British Actors Archives

Susannah York

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.

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?

The above article can also be accessed online here.

Ken Hutchison

Ken Hutchison’s best known role was as one of the yokel band of thugs who set upon Dustin Hoffman in “Straw Dogs” , Sam Peckinpah;s extremely violent film. He also played the lead villian in “Ladyhawke”. He was a moody, broody agressive Heathcliff in the 1978 adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”. He played menancing thugs in such series as “The Sweeney2, “Hazell” and “Minder”. He made one film in Hollywood in 1971, “The Wrath of God” with Robert Mitchum and Rita Hayworth. Interesting article on “Straw Dogs” on the “Guardian” website here.

Marjorie Rhodes. TCM Overview.

Marjorie Rhodes was the British character actress par excellance. She was born in 1897 in Kingston Upon Hull. Whenever she turned up in a film, you knew that you were going to see excellent characterisation. Throughout the 40’s and 50’s she regularly turned up on films usually as a battleaxe landlady or dominating mother-in-law. It was particularly pleasing to see her obtain a major starring role in her late sixties in the movie “The Family Way” with John Mills and Hayley Mills in 1966. She again played a mother-in-law but with such warmth and tenderness that she would break your heart. She died in Hove, Brighton in 1978. Excellent clip on Marjorie Rhodes on Youtube, can be viewed here.

TCM Overview:

Marjorie Rhodes was an actress who had a successful Hollywood career. Rhodes started her acting career landing roles in such films as “Escape” (1948) with Rex Harrison, “Enchantment” (1949) with David Niven and “Private Angelo” (1949). She also appeared in “Decameron Nights” (1953) starring Joan Fontaine and the Stewart Granger adaptation “Footsteps in the Fog” (1955). She kept working in film throughout the fifties, starring in the thriller “Blonde Sinner” (1956) with Diana Dors, the comedic adaptation “To Dorothy a Son” (1956) with Shelley Winters and the “The Passionate Stranger” (1957) film with Ralph Richardson.

She also appeared in the Stanley Baker crime feature “Hell Drivers” (1958) and the dramatic adaptation “Gideon’s Day” (1959) with Jack Hawkins.

In the latter part of her career, she tackled roles in the Sybil Thorndike comedy “Alive and Kicking” (1964), the Stuart Whitman comedy adventure “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” (1965) and “The Family Way” (1966) with Hayley Mills.

She also appeared in “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” (1968) and “Spring and Port Wine” (1970). Rhodes more recently acted in the horror film “Hands of the Ripper” (1971) with Eric Porter. Rhodes passed away in July 1979 at the age of 82

Brian McFarlane’s excellent entry on Marjorie Rhodes in “Encyclopedia of British Film”:

Whatever she played, there was a whiff of no-nonsense Yorkshire pudding about this great character actress. On stage with a concert party in 1920, in London from 1926, enjoying success in such forthright roles as Robert Donat’s mum Mrs Hardacre in “The Cure for Love” in 19456, a role she repeated in 1949 film, and the harridan ‘Emma Hornett’ in “Watch It Sailor” in 1961.

She could be tough and bossy, like the Councillor, Miss Mouncey in “Time, Gentlemen Please” in 1952, droll like the stroppy, inebriated cook in “When We Are Married” in 1943 or dizzy bigamist ‘Suzie’ in “The Weak and the Wicked” or dignified like the prison wardness in “Yield to the Night” in 1956. But two roles, perhaps stand out. One is true-hearted ‘Mrs Mumford’, the former barmaid who married an Oxford graduate (‘He had a lovely life. he never did a day’s work – I would’nt let him) and who galvanises the Women’s Institute in “Great Day” in 1945. The other is a performance of extraordinary melting sympathy as the understanduing mother in “The FamilyWay” in 1966, who brings the accumulated wisdom of her own married life to bear on her son to get his started. it is the jewel in the crown of a remarkable career.

