Nyree Dawn Porter obituary in “The Guardian” in 2001.
Nyree Dawn Porter will forever be identified with her role as Irene Forsyth in the 1960’s television series “The Forsyth Saga” with Kenneth More and Eric Porter. The series was a huge success worldwide. Unfortunately it was not made in colour so it has not been reshown often in recent years. She was born in New Zealand in 1936 and came to the UK after she won a talent competition. She made some minor British films and then had a success on television playing the title character in “Madame Bovary”. A visit to Hollywood did not result in any U.S. films. In the 70’s she starred with Robert Vaughn in “The Protectors”. Nyree Dawn Porter died in 2001.
The Forsyte Saga
Nyree Dawn Porter, who has died aged 61, became a star when she was one of the popular television players used by the producer Donald Wilson to persuade a reluctant BBC to make The Forsyte Saga, the memorable 1967 series created from the novels of John Galsworthy attacking the dominance of property over humanity. The series won an audience of over 100m in 26 countries.Porter’s classical good looks, slightly wan and other-worldly, were ideal for the part of Irene Forsyte, wife of the cold “man of property” Soames Forsyte, played by Eric Porter (no relation). Her looks became known world wide, so that for years she received often demented fan mail from people who either thought that the cold and property-conscious Soames should have been hanged, drawn and quartered for raping his beautiful but frigid wife, or sympathised with him on the grounds that Irene was herself a cold and irritating bitch.The formidable cast with whom she had to play also included the film star Kenneth More, who was temporarily in a career limbo at the age of 50. He played Jolyon Forsyte, cousin of Soames, who in the end runs off with the Nyree Dawn Porter character.
The series, in which the character of Irene was made pivotal, nearly did not get made. Donald Wilson had been keen on Galsworthy’s novels since 1928 and had been seeking the film rights, owned by MGM, for 11 years. But Sydney Newman, head of BBC drama, was doubtful whether a “costume” piece would appeal to popular taste in the Swinging 60s. Others were equally doubtful – even if such a series were to be made – whether two people both called Porter could star in it.
In the end the actress got her big chance because of BBC politics. The 26 episodes that were broadcast in 1967, the centenary of Galsworthy’s birth, were deliberately used by the corporation to boost public interest in BBC2, which had been launched three years previously and was still not popular because the necessary re-tuning of sets was expensive. BBC2 needed a big bold project and the series which made Nyree Dawn Porter’s name was the most expensive BBC drama project to date at £250,000.
It called for the sort of professionalism which Porter could provide. She had arrived in Britain from her native New Zealand in 1960, the daughter of a master butcher in Napier, and had acquired experience in New Zealand theatre companies. Some of her scenes “with” Eric Porter had to be played in his absence, with her uttering answers to questions that had not been asked, since Eric Porter had gone down with appendicitis. The last 13 episodes were being recorded when the first were being broadcast, so there was little room for error.
Out of the 8m people who could receive BBC2, 6m watched The Forsyte Saga; the leading actors became household names; the monthly number of TV sets being readjusted to BBC2 trebled. When the series was shown the following year on BBC1, it was to an audience of 18m.
Such epoch-making success in television often has a price, and it did so in the case of Nyree Dawn Porter. Before the Saga she had not experienced difficulty in getting guest appearance parts (in such series as The Saint, The Avengers – for which she refused to wear the regulation black leathers – and Danger Man). She could also get leading roles, making her British TV debut in the Madame Bovary series in 1964 for BBC2, and then going on to play the title role in the television version of Hugh Walpole’s Judith Paris.
But, after The Forsyte Saga, she found that the BBC usually resisted her agent’s advances, calling her “our Irene”, and refusing to con template her as anything else. She returned to the theatre, often in international tours, and in 1995 was able to boast that since playing Irene she had been round the world four times.
The truth could well have been that by the 1960s her personality and style were largely out of fashion, except for “costume drama” set in quite different eras. A quiet church-going person, she maintained that “you don’t need to strip to be sexy” – a truth that was rapidly going out of circulation.
She acted for British TV in the 1980 series For Maddie With Love and in David Copperfield. But apart from fortune-telling with cards, which caused some of her friends to call her the Witch, she had fine bone structure but no flamboyant sales points in a steadily corrupting market. She also had personal tragedies: her first husband, the actor Byron O’Leary, died from an accidental overdose of sleeping tablets and whisky; she and her second husband, Robin Halstead, by whom she had her only daughter, Talya, were divorced in 1987; constant travelling was not conducive to stable relationships. Her agent said she had died suddenly, and had not been suffering from a long illness.
Although she appeared in a stage version of The Forsyte Saga as late as 1991, in which the Soames-Irene marriage was made even more the centrepiece, it was that one BBC television series in the 1960s that gives the Nyree Dawn Porter name (it means “little white flower” in Maori) a continuing resonance.
The final irony is that when she arrived in Britain from New Zealand at the very start of the 1960s, no television service existed in New Zealand and she had never seen a television set.
Nyree Dawn Porter, actress, born January 22 1940; died April 10 2001 “The Guardian” obituary can also be accessed here.
“All the great stars have a quality which cannot be exactly pinned down. You can say that Flora Robson has a beautiful speaking voice, but how do you define that stillness, that urgent inner momentum, the flick of humour, the smile that can light up a room – the combination of all four? Perhaps the clue to her art is in the stillness, always an indication of confidence, of an artist having mastered his art. It would have been her wish, it is known, to have been beautiful but she is much more interesting than most of her contemporaries. She has played a wider spectrum than most actresses but is in the end better in sympathetic parts. – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The Golden Years”. (1970)
Flora Robson was a magnificent character actress who made many films in Britain and in Hollywood from the 1930’s to the 1970’s. Although she played wifes and mothers, she seemed especially effective as single women e.g. her housekeeper Ellen Dean in the 1939 version of “Wuthering Heights” and Muriel Manningford in “2,000 Women”. She was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1960. Flora Robson died in 1984. Her obituary in “The New York Times” can be accessed here.
TCM Article:
In the 1930s, a British film fan magazine wrote, “Although she has a strong personality of her own, she has always kept the faculty, comparatively rare in film stars, of losing her own identity in the role she is playing. For this reason, she may never be a great star, in the ordinary sense. But her characterizations will live in your memory long after those of the more conventional type of screen star have been forgotten.” Had Flora Robson been beautiful, she would have been a major star; but while her talent made her worthy of stardom, her 5’10″stature and plain features forever relegated her to the ranks of the truly great supporting actresses. Her true vocation was the stage.
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Born Flora McKenzie Robson in South Shields, Durham, England on March 28, 1902, she was one of eight children born to a former ship’s engineer and his wife. Her talent for recitation became apparent at the age of six and after attending Palmers Green High School, her father paid for Robson to study at the famed Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she won a Bronze Medal in 1921. Following graduation, she performed in the West End, making her debut in Clemence Dane’s Will Shakespeare, but after two years of regional theater, the financial instability of acting led her to take a job as a welfare officer in a Shredded Wheat factory for several years. While there, she organized theater productions for the workers.
