Bruce Boa was the difficult guest who wanted a waldorf salad in the classic “Fawlty Towers”. He was born in 1930 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada but made his acting career in British films and television. He became used as an American in British films. Among his films are “The Omen”, “Full Metal Jacket” and “Return to Oz”. He died in 2004.
There was a period in the early Sixties when no British film comedy seemed complete without Liz Fraser. According to a profile in 1964, Fraser was a “dumb, dead-pan blonde” with “rather more curves than the racing circuit at Brands Hatch”, but who was, on closer acquaintance, “actually as sharp as a steak knife”.
This native wit damaged her career just as she was becoming a stalwart of the Carry On films. After Carry on Regardless, Carry on Cruising and Carry on Cabbie between 1961 and 1963, Fraser’s involvement in the popular series was terminated because of a remark she made on set about how poorly the films were being marketed. When her comments were reported to the producer, Peter Rogers, she was banned from the films for the next 12 years.
A vivacious, big-hearted blonde with a cockney accent that survived the best efforts of drama school, Fraser made her breakthrough in the 1959 comedy film I’m Alright Jack in which she played the daughter of Peter Sellers’s shop steward in a rollicking satire on industrial relations. Her performance earned her a nomination for a Bafta for most promising newcomer.
She resisted Sellers’s advances after he locked her in his dressing room — “I didn’t quite go there” — but she did become firm friends with him and just about every other top British comedian or comic actor she worked with. Sid James was a “lovely man. We’d always have a cuddle, but there was never any funny business.” Tommy Cooper was “the most naturally funny person I’ve ever worked with. Others sort of worked at it, but no one was as infectious as Tommy.” Tony Hancock “became a good mate. He was a sad, lonely man, but we made each other laugh.” Indeed, Fraser was known in showbusiness as the ultimate “trouper”, who seemed to be able to make friends with everyone.
After a decade of playing ditzy, pneumatic blondes, usually required to strip to their underwear, Fraser began to fight against typecasting. She polished up her accent and started turning up to castings in a brunette wig. It made little difference. With a few notable exceptions she spent much of the rest of her career in comedy and for this she was treasured.
Liz Fraser
She was born Elizabeth Joan Winch in 1930 in Elephant and Castle, south London. Her father, a commercial traveller, died of tuberculosis when she was 11, leaving her mother to run a corner shop to support them. One small consolation for the bereaved child was a regular supply of free sweets.
Fraser later reflected that she would have “ended up in a factory or as a shop girl” had her mother not “put her foot down” and enrolled her at St Saviour’s and St Olave’s Grammar School in south London and “paid for me to have a good education”.
She left school at 16 and worked as a shorthand typist, which paid for two years of evening classes at the London School of Dramatic Art. Acting was something she had wanted to do after watching her uncle perform card tricks. On finishing drama school, she put an advertisement in The Stage and felt buoyed when an unnamed impresario invited her to a meeting at the Dorchester Hotel. She left in tears after he offered her a part in a “big film” in return for personal favours. Not long afterwards she made her debut as a professional actress after accepting a three-month engagement with a repertory company in Accrington.
Billed as Elizabeth Fraser, she made more than 100 television appearances during the Fifties, usually as a decorative stooge to comedians including Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Arthur Askey and Frankie Howerd. She also appeared in several episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour. When Sid James was sacked by the troubled Hancock, he devised his own series, Citizen James, and took Fraser with him.
Ethel Griffies was born in 1878 in Sheffield. She has had one of the longest careers on film. Her movie debut was in 1917 in “The Cost of a Kiss” and her final movie was “Bus Riley’s Back in Town” in 1965. She was a very effective character actress and was featured in “How Green Was My Valley” in 1941 and “Jane Eyre” in 1944. She made “The Birds” and “Billy Liar” in 1963. Ethel Griffies died in 1975 at the age of 97.