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Alan Lake studied at RADA and commenced his professional acting career in 1964. Four years later while making a television film “The Inquisitors”, he met and subsequently married Diana Dors. In 1970 they appeared together to acclaim at the Royal Court Theatra in London in the play “Three Months’s Gone”. He guest starred in many television productions throughout the 1970’s. Diana Dors died in May 1984 and Alan Lake died five months later. They had a fourteen son Jason. To view article on Alan Lake’s career, please click here.

by Pete Stampede

When it comes to their public profile, some performers are doomed to be always (sometimes only) mentioned in the same breath as their more famous partner, and Alan Lake was one such, forever linked with the ultimate sex symbol for 1950’s Britain, Diana Dors, whose third husband he was. And, despite a promising start, the nearest Lake (born 1940) got to a tailor-made acting category was an endless succession of “third villain from the left” roles in series episodes, of which this segment is a typical example. Added to which, in 1964, ABC, scared by Honor Blackman moving on, reputedly considered replacing The Avengers with a series starring Dors (who had been a Rank starlet along with Honor), to be called The Unusual Miss Mulberry. It was never made (and, considering The Avengers was on the brink of its greatest commercial success, shows how much TV executives know!), but at least makes Lake’s casting in this transitory episode strangely apt.

His first TV credit was as a policeman in The Midnight Men, “The Man From Miditz” (BBC, 1964), directed by live TV pioneer Rudolph Cartier, and starring another 50’s film star, Eva Bartok, supported by Andrew Keir and future Doctor Who Patrick Troughton. He also had minor roles in Dennis Potter’s Stand Up Nigel Barton (BBC, 1965), singing in a pub where the Oxford-educated hero tries to show his Dad that he hasn’t changed, and in one episode of a BBC2 serial of Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls (BBC, 1965), with John Ronane, seen in “Murdersville” and “Take Me To Your Leader”, as the main character Robert Jordan. Films included John Boorman’s incongruous feature debut, the Dave Clark Five vehicle Catch Us If You Can (1965, US: Having A Wild Weekend), and two directed by actors, Sky West and Crooked (1965), directed by John Mills and starring daughter Hayley, with Lake as a gypsy (he was actually of gypsy extraction), and Albert Finney’s Charlie Bubbles(67), on which he was also Finney’s stand-in.

His episodic television run had already started, with The Saint, “Locate and Destroy” (ATV/ITC, 1966), as one of a trio of Israeli agents – the others were Harry Landisand, by an odd coincidence, Honor Blackman’s then husband Maurice Kaufmann, Redcap, “The Moneylenders” (ABC, 1966) starring John Thaw, and Department S, “Dead Men Die Twice” (ATV/ITC, 1969), as ‘The Dandy’, giving Peter Wyngardesome competition in the flared, frilled fashion victim stakes. His roles in more serious dramas included Thirty Minute Theatre, “Thief” (Rediffusion, 1968) with Sian Phillips, written by Alun Owen and directed by Alan Clarke, and another anthology series entry, The Company Of Five, “Arthur Gifford Is Alive And Well In Stoke Newington” (LWT, 1968), with John Neville, once a leading classical actor and rival of Richard Burton, now, sadly, probably best known as the Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files. The Contenders (Granada, 1969), directed by future film man Mike Newell among others, was a four-part serial from a novel by John Wain, about bare-knuckle boxing in the North of England, with the tragic, in retrospect, teaming in the leads of Lake and Victor Henry, an actor specialising in angry young men roles, who just as his career seemed on an upswing had a major car accident, leaving him in a coma from which he never recovered.