She returned to acting in 1929 (ironically at the start of the Great Depression) by joining the Cambridge Festival Theatre and in 1931 had secured a position at the Old Vic in London, where her career took off. Now one of England’s top stage actresses, she moved to an apartment at 19 Buckingham Street, across the hall from the great American singer/actor Paul Robeson and his wife. In January 1933, Robeson approached Robson about co-starring with him in Eugene O’Neill’s play about an interracial marriage, All God’s Chillun’. Director Andre Van Gyseghem wrote, “Robeson was Jim and the result was terrifying in its intensity. Time and time again directing Flora and Paul I had the feeling of being on the edge of a violent explosion. I had touched it off, but the resulting conflagration was breathtaking. They literally shot sparks off each other. Seldom have I seen two performers fuse so perfectly. It was so intimate and intense that I felt, at times, I should apologize for being there. Watching it was sometimes more than one could bear at such close range. Robeson’s technique was not Flora’s. She was an expert actress with tremendous emotional power. She absolutely hushed audiences as she stripped the meager soul of Ella. But her technically superb performance found a perfect foil in Robeson’s utter sincerity.” Dame Sybil Thorndike, who attended the play, later wrote “When I saw Flora, I thought to myself, here we have the making of one of England’s greatest tragic actresses. Flora was not beautiful in the conventional sense; in fact she was rather plain. But she took the role of Ella beyond racial themes and portrayed the devastating love/hate relationship between the couple to the point that it was almost too painful to watch.”
Robson’s fame as a theater actress brought her to the attention of British filmmakers. Her first film, A Gentleman of Paris (1931) did not make a big splash, nor did the other three films she made in 1932. It was in 1934, when she was a bona fide theatrical star, that Robson began her real film career by playing a queen. It would almost become typecasting for her. In The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934), she played the Russian Empress Elisabeth, which led to her being chosen to play Queen Elizabeth I in Alexander Korda’s Fire Over England (1937), co-starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Of the role Robson wrote, “Provocative, aggressive, possessive and perhaps a bit temperamental, Elizabeth was every inch a queen. She was essentially a woman of action, and that is just the kind of women I like best to portray. Whether they are characters of actual history, or folk-lore or of pure fiction, such women whose lives and work were more important than their loves aremuch more in tune with our modern ideals and tempo of life than many of the silken sirens who have figured as the heroines of sexy and sentimental film in the past.”
Hollywood came calling after Robson’s fiery portrayal of Elizabeth. Among them, Samuel Goldwyn, who wanted Robson for his Wuthering Heights (1939) once more co-starring her with Laurence Olivier. 1939 saw Robson in no less than five films, both in the United States (We Are Not Alone as Paul Muni’s wife) and England (Poison Pen). The latter was Robson’s only starring role, as the writer of poison pen letters who might be a murderer, and it was promoted with the following advertising copy, “The name of Flora Robson at the head of the cast is a sure sign that this is something very much more than a mere recital of horror and tragedy. This is one of the few opportunities the screen gives of seeing England’s finest emotional actress.”
Robson found acting for the screen to be vastly different than the stage: “The slightest touch of self-consciousness on the screen shows. I’ve learnt from bitter experience. In the theatre one feels the audience. One overacts. But the camera, like a huge eye a yard away, snaps up everything. [Famed Hollywood cameraman Hal Rosson helped me to overcome the inevitable theatrical exaggeration and to eliminate certain small mannerisms of expression which, while perfectly natural on the stage, were little short of grotesque when translated to the screen. I knew of course that the camera demanded much less emphasis of facial expression than the stage, but I had not realized that it required under-emphasis, that is, less than would be natural. Everything like this has to be entirely eliminated for the camera, and you must even speak with as little lip movement as possible.”
Although war had broken out in Europe, Robson remained in the United States, where she accepted a role on Broadway in Ladies in Retirement (1940), with rehearsals to begin after once more portraying Queen Elizabeth on the screen. This time, she was cast opposite Errol Flynn in Michael Curtiz’s The Sea Hawk (1940), beating out such competition as Gale Sondergaard, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Judith Anderson. It was to be the second of a two-picture deal with Warner Bros., but the film ran into delays and she accepted a role in the George Raft film Invisible Stripes (1939). The Sea Hawk finally went into production and despite the many stories of Flynn’s bad behavior on the sets of his films, Robson remembered him fondly. “We hit if off from the beginning. He was naughty about his homework. I told him that because he couldn’t remember his lines it would hold up the picture and I would be delayed going to New York to do a play. When I told him this, he was very kind and learned his lines to help me: the work went so fast we were finished by four in the afternoon on some days. I remember Mike Curtiz saying to him, ‘What’s the matter with you? You know all your words.'”
Robson’s lifelong preference for the stage over film work puzzled movie executives. “The people [in Hollywood] find it very difficult to understand the English actor’s off-hand attitude towards the film industry.” That attitude led her to turn down the role of Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) because she wanted to return to the stage. Once the run of Ladies was over, she returned to London in 1941 and remained there until the end of the war, doing theater. She returned to Hollywood in 1945 to play the role which gave her the only Academy Award nomination of her career, Saratoga Trunk (1945) opposite Ingrid Bergman. It was an odd role for Robson, that of a scheming mulatto slave and it required her to act in makeup that was close to blackface. Other films in the 1940s included Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), once more with Vivien Leigh and Michael Powell’s Black Narcissus (1947). However, it was her stage work that was the most important, especially her legendary performance as Lady Macbeth in 1949 and as Paulina in John Gielgud’s 1951 production of The Winter’s Tale. As a Shakespearian actress, it was said she “took Shakespeare’s utterances on her lips with a natural dignity and beauty.”
Robson’s career continued throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s with her accepting the occasional film, as in 55 Days at Peking (1963) playing the Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi ; and Murder at the Gallop (1963), one of the very popular Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. There was also television work, both in the United States and Britain. By 1969, Robson, now in her late 60s had retired from the theater, but not before being honored with a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth II, which was elevated to a DBE in 1960, making her “Dame Flora Robson”. This last was in recognition of her many unpublicized charitable works. She also had the distinction of having a theater named after her: The Flora Robson Theatre in Newcastle, England. Her homes in Brighton were designated with plaques after her death as well as the doorway of the Church of St. Nicholas in Brighton, where she attended.
Flora Robson ended her career with television movies and mini-series including Gauguin the Savage and A Tale of Two Cities (both in 1980), with her last appearance as one of the Stygian Witches in Clash of the Titans(1981), also co-starring Laurence Olivier. She died in Brighton, England on July 7, 1984.
Flora Robson as Mary Tudor in Wilfred Grantham ‘s ‘Mary Tudor’ at the Playhouse Theatre, London, 1935. Cover of ‘Play Pictorial’. Flora Robson, English actress, 28 March 1902-7 July 1984. No. 405.(Photo by Bridgeman via Getty Images)
Michael Rennie’s best known role was as the visitor from space Klaatu in the science-fiction classic “The Day the Earth Stood Stlll” in 1951. Pervious to that most of his career was in British film. His most frequent co-star was Jean Simmons. During the 1950’s he was under contract with 20th Century Fox and starred in many of their epic dramas. As his film career waned he moved into acting on television. He died in 1971.
