British Actors Archives - Page 19 of 138

Dave Prowse

Wikipedia entry:

David Prowse, MBE (born 1 July 1935) is an English bodybuilder,^[1] weightlifter and actor. He played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, though the character’s voice was provided by James Earl Jones. He also played the Green Cross Code man, a character used in British road safety advertising.

Within the United Kingdom, Prowse is also well known as the Green Cross Code Man, a superhero invented to promote a British road safety campaign for children in 1975. As a result of his association with the campaign, which ran between 1971 and 1990, he received the MBE in 2000.^[16]

He had a role as F. Alexander’s bodyguard Julian in the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, in which he was noticed by the future Star Wars director George Lucas.^[17] He played a circus strongman in 1972’s Vampire Circus, a Minotaur in the 1972 Doctor Who serial The Time Monster, and an android named Copper in The Tomorrow People in 1973. He appeared in an episode of Space: 1999, The Beta Cloud in 1976 right before he was cast as Darth Vader. Around that time, he appeared as the Black Knight in the Terry Gilliam film Jabberwocky (1977).

He had a small role as Hotblack Desiato‘s bodyguard in the 1981 BBC TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He appeared in the first series of Ace of Wandson LWT and as a bodyguard in Callan. He played Charles, the duke’s wrestler, in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of As You Like It in 1978. Prowse played Frankenstein’s monster twice, in The Horror of Frankenstein and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell.

Prowse made two uncredited appearances on The Benny Hill Show. On Hill’s first show for Thames Television in 1969, he played a briefs-clad muscleman in the “Ye Olde Wishing Well” quickie, and in 1984 he showed off his muscles in a sketch set to the song “Stupid Cupid”. The earlier routine was also featured in the 1974 film The Best of Benny Hill, in which he was credited. Amongst his many non-speaking roles, Prowse played a major speaking role in “Portrait of Brenda”, the penultimate episode of The Saint broadcast in 1969.

In May 2010, he played Frank Bryan in The Kindness of Strangers, an independent British film produced by Queen Bee Films. The film screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Prowse was brought up on the Southmead housing estate in Bristol, winning a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School. Prowse attended Bristol Grammar School. In his teens, Prowse was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm) tall, and developed an interest in bodybuilding. His early jobs included a bouncer at a dance hall, where he met his future wife, and a lifeguard at Henleaze Swimming Pool. Following his successes from 1961 in the British heavyweight weightlifting championship, he left Bristol in 1963 to work for a London weightlifting company.Prowse has been married since 1963 and is the father of three children.^[20] He is a prominent supporter of Bristol Rugby Club.

Maureen Pryor was born in 1922 in Limerick, Ireland, to an English father and an Irish mother.

She appeared in the West End in Seán O’Casey‘s Red Roses for Me, Noël Coward‘s Peace In Our Time, John Griffith Bowen‘s After the Rain (also on Broadway), Doris Lessing’s Play with a Tiger^[2] and plays such as Little Boxes and Where’s Tedd.^[3] She was a member of the Stables Theatre Company. She also appeared on Broadway in the premiere season of Boeing-Boeing (1965).^[

In Manchester, she appeared in Eugene O’Neill‘s one-act play Before Breakfast, directed by Bill Gilmour. She played Mistress Quickly in Terry Hand’s 1975/76 production of Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She made over 500 television appearances, including a Play for Today, “O Fat White Woman” (1971),^[4] adapted by William Trevor from his own short story, and Ken Russell‘s television film Song of Summer (1968), in which she played Jelka Delius, the long-suffering wife of the composer Frederick Delius. Russell cast her again in his cinema film The Music Lovers (1970) as Tchaikovsky‘s mother-in-law. In the 1974 BBC television film Shoulder to Shoulder she played the composer Dame Ethel Smyth.

She died in 1977.

Mark Bazeley was born on September 30, 1970 in Wantage, Oxfordshire, England. He is an actor, known for The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Queen (2006) and The Damned United (2009). In 2015 was featured in the hit UTV series “Home Fires”.

Wayne Fontana was born in 1945. Fontana was born in Manchester, Lancashire, and took his stage name from Elvis Presley‘s drummer, D.J. Fontana. In 1963 he formed his backing group, the Mindbenders, and secured a recording contract, coincidentally, withFontana Records. He remained under contract to the label after parting with the Mindbenders. He soldiered on alone, using musicians working under the name of the Opposition, notably Frank Renshaw (lead guitar) (born 22 June 1943, Wythenshawe, Manchester); Bernie Burns (drums); Roy “Rossi” Henshall (bass); Rod Gerrard (guitar, ex-Herman’s Hermits), and Phil Keane (drums), among others. Sometimes the band was billed as the Mindbenders, sometimes just as the Wayne Fontana Band. Fontana’s most successful solo single release was also his last, “Pamela, Pamela”, which reached No 11 in the UK Singles Chart early in 1967. Sadly Wayne died in August 2020.

