Tony Scannell was born in 1945 in Kinsale, Co. Cork. His father was a reknowned Irish professional football player. Tony Scannell is best known for his performance as DS Roachin the long running “The Bill”. He made his TV debut in “Little Lord Fauntleroy” in 19776. His film credits onclude “Flash Gordon”, “At the Fun of the Fair” and “Point of View”.
The actor Tony Scannell, who has died aged 74, will be best remembered as the fiery maverick DS Ted Roach in the long-running television series The Bill, debuting in its second episode in 1984. During his stint the programme metamorphosed from a one-hour post-watershed series to a twice- then thrice-weekly year-round fixture of ITV’s primetime schedule, regularly pulling in more than 15 million viewers.
The Bill was a deliberately unglamorous depiction of British policing, portraying its officers as ordinary, flawed individuals. Roach was a hard-nut cop of the old school – a dogged investigator unafraid to bend the rules. Scannell’s performance was extremely watchable, making the detective a dyspeptic, spiky but likable tough guy, delivering his dialogue with a splenetic energy and jabbing finger, his sharp copper’s instinct often battling the effects of the previous night’s whisky intake.Advertisement
Roach’s testy relationship with the top brass matched Scannell’s own with the programme’s producers, and he left in 1993. His final episode provided an apposite departure involving fisticuffs, a clandestine romantic assignation, drinking on duty, and the culmination of his long-running feud with the by-the-book Inspector Monroe (Colin Tarrant). Ordered to apologise for thumping his nemesis, Ted refused and quit, storming out with a snarled lament about the changing face of the force.
Scannell’s authentic, committed turn made Roach a popular character and he reprised the role for two episodes in 2000 before being killed off in 2004, setting in motion a storyline for three ex-colleagues.
Born in Kinsale, County Cork, Tony was the eldest of the five children of Tommy Scannell, a professional footballer who was once capped for Ireland, and his wife, Peggy (nee O’Donovan). When Tony was five his father signed as a goalkeeper for Southend United, and the family moved to England as a result. However, Tony stayed behind in Cork to live with his grandmother so that he could be educated at the local Presentation Brothers college. After school he served briefly as an apprentice toolmaker before moving to England at the age of 15 to rejoin his family, who were by then living in Folkestone in Kent.
There he worked variously as a TV salesman, a singing bingo caller and a deckchair attendant before a five-year stint with the Royal Air Force, serving as a reconnaissance photographer in Cyprus. He became a radio disc jockey for the British Forces Broadcasting Service there, and helped out backstage at the camp’s theatre group in order to avoid guard duty. When he left the forces that experience, along with the encouragement of future Bill co-star Larry Dann, secured Scannell employment as an assistant stage manager at the Cambridge Arts theatre in 1968.
He trained at the East 15 Acting School in Loughton, Essex, and immediately upon graduating played Elyot in Jack Watling’s showcase production of Private Lives (Frinton, 1974). He then joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, appearing at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in, among other productions, Dracula (1974) and Bloody Mary (1975). He toured in Happy as a Sandbag (as Max Miller and Winston Churchill, 1977) and Hull Truck’s The New Garbo (1978), and performed in Four Weeks in the City for the National Theatre (Cottesloe, 1978).
He made his TV debut in 1976 and played small roles in Enemy at the Door (1978), The Professionals (1979) and the film Flash Gordon (1980) before getting better parts in Armchair Thriller (The Circe Complex, 1980), Strangers (1981) and The Gentle Touch (1981). When the call came to audition for The Bill he was working as a salvage diver.
In later years he was a regular in the Channel 5 soap opera Family Affairs (as the conman Eddie Harris, 1997-99), made a good account of himself as Tony Booth – opposite Sue Johnston’s Pat Phoenix – in the TV movie The Things You Do for Love: Against the Odds (1998), displayed knowing comic timing in Charlie Brooker’s Unnovations (2001), guested in Waking the Dead (2007) and starred in the film The Haunting of Harry Payne (also known as Evil Never Dies, 2014). He made his West End debut in Wait Until Dark (Garrick theatre, 2003) and became a regular in pantomime (Abanazer a speciality).
No stranger to tabloid intrusion, and despite being declared bankrupt in 2002, he had few regrets – he said he enjoyed the celebrity life to the full even if he had not always known how to handle it. He met the actor Agnes Lillis during a 1993 production of An Evening with Gary Lineker at the Jersey Opera House – she introduced him to Buddhism and he became a member of the Buddhist movement SGI-UK. This, and settling with Agnes to enjoy a quiet family life in Suffolk in 1995, gave him a contentment that had eluded him in his hedonistic days. They formed a theatre company – Eastbound – which performed short tours of local theatres and taught adult acting evening classes at the Seagull theatre in Lowestoft.
He is survived by Agnes and their children, Tom and Sophie, and by a daughter, Julya, from a relationship with Penny Ansell, and a son, Sean, from his 1971 marriage to Melanie Self, which ended in divorce.
• Thomas Anthony Scannell, actor, born 14 August 1945; died 26 May 2020
June Laverick was born in 1931, Redcar, North Yorkshire and is a retired English film, television and stage actress. She was once described as “a popular lightweight leading actress of the day” and is probably best remembered as the fictional wife of Dickie Henderson in The Dickie Henderson Show.
Before June was born her parents ran a public house in Bishop Auckland but then returned to Redcar to run The Royal Hotel on the sea front near Redcar Pier. In 1931, Laverick was born in Laburnum Road, Redcar.[4] In her youth June attended White House school and ballet school. She determined at an early age that she wanted a career in light entertainment.
