”,”Upstairs and Downstairs”, Two-Way Stretch” and “The Rebel”. She was featured in over 100 movies. Irene Handel was also a published novelist. She died in 1987 at the age of 85.
“Times” obituary:
Irene Handl, the comedy actress who made a speciality out of warm-hearted Cockneys, died yesterday. She was 85. She was getting on for 40 before she started acting but quickly made her mark and had a long and fruitful career on the stage, in films and on television. Small, dumpy and invariably cheerful, she took naturally to comedy and will be remembered for her portrayals of maids and charladies and dotty aunts. She was also a successful novelist – a late starter here as well, her first book not appearing until she was in her sixties. Irene Handl was born in Maida Vale, London, on December 27, 1901. Thedaughter of a Viennese banker and aFrench mother, she was educated at a variety of schools and travelled widely in her youth. After hermother’s death she stayed at home to look after her father. When she decided, at an advanced age for such things, to try for a career on the stage, she trained at the Embassy School under Eileen Thorndike (sister of Dame Sybil). She had an immediate success playing the maid in the West End comedy “George and Margaret”, which opened in 1937.
In time she played most of the classic comedy roles, from Mrs Malaprop to Lady Brakcnell and her own favourite, the medium Madame Arcati in Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit”. But her biggest stage success was in her more familiar guise as the lovable Cockney char in “Goodnight Mrs Puffin”, which ran for three years in the 1960s. By then she had become a national figure through the cinema. She hadmade her first film in 1938 and after a long apprenticeship in small parts she came to the fore in comedies of the 1950s and 1960s like “The Belles of St Trinians”, “Brothers in Law”, “I’m All Right Jack”, “The Rebel” (with Tony Hancock) and “Heavens Above”. Her best film parts were the disapproving wife of Peter Sellers’s Communist shop steward in “I’m All Right Jack” and the Marxist mother of David Warner in “Morgan, A Suitable Case for Treatment”. In 1965 she surprised and delighted the publishing world with her first novel, “The Sioux”, the portrait of an aristocratic French family, written with originality and insight and revealing a less comfortable side to her personality than had been suggested by her stage Cockneys. She had begun the first draft of the book when she was 14. For 40 years it lay untouched in a linen cupboard and was finally pulled out during a long run of “Goodnight Mrs Puffin” – when she decided that writing might be a good way of recharging her creative batteries. A sequel, “The Gold Tip Pfitzer”, appeared to similar acclaim in 1973.
The climax of a busy career on television was the comedy series “For the Love of Ada”, in which she and Wilfred Pickles played an elderly couple finding romance late in life. It rans for three years from 1970 and spawned a film, though its comedy did not transfer happily to the large screen. Her other television work included the children’s comedies “Metal Mickey” and “Supergran”. Irene Handl continued to make films, do television shows and even appear in Christmas pantomimes until she was well into her eighties.
Unmarried, she usually had a chihuahua dog for a close companion, and she had an unlikely passion for the records of Elvis Presley.
The above “Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Martin Jarvis was born in 1941 in Cheltleham. He made his first television appearance in 1965 in an episode of “Doctor Who” on BBC. Two years later he played Jon in the hughly popular “The Forsyte Saga” and also starred in “Rings on her Fingers” between 1978 and 1980. He has made appearances in Hollywood on American television series such as “Murder She Wrote” and “Walker”. His films include “Buster”, “Titanic” and “Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War”. He is married to actress Rosalind Ayres.