“Wikipedia” entry Michael Rennie (25 August 1909—10 June 1971) was an English film, television and stage actor best known for his starring role as the benevolent space visitor Klaatu in the 1951 classic science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still. Eric Alexander Rennie was born in Idle, a village near the West Yorkshire city of Bradford (subsequently, a Bradford suburb) and educated at The Leys School, Cambridge. During the late 1930s, Rennie served his apprenticeship as an actor, gaining experience in acting technique, while touring the provinces in British repertory. There is evidence that, at the age of 28, he was noticed by one of the British film studios, which decided to appraise his potential as a film personality by arranging a screen test. The 1937 test, which exists in the British Film Institute archives under the title “Marguerite Allan and Michael Rennie Screen Test”, did not lead to a movie career for either performer. In Secret Agent, he was primarily a stand-in for leading man Robert Young, and his own on-camera bit was so small that it cannot be discerned in the preserved final version of the film. He also played other bit parts and later, minor, unbilled roles in ten additional films produced between 1936 and 1940, the last of which, “Pimpernel” Smith, had a belated release in July 1941, while Rennie was already in uniform, serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Second leads and then leads in seven other British films produced between 1946 and 1949 followed, including what may be considered Michael Rennie’s only role as one of two central characters in a full-fledged love story. In the 47-minute episode, “Sanatorium”, the longest among the Somerset Maugham tales constituting the film Trio (released in London on 1 August 1950), the mature-looking, lightly-mustached, 40-year-old Rennie and twenty-years-younger Jean Simmons are patients in the title institution, which caters to victims of tuberculosis. Michael Rennie, along with Jean Simmons and The Wicked Lady leading man James Mason, was one of a number of British actors offered Hollywood contracts in 1949-50 by 20th Century Fox’s studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. The first film under his new contract was the British-filmed medieval period adventure The Black Rose, starring Tyrone Power who became one of Rennie’s closest friends. Fifth-billed after the remaining first-tier stars Orson Welles, Cecile Aubry and Jack Hawkins, Rennie was specifically cast as 13th century King Edward I of England, whose 6′ 2″ frame gave origin to his historical nickname, “Longshanks”. Rennie’s second Fox film gave him fourth billing in the top tier. The 13th Letter, directed by his future nemesis and love rival Otto Preminger. Rennie’s next film dramatically moved his billing up to first and assured him screen immortality. The Day the Earth Stood Still was the first postwar respectably-budgeted “A” science fiction film. A serious, high-minded exploration of humanity’s place in the universe and our responsibility to maintain peaceful coexistence, it has remained the gold standard for the genre of the era. A unique aspect of the film is the participation, within its fictional structure, of four top newscasters and commentators of the period—Elmer Davis, H. V. Kaltenborn, Drew Pearson and Gabriel Heatter. The story was dramatized in 1954 for Lux Radio Theatre, with Rennie and Billy Gray recreating their roles and Jean Peters speaking the dialogue of the Patricia Neal character. Seven years later, in October 1961, when The Day the Earth Stood Still had its television premiere on NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies, Michael Rennie appeared before the start of the film to give a two-minute introduction. Convinced that it had a potential leading man under contract, the studio decided to produce a version of Les Miserables as a vehicle for him. The film, released on August 14, 1952, was well-directed by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Lewis Milestone, and Rennie’s performance was respectfully, but not enthusiastically, received by the critics. Michael Rennie’s next film was the last under his five-year contract with 20th Century Fox. The Rains of Ranchipur, released on December 14, 1955. In 1959 Rennie became a familiar face on television, taking the role of Harry Lime in The Third Man, a British-American syndicated TV series very loosely based on the character created by Orson Welles. During the 1960s he continued his TV career with guest appearances on such series as Route 66 (a moving portrayal of a doomed pilot in the two-part episode, “Fly Away Home”); Alfred Hitchcock Presents; Perry Mason (one of four actors in four consecutive episodes substituting for series star Raymond Burr, who was recovering from surgery); Wagon Train, The Great Adventure; Lost in Space (another two-part episode—as an all-powerful alien, “The Keeper”, he worked one last time with his Third Man co-star Jonathan Harris); The Time Tunnel (as Captain Smith of The Titanic, in the series’ September 9, 1966 premiere episode); Batman (as the villainous Sandman in league with Julie Newmar’s Catwoman), three episodes of The Invaders (as a malign variation of the Klaatu persona), and two episodes of The F.B.I.. Both of Michael Rennie’s marriages ended in divorce. He was first married to Joan England in 1938. His second marriage was to actress Maggie McGrath. Their son David Rennie is a UK circuit judge in Lewes, Sussex. Michael Rennie was also briefly engaged to the ex-wife of the Hollywood director, Otto Preminger. It was rumoured that Preminger, who not surprisingly hated Rennie, was the prime instigator in Rennie’s fall from stardom. John Rennie, the designer and builder of the original Waterloo Bridge, is presumed to have been his great-great grandfather. His final seven feature films were lensed in Britain, Italy, Spain and, in the case of The Surabaya Conspiracy, The Philippines. Less than three years after leaving Hollywood, he journeyed to his mother’s home in Harrogate, at a time of family grief following the death of his brother. It was there that he suddenly died of an emphysema-induced heart attack, nine weeks before his 62nd birthday. Upon cremation, his ashes laid to rest in Harlow Cemetery, Harrogate.
Detailed biography on “Wikipedia” can be found here.
Les Miserables, poster, US poster art, Michael Rennie, (beard), 1952. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Virginia McKenna is in the fortunate position to have three memorable film roles to her credit – Jean Paget in “A Town Like Alice”, The wartime heroine Violette Szabo in “Carve Her Name With Pride” and Joy Adamson in “Born Free”. As a result of her experiences with lions in the latter film she and her busband the actor Bill Travers established “The Born Free Foundation”. “Ring of Bright Water” in which she starred with Bill Travers is a beautiful film about otters in the Highlands of Scotland. Ms McKenna published her autobiography “The Life in My Years” in 2009.
A talented flaxen-blonde British star combined her deep loves for acting and for wildlife throughout most her adult life. Born in London, England on June 7, 1931, her family possessed a sturdy theatrical background. Mother Anne was a jazz pianist, composer and cabaret performer while father Terry, an auctioneer, had relatives in the arts including actress Fay Compton and author Compton MacKenzie.
Virginia’s boarding house education was interrupted by the London Blitzkrieg. She and her mother (her parents were divorced by this time) evacuated from England to Cape Town, South Africa, a move that lasted six years. Upon her return to England, she acted in a few school plays. Her interest stuck and she auditioned and was accepted into the London School of Central Speech and Drama. Two years later she became a six-month member of Scotland’s renowned Dundee Repertory. Spotted by a talent scout playing Estella in a production of “Great Expectations,” Virginia was invited in 1951 to return to London to portray Dorcas in “A Penny for a Song” with a stellar cast that included Ronald Squire, Alan Webb, Marie Lohr and leading man Ronald Howard, the son of “Gone With the Wind” star Leslie Howard. This quickly led to TV and film offers.
Virginia made her cinematic debut with a prominent role in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray(1952) starring Hugh Sinclair and Pamela Brown, then played Richard Attenborough‘s sister-in-law in Father’s Doing Fine (1952). Two more films arrived the following year withThe Horse’s Mouth (1953) starring Robert Beatty and the Oscar-nominated WWII dramaThe Cruel Sea (1953) with Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, Stanley Baker and Denholm Elliott, the last mentioned to whom she later married in 1954. Following classical stage parts in “Richard II,” “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” “Henry IV” and “As You Like It” at the Old Vic during its 1954-1955 season and her acclaimed BAFTA-winning role as Juliet oppositeTony Britton‘s Romeo in a BBC-TV version of “Romeo and Juliet,” Virginia returned to filming with Simba (1955) starring Dirk Bogarde and PT Raiders (1955), another WWII drama that reunited her with Richard Attenborough. Film stardom came with her crop-haired role as WWII Japanese captive Jean Paget in A Town Like Alice (1956) oppositePeter Finch. Both actors won BAFTA film awards for their roles. As such Virginia grew in box-office status.