IMDB entry:
The daughter of actor-manager Samuel Rupert Woods and actress Lillie Roberts, Ethel Griffies began her own stage career at the age of 3. She was 21 when she finally made her London debut in 1899, and 46 when she made her first Broadway appearance in “Havoc” (1924). Discounting a tentative stab at filmmaking in 1917, she made her movie bow in 1930, repeating her stage role in Old English (1930). Habitually cast as a crotchety old lady with the proverbial golden heart, she alternated between bits and prominently featured roles for the next 35 years. Her larger parts included Grace Poole in both the 1934 (Jane Eyre (1934)) and 1943 (Jane Eyre (1943)) versions of “Jane Eyre” and the vituperative matron who accuses Tippi Hedren of being a harbinger of doom inAlfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds (1963). Every so often she’d take a sabbatical from film work to concentrate on the stage; she made her last Broadway appearance in 1967, at which time she was England’s oldest working actress. Presumably at the invitation of fellow Briton Arthur Treacher, Ethel was a frequent guest on TV’s The Merv Griffin Show (1962), never failing to bring down the house with her wickedly witty comments on her 80 years in show business.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide (qv’s & corrections by A. Nonymous)
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Alan MacNaughton was born in 1920 in Scotland. His first film was “Bond of Fear” in 1956. Among his other films are “Victim” in 1961 and “Frankenstein Created Women”. His last television perfomrance was in 1999 in “Kavanagh Q.C.”.
One of the new-style working-class heroes and shooting stars of the 1960s, the actor Albert Finney, who has died aged 82, enjoyed a rich and varied career that never quite fulfilled its early promise. Like Richard Burton before him and Kenneth Branagh after him, he was expected to become the new Laurence Olivier, the leader of his profession, on stage and on screen.
That this never quite happened was no fault of Finney’s. He worked intensely in two periods at the National Theatre, was an active film producer as well as occasional director, and remained a glowering, formidable presence in the movies long after he had been nominated five times for an Oscar (without ever winning). Although a stalwart company member – Peter Hall paid heartfelt tribute to his leadership and to his acting at the National – he led his life, personal and professional, at his own tempo.
From middle age onwards – and he was only 47 when he gave one of those Oscar-nominated performances, the fruity old actor defying the blitz, Donald Wolfit-style, in Peter Yates’s The Dresser, written by Ronald Harwood – he assumed a physical bulk and serenity that bespoke a life of ease, far from the madding crowd, in good restaurants and on Irish racecourses. He never courted publicity.
His unusual, cherubic face, slightly puffy and jowly, but with high cheekbones, the face of an unmarked boxer, was always a reminder of his sensational breakthrough in two signature British films, Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) – his line as the Nottingham bruiser Arthur Seaton, “What I want is a good time; the rest is all propaganda”, could serve as a professional epitaph – and Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones (1963), a lubricious historical romp that imparted a metaphorical mood of the swinging 60s.
Finney was the new roaring boy of that high-spirited, colourful decade – cheeky, northern and working-class. Born in Salford, he was the son of Albert Finney Sr, a bookmaker, and his wife, Alice (nee Hobson); as it happens, also born that day was another northern “new wave” actor, Glenda Jackson.
Young Albert attended Tootal Drive primary school and Salford grammar. He flunked his exams but played leading roles in 15 school plays and went south to London and Rada, where he was in a class that included Peter O’Toole, Tom Courtenay, Frank Finlay, John Stride and Brian Bedford. While still a student, as Troilus in a modern play, he was spotted by Kenneth Tynan – the best-known critic of the day – who proclaimed a “smouldering young Spencer Tracy … who will soon disturb the dreams of Messrs Burton and Scofield”. And so it proved. His rise was instant and meteoric. He played Brutus, Hamlet, Henry V and Macbeth at the Birmingham Rep, and in 1956 made his London debut in the Old Vic’s production of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. In 1958 he played opposite Charles Laughton in Jane Arden’s The Party at the Arts theatre.
He followed Laughton to Stratford, joining a stellar company under the direction of Glen Byam Shaw, and played Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Laughton was Bottom) and Cassio with Paul Robeson as Othello and Mary Ure as Desdemona. He also understudied (and went on for, to sensational effect) Olivier as Coriolanus.
But Finney was a modern actor not really destined for classical eminence. Much more his style was the insolence and daydreaming of Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall at the Cambridge theatre, though the role on film went to Tom Courtenay. At the Royal Court he took the lead roles in a satirical musical, The Lily White Boys, directed by Lindsay Anderson, and in John Osborne’s vitriolic, tumultuous Luther (the latter in the West End, later on Broadway); he made his film debut opposite Olivier in The Entertainer in 1960.