Lake married Dors in 1968, at a time when her attempt to launch herself on Hollywood had decisively failed (second husband Richard Dawson, a regular on Hogan’s Heroes and host of Family Feud, actually did better there than her), her films were largely supporting roles, and she was even resorting to personal appearances in Northern working men’s clubs to keep in the public eye. (And, to be honest, her increasing weight didn’t help matters either.) In 1970, the couple collected good reviews for a play at the Royal Court, Three Months Gone; but shortly after this, Lake was arrested and briefly imprisoned following a fight in a pub. Not long after his release, he suffered a near-fatal riding accident. And to cap it all, once he started working again, he hardly seemed to play anything other than threatening types in TV episodes; his style of acting seemed to become fixed around this time too, with a constant trademark (intentionally or otherwise) being his accompanying the end of a sentence with a menacing glare of his already bulging eyes. Examples were: Madigan, “The London Beat” (NBC/Univeral, 1972), as a local henchman of David Bauer; The Adventurer, “Icons Are Forever” (ATV/ITC, 1972) with Gene Barry, one of the last and weakest ITC series; Softly, Softly, Task Force, “See What You’ve Done” (BBC, 1974), with Stratford Johns; and the first episode (barring the pilot telefilm Regan) of The Sweeney, “Ringer” (Thames, 1975), as partner in crime to Ian Hendry and Brian Blessed. (I’ve really gone off on one here David, so cut this down if you like!) An indication of Lake’s role is that he didn’t have any really notable dialogue or action, in an episode full of bits worth rewinding the tape for; Hendry, looking alarmingly like one of the henchmen in 101 Dalmations, right down to the flat cap, croaking “Aw, the bloody Sweeney! That’s all we need, innit!”; Blessed spitting “Cozzer!” (derogatory slang for policeman) at John Thaw, after knocking him to the ground; and most famously, Thaw’s warning to one of Blessed’s underlings, “We’re the Sweeney, son! and we haven’t had any dinner!”

Probably, Lake’s best film role was as an incompetent singer, appropriately called Jack Daniels, replaced by his fellow band members, in Flame (1974), starring the rock group Slade more or less as themselves; it’s better rated now than then, seen as being more of a realistic drama than the expected musical lark. In his recent autobiography, lead singer Noddy Holder eloquently described Lake at the time as “a well-known character in acting circles of the early 70’s, but he was also a notorious nutter.” The same year had Lake in the title role of The Swordsman (1974), a sequel by exploitation director Lindsay Shonteff to his earlier, equally obscure Big Zapper(1972); two years earlier, Lake and Dors had both been in The Amorous Milkman(1972), one of the endless run of British sex comedies that regrettably characterised the decade, incongruously written and directed by an actor usually seen either as Nazis or camp villains. It set the tone for the couple’s films, which together and separately, throughout the 70’s and early 80’s, just got steadily worse; the details really are too embarrassing to go into.

In contrast, though still in supporting roles, Lake kept appearing in entries in the prestige drama slot Play For Today, most notably Trevor Griffiths’ Destiny (BBC, 78), and Alan Bleasdale’s The Black Stuff (BBC, 1980), the pilot for Bleasdale’s landmark series The Boys From The Black Stuff, as one of a suspicious pair who may or may not be sincere in offering the unemployed Scousers work. The guest roles kept coming: Doctor Who, “Underworld” (BBC, 1978) was a space-set reworking of Jason and the Argonauts, with James Maxwell as ‘Jackson’, and Lake as ‘Herrick’; the latter also did Blake’s 7, “Terminal” (BBC, 1980). It was back to detective series, and (mainly) straightforward villainy for Lake in; Hazell, “Hazell Settles the Accounts” (Thames, 1978), a series about a Cockney private eye, and another one well-liked at the time but which never gets repeated; Juliet Bravo, “Trouble At T’Mill” (BBC, 1980), as a loudmouthed tycoon in an utterly routine (but long-running) series about a policewoman; Rumpole’s Return (Thames, 1980), a feature-length comeback for Leo McKern, leading to Rumpole Of The Bailey resuming as a series; Dick Turpin, “The Secret Folk” (Seacastle/LWT, 1982), as a refugee, in a popular Saturday evening series with Richard O’Sullivan as the highwayman; The Gentle Touch, “Joker” (LWT, 1982), a show with the same premise as Juliet Bravo, really; Hart To Hart, “Passing Chance” (ABC/Columbia, 1983), filmed in Greece but with a largely British cast, including Lake, playing Greeks and Cypriots—that’s US TV casting; Bergerac, “Tug of War” (BBC, 1984), a middlebrow, long-running effort set in Jersey, and Lytton’s Diary, “Lady in the Mask” (Thames, 1985), starring Peter Bowles. The latter, and an episode of Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense, “Paint Me A Murder” (TCF, 1985) which took some time to work its way round the ITV regions, were broadcast posthumously. His last film was Don’t Open Till Christmas (84), as a loon killing Santa Clauses, in an inept British slasher directed by and starring the well past-it Edmund Purdom, with Caroline Munro in a cameo.