Virginia met second husband, Bill Travers when they appeared together in the play “I Capture the Castle” in London in 1954. Both were married at the time. They met again, however, after her two-year breakup with Denholm Elliott and this time they connected and married in 1957. Virginia an Bill appeared together on film for the first time in one of her highly rare comedy films Big Time Operators (1957). They went on to do six other movies together. In the second film, Bill and Jennifer Jones starred as Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957) with Virginia andJohn Gielgud in strong support. The couple then appeared in Storm Over Jamaica (1958).
Acclaim (and a BAFTA nomination) for Virginia came again with her movie role alongsidePaul Scofield in Carve Her Name with Pride (1958) portraying Special Operations Executive agent Violette Szabo who, after he husband was killed during WWII, worked dangerous missions as an undercover agent for British intelligence until caught and executed by the Nazis in 1944. The role had a strong impact on Virginia. In 2000 she performed the opening ceremony of the Violette Sazabo Museum in Herefordshire. The actress then appeared opposite American actors Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston in the adventure yarn The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). Back on stage for a few years in potent roles as Sister Jeanne in “The Devils” and Lucy in “The Beggar’s Opera,” she and Bill were invited to appear together in the film Two Living, One Dead (1961), a Post Office robbery crimer.
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Mandatory Credit: Photo by ITV/Shutterstock (3786624h)
Film Poster – Virginia McKenna
‘Carve Her Name With Pride’ Film. – 1958
The couple’s next film together would alter the coarse of both their personal and professional destinies when they signed up to play Joy and George Adamson, noted wildlife welfare preservationists, in a landmark film version of the best-selling novel Born Free (1966). The movie was a massive, international box office smash. The shooting, with the real George Adamson serving as tech advisor, deeply affected the couple so much that for the rest of their lives/careers they dedicated themselves to wildlife causes with many of their subsequent pictures having related themes. The couple went on to form a documentary film company and served as writers/producers to create wildlife films. One of the best known of their many documentaries is Christian the Lion (1971).
A few years later Virginia and Bill filmed two animal-related movie adventures, Ring of Bright Water (1969) and An Elephant Called Slowly (1970). The former, filmed in London and the Scottish coast, was based on a best-selling book and told of the romance of an office worker/artist (Bill), his otter pal Mij, and his love interest (Virginia), the town’s doctor. Virginia later helped create a museum to honor the film’s author, naturalist Gavin Maxwell. The latter, which was filmed in Kenya, had the couple “adopting” three young elephants.
Throughout the 1970s, Virginia continued to be seen to good advantage in a sprinkling of film, theatre and TV roles. Cinematically she joined Rod Steiger as Napoleon, Christopher Plummer as the Duke of Wellington and Orson Welles as Louis XVIII in Waterloo (1970) last as the Duchess of Richmond; was top-billed in the family adventure Swallows and Amazons (1974); appeared in the English/Canadian thriller The Disappearance (1977); and showed up in the Italian/English end-of-the-world drama Holocaust 2000 (1977). On the London musical stage Virginia succeeded Jean Simmons as Desiree Armfeldt in theStephen Sondheim hit “A Little Night Music” and in a 1979 revival of “The King of I” opposite perennial king Yul Brynner that ran 16 months. On TV the actress gravitated towards period roles in roles that ranged from Daisy in The Edwardians (1972); to Clemmie Churchill in The Gathering Storm (1974) to Mrs. Darling in Peter Pan (1976) to Portia in Julius Caesar (1979).
Despite appearing in roles from the 1980s on, which included playing Gertrude alongsideRoger Rees in 1984’s “Hamlet,” a role in the plush mini-series The Camomile Lawn (1992) and a recent support role in the film Love/Loss (2010), Virginia was more committed to her wild animals activism. Very much involved with the global influence of the Born Free Foundation and its Zoo Check project, Virginia earned an OBE for her services to wildlife conversation and animal welfare.
Bill died in 1994 and their son Will Travers joined their enthusiasm towards wildlife, becoming the CEO of the Born Free Foundation. Virginia is the author of several wildlife books and her autobiography “The Life in My Years” was published in 2009. One of her more recent outings was a 2011 appearance in the long-running, award-winning BBC documentary series The Natural World (1983).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Interview with Virginia McKenna on “Nature” website can be accessed here.
7th April 1956: British stage and screen actress Virginia McKenna is featured for the cover of Picture Post magazine. Original Publication: Picture Post Cover – Vol 71 No 1 – pub. 1956. (Photo by IPC Magazines/Picture Post/Getty Images)
Oliver Tobias has an international film and television career. He was born in Switzerland and came to live in Britain at the age of eight. In 1968 he starred in the London production of “Hair”. His first film role was in “Romance of a Horse Thief” with Yul Brynner. He scored a big success as King Arthur in 1972 in “Arthur of the Britons”. He made “Luke’s Kingdom” in Australia directed by Peter Weir. Another successful series was “Smuggler” set in Cornwall.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
A remote and rather prevailing sullenness has only enhanced the mystique and charisma found in dashingly handsome Oliver Tobias, who has enjoyed over a three decade-long career on stage, screen and TV. Born Oliver Tobias Freitag in Zurich, Switzerland on August 6, 1947, he was the son of Swiss actor Robert Freitag and German actress Maria Becker, who subsequently divorced when he was young. Living in England from age 8, he was sent to boarding school and was later encouraged by his mother to study at the East 15 Acting School (1965-1968) which coincided with dance training at the Ecole de Dance in Zurich. In 1968 he appeared in the original London production of “Hair” playing the prime rebel role of Berger. The following year he starred, staged and choreographed the rock opera in Amsterdam and again helmed a production in 1970 in Tel Aviv. Oliver continued his shaggy-haired, counterculture musical career with the role of Judas in a German touring company of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
Around this time he started making an impression in films with the international productions of Romance of a Horsethief (1971), _Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1971)_, which co-starred Charlotte Rampling, and The God King (1974) in a Mephistophelean-styled role. On TV he enhanced a number of classic, age-old stories from Sherlock Holmes to Robin Hood. He earned TV stardom as King Arthur in the series Arthur of the Britons(1972), then again played the youthful ruler of Camelot in King Arthur, the Young Warlord (1975) on film. From there he graced a number of colorful costumers, includingArabian Adventure (1979) and on TV portrayed composer Johann Strauss in an equally colorful outing. Despite this attention he did not give up his musical roots, showing his prowess in the title role of the rock opera “Peer Gynt” in Zurich, and in the role of The Pirate King in “The Pirates of Penzance” at London’s Drury Lane Theatre.
As a stretch he also appeared as Bassa Selim in the Mozart opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” in 1988 and 1989, then appeared in a non-musical, the powerful AIDS drama “The Normal Heart,” shortly after. Oliver’s taste in movies have been eclectic to say the least, and not always tasteful. He appeared in Joan Collins‘ scurrilous, soft-core flick The Stud (1978) as an amorous waiter who sleeps his way to the top, and was part of the cast in the costumed romp Mata Hari (1985) which focused more on the disrobing of its star Sylvia Kristel than anything else.
For variety he portrayed a Vietnam veteran in Operation Nam(1986), a galactic dictator in Nexus 2.431 (1994), and a U-boat captain in The Brylcreem Boys (1998). In 1999 he again returned to musical limelight, this time in London as King Roderick in “La Cava,” based on the Dana Broccoli novel. He returned to the role a second time in 2001. In 2003 he was Percival Brown in the 50th anniversary production of “The Boyfriend” and the very next year toured in the rock musical “Footloose.”