IMDB entry:
Martin Jarvis OBE is one of Britain’s most versatile leading actors. His distinguished career continues to encompass just about every aspect of the entertainment industry: film, television, theatre, radio and audio recording. He is also the author of two bestselling books: a hilarious autobiography Acting Strangely and a compelling account of his award-winning time on Broadway in 2001: Broadway, Jeeves – The Diary of a Theatrical Adventure, both published by Methuen. In 2010 he starred as Vincent Hogg in a new production of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Cracked in ITV/WGHB’s popular ‘Miss Marple’ series. In 2009, he starred in BBC2’s comedy/drama Taking the Flak, receiving outstanding reviews for his performance as national treasure tv journalist David Bradburn. He stars in the feature film Neander Jin – Return of the Neanderthal Man (US/ Germany co-production, 2010) as Peter Blodnik, network mogul. Alongside his screen and theatre career he is a prolific director of radio drama and, with his wife, actress/director Rosalind Ayres, produces plays and readings for BBC. His award-winning productions include Shadowlands, David Mamet’s Keep Your Pantheon, Ayckbourn’s Man of the Moment and Ian Fleming’s Dr No. He has homes in London and Los Angeles. He trained at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, England), where he won the Vanbrugh Award and the Silver Medal. He is an Associate of RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, England). He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the British Empire) in the 2000 Queen’s New Years Honors List for his services to drama. In 2006, he appeared at the Santa Fe Arts Festival in New Mexico in Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost with Shirley Maclaine and Ali McGraw. Earlier in the same year, he starred in Honour at Wyndham’s Theatre, London giving an acclaimed performance opposite Dame Diana Rigg. On screen that year he played Leonard in BBC-TV’s modern version of “Much Ado About Nothing” and (in 2005) starred as “Malvolio” in “Twelfth Night” at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. He received a Theatre World Award on Broadway in 2001 for his title role performance in “By Jeeves” which he also filmed. His West End, National, Almeida and Donmar theatre appearances include works by Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Michael Frayn, Harold Pinter CH, Somerset Maugham, Sir George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. He played Jack Worthing opposite Dame Judi Dench’s Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” at the National Theatre in the 1980s directed by Sir Peter Hall, and premiered Pinter’s “Other Places” in the National’s Cottesloe Theatre. Pinter directed him in the leading role of Hector in Giraudoux’s “The Trojan War Will Not Take Place.” He met Sir Alan Ayckbourn at the National and subsequently went on to star in his “Woman in Mind,” “Henceforward,” “Just Between Ourselves” and “By Jeeves.” His Screen credits include leading roles in the British/Australian mini-series “Bootleg,” “Inspector Lynley Mysteries,” “Lorna Doone,” Frayn’s “Make and Break,” “Ike – The War Years” (with Robert Duvall) and “The Bunker” (with Sir Anthony Hopkins.) He was “Linus” in Sir Richard Eyre’s film, “Absence of War written by Sir David Hare. He has guest starred (very often as villains) in “Inspector Morse,” “Frost,” “Lovejoy,” “Casualty,” “Murder Most Horrid,” “Dr Who,” “Space Above and Beyond,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Walker: Texas Ranger” in the US. He played monstrous Neil Biddle in “Sex ‘N’ Death” and was a memorable television Uriah Heep in “David Copperfield” on British television. First major screen role: ‘Jon’ in the multi-award winning “The Forsyte Saga.” He followed this with many ‘classic serials’ including “The Way of All Flesh (in which he starred as Ernest Pontifex), “Nicholas Nickleby” (title role), “The Moonstone,” “Little Women” and “The Pallisers.” His feature films include the psychological thriller “Framed” (2007), “Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War,” James Cameron’s “Titanic,” “Kid With the X-Ray Eyes,” “Buster,” “The Last Escape,” and “Taste the Blood of Dracula.” His voice can be heard in numerous television animation series as well as feature films including “Flushed Away” and “Eragon.” He has narrated “Peter and the Wolf at the Barbican” and appeared with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra as Narrator for Egmont and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” At the Chichester Festival Theatre he starred with Sir John Gielgud in “Paradise Lost,” with Googie Withers CBE and Susan Hampshire OBE in “The Circle” and with concert pianist Lucy Parham in “Beloved Clara.” Jarvis & Ayres Productions, which he founded with his wife, Rosalind Ayres, has produced many award-winning dramas and readings for BBC Radio, National Public Radio in America and for audio books. Their work includes outstanding interpretations of plays by Sir George Bernard Shaw, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter CH, Michael Frayn, David Mamet, Hugh Whitemore, Robert Shearman, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, and many more. British and American stars who have been associated with J&A productions include, in the UK: Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Diana Rigg, Alfred Molina, Richard E. Grant, Michael York OBE, Richard Briers CBE, Pauline Collins OBE, Janie Dee, Fiona Shaw CBE, Miriam Margolyes OBE, Patricia Hodge, Twiggy Lawson, Natascha McElhone, Martin Freeman, Barry Humphries CBE, Phil Collins and in the US: Brendan Fraser, Elaine Stritch, Teri Garr, Stacy Keach, Shirley Knight, Hector Elizondo, Bruce Davison, Matthew Wolf, Eric Stoltz, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ed Begley Jr, Ed O’Neill and Gregory Peck. Directors of J&A dramas include: David Mamet, Michael Grandage, David Grindley, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Pete Atkin, Rosalind Ayres. Their productions have received Audie and Earphone awards in the US. In September 2006, he directed Teri Garr, Michael York OBE and Alfred Molina in an acclaimed production of “Pack of Lies” for BBC Radio 4. He and Fiona Shaw CBE starred for five years in the popular BBC series “Our Brave Boys.” His Just William audio and radio recordings are world wide best sellers. He was the subject of BBC TV’s This Is Your Life in 1999.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tricia Giles