1999 saw The Blonde Bombshell, a tacky TV movie biopic of Dors, played by two actresses, neither of whom looked anything like her; this is an indication of the way British TV is going, trying to do the kind of thing Americans have been doing for years. It ended by depicting Lake, overcome with grief after Dors’ protracted death from cancer in 1984, shooting himself shortly afterwards, on the anniversary of their first meeting. This sounds like just the sort of conclusion a sensationalist TV movie would have. What makes it even sadder is it’s true.

Art Malik. TCM Overview.

Art Malik was born in Punjab in Pakistan in 1952. His family emigrated to England when he was four. When he was in his late teens he started acting with the Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He acheived international fame for his role of Hari Kumar in the television epic about the Indian Raj “The Jewel in the Crown”. He had a major role in the Timothy Dalton 007 film “The Living Daylights”. He is featured in the 2010 film “The Wolfman”.

TCM Overview:

Art Malik will be remembered for quite some time as Aziz, the terrorist going to his death riding a missile in James Cameron’s “True Lies” (1994), but he is a well-traveled stage actor and is familiar for his many miniseries and features based in India. Born in Pakistan but raised in London, Malik began acting after losing interest in his business studies. He spent the 1970s on stages throughout England performing in the classics and contemporary plays alike.

Billed as Athar Malik, he made his film debut in Peter Brook’s “Meetings With Remarkable Men” (1979), based on the memoirs of the meditative cult figure G.I. Gurdjieff. 1984 proved to be a breakout year for Malik. He first came to the attention of American audiences as Zarin in the HBO miniseries “The Far Pavilions,” co-starring Ben Cross and Amy Irving. He was seen on the big screen as Mahoumed Ali in David Lean’s final feature, “A Passage to India,” about the waning days of British influence. And he gained critical acclaim and widespread notice as Hari Kumar, the gentle Indian who romances an Englishwoman (Susan Wooldridge) much to the consternation of a British officer (Tim Piggott-Smith).

The success of these ventures brought Malik to Hollywood, where he appeared in the short-lived medical drama “Hothouse” (ABC, 1988) as a young therapist involved with an older female doctor (Michael Learned). On the big screen, he was an Afghan rebel leader who teams with James Bond (Timothy Dalton) in “The Living Daylights” (1987). In Roland Joffe’s “City of Joy” (1992), Malik portrayed a brutal gangster who demands graft from the local inhabitants of the area. Opposing him are an American doctor (Patrick Swayze) and a woman who operates a medical clinic (Pauline Collins). While the film was uneven and failed to win an audience, Malik’s villainous turn caught the attention of James Cameron who cast the actor as Aziz in “True Lies” without even meeting him. Aziz gave Malik a chance to demonstrate further his range, making the portrayal of the fanatic terrorist believable even in the cartoon aura of the film. He subsequently was featured in the acclaimed British drama “Clockwork Mice” and appeared as the sinister rival to the King in the Disney-produced “A Kid in King Arthur’s Court” (both 1995).