Divorced from Camilla Ravenshear, he has two daughters, Angelika and Celeste. In 2001 he married Polish-born Arabella Zamoyska. The rugged charmer is in the process of writing a tell-all autobiography.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Joan Collins has had a remarkably long and successful career on film. In 1951 she made her first film “Lady Godiva Rides Again”. By 1955 she was in Hollywood making “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing”. She made several films for 20th Century Fox studios over the next few years. In 1981 her career reached enormous exposure through her success as Alexis Carrington in the night-time soap “Dynasty”. She has maintained her career profile through further film and television roles as well as a career in writing and journalism. She was made a Dame by the Queen in 2015. Her official website can be found here.
TCM Overview:
A glamorous presence on film and television for a half-century, Joan Collins specialized in seductive, larger-than-life women with a lust for just about everything in projects ranging from “Land of the Pharoahs” (1955) and “Island in the Sun” to “The Stud” (1978) and most famously, “Dynasty” (ABC, 1981-89). Her physical beauty – which was often likened to a British Elizabeth Taylor – was a drawback in her earlier career, which found her playing wayward girls and wantons. After a short stint in Hollywood, during which she dated numerous studs of the time, including Warren Beatty, she drifted into B-grade pictures for over a decade before being cast as the venomous Alexis Carrington in “Dynasty.” Her overripe performance launched a thousand similar “rich bitch” characters on primetime, but Collins managed to hold the title with charm and sexiness for decades after the show’s demise. An outspoken and at times brazen figure in real life, with a string of marriages and public romances to her name, she remained one of the most cheekily appealing actresses in the world.
Born Joan Henrietta Collins in Paddington, a metropolitan borough of Westminster, London on May 23, 1933, she was one of three children born to Elsee Bessant, a dance teacher, and South African-born agent Joseph William Collins, who would later count The Beatles and Tom Jones among his clients. Her younger sister, Jackie, followed in her footsteps with appearances in B- pictures and television in the 1960s before establishing herself as a best-selling author of salacious romance novels. In some ways, Joan Collins led a charmed adolescence – she and her siblings were raised in the affluent neighborhood of Maida Vale, and Collins made her acting debut at the age of nine, playing a boy in a production of “A Doll’s House.” But these early years were also difficult ones for her. Joseph Collins was reportedly a strict father with a taste for discipline, which he wielded over children and spouse alike. Collins found an escape in the movies; she had fallen in love with them after seeing “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) at an early age, and envisioned a life for herself that was spent as an actress.
She approached her father about auditioning for London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, to which he agreed on one condition: that she would become his secretary if she did not pass. Thankfully, Collins did make the grade, and by 17, she had landed a contract with the Rank Film Company, one of the U.K.’s biggest studios. Though not exactly praiseworthy of his daughter’s accomplishments – Collins would be remarkably dismissive of his children in public throughout his life – he also served as her first agent. Her tenure with Rank was particularly unspectacular; a debut as a beauty contestant in “Lady Godiva Rides Again” (1951) was followed by a string of forgettable roles in dramas, comedies and costume pictures, including “I Believe in You” (1952) and “Decameron Nights” (1953) with Louis Jordan. Collins supplemented her film income as a popular model in magazines. At age 18, she was voted the most beautiful girl in England by a photography group. She also was not afraid to speak about her issues with Rank; in 1954, she complained to a London newspaper about the company’s lack of support for its female talent. The statement would help to cement Collins’ image as an outspoken woman for the rest of her career.
In 1955, 20th Century Fox signed her to a contract, hoping to mold her into their version of Elizabeth Taylor, to whom she bore a strong resemblance, minus violent Taylor eyes. Her first American feature was a bit of a camp effort; “Land of the Pharoahs” (1955), directed by Howard Hawks and penned in part by William Faulkner, was epic in scope but sudsy in its story of a self-absorbed pharaoh and the princess (Collins) who wants to enjoy some of his riches in the present, rather than the afterlife. The film cemented Collins’ screen image as a sexually rapacious, morally ambiguous femme fatale – a role she would play on and off for the remainder of her career. Collins’ private life also helped to sell that notion to ticket buyers. Her first marriage, to Irish actor Maxwell Reed, ended because he had allegedly tried to sell her to an Arab sheik in 1955. In 1959, she began a torrid romance with fellow up-and-comer Warren Beatty. The relationship burned up the gossip magazines with lurid tales of their non-stop lovemaking, but the affair ended badly, with a broken engagement and an abortion. Collins would later be linked to numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Dennis Hopper, Ryan O’Neal and Robert F. Kennedy.
Our Girl Friday, poster, (aka THE ADVENTURES OF SADIE), US poster, Joan Collins, 1953. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Her reputation sealed her into a series of vampish roles throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In Richard Fleischer’s “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing” (1955), she played Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, whose relationship with architect Stanford White ended with his murder in the 1920s. In “The Opposite Sex” (1956), she was a showgirl who steals faithful husband Leslie Nielsen away from dutiful wife June Allyson. And in “Island in the Sun” (1957), she was the kittenish younger sister of plantation owner James Mason, who uses her wiles to lure war hero Stephen Boyd. On occasion, Collins proved that she had talents beyond her physical appeal; the “Sea Wife” (1957), which was initially helmed by Roberto Rossellini, was a stark character piece about shipwreck survivors adrift in a lifeboat, while the Western “The Bravados” (1958) and the caper picture “Seven Thieves” (1960) showed that she could share the screen with such powerhouses as Gregory Peck, Rod Steiger and Edward G. Robinson. She could also do comedy, as her dizzy town vixen in “Rally Round the Flag, Boys!” (1958) showed. But for the most part, Collins was the go-to for seductive and exotic types, and she played the decorative parts in unmemorable films like “Stopover Tokyo” (1957) with Robert Wagner, “Esther and the King” (1960), and “The Road to Hong Kong” (1962), the final “Road” picture with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
By the mid-1960s, Collins was lending her appeal to American TV shows like “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (NBC, 1964-68), “Batman” (ABC, 1966-68 as The Siren) and a memorable appearance on “Star Trek” (NBC, 1966-69) in the Hugo Award-winning episode “City on the Edge of Forever” as a love interest for Captain Kirk (William Shatner) doomed by a fateful twist in history. Her film career appeared to have stalled completely; among the string of flops to her name during this period was the singularly titled “Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?” (1969), a surreal ego trip directed by her second husband, singer and songwriter Anthony Newley. Collins would later attribute the film as a leading factor in her 1973 divorce from him.
The 1970s saw Collins continue to toil in episodic television and low-budget films. Horror and exploitation soon became her forte, with appearances in the anthology films “Tales from the Crypt” (1972) as a woman threatened by a homicidal Santa Claus, and “Tales that Witness Madness” (1973) in which her jealous wife suspects that her husband has fallen in love with a very feminine and vengeful tree. In 1978, she starred in softcore adaptations of her sister Jackie’s novels “The Stud;” the film, which featured copious nudity by Collins as a predatory nightclub owner, was a sizable hit, as was its sequel, the equally tawdry “The Bitch” (1979). Both saw financial returns that rivaled the Bond series in ticket sales.