She followed an acting career in theatre, film and television and after retiring from acting in her 30s June moved back to Redcar.
In the 1950s June worked in the theatre in musicals, comedies and revues, and had a variety of film roles contracted to the Rank Organisation. She was a member of The Company of Youth, the Rank Organisation’s acting school often referred to as “The Charm School” and was often photographed for the front covers of cinema magazines and for publicity shots.
After the Dickie Henderson Show June retired from acting to be replaced by Isla Blair in the next series A Present for Dickie (1969–1970). In 1970 June came back to appear in the last episode.
Laurence Oliver was born in 1907 in Dorking, Surrey. He acted with the Old Vic and made his film debut in 1930 with “Too Many Crooks”. In 1931 he spent a brief time in Hollywood where he made “Westward Passage” among others. By 1933 he was back pursuing his career in Britain. He venture back to Hollywood in 1938 to make “Wuthering Heights”, “Rebecca”, “Lady Hamilton and “Pride and Prejudice”. During World War Two he returned to Britain to enlist. His career soared to new heights with his “Hamlet” and he had a very prolific career on stage and screen both in Britain and the U.S. until shortly before his death in 1989.
TCM Overview:
He was by wide consensus the greatest actor of the 20th century. In an age when the “legitimate” theater held firm to primacy over motion pictures, and classical theater over modern, Laurence Olivier crossed seamlessly between both, even bridging the gap between popular culture and the Shakespearean and classic drama canon of which he was master. His official, glamorized coupling with multiple Oscar-winner Vivien Leigh – “the King and Queen of the theater,” as contemporary Sir John Gielgud once dubbed them – proved far darker than the fairy tale advertised to the public, even as countless rumors swirled around his eclectic extracurricular relationships. His legacy as the definitive Heathcliff and Hamlet, his acclaim even a generation later as the vengeful cuckold in “Sleuth” (1972) and a ruthless Nazi doctor in “Marathon Man” (1976), would see him earn 14 Oscar nominations, three statues, five Emmys out of nine nominations, two British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards out of 10 nominations – only a few indicators of his titanic impact on his craft and indeed on Western culture.
He was born Laurence Kerr Olivier on May 22, 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, England, the third child of Agnes and Rev. Gerard Olivier – she a warm and doting woman, he an austere and stolid High Anglican minister. Gerard soon moved the family to the bleaker urban scape of London to minister its Dickensian slums, though his considerable inheritance afforded “Larry” a series of parochial schools, including All Saints Church’s “choir school,” which began refining his penchant for the arts, and saw him play Brutus in “Julius Caesar” at age 10. He would be devastated two years later when his mother died of a brain tumor. In 1922, the school company staged its version of “The Taming of the Shrew” at a Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare birthday festival, with Olivier drawing mainstream raves for his shrewish Katharina (in true Shakespearean drag). He next attended St. Edward’s in Oxford, continued to display thespian talent and, upon graduation, his father advised he pursue a theatrical career.
2654222 Poster for \’The Beggar’s Opera\’ film, starring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath the Highwayman, 1953 (colour litho) by British School, (20th century); Private Collection; (add.info.: Laurence Olivier (22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989), English actor of stage and screen.); Peter Newark Pictures; British, it is possible that some works by this artist may be protected by third party rights in some territories.
At 17, he won a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama, but soon began a two-year stint with the Birmingham Repertory Company. There, he met fellow thespians Peggy Ashcroft, Ralph Richardson and Jill Esmond, with whom he became enamored. They would all graduate to London’s West End theater district. Soon Olivier became a hot commodity, as evidenced by his lead in a garish, overambitious stage production of the French Foreign Legion adventure “Beau Geste.” In 1929, he crossed the Atlantic to make his Broadway debut in “Murder on the Second Floor,” reuniting with Esmond, who, upon his arrival, immediately agreed to his marriage proposal. They would marry in 1930. Also that year, Olivier scored a role in a new play, “Private Lives,” by playwright Noel Coward, who, by various accounts, either successfully or unsuccessfully proffered a sexual dalliance with Olivier, at any rate inaugurating a lifelong friendship. Esmond joined the play’s cast for an early 1931 Broadway run, which caught the attention of American film studios.
They lured the couple to Los Angeles, but Olivier’s three initial movies for RKO – he liked only “Westward Passage” (1932) – did little to set the box office afire. The couple returned to the U.K., where they made their only movie together, “No Funny Business” (1933). MGM would lure him back to Los Angeles, with a one-off project opposite Greta Garbo, but the studio’s grand dame intimidated and took an instant dislike to the newcomer so MGM fired him. Humiliated, Olivier returned to London and the stage with a string of hits, becoming a producer for the first time with the play “Golden Arrow,” co-starring his young Irish discovery Greer Garson, and in a 1935 staging of “Romeo and Juliet” with Gielgud that would run an unheard-of six months. Olivier and Gielgud would take on the unique task of alternating on the Romeo and Mercutio parts. Olivier wowed critics, eschewing the formal, lyrical approach to the Bard by playing Romeo with naturalistic, hormonal verve, which may have spilled over to a physical relationship with his Juliet, Peggy Ashcroft. But at this same time, he became a singular attraction to a young actress who had made it to the West End herself under the name Vivien Leigh.