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Interview with Art Malik on “Digital Spy” can be read here.

Hugo Speer TCM Overview

Hugo Speer began his acting career with roles in such British series as “The Bill” and Heartbeat”. He played the part of Guy in the hughly successful “The Full Monty”. In “The Interpreter” he played the brother of Nicole Kidman. He has also appeared in episodes of “Skins”.

TCM Overview:

English actor Hugo Speer first became known to audiences for his role in the smash-hit comedy “The Full Monty” and later had recurring roles on the TV shows “Echo Beach” and “Sorted.” Born in the Yorkshire city of Harrogate, he studied acting at the Arts Educational School. His first roles came in the ’90s, playing a small part in the feature “Bhaji on the Beach” and appearing in the TV drama “The Bill.” In 1997, he earned a recurring role on the drama “McCallum” and achieved international fame as one of the six unemployed steel workers in “The Full Monty.”

He had a subsequent starring role in the musical comedy “Swing” in 1999, and appeared in the 2005 Hollywood thriller “The Interpreter.” On television, he played Sergeant George in the acclaimed miniseries “Bleak House” and starred in the drama “Sorted.” He subsequently co-starred with Martine McCutcheon and Jason Donovan in the family drama “Echo Beach” and went on to appear in the supernatural series “Bedlam.” In 2011, he was featured in another show involving the paranormal, the Syfy series “Haven,” and the same year he appeared in the romantic drama “Late Bloomers,” starring William Hurt and Isabella Rossellini.

Interview on the BBC Website can be read here.

Nicholas Clay obituary in “The Guardian” in 2000.

Nicholas Clay was born in London in 1946. He acted on stage throughout the seventies and also made some films. In 1980 Hohn Boorman cast him as Sir Lancelot in “Excalibur” which was a huge success. He also starred in “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and “Evil Under the Sun. He made many guest appearances on British television. He was married to the actress Lorna Heilbron. Nicholas Clay died in 2000.

His “Guardian” obituary:Nicholas Clay, who has died of cancer aged 53, was a superb Lancelot in John Boorman’s film Excalibur (1981), a prominent player during Sir Laurence Olivier’s golden Old Vic period in the 1970s, a television star, and an actor who loved teaching – and was good at it.

Nicholas Clay in “The Road Builder” 1971 MGM ** B.D.M.

We first met in the early 1970s, at the Old Vic. Nick had named parts, I was “as cast”. He was quite the most beautiful man I had ever seen, gallingly handsome and awesomely athletic. Olivier’s company enjoyed hit after hit – and Nick was in most of them, notably Jumpers, The Misanthrope, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Equus. After that, he went with The Misanthrope to Broadway.

His first film had been The Night Digger in 1971. A year later, he played Charles Darwin in The Darwin Adventure, and the decade ended with Zulu Dawn (1979). In the 1980s, he appeared in Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981), Evil Under The Sun (1982), Sleeping Beauty (1987), Lionheart (1987), and, of course, Excalibur. He wore a lot of armour – but that comes with heroic acting, and Nick did that with epic braggadocio. He could swash a buckle.

He also appeared in numerous television series. He was the Earl of Southampton in John Mortimer’s William Shakespeare (1978) and starred in Virtual Murder, Picture Of Dorian Gray, The Three Musketeers and Gentlemen And Players, in which he shared top billing with Brian Protheroe. Nancy Banks Smith wrote: “Brian Protheroe looks as if he’s been pressed between the leaves of a book. Nicholas Clay looks like he’s been hit over the head by a brick.” He loved quoting that. Self-deprecation was not a problem.

His stage work continued. There was a world tour of She Stoops To Conquer, and, at Chichester, he played in The Confederacy and A Month In The Country, opposite Dorothy Tutin.