In 1981, Collins’ career received its biggest boost and greatest exposure when she was cast as Alexis Carrington on “Dynasty.” Originally considered as a role for Sophia Loren, among others, Alexis was introduced in the second season of “Dynasty” as a key witness in the trial of the show’s patriarch, Blake Carrington (John Forsythe), for the murder of his son Steven’s gay lover. Her testimony about her former husband throws a wrench into the defense, and Alexis soon proves herself to be a world-class upsetter in the Carrington clan, wreaking havoc with Blake’s new wife, Krystal (Linda Evans), daughter Fallon (Pamela Sue Martin) and just about every male, available or otherwise, that crosses her path. Audiences soon flocked to see what witchery Alexis would conduct each week, as well as the regular room-wrecking catfights she would conduct with Evans and later Diahann Carroll and Stephanie Beacham. A combination of Collins and a new writing staff helped to elevate “Dynasty” past its chief competitor, “Dallas” (CBS, 1978-1991), all of which re-energized Collins’ career. She would eventually net six Golden Globe nominations between 1982 and 1987, and took home one in 1983.
The late-in-life success of Collins allowed her to make the rounds in numerous glitzy TV-movies and miniseries, most notably “Sins” (CBS, 1986) and “Monte Carlo” (CBS, 1987), on which she also served as producer. She surprised many with a 12-page layout in Playboy under the rubric “50 is Beautiful.” She also began a very popular second career as an author and magazine contributor, penning several books on beauty, as well as a handful of glossy novels that hewed closely to sister Jackie’s style. There was also Katy: A Fight for Life (1982), a memoir of her daughter Katy’s struggle after being struck by a car in 1980 and enduring severe brain injuries.
However, her relationship with “Dynasty” producers Aaron Spelling and E. Duke Vincent began to sour by its sixth season. She was arguably the show’s key attraction, and as such, demanded a larger salary for her efforts. As a result, she missed the first episode of the sixth season, which followed the infamous “Moldavian Massacre,” which closed the fifth season with nearly all the major characters appearing to be killed in a coup during a wedding. Eventually, Collins got her wishes – a reported $60,000 per episode – but the writing was on the wall for “Dynasty.” The show slogged through its next nine seasons before ABC pulled the plug, ending Alexis’ reign on primetime with – what else? A cliffhanger, which was finally resolved in 1991 with the four-hour miniseries “Dynasty: The Reunion” (ABC).
But Collins was not quite out of the scandal sheets yet. A 1991 book deal with Random House resulted in a lawsuit that demanded the actress return the $1.2 million advance she had received after submitting manuscripts that they deemed unsuitable. She countersued for the remaining $4 million in the deal, and, astoundingly, won the case in 1996 thanks to her deal from super agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar, who had stipulated that Collins would be paid whether the manuscripts were published or not. The resulting judgment – Collins was allowed to keep the advance, as well as $1 million for one of the completed manuscripts – landed her in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest payment for an unpublished book.
Undaunted, Collins began focusing her attention on the theater. A revival of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” launched in London’s West End in 1991 before traveling to Broadway in 1992. She would return to the stage on numerous occasions through the ’90s and 2000s, most notably in a tour of “Love Letters” with George Hamilton and a West End production of “Moon Over Buffalo” with Frank Langella. Meanwhile, film and television continued to provide Collins with diva-esque roles in Kenneth Branagh’s “A Midwinter’s Tale” (1995), the Emmy-nominated “Annie: A Royal Adventure” (ABC, 1995), and “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas” (2000), which cast her as Fred Flintstone’s glammed-up mother-in-law, Pearl Slaghoople. She wrapped up the ’90s with the receipt of an O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Her “Dynasty” past was never quite far behind, though. In 1997, Aaron Spelling brought her to his primetime soap “Pacific Palisades” (Fox, 1997) in a last-ditch attempt to save the series. It did not work, but she was back in the trenches in 2000 with a guest shot on “The Guiding Light” (CBS, 1952-2009) and in 2005 on the U.K. series “Footballers Wives” (ITV, 2002-06). She also reunited with Linda Evans for the play “Legends!” which ran for a 30-week tour of North America. And in 2010, she joined the cast of the German soap “Forbidden Love” (Das Erste, 1995) for a short stint. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Ian Charleson was a gifted theatre and film actor from Scotland. His best known film role was as Eric Liddell the athlete and Christian missionary in “Chariots of Fire” in 1981. He performed on stage in such plays as “Guys and Dolls” and “After Aida”. In the 1980’s he went on to make such films as “Ghandi”, and “Car Trouble. He died in 1990 eight weeks after performing the lead in “Hamlet” directed by Richard Eyre at the Oliver Theatre. Ian Charleson was 40 years of age when he died.
A touching tribute by David Benedict from “The Independent”:When Daniel Day-Lewis walked out halfway through the run of Hamlet at the National, everyone talked. When Ian Charleson took over the role a few weeks later, nobody noticed. At least, not until the actress Suzanne Bertish wrote to John Peter of th e Sunday Times urging him to see Charleson’s arresting performance.. His review described Charleson’s portrayal as “virile and forceful. He oozes intelligence from every pore . . . the way Charleson can transform a production is a reminder that actors are alive and well, that directors can only draw a performance from those who have one in them and that, in the last analysis, the voice of drama speaks to us through actors.”
What he didn’t know was that Charleson was fighting full-blown Aids. The following night, he gave his last performance. Eight weeks later, at the age of 40, he died of septicemia brought on by Aids, and Britain lost one of its finest actors.
Known principally for his outstanding performance as Eric Liddell in the much-feted Chariots of Fire, Charleson was an actor whose full potential was only just being realised when he died.
He left drama college early to work with Frank Dunlop and the Young Vic Company. Within months he was playing his first Hamlet – in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. At 24, he played the original Shakespeare version for Cambridge Theatre Company but, despite good reviews, he remained unsatisfied with his performance.
There followed TV plays, including Drew Griffiths’s The House on the Hill, West End successes, a season at the National, Derek Jarman’s Jubilee and a lengthy run at the RSC including Once in a Lifetime, the original production of Piaf, and The Taming of the Shrew.
Chariots of Fire was followed by Ghandi and numerous American TV mini-series. His triumphant return to the National was as Sky Masterson (the Marlon Brando role) in Guys and Dolls. Something of his deliciously smooth and sexy performance can be gleaned from the cast recording. It’s not just the flowing of his light tenor voice. There’s something else. When he sings “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” to Julie Covington, you hear his heart opening up. Conversely, when playing opposite Julie Walters in Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, he combined physical abandonment with a mesmerising intensity.
He discovered he was HIV positive in 1986 and abandoned work for a year. His antibody status was to remain a secret to all but his closest friends. When he returned to the National in 1988 opposite Lindsay Duncan in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Michael Coveneywrote: “Mr. Charleson is stricken almost to the point of catatonia, a ruined athlete in shimmering white exactly conjuring the ideal of a helpless male divinity. These are two performances of driven majesty and great poise.”
In the Autumn of that year he was rushed to hospital with pneumonia. After extensive chemo- and radiotherapy, he played the tough drag queen Greta at a one-off benefit performance of Bent in aid of Stonewall, the campaign group. As the director Sean Mathias wrote, “the most gargantuan part of it from Ian’s point of view was that here was a man with Aids, his torso now covered by Kaposi’s sarcoma, his face starting to distort and disfigure, dressed convincingly as a glamorous and roguish Dietrich-type woman, and the secret behind that portrayal was that he, the director and the costume designer were the only people who knew about his illness.”
After his death, a group of his friends set up the Ian Charleson Award for a classical actor under the age of 30. There are also scholarships in his name at Lamda, and the Royal Free Hospital has an Aids centre dedicated to him. Much of the money to provide this was raised at a benefit performance of Guys and Dolls. The tickets just vanished.