Obituary in “Daily Telegraph”

Wayne Fontana, who has died aged 74, was the founder and former lead singer of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, a Manchester-based band who shot to fame in 1965 with The Game of Love, which topped the charts in the US and went to No 2 in the UK.

Due to “musical differences” with other members, however, Fontana abruptly left the group in the middle of a concert in October 1965. Subsequently the more concisely named Mindbenders released Groovy Kind of Love, which went to No 2 on both sides of the Atlantic, while Fontana struggled to achieve further chart success as a solo artist.

His real name was Glyn Geoffrey Ellis and he was born on October 28 1945 at Levenshulme, Manchester. After leaving school he worked in a record shop where, in 1962, he teamed up with Terry Morton, Stuart Sirett, Bob Lang and Ian “Skin” Lucas and changed his name to Wayne Fontana (in tribute to Elvis Presley’s drummer DJ Fontana) to form Wayne Fontana and the Jets.

In 1963 the band secured an audition at Manchester’s Oasis Club to which only Fontana and Lang turned up, so at the last moment two bystanders at the bar, guitarist Eric Stewart (later of 10cc) and drummer Ric Rothwell, were drafted in.

Although their performance was dire, the talent scout saw enough potential to get them a recording contract and they became Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders – Mindbenders after a Dirk Bogarde horror movie they had just seen.

Their first hit in Britain was the curiously titled Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, released in 1964. It reached No 5 in the charts and led to a tour with the American singer Brenda Lee. Then came The Game Of Love (“The purpose of a man is to love a woman/ And the purpose of a woman is to love her man/ So come on baby … let’s play/ The game of (love) love (love) love”) in February 1965.

By the middle of the year, however, disagreements had begun to show. “One night on stage, I decided to sing Save the Last Dance for Me and I could hear the band mumbling, ‘Why are we always doing the slow ones?’,” Fontana recalled. In October 1965, midway through a live show, he walked off stage and out of the band.

He struggled to achieve chart success as a solo artist, though his Pamela, Pamela, written by Graham Gouldman – another future member of 10cc – reached No 11 in the UK in early 1967.

“I continued recording and moved to Spain – and later America for three years, where I also toured,” Fontana told the Express in 2017. “I did shows aboard the cruise liners then returned to England, where I got a contract to write and record new songs. Then I went into self-retirement, drank too much and didn’t know where I was half the time.”

From 1977 he toured regularly with the The Solid Silver 60s Show, recalling that he was often asked to sing A Groovy Kind Of Love: “I couldn’t because that was the Mindbenders’ hit after I’d left.”

His later years were punctuated by brushes with the law. In 2005, he overturned a bankruptcy order made against him in error but was arrested after police were called by bailiffs who had gone to his home in Glossop, Derbyshire, to speak to him about an unpaid congestion charge bill. Fontana had poured petrol on the bonnet of their car and set it alight with the bailiffs still inside.

Remanded in custody in May 2007, he later appeared at Derby Crown Court dressed as the Old Bailey’s Lady of Justice, complete with a sword, scales, crown, cape and dark glasses, claiming “justice is blind”.

“I’m sick of living under this New World Order,” he wrote on his blog. “Let’s claim our country back. We could make it a fancy-dress protest against our fascist government’s inhumanity to its fellow man, woman and families.”

He was subsequently sentenced to 11 months for setting fire to the car but was freed because he had served the term while being detained under the Mental Health Act.

In March 2011 Fontana was arrested at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, after failing to appear in court in Wakefield over an unpaid speeding fine.

Wayne Fontana’s marriage to Suzanne Davis was dissolved. He is survived by a long-term partner and three children.

Wayne Fontana, born October 28 1945, died August 6 2020

John Buckmaster was born on July 18, 1915 in Frinton-On-Sea, Essex, England as John Rodney Buckmaster. He is known for his work on Sherlock Holmes (1954), Sample People(2000) and The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse (1948). He died in 1983 in London, England. He was the son of Gladys Cooper.

Kenneth Cope was born on June 14, 1931 in Liverpool, England as Kenneth Charles Cope. He is an actor and writer, known for My Partner the Ghost (1969), That Was the Week That Was (1962) and Coronation Street (1960). He has been married to Renny Lister since 1961. They have three children. He starred in “Carry On at Your Convenience”.