Nick was born in Streatham, south London, to Rose and Bill Clay, a sergeant in the Royal Engineers. After a nomadic army childhood, the family settled in Kent. There is a clan of Clays in Kent – with no tradition of theatre or the performing arts. Dan Willis, a teacher at Upbury Manor school, kick-started Nick’s love of theatre and he was soon performing with the Little Medway Theatre Club; he would later become its patron. But his defining moment was seeing Leo McKern in Peer Gynt at the Old Vic. The dye was cast. He worked as a hod carrier for two years to pay his way through the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; in later years, he became an associate there, active in development and fundraising work.Advertisement

Nick married Lorna Heilbron, a psychotherapist and actress, in 1980, and they had a daughter, Ella. After our Old Vic period, we had drifted apart for a bit. Our friendship rekindled and developed at about the time his second daughter, Madge, was born, 14 years ago. He and Lorna had been visiting Gillian Barge at her cottage at Sibton, in Suffolk; I was there as her partner.

He loved nature, and he loved that place. It suited his spiritual and practical sides. He was a very practical man, a collector of tools that he could use expertly. His favoured charity was the John Muir Trust For The Conservation Of Wild And Open Spaces.

Lately, Nick had been terrific as Ernest in Design For Living. It transferred from the Donmar Warehouse to the Gielgud theatre. Last year, he appeared in Max Gold’s 50 Revolutions at the Whitehall. It was interesting, experimental stuff. He was a regular in Channel 4’s Psychos, quite the most interesting drama series of last year. He was doing a lot of teaching at the Actors Centre and the Academy Of Live And Performing Arts.

Nicky faced his illness with enormous bravery, as I knew he would, without self-pity, sentimentality or “why me?” anger. He was open and candid about it, and thrilled when he heard that his old school was naming its new arts facility the Nicholas Clay Centre. He was a lovely man, and I am a better person for having known him.

At the end of Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Ector Maris addresses the corpse of his friend and brother, Lancelot: “Thou were the courtliest knight that ever bare shield; and thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse . . . and thou were the kindest man that ever strake with sword; and thou were the goodliest person ever came among the press of knights . . . Then there was weeping and dolour out of measure”

Nick is survived by Lorna, their two daughters and his mother, Rose.

Clive Merrison

Nicholas Anthony Phillip Clay, actor, born September 18 1946; died May 25 2000

His “Guardian” obituary can be viewed here.

Bill Travers obituary in “The Independent” by David Shipman in 1994.

Bill Travers was a British actor and well-known animal rights activist. He was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1922. He began making films in the early 1950’s gaining larger parts by the middle of the decade. He went to Hollywood where me made films witch such actresses as Eleanor Parker, Ava Gardner and Jennifer Jones. Long married to Virginia McKenna, they made several films together including “Born Free” . Bill Travers died in 1994.

Bill Travers features extensively in his wife Virginia McKenna’s book “The Life in my Years”.Independent obituary by David Shipman:

BILL TRAVERS was an actor of rugged good looks and a cheery personality at a time when the British film industry was not much interested in creating or maintaining stars. Like such contemporaries as Michael Rennie and Richard Todd he was wooed by the Hollywood studios, but he is best remembered for his British movies.

The younger brother of Linden Travers, the charming vamp of the Thirties and Forties, he had much experience in the theatre before making his film debut, in Conspirator (1949). He was first noticed as one of the PoWs in The Wooden Horse (1950) and then as the teacher keen on cricket in Anthony Asquith’s film of Terence Rattigan’s play The Browning Version (1951). After a number of other supporting roles he played Benvolio in a film which has seemingly gone missing – Romeo and Juliet (1954), gorgeously filmed on locations in Verona by Renato Castellani, who persuaded the Rank Organisation to let him have an amateur Juliet, Susan Shentall, and an unconvincing Romeo, Laurence Harvey: but the director George Cukor liked Travers sufficiently to cast him in MGM’s ambitious Bhowani Junction (1956) – much to the actor’s satisfaction, as the author of the original novel, John Masters, had been his Brigade Major when he had served in the Chindits. Travers also felt that his six years in the East had given him an insight into the vulnerability of the Eurasian railway superintendent that he played – as well as teaching him the accent that the role needed. The stars were Stewart Granger and Ava Gardner.