Leigh, already married and a mother, famously pronounced she would one day marry Olivier, and Olivier himself later claimed that after seeing her breakthrough play “Mask of Virtue,” he experienced “an attraction of the most perturbing nature I have ever encountered.” They starred together in film producer Alexander Korda’s “Fire Over England” (1936), with Olivier playing an agent of Queen Elizabeth on a mission to Spain and Leigh portraying one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting and his lover, which, as their fervent on-screen embraces betrayed, they had become in real life. Leigh aspired to Olivier’s mastery of classic theater. As the relationship intensified, she eventually picked up his famous fluency in unfettered blue language. Olivier’s persistent religious guilt complicated things, as did Esmond’s recent pregnancy, soon to bear a son, Tarquin – though she remained publicly amicable with both of them. In 1937, Olivier joined the venerable Old Vic theater as a featured star, beginning the year in its production of “Hamlet,” even as he managed to arrange the first tandem projects for himself and his lover: a staging of “Hamlet at Denmark’s Elsinore Castle in the summer, and a film, “Twenty-One Days” (1940), with the two playing lovers on the lam after he accidentally kills her estranged husband. Neither liked the latter, shelving it for three years, but at the end of the production, as news spread of Hollywood’s adaptation of the blockbuster novel Gone With the Wind, she famously prophesied she would play its protagonist, Scarlett O’Hara. Leigh and Olivier soon fessed up to and separated from their respective partners and, after his rare comedic turn with Merle Oberon and Ralph Richardson in “The Divorce of Lady X” (1938), he and Leigh headed to Hollywood – she to fulfill her prophecy and he to finally break through the film barrier as a romantic heartthrob.
It would be Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” (1939), adapted for film by indie producer Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler, that made Olivier a household name across the Atlantic. He played Heathcliff, one-time stable boy spurned for his low breeding by his first love, Cathy (Merle Oberon), who returns years later as a successful, brooding man with his heart hard and set on revenge against his lost love and anyone who had mistreated him in the past. He would credit director William Wyler with teaching him the toned-down nuances of screen versus stage acting, turning in his first Oscar-nominated performance. At the same time, Leigh won Best Actress as Scarlett O’Hara for her work in “Gone with the Wind.” In 1940, their respective spouses agreed to divorce and to the delight of fans, Leigh and Olivier wed. Olivier would rack up two more hits: “Pride and Prejudice,” reuniting him with protégée Greer Garson in the film adaptation of Jane Austen’s witty Victorian parlor romance; and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” which had him as a sullen aristocrat with a new wife (Joan Fontaine) driven to dredge up the mysterious fate of his first spouse while confined to his gothic mansion. Olivier’s disquieted, simmering performance drew yet another Oscar nomination.
Olivier and Leigh returned to Britain to do another tandem picture for Korda, “That Hamilton Woman” (1941), which cast her as an unhappily married socialite and him as the British naval hero Horatio Nelson, which chronicled their illicit romance which became the great scandal of its time. Commissioned by the British government, he next mounted his most ambitious production, a Technicolor version of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (1944). He produced, directed and starred in the critically acclaimed film, and his delivery of the famed St. Crispin’s Day speech became a rallying cry for the country’s ongoing war effort. The film’s 1946 U.S. release would earn him Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Picture, and though he won neither, his top-to-bottom helming of the project would earn him an honorary Academy Award in 1947. Also that year, King George VI knighted Olivier, making the couple “Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier.”
Despite the fairy tale mystique surrounding the legendary couple, all was not well in their household. Leigh increasingly suffered violent tantrums that she would not remember afterward, and to make matters worse, during production of “Caesar and Cleopatra” (1945) she suffered a miscarriage. Tuberculosis compounded her physical and mental health issues; she grew distant and jealous of Olivier’s successes and paranoid about his affairs, both imagined and real, at one point telling him matter-of-factly she was no longer in love with him. Seeking respite, Olivier strayed with any number of rumored partners even as he enabled her own long-term affair with actor Peter Finch, whom he hired for the Old Vic company after its 1948 tour of Australia. That year, he made history with his big-budget Shakespearean film adaptation of “Hamlet” (1948), in which he became the first director to direct himself to a Best Actor Oscar.
The Oliviers continued their stage collaborations; notably he directed her in the 1949 West End production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He settled into a kind of caregiver role for his manic-depressive, bipolar wife, arranging a project of his own, the Wyler-helmed illicit-love tragedy “Carrie” (1952), to travel with her while she made “Streetcar” (1952) in Hollywood. Her co-star Marlon Brando later wrote he eschewed a tryst with Leigh out of respect for Olivier, but oddly, David Niven claimed in his autobiography that he witnessed Brando kissing Olivierat the couple’s mansion. (Though long a subject of rumor and controversy, Olivier’s third wife, Joan Plowright, would acknowledge his libertinism and bisexuality in a 2006 radio interview). Leigh was back with Finch in Ceylon in 1953 for the film “Elephant Walk” (1952) when she suffered a full-blown break, causing her to be hospitalized and be given a lifelong regimen of electroshock therapy, which would render her even more alien to Olivier.