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Mike Gwilym was born in Wales in 1949. He made his television debut in “Edward the Seventh” in 1975. Other television roles included “How Green Was My Valley” and Dick Francis’s “The Racing Game” where he played ex-jockey now private detective Sid Halley. His films include “Hopscotch” in 1980 with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson, “Priest of Love” and “Venom”.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Born in Neath, Gwilym is the brother of actor Robert Gwilym, son of Arthur Aubrey Remington Gwilym and Renée Mathilde Eugénie Léonce Dupont. His parents were the proprietors of a women’s clothing chain in Wales. Mike’s Belgian maternal grandfather was the oil industrialist Edmond Jules Dupont from Liège. Mike Gwilym’s interest in acting began while at Wycliffe Preparatory School,[4][5]but he began his acting career while at university at Oxford with the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and went on to join the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre before becoming an associate actor of the Royal Shakespeare Company His stage debut was as ‘Prince Hal’ in Henry IV, Part 1 at the Playhouse Theatre, Sheffield, UK in 1969.
Gwilym retired from the professional stage to the South of Spain (province of Malaga), where his parents had a summer home. From the year 2001 he has shared a home with his partner in Sotogrande in the province of Cadiz.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can lso be accessed online here.
Muriel Angelus was born in 1909 in London of Scottish parents. Her first movie was the silent “The Ringer” in 1928. Up until 1935 she alternated between making films and appearing on the London stage. She then went to Broadway to appear in the hit show “The Boys from Syracuse” with Eddie Albert. She then went to Hollywood where she made such films as “The Light that Failed” with Ronald Colman and Ida Lupino “The Great McGinty” directed by the great Preston Sturges with Brian Donlevy. On her marriage in 1943 she retired from acting. Muriel Angelus died at the age of 95 in 2004.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
The memories are vague when it comes to recalling this London-born leading lady, but Muriel Angelus did have her moments. She managed to appear in a few classic Broadway musical shows and Hollywood films before her early retirement in the mid-1940s. Of Scottish parentage, the former Muriel Findlay developed a sweet-voiced soprano at an early age. She made her singing debut at 12, eventually changing her name and becoming a popular music hall performer. She entered films toward the end of the silent era with The Ringer (1928), the first of three movie versions of the Edgar Wallace play. Her second film Sailor Don’t Care (1928) was important only in that she met her first husband, Scots-born actor John Stuart. Her part was excised from the film. Though in her first sound picture Night Birds (1930), she got to sing a number, most of her films did not usurp her musical talents. The sweet-natured actress who played both ingenues and ‘other woman’ roles co-starred with husband Stuart in No Exit (1930), Eve’s Fall (1930) and Hindle Wakes (1931), and appeared with British star Monty Banks in some of his farcical comedies, including My Wife’s Family (1932) and So You Won’t Talk (1935). Muriel received a career lift with the glossy musical London hit “Balalaika” and a chain of events happened with its success. It led to her securing the pivotal role of Adriana in “The Boys From Syracuse” and, in turn, a contract with Paramount Pictures. Divorced from Stuart by this time, Muriel settled in Hollywood and made her best films while there. She was touching as girlfriend to blind painter Ronald Colman in The Light That Failed (1939), a second remake of the Rudyard Kipling novel, and appeared to great advantage in Preston Sturges’ classic satire The Great McGinty (1940) as _Brian Donlevy_’s secretary. After scoring another long-running Broadway hit with “Early To Bed” in 1943, Muriel met Radio City Music Hall orchestra conductor Paul Lavalle while appearing on radio in New York and married him in 1946. She retired to raise a family in New England. They had a daughter, Suzanne, who later worked for NBC. Muriel pretty much stayed out of the limelight for the remainder of her life. She died at 95 in a Virginia nursing home in 2004, some seven years after her husband’s death.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Guardian obituary 2004
Muriel Angelus
British actor who starred in films and stage musicals, memorably singing Falling In Love With LoveRonald BerganThu 2 Sep 2004 01.36 BST
One of Rodgers and Hart’s greatest hits, Falling In Love With Love, was first sung in the 1938 Broadway production of The Boys From Syracuse by Muriel Angelus, who has died aged 95. The New York Times critic thought her portrayal of Adriana in this musical adaptation of The Comedy Of Errors “a monument to precariously controlled wifely patience”, and that she sang “with exquisite sweetness”. Unfortunately, her sweetly exquisite soprano voice was heard too seldom in a career that began at the age of 12 and ended at 33.