A pattern of oscillation between theatre and cinema was soon established, as he bookended his first major stint at the National, in the great Olivier company, with screen appearances in Reisz’s 1964 remake of Emlyn Williams’s psychological thriller Night Must Fall and Stanley Donen’s delightful study of a disintegrating relationship, scripted by Frederic Raphael in flash back and fast forward, Two For the Road (1967). Finney’s leading lady in the latter, Audrey Hepburn, was not the first nor last of his amorous work-and-pleasure intrigues.
His NT appearances in 1965 and 1966 were as a strutting Don Pedro in Franco Zeffirelli’s Sicilian take on Much Ado About Nothing (with Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens), the lead in John Arden’s Armstrong’s Last Goodnight, a great double of the candescent upstart Jean in Strindberg’s Miss Julie and the outrageous Harold Gorringe in Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy, topped off with the double-dealing, split-personality Chandebise in Jacques Charon’s definitive production of Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear.
Then he was off again, having founded Memorial films in 1965 with his great friend and fellow actor Michael Medwin, directing and starring in Charlie Bubbles (1968), written by his fellow Salfordian Shelagh Delaney (author of A Taste of Honey) and featuring Billie Whitelaw and Liza Minnelli. He co-produced Lindsay Anderson’s savage public school satire If … (1968), bankrolled Mike Leigh’s first feature film, Bleak Moments (1971), and gave Stephen Frears his movie-directing debut on Gumshoe, a brilliant homage to film noir as well as a good story (written by Neville Smith) about a bingo caller (Finney) in a trenchcoat with delusions of being Humphrey Bogart. He even had time to disguise himself totally as a wispily senile Scrooge in Ronald Neame’s 1970 film, with Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley and Edith Evans as the Ghost of Christmas Past.
An invitation to return to the Royal Court as an associate director (1972-75) resulted in one of his blistering stage performances, opposite Rachel Roberts, in EA Whitehead’s Alpha Beta. He directed Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City and a revival of Joe Orton’s Loot, and appeared in David Storey’s Cromwell and Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.
The reminiscing Krapp unspooled his old Grundig on a double bill with Billie Whitelaw’s hectic jabbering in Not I, and Finney confided in Whitelaw his lack of rapport with the playwright: “You know the way I work, I take all the different paints out of the cupboard, I mix the colours together. If they’re not right, I shove them all back and take out a new lot.” Whitelaw advised him to dispose of all the colours and retain the white, black and grey.
He was much happier unbuttoning in Peter Nichols’s sharp West End comedy Chez Nous and embodying Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in Sidney Lumet’s star-laden Murder on the Orient Express (1974). But he returned to the National under Peter Hall during the difficult transition period from the Old Vic to the South Bank.
Over six years from 1974, as striking technicians and unconvinced critics lined up to try to scupper the new building, Finney ploughed on as a bullish, tormented Hamlet, a lascivious Horner in The Country Wife, the perfect arriviste Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard and a disappointing Macbeth. The centrepiece was his heroic, muscular and glistening Tamburlaine in Peter Hall’s 1976 defiant staging of Marlowe’s two-part mighty epic, twirling an axe to deadly effect.
This performance marked Finney’s grandest, if not necessarily finest, hour on stage; he appeared briefly at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 1977 to deliver beautifully modulated performances as Uncle Vanya and an ultra-credible woman-slaying Gary Essendine in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter. Another long absence from the theatre ended with a stunning performance as a roguish Chicago hoodlum in Lyle Kessler’s Orphans at the Hampstead theatre in 1986 (and a movie version a year later) and another great turn as a Catholic priest, held hostage and deprived of his faith, in Harwood’s JJ Farr at the Phoenix theatre.
Finney was now nearly a grand old man, but without the seigneurial distinction of either Olivier or Gielgud. He was delightful and dewy-eyed, eventually, as a bald Daddy Warbucks in John Huston’s film of Annie (1982), but truly magnificent as the alcoholic British consul – “a drunk act to end all drunk acts” said one critic – in Huston’s Under the Volcano (1984), adapted from the novel by Malcolm Lowry.
That performance should have won the Oscar, perhaps, but he remained a near-miss nominee, as he had done in The Dresser (1983). On stage, the beautiful, bolshie boy had settled into ruminative, but always interesting, late middle age, notably in Harwood’s ingeniously structured Another Time (1989), in which he played a bankrupt Jewish commercial traveller and, in the second act, his own musician son, 35 years later; another Harwood play, Reflected Glory (1992), allowed him to let rip as a breezy Mancunian restaurateur confronted with a critical family play written by his own playwright brother (though it was slightly unsettling to see Finney, the brave new Turk, siding with Harwood’s contempt for “modish” contemporary theatre manners).