He earned another Oscar nomination for his villainous “Richard III” (1955), and followed it up with a Marilyn Monroe mismatched-pair fantasy, “The Prince and the Showgirl” (1957), which he also directed. Meanwhile, he had commissioned West End enfant terrible John Osborne to write him a drama that could contemporize his own image. Osborne produced “The Entertainer,” which had Olivier as an unpleasant, archaic song-and-dance man still working Britain’s crumbling dance-halls, metaphorical of an Imperial society in decay. He began a relationship with his onstage daughter, Joan Plowright. She would star with him in the 1960 film adaptation, which would earn Olivier yet another Best Actor Oscar nomination. He and Leigh would divorce that year, leading to Olivier and Plowright marrying in 1961. With the dissolution of the Old Vic company in 1962, he would soon oversee another regeneration called the National Theatre Company, with Olivier serving as its first director. Under his tenure, it would nurture a new generation of talent, including Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Alan Bates and Anthony Hopkins. The National’s production of “Othello” would become the 1965 film, for which Olivier and his three co-stars would all win Oscar nominations.
Olivier continued to be selective with film in the 1960s. His leading roles became less frequent but affecting, as with “Term of Trial” (1962), in which he gave a heartbreaking performance as a high school teacher whose life is turned upside down when a spurned student accuses him of seducing her; and his understatedly cool detective in “Bunny Lake is Missing” (1965). Olivier had also begun taking film-stealing supporting roles, in which he often played villains. He played Johnny Burgoyne, the dashing nemesis of the colonials Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster in George Bernard Shaw’s Revolutionary War drama “The Devil’s Disciple,” (1959); thwarted Douglas again as the scheming, draconian general Crassus in Stanley Kubrick’s epic “Spartacus” (1960); an Islamic would-be messiah in “Khartoum” (1966); a Soviet premier in “Shoes of the Fisherman” (1968); and, later, as the nefarious Dr. Moriarty in the revisionist Sherlock Holmes adventure “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” (1976).
The late 1960s would begin a series of health crises for Olivier, starting with treatment of prostate cancer, but he would nevertheless be prolific in bringing the stage to mass media in the 1970s. He oversaw the translation of the National’s productions of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” (co-starring Plowright) into a theatrical film and Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1973) into a TV-movie for broadcast on ITV in the U.K. and ABC in the U.S, earning him an Emmy. However, he relinquished helm of the theater soon thereafter amid some contention with its board, just a few years before the company moved into the new Olivier Theater. In 1974, he barely survived the onset of the muscle disease dermatopolymyositis, but returned the next year with the TV-movie “Love Among the Ruins” (ABC, 1975), playing a barrister charged with defending a woman he fell in love with years ago, both now in their twilight years. Both he and Katherine Hepburn won Best Actor Emmys for a “special” broadcast. He would also bring Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and William Inge’s “Come Back, Little Sheba” to NBC in 1976 and 1977, respectively.
Laurence Oliver
His selective, age-adjusted cinematic outings brought continued accolades, notably three more Oscar nominations for his manipulative cuckolded husband in the cat-and-mouse thriller “Sleuth;” ice-blooded Nazi dentist, famously torturing Dustin Hoffman via check-up in “Marathon Man” (1976); and as a dry, unflappable Nazi hunter in “The Boys from Brazil” (1978). He received a second honorary Oscar the following year for his body of work. He also stood out as an old pickpocket shepherding the two smitten adolescents in Venice in “A Little Romance” (1979) and as the vampire hunter Van Helsing in the 1979 remake of “Dracula.” His work as Neil Diamond’s orthodox Jewish father in the remake of “The Jazz Singer” (1980), however, was viewed as overwrought and mawkish. He won another BAFTA Best Actor nomination for “A Voyage Round My Father” (1983) opposite Alan Bates, and won yet another Emmy that year for his turn as “King Lear” (ABC). Worried about his estate, he peppered his later years’ work with glorified cameos – some in projects he knew to be awful, as with “Inchon” (1981) and “Clash of the Titans” (1981), but others in higher-quality fare like “The Bounty” (1985). In 1984, the top awards for British theatrical awards were renamed the Laurence Olivier Awards. His infirmities became evident during the March 1985 Academy Awards telecast, when he capped the evening presenting the Best Picture Oscar, but inadvertently sidestepped the tradition of running down the nominees first and simply stated the winner, “Amadeus.” He appeared in the “Entertainer”-reminiscent Granada TV series “Lost Empires” (PBS, 1987) about the decline of U.K. vaudeville, for which he earned his last Emmy nomination, then made a final cameo as an old soldier in Derek Jarman’s stylistic “War Requiem” (1989). He died on July 11, 1989, at his home in Steyning, West Sussex. His burial at Westminster would rival British state funerals, televised nationally throughout the U.K.
James Laurenson was born in Marton, New Zealand in 1940. He came to Britain in his early twenties. “Women in Love” in 1969 was his first film. Among his other films are “The Magic Christian”, “Assault”, “Pink Floyd: The Wall” .
TCM Overview:
James Laurenson was a prolific actor who created a name for himself largely on the big screen. Laurenson’s acting career began mostly with his roles in various films, such as the Alan Bates dramatic adaptation “Women in Love” (1969), the crime picture “Assault” (1971) with Suzy Kendall and “Pink Floyd The Wall” (1982) with Bob Geldof. He also appeared in “Heartbreakers” (1984). He also was featured in the miniseries “Turn of the Screw” (1973-74). His film career continued throughout the eighties and the nineties in productions like “The Man Inside” (1990) and the thriller “A House in the Hills” (1993) with Michael Madsen. He also landed a role in the miniseries “The Bourne Identity” (1987-88). He also appeared in the TV special “Project: Tin Man” (ABC, 1989-1990). Recently, he tackled roles in the thriller “Three Blind Mice” (2003) with Edward Furlong, the Kevin McKidd drama “AfterLife” (2004) and the Anne Hathaway dramatic adaptation “One Day” (2011). He also appeared in the Sam Claflin drama “The Riot Club” (2015). He also had a part in the TV miniseries “The Hollow Crown” (2012-). Most recently, Laurenson acted on “The Widower” (PBS, 2015-).