Even the dress rehearsal was packed to the rafters. Nearly every member of the original cast and band returned to honour him. Bob Hoskins even flew in overnight from Los Angeles and made it in time for the curtain-call.
Tony Britten, the musical director, recalls that “he had this enormously virile stage presence and the most glorious, completely unforced voice. The musicians, a hard-bitten bunch, were crying from the overture onwards. Those occasions are always emotional, but that was something else. It was a tribute to the affection in which he was held.”
“The Independent” tribute can also be accessed on line here.
David Tomlinson, who was born in 1917, was featured in many British comedies of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Suddenly in middle-age he became hughly popular in the U.S.A. as a result of a series of films he made with Walt Disney Studios in California.in the mid 1960’s starting with his role of Mr Banks in “Mary Poppins”. He also made “The Love Bug” and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” for the Disney studio. he retired from acting in 1979 and died in 2000. The popularity of the Disney films and also some of his earlier British ones has ensured that his popularity continues. His “Guardian” obituary by Denis Barker can be accessed here.
Susannah York obituary in “The Independent” in 2011.
Susannah York was to the forefront of those beautiful young actresses who burst on to the screen in British films of the 1960’s. She belongs with Julie Christie, Samantha Eggar and Sarah Miles as icons of that time in British cinema. She made her debut in 1960 as the daughter of Sir Alec Guinness in Ronald Neame”s excellent “Tunes of Glory”. She received international recognition opposite Albert Finney in “Tom Jones”. In 1969 she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the Hollywood made “They Shoot Horses Don’t They” In more recent years she has been seen frequently both on stage and television. Susannah York sadly died in 2011.
Her “Independent” obituary by Tom Vallance:
Susannah York was a versatile actress who was a major film star in the Sixties and Seventies, and whose screen career embraced such hits as Tunes of Glory (1960), Tom Jones (1963) and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), for which she received an Oscar nomination.es and cropped blonde hair, she could be overtly sexy or convincingly repressed, and starred in such diverse films as The Killing of Sister George (1968) and Images (1972), her leading men including William H olden, Warren Beatty, Dirk Bogarde and Peter O’Toole. Independent and strong-willed, with a rumoured ability to terrorise directors, she had a predilection for challenging, off-beat roles that latterly attracted limited attention, but she also appeared in three Superman films, playing the super-hero’s mother and the wife of Marlon Brando.
Born Susannah Yolande Fletcher in Chelsea in 1939 (she was to knock three years off her official biography), she was raised by her mother in a remote Scottish village after her parents were divorced. After attending Marr College in Ayrshire, where theatrical ambition was fostered by playing an Ugly Sister in a school production of Cinderella, she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she won the Ronson award for most promising student.
After graduating in 1958, she appeared in repertory and in pantomime, and made an impression opposite Sean Connery in a BBC production of Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch-hunts, The Crucible. Her performance won her the role of Alec Guinness’s daughter in the powerful military drama Tunes of Glory. After playing leading lady to Norman Wisdom in one of the comic’s better films, There Was a Crooked Man (1960), she established herself with her sensitive performance as an adolescent schoolgirl in France who becomes aware of her sexuality and the power it gives her, in The Greengage Summer (1961). She had a darker role in John Huston’s Freud: The Secret Passion (1962), playing one of the psychoanalyst’s patients. To demonstrate Freud’s achievements without myriad roles, York’s character simultaneously suffered from insomnia, hysteria, sexual repression, temporary loss of sight and a father fixation.
York next had one of her best remembered roles, that of the voluptuous but chaste Sophie Western in the bawdy Oscar-winning romp directed by Tony Richardson, Tom Jones opposite Albert Finney, though she was unhappy at reviews that emphasised her beauty. “I suppose I was fairly arrogant, in a way. I thought that films were for pretty people, and since I was going to be an actress, that didn’t concern me.”
York went to Malaysia for her next film, the action adventure, The Seventh Dawn (1964), with William Holden and Capucine, who was cast because she was having affairs with both Holden and the film’s producer, Charles Feldman. She starred opposite Warren Beatty in the caper movie Kaleidoscope (1966), set in Monte Carlo and the London of the Swinging Sixties. Sandra Dee was first cast as the female lead at the request of Beatty, who had already tried to add her to his conquests, but director Jack Smight persuaded the studio to pay Dee her full salary and remove her from the film. He stated: “I couldn’t conceive of Sandra Dee playing a strong-willed British girl.” The film’s writers sent a telegram to Smight stating: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.” She was later to describe her relationship with Beatty as “bantering”, adding that his flirting “wouldn’t stop ever. After a bit, you’d need to say, ‘Come on, cool it, Warren’.”
In Kaleidoscope, York played a Carnaby Street designer, a stark contrast to her touching portrayal of Thomas More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, in the film version of Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for all Seasons (1966). York enjoyed working with Dirk Bogarde on Sebastian (1967), but it was not a success, and Duffy (1968), another Swinging Sixties’ tale, was even worse.
1970s UK Woman’s Realm Magazine Cover
One of York’s most controversial roles was that of Childie, the cunning and manipulative lesbian in The Killing of Sister George. Eileen Atkins had created the role in Frank Marcus’ play on stage opposite Beryl Reid, who repeated her role of a radio soap-opera actress faced with the disintegration of her romantic partnership and the loss of her sustaining role. “I could accept the idea of lesbianism philosophically, but playing intensely emotional scenes with another woman taxed all my resources as an actress,” York said. The woman from “BH” [Broadcasting House] who comes between the couple was played by Coral Browne. “Beryl and Coral were chalk and cheese but they liked me so I was kind of the jam in the sandwich. I got on well with each individually, but they loathed each other.”
York had a cameo in the all-star musical Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) – “I did one day’s work with Dirk Bogarde because I wanted to work with him again.” After playing the WAAF wife of a Squadron Leader (Christopher Plummer) in The Battle of Britain (1969), York went to Hollywood, where she was promoted as “the most important star to come out of England since Elizabeth Taylor”. In Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, which depicted the marathon dancing craze during the Depression, her heart-breaking performance as a Jean Harlow-like participant whose illusory dreams of stardom climax with a powerful mad scene in the shower, won her a Bafta award and an Oscar nomination, but she received a hostile reaction to her statement that it offended her to be nominated without her consent.
Comments about Americans’ age-consciousness and the country’s pervading commercialism also failed to win her friends, and she returned to the UK to star with Peter O’Toole in a film she would later describe as her favourite, Country Dance (1969), written by her friend James Kennaway. O’Toole played a Scottish landowner who harbours incestuous yearnings for York.
Her title role in a television movie, Jane Eyre (1970) with George C Scott as a testy Rochester, won her an Emmy nomination, after which she played another controversial role in the florid drama Zee and Co (1971), in which she romances the husband (Michael Caine) of Elizabeth Taylor, who then sets out to seduce her. She teamed rewardingly with Rod Steiger in the mordantly witty Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971), written by Kurt Vonnegut, in which Steiger returns from eight years lost in the Amazon to find his formerly dim-witted wife (York) educated and liberated, and she followed it with one of her greatest personal triumphs, as the schizophrenic wife in Robert Altman’s bewildering psychological drama, Images.
Her performance won her the Best Actress award at Cannes, though critics liked the inscrutable film more than the public. Altman’s inspiration was a children’s story written by York, In Search of Unicorns, and she later wrote a second, Lark’s Castle.