His last stage appearance reunited him in 1996 with his old friend Courtenay in Yasmina Reza’s Art, at Wyndham’s, a play about friendship being threatened by the purchase of a white painting for a lot of money. Courtenay was the art-loving dermatologist, Finney hilarious and exasperated as an astronautical engineer appalled by the purchase.
Harwood scripted a new film version of Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version (1994), directed by Mike Figgis, but Finney was probably as unwise to assume Michael Redgrave’s mantle as the unloved classics teacher as he was to play the Ralph Richardson role of Henry James’s Dr Austin Sloper in Agnieszka Holland’s Washington Square (1997), a remake of William Wyler’s far superior The Heiress.
Finney, it seemed, was selecting his movie scripts for their surprise and eclectic qualities, rather than any urgency about fulfilling his destiny as a great actor. But he was much racier on film than on stage. He honed his gangster act as a dodgy politician in the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing (1990), bumbled irascibly as a retired track official in Matthew Warchus’s Simpatico (1999), an underrated version of a difficult Sam Shepard play, and added a touch of class (and a wayward American accent) as the small-town lawyer in Steven Soderbergh’s crusading Erin Brockovich (2000), opposite a rejuvenated, tremendous Julia Roberts, which brought his fifth and last Oscar nomination.
His best, and now often elegiac, performances materialised sporadically on television: as Maurice Allington in The Green Man (1991), adapted from a Kingsley Amis novel; as Reggie in A Rather English Marriage (1998), alongside Courtenay; and as Churchill in The Gathering Storm (2002), written by Hugh Whitemore, with Vanessa Redgrave as his wife.
In Hollywood, he clocked in for Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and the third in a superb trilogy adapted from Robert Ludlum’s spy action thrillers, starring Matt Damon, Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). His last movie credits came in The Bourne Legacy and the Bond film Skyfall (both 2012).
Albert Finney
Finney, always known as Albie, was rumoured to have declined both a CBE and a knighthood. In 1957 he married the actor Jane Wenham; they had a son, Simon, and divorced in 1961. His marriage to the French actor Anouk Aimée in 1970 ended in divorce eight years later. He then had a long relationship with the actor Diana Quick – the pair were for a while feared missing up the Amazon. In 2006 he married Pene Delmage, who survives him, along with Simon.
• Albert Finney, actor, born 9 May 1936; died 7 February 2019
3766258 Luther by John Osborne; (add.info.: Programme for Luther by John Osborne at Phoenix Theatre, London with Albert Finney in title role. Directed by Tony Richardson. 5 September 1961); Lebrecht Authors; it is possible that some works by this artist may be protected by third party rights in some territories.
Adrianne Allen was born in 1907 in Manchester. Her films include “Loose Ends” in 1930, “The October Man” and “Bond Street”. She was married to Raymond Massey and her children are actors Daniel Massey and Anna Massey. Adrianne Allen died in 1993 at the age of 86 in Switzerland.
IMDB entry:
Adrianne Allen was married to Raymond Massey from 1929 to 1939. The Masseys were great friends with William and Dorothy Whitney, who were divorced in the late 1930s. William was an international lawyer, and Adrianne went to him for the divorce. Shortly after the divorce of Adrianne and Raymond, William and Adrianne married, as did Raymond and Dorothy Whitney, and all lived happily ever after. Adrianne and Bill lived in London before and during WWII and Adrianne’s children, Daniel Massey and Anna Massey, spent much of their time with the Whitneys. In the 1950s, Adrianne and Bill moved to Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland, where they lived out their days.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: annie whitney
The above entry can also be accessed on IMDB here.