Before the film was shown Travers was about to join Windsor rep when he was asked to test for Geordie (1955), the first venture of the writer-producer-director team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat following the death of Alexander Korda. They had put their own money into the project, but had difficulty persuading the distributor, British Lion, to let them cast a virtual unknown in the title-role – that of a puny Highland lad who takes a correspondence course in physical education and ends up throwing the hammer for the British Olympic team at Melbourne. The critic Gavin Lambert wrote: ‘Bill Travers is a young player of individual gifts, and he conveys the shy, honest simplicity of Geordie most pleasingly; this is a performance attractively free of mannerism, and has a genuine freshness.’

The film was a great success, both in Britain and in the United States, overshadowing Travers’s stint as an earnest young lawyer in Footsteps In The Fog (1955), which starred Stewart Granger and his then wife, Jean Simmons, both being villainous. Granger was under contract to MGM, which did not find him entirely docile. That studio signed the more amenable Travers after liking his work in Bhowani Junction, and cast him as Robert Browning in the remake of The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1956), directed by Sidney Franklin, who had made the original screen version in 1934. John Gielgud offered a more convincing character study of Mr Barrett than Charles Laughton had done; and Jennifer Jones was suitably inhibited as Elizabeth.

Henrietta Barrett was played by Virginia McKenna, who became Mrs Travers in 1957. They received a splendid wedding present in William Rose’s script for The Smallest Show On Earth (1957), an affectionate and funny comedy about a young couple who inherit a flea-pit and keep it open against the competition of the supercinema round the corner. Their antique staff consisted of Margaret Rutherford, Peter Sellers and Bernard Miles, and they were all of them delightful in this Launder and Gilliat production directed by Basil Dearden.

Travers followed with a couple of flops. The Seventh Sin (1957)was MGM’s injudicious remake of Somerset Maugham’s story The Painted Veil, which had starred Garbo. Eleanor Parker was no substitute as the unfaithful wife and Travers could not make sense – nobody could have – out of the cuckolded husband. Passionate Summer (1958) was Rank’s retitling of Richard Mason’s best-seller The Shadow and The Peak. The film’s director, Rudolf Cartier, had achieved an eminence in television but proved ill at ease with a movie for the large screen; Travers plays a schoolteacher in Jamaica, and McKenna the air hostess with whom he is in love.

For “The Independent” Obituary of Bill Travers, please click here.

Though McKenna had provided Rank with two of its biggest hits of the decade (Carve Her Name With Pride and A Town Like Alice), she and Travers became as a result of Passionate Summer – in Travers’s own words, ‘less than favourites with the Rank Organisation’. He returned to Launder and Gilliat for The Bridal Path (1959), another Highland story, but it did not repeat the success of Geordie. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and made his Broadway debut in an army comedy, A Cook For Mr General, which folded after 28 performances.

Since he and McKenna were no longer box-office names they were surprised to be cast as the Kenyan game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy, in Born Free (1966), based on Joy Adamson’s memoir about bringing up the lion-cub Elsa. The result was seen by almost as many millions who had loved the book, leading to a Hollywood offer for Travers – to play a cavalry lieutenant alongside James Garner and Sidney Poitier in Duel At Diablo (1966).

But, paradoxically, Born Free lessened the Travers’ interest in movies per se (and he kept the beard he had grown for it). They declined to appear in the sequel, Living Free (1972), and were replaced by Nigel Davenport and Susan Hampshire, but in the meantime had made a documentary, The Lions Are Free (1967), as well as two more films concerning animals, Ring of Bright Water (1970) and An Elephant Called Slowly. They devoted their lives to animal causes, never afraid of those whose views they challenged. Playing Joy in Born Free, ‘a real person, who was not only alive, but there during much of the filming, made it a unique experience’, McKenna said in 1989. ‘The relationship that developed between Bill and me and the lions sowed the seeds of the work that Bill and I do in our charity, Zoo Check, now renamed The Born Free Foundation.’