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
James laurenson’s obituary in 2024
Primarily a stage actor of good grace, authority and a fine baritone voice, James Laurenson, who has died aged 84 after suffering with Parkinson’s disease, was a familiar face on television, stretching from a short-stay run as the Rev Peter Hope in Coronation Street in 1968 through to Sir John Weir, the physician royal, in The Crown (2016).
He had arrived on a boat from New Zealand in the early 1960s – as many artists did from those islands, and Australia, at that time – and by 1964 was treading the boards with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and London.
At the end of the 1960s he joined the touring Prospect Theatre Company in their 1969 visit to the Edinburgh festival, where Ian McKellen became an overnight sensation playing both Shakespeare’s Richard II and Marlowe’s Edward II, a play not produced professionally at that time for more than 300 years.
In Edward II, Laurenson played the king’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, who meets an untimely end after scenes of erotic intensity, culminating in a passionate kiss with McKellen, who regarded the scene as a particular bonus for the festival run and an extended season of both plays at the Piccadilly theatre in London, buoyed by an ecstatically appreciative Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times. The kiss was not particularly remarked upon in the theatre (censorship had been abolished in 1968), but caused a ripple of outrage nationwide when the plays were televised in 1970: the first gay kiss on the box.
In the 1990s, after his first marriage broke up, Laurenson moved from London to Frome, in Somerset, and resumed a happy relationship with the RSC’s founding director, Sir Peter Hall, who much admired his work in Hall’s Indian summer of seasons at the Theatre Royal, Bath.
Among the generous pick of fine performances there, I would highlight his wryly stoical Vladimir to Alan Dobie’s quietly resigned Estragon in Waiting for Godot, one of the best revivals of that milestone play I have seen, directed by Hall, who had staged the first British production in 1955; and a delightfully hangdog Sir Peter Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s great comedy The School for Scandal, directed by Jamie Lloyd in 2012
The Beckett transferred happily to the Ambassadors in London, where Laurenson’s biggest, splashiest West End role had been that of the producer Julian Marsh in Gower Champion’s famous 1983 Broadway version of one of the best backstage movies, 42nd Street.
Restaged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, by Lucia Victor, one year later, Marsh/Laurenson’s two most famous lines did not zing with the Broadway pizazz of the original (“Musical comedy – the greatest words in the English language!” is catnip on Broadway, less so here); and his imprecation to the suddenly elevated understudy, Peggy Sawyer, “You’re going to go out a youngster, but you’ve gotta come back a star!”, was played with an almost carefully inflected beseeching as opposed to Jerry Orbach’s gargantuan, Shakespearean command.
Still, though he had no grounding in musical theatre, and could not sing that well, Laurenson was praised by Michael Billington for conveying “the right impression of a sober-suited Caligula gradually thawing into a human being”.
He was born in Marton, on New Zealand’s north island, to Amy (nee Monk) and her husband, Stanley Laurenson, a seed salesman in the agricultural environs, and a lay Methodist preacher with a penchant for amateur dramatics. James appeared in school plays at Marton district high school before further developing his thespian tendencies at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, where he was directed in several productions, including the title role of Macbeth, by the crime novelist Ngaio Marsh; Marsh was, in effect, the inspiration and founder of professional theatre in New Zealand.
The move to Britain was propelled by winning a grant from the New Zealand government to go to Lamda in London for a year. He started out at the RSC as a messenger in Henry VI (David Warner as the king) in 1964 and then Guildenstern – Michael Williams was Rosencrantz – in the gamechanging Warner Hamlet of 1965.
He was Longaville in John Barton’s exquisite RSC 1965 production of Love’s Labour’s Lost and a charming Orlando to Charlotte Cornwell’s Rosalind in a 1977 revival of As You Like It by Trevor Nunn; the Dauphin and the rabble-rouser Jack Cade in the Alan Howard Henry VI trilogy (1978), directed by Terry Hands; and a memorable Cassius – opposite Ben Kingsley’s Brutus – in a 1979 Julius Caesar.
He twice appeared in Hamlet, though not as the prince: he was a brisk and disarming Claudius in the Almeida production by Jonathan Kent at the Hackney Empire, with Ralph Fiennes and Francesca Annis in 1995; and a marvellous, unusual double of the Ghost (mesmeric, quietly spoken) and the Player King (relishing oratorial extravagance) in Nicholas Hytner’s 2010 National Theatre production with Rory Kinnear.
Other revivals of note include that of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance at the Haymarket in 1997, with Maggie Smith and Eileen Atkins, in which he and Annette Crosbie played, superbly, terror-struck neighbours seeking sanctuary; and a Donmar Warehouse 2000 revival of Peter Nichols’s Passion Play, a coruscating comedy of adultery entwining two intersecting couples – Laurenson and Cherie Lunghi, and Martin Jarvis and Cheryl Campbell – with a disruptive catalyst played by Nicola Walker. Michael Grandage’s production confirmed the modern classic status of a compelling black comedy.