TCM Ove4rview:
Delicately lovely British actress, primarily on stage in light, brittle comedy from the mid-1920s until the late 50s. After training at RADA, Allen made her London stage debut in Noel Coward’s “Easy Virtue” in 1926. She often brought her intelligence and grace to the Broadway stage, in productions ranging from the mournful romance “Cynara” (1931) to the high period comedy “Pride and Prejudice” (1935) to the intense family saga “Edward, My Son” (1948). From the mid-40s on, Allen primarily played mother roles, like her matchmaker in “The Reluctant Debutante” (1956).Allen also made a dozen film appearances on both sides of the Atlantic between 1930 and 1954. Her busiest period in film came shortly after her debut in “Loose Ends” (1930), but the middling “The Stronger Sex” and “The Woman Between” (both 1931) failed to establish her in film. Decidedly better were the offbeat small-town drama, “The Night of June 13” (1932) and the superior British noir, “The October Man” (1947).
Wilfrid Hyde-White came to prominence in late middle age, after having spent a long time in minor roles. He was born in 1903 in Burton-on-the-Water, England, the son of a rector. He made his film debut in 1934 in “Josser on the Farm” and then went on to make “Turned Out Nice Again” with George Formby.
His breakthrough role came in the Carol Reed classic of 1949 “The Third Man”. “North West Frontier” with Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall weas a major success. He went to Hollywood in 1959 and made such films as “Ada” with Susan Hayward, “let’s Make Love” with Marilyn Monroe and as Pickering in “My Fair Lady” in 1964. Most of his subsequent career was spent in Hollywood where he died in 1991 at the age of 87. His son is the actor Alex Hyde-White.
IMDB Entry:
Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!, poster, (aka OUR MAN IN MARRAKESH), US poster, left: Wilfred Hyde-White, Herbert Lom, Senta Berger, Terry-Thomas; Tony Randall (on ground), 1966. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
British character actor of wry charm, equally at home in amused or strait-laced characters. A native of Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, he attended Marlborough College and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. His stage debut came in 1922, and by 1925 he was a busy London actor. He married actress Blanche Glynne (real name: Blanche Hope Aitken) and in 1932 toured South Africa in plays. Alleged to have been spotted by George Cukor during a performance in Aldritch, Hyde-White (with or without Cukor’s help) made his film debut in 1934.
He often appeared under the name Hyde White in these early films. He continued to act upon the stage, playing oppositeLaurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in “Caesar and Cleopatra” and “Antony and Cleopatra” in 1951. With scores of films to his credit, he will always be remembered for one, My Fair Lady (1964), in which he played Colonel Pickering. Active into his ninth decade, Hyde-White died six days before his 88th birthday. He was survived by his second wife, Ethel, and three children.
Distinguished-looking, urbane character actor noted for his droll humor on stage as the father of the title character in the drawing room comedy “The Reluctant Debutante” (London 1956, Broadway 1957) and the Laurence Olivier-Vivien Leigh “Caesar and Cleopatra” (1952).
Often cast as genteel Englishmen whose surface manners mask a roguish or larcenous soul, Hyde-White is best known for his performances as Crippin, a British Council functionary in “The Third Man” (1949), the hypocritical headmaster in “The Browning Version” (1951) and Henry Higgins’s bemused friend, Colonel Pickering, in “My Fair Lady” (1964). On TV he appeared briefly on the nighttime soap opera “Peyton Place” (1967), starred as Emerson Marshall in the legal comedy series, “The Associates” (1979) and played Dr. Goodfellow in “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” (1981).
A supremely unctuous character player, adept at smoothly honed sycophancy – as, for example, the literary chairman of The Third Man (d. Carol Reed, 1949), the headmaster in The Browning Version (d. Anthony Asquith, 1951), and one of the wealthy brothers in The Million Pound Note (d. Ronald Neame, 1953).
With his plummy tones and sleekly coiffed appearance, he usually played upper-class, but there is a smattering of fake smoothies, like crim Soapie Stevens in Two-Way Stretch (d. Robert Day, 1960), or the merely deferential like the jeweller in Bond Street (d. Gordon Parry, 1948). However, it is hopeless trying to limit the highlights in such a career, which spanned fifty years, every type of British film and not a few international ones, most famously as that arch-gent, Colonel Pickering, in My Fair Lady (US, d. George Cukor, 1964).
Marlborough-educated and RADA-trained, he was first on stage in 1922, scoring a major hit as the father of The Reluctant Debutante (1955) and screen since 1936. His son Alex Hyde-White (b.London, 1959) has acted in several films including Biggles (d. John Hough, 1986) and Pretty Woman(US, d. Garry Marshall, 1990).
Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
New York Times obituary in 1991:
Wilfrid Hyde-White, the English actor who appeared in films including “My Fair Lady,” “Ten Little Indians,” “The Third Man” and “The Browning Version,” died yesterday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 87 years old.