Born in London of Scottish parents, the blonde Muriel Angelus Findlay began singing in music halls before entering films in 1928 in the silent The Ringer, the first of three versions of the Edgar Wallace play. A year later, she was in Germany for Maskottchen, based on an operetta by Walter Bromme, in which she played “the other woman”. If the producers had waited a few months for sound, they could have included the songs.Advertisementhttps://38e84c381af680794f0905d392a93a04.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
In her first talkie, Night Birds (1930), she got to sing a number in a West End revue, in which a detective, on the trail of her fugitive boyfriend, disguises himself as a chorus boy. More serious was Hindle Wakes (1931), the first sound version of Stanley Houghton’s 1912 play, where Angelus portrayed Beatrice Farrar, the respectable fiancee of Alan Jeffcote, a Lancashire mill-owner’s son, who refuses to go away with him for a naughty weekend. Instead, he takes a mill girl, only to return to Beatrice after the girl remembers her “place”. Jeffcote was played by the Scottish-born actor John Stuart, whom Angelus married during the shooting of the film.
They then appeared together in Let’s Love And Laugh (1931), an inconsequential comedy-drama in which she was the daughter of a publisher, and he an aspiring writer. She then embarked on several farcical comedies, some directed and starring Monty Banks (Mario Bianchi), the husband of Gracie Fields, with titles such as My Wife’s Family (1932), So You Won’t Talk (1935), and Blind Spot (1932), in which she played an amnesiac, a melodrama Angelus would have wanted to forget.
· Muriel Angelus, actor, born March 10 1909; died August 22 2004
The Way Of All Flesh, poster, l-r: Muriel Angelus, Akim Tamiroff, Gladys George on poster art, 1940. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
In 1936, she starred in the Eric Maschwitz stage musical Balalaika at the Adelphi Theatre in London. Angelus was ravishing as Lydia, a ballet dancer and singer, who falls in love in Paris with an exiled Russian prince after the Bolshevik Revolution. It was the sort of thing that went down very well in the West End in the 1930s, and it ran for over a year. It led to Angelus being offered the role of Adriana in The Boys From Syracuse, and a contract with Paramount, for whom she made four prestigious films.
The first was William Wellman’s The Light That Failed (1939), the second remake of the Rudyard Kipling novel, which tells of the desperate attempt of a painter (Ronald Colman) to finish his greatest painting – of a prostitute (Ida Lupino) – before he goes blind. In a moving scene, Angelus, as the now blind artist’s girlfriend, has to hide the fact from him that the painting has been slashed by the prostitute in a jealous rage.
Of the three last films she made, all in 1940 – Safari, a studio-bound jungle melodrama with Douglas Fairbanks Jr as “the best hunter in West Africa”; The Way Of All Flesh, in which Angelus was a thieving adventuress; and The Great McGinty – the last is by far the most memorable. In this, Preston Sturges’ first feature, about a tramp (Brian Donlevy) who becomes state governor by craft and graft, Angelus played his secretary, offering to become his public wife for the sake of the “women’s vote”. Angelus triumphs as the sole character with half a conscience in one of Hollywood’s best satires.
After another success in a Broadway musical, Early To Bed (1943-44), as the madame of a bordello in pre-war Martinique, which people, for reasons known only to the librettist, keep mistaking for a girls’ school, Angelus left show business. In 1946, long divorced from Stuart, she married Paul Lavelle, the conductor of the Radio City Music Hall orchestra.