Waiting for Godot, Theatre Royal, Bath
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Laurenson’s film career did not include any blockbusters, but he popped up regularly after his debut in Ken Russell’s Women in Love (1969) as a minister. He had two decent roles, in Sidney Hayers’ Assault (1971), in which he was a doctor attending to rape victims who becomes a prime suspect; and as the deceased father of Bob Geldof’s Pink in Alan Parker’s Pink Floyd – the Wall (1982), who revisits his unhappy childhood.
Other movies included A House in the Hills (1993) with Michael Madsen, the French/British crime film Three Blind Mice (2003) with Edward Furlong and Emilia Fox, Lone Scherfig’s One Day (2011), scripted from his own novel by David Nicholls, with Anne Hathaway and Patricia Clarkson, and Scherfig’s The Riot Club (2014), written by Laura Wade – based on her terrific play Posh, an expose of the Bullingdon private club in Oxford (dis)graced by David Cameron and Boris Johnson – with Sam Claflin and Max Irons as undergraduate tearaways ultimately answerable to their college president, played by a spoilsport authoritarian, Laurenson.
It was interesting that Laurenson, a kind and patient man, often excelled at playing baddies. One of them was the glowering Friedrich, Elector of Brandenburg, in Heinrich von Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg, directed by Neil Bartlett for the RSC and the Lyric Hammersmith in 2002. You would not want to cross him in that mood, or mode. He had the rare knack, though, of playing ugly in the nicest possible way.
Laurenson married the blissfully eccentric character actor Carol MacReady in 1970. They divorced in 1997, and he then married the art teacher Cari Haysom, who survives him along with his son from the first marriage, Jamie, a film producer, and three grandchildren, Nancy, Connie and Stanley.
James Philip Laurenson, actor, born 17 February 1940; died 18 April 2024
Finlay Currie was a terrific Scottish character actor in British and U.S. films from the thirties right through to the sixties. He was born in Edinburh in 1878. He and his Maude Courtney had a vaudeville act and they toured the U.S. with their revue in the 1890’s. His first film was “The Old Man” in 1932. His film career highlights include “The Edge of the World” in 1937, “49th Parallel”, “Thunder Rock” and “I Know Where I’m Going”. He gave a wonderful performance in David Lean’s verision of “Great Expectations” as Magwitch in 1946. He went to Hollywood in the early 1950’s and made such films as “People Will Talk” with Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain, “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Treasure of the Golden Condor”. Back in Britain in his eighties he was featured in “Billy Liarin 1963 “, “The Battle of the Villa Fiorita” and “Bunny Lake is Missing”. He died in 1968 at the age of 90.
IMDB Entry:
Scottish-born Finlay Currie was a former church organist and choirmaster who made his stage debut at 20 years of age. It took him 34 more years before making his first film, but he worked steadily for another 30 years after that. Although he was a large, imposing figure, with a rich, deep voice and somewhat authoritarian demeanor, he was seldom cast in villainous parts. He received great acclaim for his role as Magwitch inGreat Expectations (1946), and one of his best remembered roles was as Shunderson,Cary Grant‘s devoted servant with a secret past, in People Will Talk (1951). Later in life he became a much respected antiques dealer, specializing in coins and precious metals. He died in England at age 90.
Max Bygraves was born in London in 1922. His father was a professional boxer. He became a singer and entertainer and in the early 50’s he began having Top Ten hits in Britain. He made films such as “Charlie Moon” , “A Cry from the Streets”, “Bobbikins” and “Spare the Rod”. When he retired he lived with his family in Australia. He died in August 2012.
His “Guardian” obituary by Dennis Barker:
Max Bygraves, who has died aged 89 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, was an all-round entertainer: a mischievously smiling raconteur, a full-throated and sentimental singer, a television host and a reluctant gameshow compere (his two years with Family Fortunes in the mid-1980s convinced him it was not his medium).
He always kept the persona of a cheerful cockney stevedore, smart-alecky but good-natured, with a reassuringly imposing presence and the sort of innocent bawdiness that would not upset anyone. The persona was entirely suited to the voice suggesting syrup-soaked gravel, the expansive arm gestures and the chummily unemphatic manner that absolved jokes that in another mouth might have been offensive.
He was born Walter William Bygraves into a large family in Rotherhithe, south-east London, to Henry Bygraves, a prizefighter who became a docker, and his wife, Lilian. The family lived in a two-room flat and money could be scarce. “The hand-me-downs were never handed down because we wore them till they were threadbare,” Bygraves wrote in a memoir. Henry tended to fend off his young son’s questions about life and sex with jokes. When, in early adolescence, the boy asked him why hair was beginning to grow on his body, his father told him it was God’s punishment for his misdeeds: “You’re turning into a coconut.”
As he grew to his full commanding height, a dignified and humorous self-confidence became Bygraves’s hallmark. He attended St Joseph’s school, Rotherhithe, and sang with his school choir at Westminster Cathedral. When his father dressed him up in an old army cap, gave him a broom for a rifle and got him to sing a popular song in front of an audience of dockers, the collection for him was large enough to encourage the thought of a career in show business.
However, after leaving school at the age of 14, he went into an advertising agency, WS Crawford, as a messenger boy, ferrying copy to newspapers and popping into the Holborn Empire to see variety acts whenever he could afford it. When the advertising industry slumped at the beginning of the second world war, he got a job as a carpenter’s apprentice and built air-raid shelters. After being blown off a roof he was repairing during an air raid, he decided to volunteer for the RAF in 1940 and served as an airframe fitter for five years and. He met a sergeant in the WAAF, Blossom Murray, and they married in 1942. Together, they had three children, Christine, Anthony and Maxine.