He died of congestive heart failure at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, where he had been a patient since 1985, said Louella Benson, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
Mr. Hyde-White was especially well known for his urbane drollery, in such roles as the father of the title character in the play “The Reluctant Debutante,” which he performed in London and then, in 1956 and 1957, on Broadway.
Reviewing that drawing-room comedy, Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times said Mr. Hyde White gave a “brilliant performance” as the head of a frantic household — “relaxed, quizzical, neat, funny.” Of ‘Certain Tricks’
The actor told an interviewer at the time: “The premise of the drollery has to be firm. It is allowed to look leisurely, but actually my technique is hidebound by method. I really don’t take chances onstage. My style of acting is made up of certain tricks acquired over many years.”
Those, he said, included lowering his voice if audiences were noisy or sleepy. The worst thing to do is outshout them, he said, and if they are sleeping, do not awaken them, thereby eliminating a few critics.
“The suaveness,” he said, “isn’t born of confidence: it’s born of fright.” Comedies on the Stage
Mr. Hyde-White, who was born in Gloucester, began his career in a series of comedies produced during the late 1920’s at the Aldwych Theater in London, then began his film career as a stuffy burgomaster in “Rembrandt.”
He played a professor in “The Third Man” (1950) and the headmaster in “The Browning Version,” the 1951 film based on Terence Rattigan’s play. In “My Fair Lady” (1964), he played Henry Higgins’s associate.
In 1952, he appeared in New York with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in “Caesar and Cleopoatra” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” In 1973, he played an urbane marquis on Broadway in “The Jockey Club Stakes,” a British comedy.
His American television credits included a brief run in the 1960’s nighttime soap opera “Peyton Place.” He also starred as Emerson Marshall in ABC’s lawyer comedy series “The Associates” and appeared as Dr. Goodfellow in “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.”
He is survived by his wife, Ethel; two sons, Alex and Michael; a daughter, Juliet, and four grandsons
Michel Ray was born in 1944 in England to an English mother and a Brazilian father. He made his film debut in “The Divided Heart” in 1954. In 1956 he went to America to make “The Brave One” and “The Tin Star” amongst others. In 1962 he was featured in “Lawrence of Arabia”. He ceased acting in 1964 and became a stockbroker.
His IMDB entry:
He was born into a wealthy family having an English mother and a Brazilian father. He was educated in Switzerland where he learnt to ski. His parents were friends of producerMichael Balcon who was looking for a boy who could ski for his 1954 film The Divided Heart (1954). Young Michel fitted the part perfectly and started a film career which culminated in the role of Faraj in Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
This project took eighteen months and caused Michel to look at the affect film work was having on his education. He decided to quit acting. He subsequently attended Harvard where he read business studies. After university he joined White Weld & Co moving on to NM Rothschild and Credit Suisse First Boston. In his London city career in investment banking he made his first millions.
In 1995 he joined Nikko Securities and in 1998 became the first non-Japanese member of the main board. Meantime he had continued his passion for winter sports and was a member of the British Olympic ski team at the 1968 Winter games in Grenoble, France.
The Divided Heart, poster, US poster, from top: Armin Dahlen, Yvonne Mitchell, Michel Ray, 1954. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
He was in the team again in ’72 and ’76 competing on these occasions in the luge. He had also married a childhood friend Charlene, daughter of Alfred “Freddie” Heineken. Her mother was Lucille Cummins daughter of a Kentucky Bourbon maker.
Her father Freddie died in January 2002 and left his controlling interest, 50.05%, in the Heineken brewing empire to the couple. It is estimated at three billion pounds sterling or four point two billion dollars. Michel’s life story is more glamorous than many a Hollywood fiction.
As a teenager, Michel de Carvalho was living every boy’s fantasy. While his friends sat in school, 17-year-old Michel was a movie star, with a coveted role in Sir David Lean’s epic, Lawrence Of Arabia.
Between breaks in filming, he caroused through the fleshpots of Beirut with Hollywood stars Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif, pursued by hordes of adoring females. The film won seven Oscars and would go down in cinema history. Michel, using the stage name Michel Ray, seemed destined for fame.
Many child actors would let the experience go to their heads and veer off the rails, eventually disappearing from view. But Buckinghamshire-born Michel has continued to thrive and enjoy life to the full.