Fifteen years later, Lavelle and Angelus recorded Tribute To Rodgers And Hammerstein, in which, naturally, she sung Falling In Love With Love. She is survived by her daughter from her second marriage.
Katie Boyle is a well known broadcaster who has acted in some British films. She was born Caterina di Francavilla in Florence, Italy in 1926. At the age of nineteen she came to Britain. She was originally a model and then then appearing in such films as “Old Mother Riley, Headmistress” in 1950. Her other movies included “The House in the Square”, “The Truth About Women” with Laurence Harvey and “Intent to Kill” with Richard Todd.
Ian McNeice was born in Basingtoke in 1950. He is one of Britains best and most profilic of character actors. His films include “84 Charing Crfoss Road”, “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” with Maggie Smith and “Day of the Dead”. In 1995 he went to Hollywood to make “Ace Ventura Pet Detective”. Recent films have included “Oliver Twist” and “The Black Dahlia”.
TCM Overview:
Ian McNeice was born in the town of Basingstoke (in Hamsphire, England) on October 2, 1950. He studied acting at the Taunton School in Somerset and the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Arts, followed by four years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. McNeice began appearing regularly on television in the early â¿¿80s, notably on the 1982 mini-series “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.” In ’85, he was cast in a recurring role on the series “Edge of Darkness.” In addition to his TV work, McNeice appeared in the films “84 Charing Cross Road” (’87),” “The Raggedy Rawney” (’88), “The Russia House” (’90), “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” (’95), and “From Hell” (’01). Some of McNeiceâ¿¿s most memorable roles include the villainous Baron Vladimir Harkonnen on the mini-series “Frank Herbertâ¿¿s Dune” (’00) and “The Children of Dune” (’03), the bibulous sous-chef Gustave on the British sitcom “Chef!,” and the newsreader on the HBO mini-series “Rome.” He also took the role of Winston Churchill on an episode of the British sci-fi series “Doctor Who”; the part was something of an encore for McNeice, having previously played Churchill in an ’08 stage play.
Moira Redmond was born in 1928 in Bognor Regis in Kent. Her film debut came in 1958 with the movie “Violent Moment”. Other films include “Doctor in Love” with Michael Craig and “A Shot in the Dark” in 1964 with Peter Sellers and “Kill or Cure” with Eric Sykes. In 1975 in the very popular television series “Edward the Seventh” she played Alice Keppel. She died in 2006.
“Independent” obituary:
A versatile actress of striking auburn-haired beauty, with a honeyed voice of considerable range, Moira Redmond had a particular gift for the demands of high comedy, to which she brought an impressively stylish aplomb. Her ill-health prevented audiences from seeing her tackle some of the rewarding roles – Lady Bracknell would surely have been among them – which might have come her way later in her career.
Her interest in the theatre began as a child at school in Bognor Regis. Redmond made her professional début playing walk-on parts in Peter Brook’s revelatory production of Titus Andronicus (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1957) with Laurence Olivier; she also understudied Olivier’s then wife Vivien Leigh as the abuser Lavinia and had many an uneasy moment when the wayward star occasionally went missing on the production’s European tour before its London run (Stoll, 1957).
By way of marked contrast her next West End appearance was in Agatha Christie’s tepid Verdict (Strand, 1958) after which she played a remarkably wide variety of major roles in leading repertory theatres, including Nottingham and Leatherhead.
For the enterprising Pop Theatre led by Frank Dunlop at the 1966 Edinburgh Festival, Redmond was part of an intriguingly varied company that included Jane Asher, Jim Dalt, Laurence Harvey and Cleo Laine; she was a feisty Hermione, memorably forgiving in the statue scene, in The Winter’s Tale (later in London at the Cambridge, 1966) and equally telling as Helen in The Trojan Women.
A highlight of Redmond’s career was her Queen Victoria in Edward Bond’s Early Morning (Royal Court, 1968), in which she took every opportunity to mine the vein of black comedy in a fantasia positing a lesbian relationship between Redmond’s Queen and Marianne Faithfull’s Florence Nightingale. She appeared too in another 1960s darkly comic classic, Peter Barnes’s The Ruling Class as the venal Lady Claire Gurney (Nottingham Playhouse, 1969).