Stationed near Kew, Bygraves started entertaining the troops and performed in pubs, doing impressions of Frank Sinatra, the Inkspots and Max Miller (earning him the nickname Max, which he kept). By the time the war ended, he had resolved to turn professional. At the Grand theatre, Clapham, he was spotted by the agent Gordon Norval, who got him six weeks’ work.
Further engagements followed but the going was tough. Despite their love of Britain, he and Blossom had just decided to emigrate to Australia when a letter arrived from the BBC asking him to repeat the audition act he had recently given. This earned him an appearance in the radio series They’re Out, which featured other demobbed entertainers such asSpike Milligan, Jimmy Edwards, Frankie Howerd, Harry Secombe and Benny Hill. In 1946 he did a touring revue, For the Fun of It, with Howerd. He then made his first films, Bless ’em All and Skimpy in the Navy (both 1949), and had another radio hit in the 1950s, performing in the comedyEducating Archie, written by Eric Sykes. He made a handful of films in that decade, taking the title role in Charley Moon (1956), in which he performed his single Out of Town, and appearing in Lewis Gilbert’s social drama A Cry from the Streets (1958).
Meanwhile, the London Palladium had become something like his professional home. He made his debut there in 1950, after he was seen at the Finsbury Park Empire by the leading impresario Val Parnell and was asked to stand in for the comedian Ted Ray at the Palladium. He appeared in 14 shows there over a period of 10 years and eventually starred in 19 Royal Variety Performances. After the first of these, in 1950, Judy Garland asked him to appear with her at the Palace theatre in New York where, wrongly, he did not expect his cockney humour to register.
Bygraves was naturally laidback and worked on perfecting the art of unforced pace on stage. After a confusion of props had hindered one of his shows, he took a single chair, with its back to the audience, and sat facing the crowd in a relaxed manner. His gags went over better than ever; from then on, his delivery was always apparently casual. He regarded his catchphrases as better value than a press agent, and lines such as “A good idea, son” and “I wanna tell you a story” became national property.
Like many variety big earners, Bygraves was sometimes taken for a ride but he also made some shrewd business decisions. His company Lakeview Music bought the rights to Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! for £350 and Bygraves made a fortune when he sold them on for £250,000. In 1960, he released his version of one of the musical’s numbers, Consider Yourself. In the 50s, he had reached the Top 5 with the singles Meet Me on the Corner, You Need Hands/Tulips from Amsterdam and Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be. Often nostalgic or comedic in tone (such as You’re a Pink Toothbrush), Bygraves’s recordings were also released in a series of crowd-pleasing “singalong” albums. He picked up 31 gold discs in total and was appointed OBE in 1983.
Leslie A MacDonnell presents Max Bygraves in a new happy go lucky revue Meet Me on the Corner with Tony Fayne, Sid Millward, Wally Stewart and The Nitwits, Janet Richmond, Vera Cody’s Goldie, Neil & Pat Delrina, ‘Meet Me on the Corner’ Boys & Girls and Bob & Marion Knoyot. Produced by Stanley Willis-Croft. Gala Performance Monday April 11th at 8:15pm subsequently twice nightly 6:15 & 8:30pm for 3 weeks. Closed Good Friday.
Bygraves published a novel, The Milkman’s on His Way, in 1977. His autobiography, I Wanna Tell You a Story, appeared the previous year, and further memoirs followed, including After Thoughts (1989), Max Bygraves: In His Own Words (1997) and Stars in My Eyes: A Life in Show Business (2002). In his later years he settled into a routine of overseas shows, especially in South Africa, which he had often visited before the end of apartheid, protesting that an entertainer should not concern himself with politics. Personally, he was generous to family, friends and old associates and worked for theatre charities. He relocated to Australia from Poole, Dorset, several years ago.
Blossom died in 2011. Bygraves is survived by his children and several grandchildren.
• Max (Walter William) Bygraves, entertainer, born 16 October 1922; died 31 August 2012
His “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here
A blonde actress with fine-boned, patrician features and a cool stately presence, Patricia Hodge remains best known outside the British Isles as the straying wife of book editor Ben Kingsley whose dalliance with literary agent Jeremy Irons is told in reverse order in the film version of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” (1983). Discerning television viewers will recall the stage-trained performer in several memorable productions, many shown in the USA on either PBS or A&E. She portrayed aristocrats in both “Edward and Mrs. Simpson” (1978) and “The Death of the Heart” (1987). Hodge may be best known to mystery buffs for her characterization of barrister Philida Erskine-Brown on the PBS courtroom series, “Rumpole of the Bailey” and as independent TV newscaster/detective Jemima Shore in the TV adaptations of Antonia Fraser’s popular novels. In 1987, she delivered a riveting performance as a glamorous novelist in the excellent BBC TV presentation of Fay Weldon’s “The Life and Loves of a She Devil” and five years later triumphed in another Weldon adaptation, “The Cloning of Joanna May.” More recently, Hodge has been concentrating her energies on the stage, returning to her roots in musical theater with an acclaimed turn a
John Hannah was born in East Kilbride, Scotland in 1962. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In 1994 he was noticed by the public in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. He starred in “The Mummy” and it’s sequel. On television he has starred in police dramas such as “McCallum”, “Rebus” and “New Street Law”.