York’s independence and desire for challenging roles in works with limited appeal, such as Jean Genet’s The Maids (1974) with Glenda Jackson, and The Shout (1978), in which Alan Bates played a man who has learnt from aborigines a “shout” that causes death, dimmed her lustre, though she reached a larger public as Superman’s mother Lara on the doomed planet Krypton in Superman (1978), in which she and Marlon Brando send their son rocketing to Earth when their planet starts to blow up. “The draw as far as I was concerned was Brando.”
In recent years York returned to the theatre, joining the RSC for the 1996-97 season to play Gertrude in Hamlet and Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor. She had a particular allegiance to the enterprising New End Theatre in Hampstead, where she won praise in a Tennessee Williams triple bill, and she appeared in several one-woman shows, including her own compilation, The Loves of Shakespeare’s Women. Her extensive TV roles included Mrs Fitzherbert, illegal wife of George IV in Prince Regent (1979), and Mrs Cratchit in A Christmas Carol (1984) with George C Scott. In 2003 she had a recurring role as hospital manager Helen Grant in Holby City, a character she also played in two episodes of Casualty (2004).
Active in left-wing politics, she was fearless and determined. A CND supporter, she vehemently supported Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli dissident who revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons programme. Acting in Tel Aviv in 2007, she dedicated her performance to Vanunu, to cheers and jeers.
York married Michael Wells, also a Rada graduate, in 1960, and before their divorce in 1976 they had two children, Orlando and Sacha, who appeared with their mother as Cratchit children in A Christmas Carol. Orlando described her as “an absolutely fantastic mother” who “loved nothing more than cooking a Sunday roast and sitting around the fire of a winter’s evening.”
Susannah Yolande Fletcher (Susannah York), actress: born London 9 January 1939; married 1960 Michael Wells (one son, one daughter); died 15 January 2011
Her obituary by Michael Billington in “The Guardian” can be accessed here.
Article on Susannah York in “Tina Aumont’s Eyes” website:
Never one to be typecast, lovely English actress Susannah York explored many avenues, and often gave her best performances outside the Hollywood system. Frequently appearing in smaller, offbeat and sometimes controversial movies, the uninhibited York left a lasting impression, and successfully juggled family life with a distinguished career both home and abroad. Along the way she worked with such major talents as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Scofield and John Hurt, as well as noted directors; John Huston, Fred Zinneman, Sydney Pollack and Robert Altman.
Born Susannah Yolande Fletcher, in London on January 9th, 1939, York’s illustrious career began in 1960 playing Alec Guinness’s daughter in the brilliant war drama‘Tunes of Glory’. The following year she gave an emotional turn in ‘The Greengage Summer’ (’61), as a teenager abroad falling for Kenneth More’s older, mysterious gentleman. A terrific performance (but a bad experience) as a disturbed patient in John Huston’s ‘Freud’ (’62), was followed by a more cheery turn as the seductive Sophie Western in the Oscar-winning ‘Tom Jones’ (’63). Susannah then supported William Holden in the mediocre drama ‘7th Dawn’, before being stranded in the desert with Stanley Baker and Stuart Whitman, in the excellent survival adventure ‘Sands of the Kalahari’ (’65).
1966 saw Susannah in the enjoyable caper movie ‘Kaleidoscope’, with Warren Beatty, then playing the daughter of Paul Scofield’s Thomas More, in another multi Oscar-winner ‘A Man for All Seasons’. Not afraid of challenging roles, in 1968 Susannah starred in Robert Aldrich’s ‘The Killing of Sister George’, and gave an excellent performance as the child-like lover of Beryl Reid’s older, bitter actress. A fairly graphic sex scene between York’s character and Coral Browne’s BBC executive, earned the movie the dreaded ‘X’ rating, and in the UK, this controversial scene was cut considerably. 1969 was a big year for Susannah. After co-starring in two big budget war movies, ‘Oh! What a Lovely War’, and ‘Battle of Britain’, York had her best role yet, as the desperate Jean Harlow wannabe; Alice LeBlanc, in Sydney Pollack’s superb drama ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t they?’ Susannah was marvellous in an emotionally charged role, and it’s surprising that she did not have fond memories of this wonderfully gruelling film. York’s terrific turn earned her an Oscar nomination and Bafta award, and it remains my favourite of her many great performances.
Happier back in the UK, Susannah began the Seventies playing Jane Eyre to George C. Scott’s Edward Rochester, in Delbert Mann’s acclaimed TV film ‘Jane Eyre’(’70). Her beautiful interpretation of the oft-filmed classic earned her an Emmy nomination. Next up was the little-seen drama ‘Country Dance’, in which she has an incestuous relationship with her brother, played by Peter O’Toole. In 1972 Susannah had one of her best roles, in Robert Altman’s excellent psychological drama; ‘Images’. York won a well deserved Best Actress Award at Cannes for her exceptional performance as the disturbed Cathryn, a children’s author who may or may not have killed her husband. A more lighter film followed in 1974 with ‘Gold’, an ok adventure with Roger Moore, then the slightly better, though barely noticed; ‘Maids’ (’75) with Glenda Jackson. After playing a wanton army widow in ‘Conduct Unbecoming’ (’75), York re-teamed with Roger Moore for the comedy ‘That Lucky Touch’ (’75). Susannah then travelled to Australia for Tim Burstall’s bawdy adventure ‘Eliza Fraser’, then bared all in the minor British horror ‘The Shout’ (’78), alongside Alan Bates and John Hurt. After supporting Elliot Gould’s crafty bank teller in the superb Canadian thriller ‘Silent Partner’, she was Superman’s mother Lara, in the global hit ‘Superman’ (’78). York then co-starred with Charlton Heston in the Egyptian set horror ‘The Awakening’ (’80), before re-teaming with Elliot Gould for the pleasant romantic comedy ‘Falling in Love Again’ (’80).
1981 saw Susannah play Martin Sheen’s wife in the entertaining caper ‘Loophole’, along with Albert Finney. York then had a hit playing a doctor in the popular Second World War television series ‘We’ll Meet Again’ (’82). After playing Mrs Cratchit in the excellent TV movie version of ‘The Christmas Carol’ (’84), York’s career slowed down, and apart from a couple of television movies and a voice-only appearance in Superman IV (’87), Susannah would not have another decent role until Pier’s Haggard’s excellent romantic drama ‘A Summer Story’ (’88). Another brief television series followed in 1991 when she played a widow in the horse racing drama ‘Trainer’. A quiet period followed with only the 1997 romantic comedy ‘Loop’ standing out. In 2003 York played Radha Mitchell’s mother in the mediocre Australian thriller ‘Visitors’, and then had a brief run in two popular UK hospital dramas; ‘Holby City’ and ‘Casualty’ (2003-04). A good little movie came York’s way in 2005, with a cameo appearance in the London set comedy ‘The Gigolos’, before making one of her final movie appearances in the 2008 fantasy drama ‘Franklyn’, which starred Ryan Philippe and Eva Green.
Susannah York had married at the start of her career in 1960, and had a son (born in ‘73) and a daughter (born in ’72) before divorcing husband Michael Wells in 1980. After a distinguished career spanning fifty years, including some noted theatre productions, Susannah died of bone marrow cancer on January 15th 2011, aged 72. One of the finest English actresses of her era, Susannah always did things on her own terms, and in continually challenging herself, she left us with some fantastic performances. A tough cookie indeed, how many other young actresses have punched John Huston?
Favourite Movie: The Silent Partner Favourite Performance: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
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