Belinda Lee was born in Budleigh, Devon in England in 1935. In 1954 she won a Rank contract. At first she was used as comic foil to the likes of Norman Widsom and Benny Hill. Gradually she began to get more dramatic roles and by the late 50’s she had some substantial roles behind her e.g. “Footsteps in the Fog”, “Dangerous Exiles” and “Nor the Moon by Night”. She also made some biblical epics on the European continent. Sadly she was killed in a car accident at the age of 26 in California in 1961.Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Green-eyed blonde bombshell Belinda Lee was born in Devon, England to a hotel owner (Robert Esmond Lee) and florist (Stella Mary Graham) on June 15, 1935. Nicknamed Billie, she was an incredible beauty while still in her early teens, attending the Rookesbury Park Prep School at Hampshire and St. Margaret’s boarding school at Devon. Expressing an avid interest in acting, she focused on dramatics at the Tudor Arts Academy at Surrey (1947), then gained entry via a scholarship at London’s RADA in which she made her stage debut in “Point of Departure”.

The sharp-faced Belinda was noticed by Rank Studio director Val Guest while performing at the Nottingham Playhouse. Artificially groomed in starlet parts, the first being The Runaway Bus (1954), Guest went on and helped her obtain a movie contract with Rank while introducing her to one of Rank’s prime still photographers Cornel Lucas. That same year she married the much older Lucas, who helped promote her as a sex goddess with thousands of glamorous photographs.

Initially promoted as a docile young beauty, her parts gradually grew sexier. Belinda worked intently in films but found frustration typed as a buxom, peroxide blonde. Boxed in as a second-string Diana Dors, she played a sensuous foil to Benny Hill in Who Done It? (1956) and was served up as sexy window dressing opposite both John Gregson inMiracle in Soho (1957) and Louis Jourdan in Dangerous Exile (1958).

Estranged now from Lucas, Belinda headed offh to Italy for a change of pace and atmosphere but only found more of the temptress roles she sought to avoid — Aphrodite, Messalina and Lucrezia Borgia — in lowbudget spectacles. She also became preoccupied with married men, one being Prince Filippo Orsini, whose position with the Vatican led to a major scandal. This particular turbulent romance and a dissipating relationship with the Rank Studio (her last picture for the studio was Elephant Gun (1958) with Michael Craig) triggered a near-fatal suicide attempt with pills in January of 1958. She later divorced Lucas and continued her torrid affair with Prince Orsini, and then others.

It all ended much too soon for the 26-year-old when she decided to join her current love, the much older Italian playboy/journalist/film producer Gualtiero Jacopetti, on a trip to Las Vegas where he was working on a documentary (Mondo cane (1962) [“The Woman in the World”]. While she, Jacopetti and co-producer Paolo Cavara were auto passengers on their way to Los Angeles from Vegas, their driver lost control of the speeding car and flipped. The 25-year-old actress was thrown from the car and died of a fractured skull and broken neck. The other three escaped with fairly minor injuries. Cremated in the States, her ashes were eventually returned to Rome and placed in the Campo Cestio Cemetary.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.ne

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Susannah York

Susannah York obituary in “The Independent” in 2011.

Ken Hutchison

Marjorie Rhodes

Marjorie Rhodes. TCM Overview.

Alan Lake

Art Malik

Art Malik. TCM Overview.

Hugo Speer

Hugo Speer TCM Overview

Nicholas Clay

Nicholas Clay obituary in “The Guardian” in 2000.

Bill Travers

Bill Travers obituary in “The Independent” by David Shipman in 1994.

Belinda Lee

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