Jeremy Kemp was born in 1935 in Chesterfield in Derbyshire. He studied in London at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He first came to the attention of the public in the popular TV series “Z Cars” in Britain. He made his film debut in 1965 in “Dr Terror’s House of Horrors”. The following year he had a major role with George Peppard and James Mason in “The Blue Max”. He also starred in “Operation Crossbow”. His other films include “The Strange Affair” with Michael York and Assignment K” with Stephen Boyd. He has acted in Hollywood in many of the popular television drama such as “Hart to Hart”, “Winds of War, “War & Remberance”,”The Fall Guy” and “Murder She Wrote”.
A commentary on Jeremy Kemp on the British Film Forum can be accessed here.
The actor Jeremy Kemp, who has died aged 84, was in at the beginning of a piece of TV history when he appeared in the original cast of Z Cars as PC Bob Steele. While Dixon of Dock Green depicted a homely image of the police, Troy Kennedy Martin’s creation was a warts-and-all portrayal of the members of a new crime division set up in the fictional Liverpool suburb of Newtown, with mobile officers in patrol cars Z Victor One and Z Victor Two, and in its early days broadcast live.
In the first episode, directed by John McGrath, Steele was seen at home having lunch with his friend and partner in Z Victor Two, PC Bert Lynch (played by James Ellis). A stain on the wall was explained as the previous night’s hot-pot flung by Steele’s wife, Janey (Dorothy White), during an argument – while she sported a black eye. Steele and Lynch were two of a group of officers selected by DI Charlie Barlow (Stratford Johns) and DS John Watt (Frank Windsor) to tackle a new wave of crime on Britain’s burgeoning housing estates. The others were constables Fancy Smith (Brian Blessed) and Jock Weir (Joseph Brady).
In 1963, less than halfway through the second series, Kemp left the programme for fear of typecasting, also saying that he hated wearing the police uniform. He later gained direct experience of the harsh side of life in the force when, he claimed, he was beaten up in a police cell, but was himself charged with assaulting one of the officers. “I reported a drinking club to the police for not having a proper licence,” he told the Sun in 1985. “What I did not realise was that the club was paying £50 a week protection money.” He was conditionally discharged for a year after being found guilty of assaulting a police sergeant in 1966 by throwing a beaker of water into his face.
After Z Cars, the craggy-faced Kemp took many character roles on TV and in films. With his 6ft 2in stature and a military bearing, he was often cast as earls, doctors or army officers, such as Brigadier General Armin von Roon in the mini-series The Winds of War (1983) and its sequel, War and Remembrance (1988-89). This fictional officer in the German high command was created by Herman Wouk in the original novels as a device for relaying important facts and tying the story together. He is wounded in an assassination attempt on Hitler and watches the Führer’s gradual decline.
Kemp was also one of the original cast who returned to Z Cars in 1978 for its final episode, written again by Kennedy Martin and directed by McGrath. Kemp played a vagrant, while Blessed was seen simply as a member of the public and Brady was credited as a Scotsman. Ellis had completed the full, 16-year run, with his character by then an inspector.
Born near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, with the name Edmund Jeremy James Walker, the future actor was the son of Elsa (nee Kemp) and Edmund Walker, an engineer from a family of landed gentry who had owned estates in Yorkshire. He started his national service with the Gordon Highlanders and ended up as a lieutenant in the Black Watch before training as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama (1955-58), taking his own second name and mother’s maiden name professionally.
Winning a bursary for drama students named after the actor Carleton Hobbs, in 1958 Kemp gained a contract with the BBC’s radio drama company. He made his television debut that year as a police constable in The Frog, a Sunday-Night Theatre production based on Ian Hay’s play. Michael Caine, who also played a constable, later turned down the role taken by Kemp in Z Cars.
The police series helped to bring him film roles. The director Michael Anderson auditioned him for a small part in the spy drama Operation Crossbow (1965), alongside stars including Sophia Loren, John Mills and Trevor Howard, but was so impressed by “the range of his personality” that he catapulted him to a billing above the title.
Complete with moustache and upper-class accent, Kemp played a British agent. A year later, he was in The Blue Max as Lt Willi von Klugermann, the first world war German fighter pilot taking George Peppard under his wing.
Kemp was also seen as Jerry Drake in Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), the coach of an Indigenous Australian marathon runner in the Olympic drama The Games (1970), Duke Michael in The Prisoner of Zenda (1979) and an East German general in the spy spoof Top Secret! (1984).
On television, he played the Nazi hunter Luke Childs in Contract to Kill (1965), Sqn Ldr Tony Shaw, a captured fighter pilot, in the second series (1974) of Colditz, the British undercover agent Geoffrey Moore in The Rhinemann Exchange (1977), the Duke of Norfolk in Henry VIII (1979), Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (1981), General Gates in George Washington (1984) and Jack Slipper, chasing Ronnie Biggs, in The Great Paper Chase (1988), over which the real-life detective successfully sued the BBC.
After two seasons appearing in the classics at the Old Vic theatre (1958-60), Kemp’s stage roles included Aston in The Caretaker (Mermaid, 1972) and Buckingham in Richard III (Olivier theatre, 1979). His final screen credit came as Hissah Zul in the TV series Conan (1997-98), about the mythical barbarian.
He had a particular interest in birds, and liked to visit the London Wetland Centre in Barnes, south-west London. At various times he lived in Britain and California with his American partner, Christopher Harter. She predeceased him, and he suffered from considerable ill health in later years.
He is survived by two sisters, Gill and Jan.
• Jeremy Kemp (Edmund Jeremy James Walker), actor, born 3 January 1935; died 19 July 2019