Redmond’s comedic skill shone in a rare revival of “Saki” (H.H. Munro)’s only comedy, The Watched Pot (Mermaid, 1970), as Mrs Peter Vulpy, a widow with often a predatory glint in her eye. As the sleekly upwardly mobile Grainne in a wonderful but short-lived Hugh Leonard, Dublin-set comedy The Patrick Pearse Motel, she was hilariously funny.
Her range could also extend to the tragic miner’s wife at the heart of D.H. Lawrence’s The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd (Leatherhead, 1971) and it made her a natural choice as a member of the Actors’ Company formed by, among others, Ian McKellen when she returned to comedy with a delightfully randy matron in Feydeau’s Ruling The Roost (Edinburgh, 1972) and displayed a contrasted fierce concentration in Iris Murdoch’s The Three Arrows (Arts, Cambridge, 1972).
Returning to repertory, Redmond had a splendid run of parts at the Bristol Old Vic in 1975, playing the harassed Sister McPhee in Peter Nichols’s The National Health, a glittering Ariadne Utterword in Heartbreak House (she was a superb Shavian) and, outstandingly, in Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus, as Muriel, frustrated dragon-wife of the play’s central erring doctor.
After a period concentrating primarily on television work Redmond returned in fine form to the theatre in Alan Ayckbourn’s production of his large-scale A Chorus of Disapproval (National Theatre, 1985) set against the background of a local operatic society’s production of The Beggar’s Opera.
Early in her career Redmond was groomed as a “starlet”, with appearances in inconsequential movies including Violent Moment (1958) and Doctor in Love (1960). She had better roles in more interesting films – a good cameo in John Huston’s flawed Freud (1962) and a juicy comedy part in A Shot in the Dark (1964) – but her late film career offered her, like most actresses of her age then, little of genuine quality.
On television it was quite another story. Redmond made countless smaller-screen appearances, guesting in virtually all the leading series of her era – The Avengers, Danger Man, No Hiding Place, Paul Temple, Sherlock Holmes, I, Claudius, Nanny and The Sweeney.
Some of the most prestigious series had impressive contributions from Redmond – Monica in the rarity of Noël Coward’s Post Mortem in “The Jazz Age” series (1968), a mischievously luscious Duchess of Cleveland in The First Churchills (1969), a notably subtle and moving portrayal of the King’s mistress Alice Keppel in Edward VII (1975), and a commanding Duchesse d’Abrantes in Prometheus: the life of Balzac (1976).
Her final significant appearance was in the supporting role of Nessy, touchingly played, in the popular television version of Catherine Cookson’s The Wingless Bird (1997).
Alan Strachan
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Gary Waldhorn was born in 1943 in London. His films include “Zeppelin” in 1971, “Escape to Victory” in 1981 and “The Chain” in 1984. He has featured in many of the popular television dramas in Britain over the past thirty years.
Waldhorn is known for his work in West End theatre productions and for his collaborations with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1972 he toured Australia and New Zealand in Harry Miller’s production of Sleuth playing opposite Richard Todd.[1]
Actor and playwright Hugh Williams was born in East Sussex in 1904. He was a popular actor in British films of the 1930’s. He made his debut in “Charley’s Aunt” in 1930. He made “David Copperfield” in 1935 in Hollywood where he played Steerforth. He wrote plays with his wife Margaret, one of them was “The Grass Is Greener”. He died in 1969. His son is the actor Simon Williams.
TCM OVerview:
Hugh Williams was an actor who had a successful Hollywood career. Williams began his acting career with roles in such films as “Charley’s Aunt” (1930) with Charles Ruggles, “Sorrell and Son” (1933) and “Elinor Norton” (1934). He also appeared in the drama “Outcast Lady” (1934) with Constance Bennett. He continued to work steadily in film throughout the thirties and the forties, appearing in the W C Fields historical drama “David Copperfield” (1935), the drama “Wuthering Heights” (1939) with Merle Oberon and “One of Our Aircraft Is Missing” (1942). He also appeared in “Secret Mission” (1942). In the latter part of his career, he tackled roles in “An Ideal Husband” (1947), the Michael Ripper drama “The Intruder” (1955) and the Charlton Heston action film “Khartoum” (1966). Williams more recently acted in the Richard Burton dramatic adaptation “Doctor Faustus” (1968). Williams passed away in December 1969 at the age of 65.