Now aged 68, he is still living out a male fantasy – as a financier with a £5.5 billion fortune and limitless supplies of beer. He did it by deciding to abandon acting on the set of the classic film so that he could enrol at Harvard University.
He also went on to compete in two Winter Olympics as a skier and tobogganer. And he married the love of his life, Charlene Heineken, now 58, the daughter of the late brewery magnate Freddie Heineken. In 2002, the couple inherited the £4 billion controlling stake in the Heineken empire.
The shares have surged and with the recent acquisition of the Tiger beer brand the group’s value has increased by more than £1 billion.
Now chairman of Citi Private Bank’s business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Michel commutes between London, Washington and Holland. ‘I’ve always believed work hard, play hard,’ he says. ‘Life has never been boring – luckily.’
Approaching their 30th wedding anniversary, the couple undoubtedly lead an enviable life, but their lifestyle has never been ostentatious.
Their wealth eclipses that of Sir Philip Green and his wife Tina, as well as the Bransons and the Rausings, but the couple have never appeared in glossy photo spreads or hosted lavish public parties.’I partied in Beirut with the greatest actors of the age’
Instead, they concentrated on raising their five children in England, away from the glare of publicity. But later this month they may be tempted out for a rare appearance – to celebrate the re-release of the film that could so easily have launched Michel into a Hollywood career 50 years ago.
In the biopic of T. E. Lawrence, Michel played Farraj, one of the First World War hero’s two teenage followers. ‘They offered me the choice of the two roles – one dies in quicksand, the other is blown up,’ Michel recalls, speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday about his extraordinary life.
‘I said, ‘‘Which one lasts longer?’’ And they said the one that gets blown up by a detonator near the railway line. So I took that one, because it paid more.
‘Now whenever I tell anyone I was in Lawrence Of Arabia they say, “Oh, were you the one who went down in the quicksand?” And no one can ever remember the other one.’
Sands of time: As a child actor, Michel de Carvalho played the role of Arab boy Farraj opposite Peter O’Toole in the classic film Lawrence Of Arabia in 1962
In fact, Michel appears in one of the film’s most iconic scenes – as he and Lawrence stride into the officers’ mess in Cairo to announce the audacious capture of Aqaba. ‘We’re thirsty,’ Lawrence announces, dusty and dishevelled. ‘We want two large glasses of lemonade . . . there’s been a lot of killing, one way or another.’
During the 18-month shoot in 1961 and 1962 Michel became acquainted with some of the most talented actors of his age – as well as the countless women who pursued them. ‘The parties happened on rest and relaxation days in Beirut. Quite often I went with Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif – and that was super fun,’ he says.’At school I got so much fan mail’
Camel-riding proved more of a challenge. ‘In the beginning it wasn’t pleasant,’ Michel says. ‘You are sitting mostly side-saddle, with the hump coming up in the middle and you’re not really supposed to grip it. On one occasion I was on a camel which suddenly saw its stable – and it bolted for home, which was terrifying.
‘Years later, friends of mine had a 50th birthday party in Egypt. We went up and down the Nile. On one day they organised a camel race. Needless to say, I won.’
‘We couldn’t possibly discuss the fun in an elegant Sunday newspaper… they were the superstars and I was the bag carrier. But even superstars can only handle so much. And then the bag carrier…’
Looking back, Michel appears incredulous at his teenage decision to give up acting on the set of one of the greatest movies. ‘I said – using a huge swear word – ‘‘What am I doing here in the Arabian desert with all these funny people, superstars, Anthony Quinn, Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Jack Hawkins and the rest?’’ Where are my friends? This is a weird life. And then, almost simultaneously I became self- conscious about acting. And I just couldn’t get over my self-consciousness. It was the worst decision I ever made.
Multi-talented: Michel de Carvalho was part of the British Olympic luge team. Here he is pictured at Heathrow Airport before a flight to Japan, where he took part in the Winter Olympics at Sapporo
‘I never usually talk about Lawrence Of Arabia, but I was discussing it with someone last night and they said it wasn’t the worst decision because where would I be today? Some ageing B actor, looking for TV adverts.
‘But I should have stretched out the acting career a bit – maybe until 30.’ Born to a Brazilian diplomat father and an English mother in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, in 1944, Michel fell into acting at the age of ten. His father had died when he was very young and his mother married again, to a wealthy leather merchant.
The family entertained many illustrious figures to dinner in their London home – one was the famous producer Sir Michael Balcon, who needed a young boy who could ski, to star in his film, The Divided Heart. Initially Michel’s mother, Annie, was opposed to the idea of her son appearing on screen. He recalls: ‘But Sir Michael said it was only three months and who knows what will happen – this door has opened, why would you close it?’
Michel was a hit and film offers flooded in. Using his two Christian names as a stage name, Michel Ray was the Daniel Radcliffe of his day – going on to great acclaim in films such as The Brave One and The Tin Star.
Between films, Michel attended a boarding school in Switzerland, honing a gift for languages and developing his passion for skiing.
Rich lives: Michel de Carvalho with his wife Charlene, the Heineken heiress
Aged 17, his star reached a peak with Lawrence Of Arabia. ‘I had massive attention at school,’ he says. ‘I got so much fan mail. I never get that any more – as a banker, you get hate mail.’
Five years after he walked away from acting, just as he was about to take up a graduate place at Harvard Business School, his life took another twist when he was offered the chance to become a member of the British ski team at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.
‘It wasn’t so much for my skill as for my ability to pay the plane fare,’ says Michel modestly.
His mother was not keen on the idea. She had been relieved when he gave up acting and wanted him to get serious about making a living. ‘I wish I had kept the telegram she sent,’ he says. ‘Every second word was “bum”. It said, “From film bum to ski bum – if you make this totally stupid decision, you will be completely cut off.” So I made the completely stupid decision.’
He delayed taking up his place at Harvard to compete. ‘I told a huge porkie pie to Harvard – I can’t tell you what it was in case they take away my diploma.’
His mother need not have worried. He duly graduated from Harvard and embarked on a career in banking. But he had just begun his second job, at NM Rothschild, when he was asked to join the 1972 GB Olympic team once again – this time in the luge, the fastest and most dangerous style of tobogganing. Nervously, he asked his new boss for time off to compete in Japan. ‘I was sitting at my desk and the internal phone rang. A voice said, “Will you pop up?’’ It was Eddie Rothschild, the chairman of the bank.
‘I went upstairs and Eddie rummaged in his pockets, pulled out £200 – which was my weekly salary – and said, “Let me remind you, young man, in this bank, England comes first.” ’
Michel competed in the luge with his best friend Jeremy Palmer-Tomkinson – the uncle of socialite Tara Palmer- Tomkinson. ‘In the first week of training, my entire body was dark blue,’ he said. ‘When you are in the double luge you really are just fodder – I was the little guy and Jeremy was the big heavy guy on top. In the Japan Olympics, we were really just clowns.’
In 1983, when he was in his late 30s, Michel married Charlene Heineken. ‘Our families both had houses in St Moritz,’ he says. ‘I was ten years older than her so it wasn’t what you would call love at first sight – certainly not on her side.’I met the girl of my dreams, complete with free beer’
‘I always drank Heineken. But the problem was Heineken was the most expensive beer. So when I met my wife I thought, “This is fantastic, I’ll have free beer.” I didn’t realise then that marriage is not just about free beer.’
The couple honeymooned in the Caribbean but suffered a shock on their return. In November 1983, Charlene’s father was kidnapped in Amsterdam and held for ransom for three weeks.
‘It was a baptism of fire,’ says Michel. ‘I was just not prepared for something like that. My father-in-law had no other family but my mother-in-law, my wife and me. Luckily, it all ended well. The ransom was paid and the kidnappers all went to jail.’
In 2002, Freddie Heineken died and Charlene inherited her father’s stake in the family business – which transformed her and Michel, overnight, into one of Britain’s wealthiest couples. Today, Charlene and Michel still play a key role in the business.
Sitting in the desert with Peter O’Toole, Michel could little have dreamt how his life would turn out. ‘I never planned my life,’ he says. ‘The good lord has been kind. If you have a bit of luck, you can do quite a lot. But looking back, it was probably a mistake quitting acting.
‘ Looking back, someone should have said to me, “No, stay with that.” ’
The 50th Anniversary 4K Restoration of Lawrence Of Arabia is in cinemas across the UK from November 23. The Empire Leicester Square will have special preview screenings from next Saturday.
The above “MailOnline” article can also be accessed online here.