The Guardian obituary in 2024

Ronald Bergan’s 2003 obituary from “The Guardian”:

French-Canadian actor most celebrated as Desdemona

Thursday 11 December 2003 10.54 GMT

Desdemona is variously depicted by Shakespeare as “a maid that paragons description and wild fame”, “a most exquisite lady” and “a most fresh and delicate creature”. Suzanne Cloutier, who has died of cancer aged 76, certainly lived up to these epithets in Orson Welles’s film version of Othello (1952), her most celebrated part.Welles had begun shooting with the Italian Lea Padovani in the role. However, when Padovani quit the set after a dispute with Welles, the French-Canadian Cloutier was the 11th actor Welles auditioned for the role. According to one commentator: “With her wide-eyed innocence, coupled with a will of iron and a determination to get her own way at all costs, she constituted a strange mixture. Orson, who found her a fascinating psychological study, nicknamed her the Iron Butterfly.”

In reality, Welles had spent months trying to seduce her, but she resisted. Because of that rejection, he could be brutal towards her. Once, at dinner, surrounded by the rest of the cast, he snapped, “You contribute nothing to the conversation unless you talk about yourself.”

Michael MacLiammoir, who played Iago, wrote of Cloutier: “She is indestructible. She will discuss herself tirelessly for hours in French or English, in a faintly gilded clipped drawl (like sunshine on snow) without pausing for breath – even when she is silent you know that, like a cat, an immense activity is in progress.”

Welles spent hours trying to get a good performance from her. In a scene in which Othello (Welles) strikes Desdemona across the face, the director wanted her not to flinch from the blow, yet every time his hand moved, she (understandably) looked terrified.

David Thomson considered “she had no equal in standing still and looking beautiful”, and suggests the reason Welles picked her was because “the lady is a stooge to his Othello, not nearly as married to the Moor as Iago”. Actually, Cloutier gives a finely honed, poignant performance, despite some of the crude sound and editing. Several of her lines were dubbed by Gudrun Ure, and instead of reshooting long and medium shots which he had done with Padovani, he simply included them in the finished film, hoping the audience would not notice.

Mischievously, Welles contemplated dubbing her whole role. “I can’t wait to see what Cloutier’s reaction will be when she attends the premiere and finds out it’s not really her, at least not her voice, and in many shots, not her body, on the screen.”

Yet Welles must have thought highly enough of her, because he cast her in his one-act play The Unthinking Lobster, staged in English in Paris in 1950, about a female saint who appears in a corrupt Hollywood. Later she helped him find financing for his aborted film projects, The Other Side Of The Wind and Don Quixote.

Born in Ottawa, Cloutier became a Powers Model in New York at the age of 18, after running away the day after her wedding to an eminent Canadian doctor. As the marriage was not consummated, it was annulled. She was soon offered a small role in Temptation (1946), a “woman’s picture” starring Merle Oberon, and then joined Charles Laughton’s stage company for one season in New York.

During a period in Paris, she was a member of Jean Dasté’s Comédie Française touring company and appeared in two prestigious films: Julien Duvivier’s Au royaume des cieux (The Sinners, 1947), opposite Serge Reggiani, and Marcel Carne’s Juliette ou la clef des songes (Juliette Or The Key Of Dreams, 1950) in which she had the title role of the mysterious girl whom Gérard Philipe, in a prison cell, meets in his dreams.

Immediately after making Othello, Cloutier was in London to play in Herbert Wilcox’s Derby Day (1950), a four-part picture with Cloutier as a film fan winning a star (Peter Graves!) in a raffle. At the same time, she met Peter Ustinov. Coincidentally, Ustinov had seen a photograph of the “strikingly beautiful girl” on a French magazine cover three days before his French agent introduced them backstage during a production of his play The Love Of Four Colonels. She told him she was on the run from Welles, who was searching for her to fulfil a contract for which she had not been paid. She also told him that her mother was a German Jew and that her father was descended from an Indian chief, neither of which turned out to be true.

“People were enchanted by her freshness,” explained Ustinov in his autobiography, “her extraordinary capacity for invention, and her acumen in pursuing her ends, and I must admit, I was among them.”

They appeared together in Ustinov’s play No Sign Of The Dove at the Piccadilly Theatre (1953), and were married a year later. Except for a role in Doctor In The House (1954), Cloutier was busy during the decade bringing up their three children, Pavla, Igor and Andrea, all of whom survive her.

In 1961, she resumed her acting career briefly with Ustinov in his play Romanoff And Juliet. Gradually the marriage broke down; Cloutier disliked England and the English, and Ustinov became disenchanted with her ever-increasing Québecois nationalism. They divorced in 1971.

Cloutier no longer worked as an actor, but she remained busy as an artistic adviser to various film festivals in addition to producing two musical documentary films. She returned to Canada in 1988, living in Montreal.

· Suzanne Cloutier, actor, born July 10 1927; died December 2 2003

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Shazad Latif is an actor, known for Salting the Battlefield (2014), The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) and We are Monster (2014).

TCM Overview:

Dark-eyed British actress Barbara Steele had the perfect face for horror. Though the Rank Organization starlet had been imported to the United States by 20th Century Fox to play Elvis Presley’s love interest in “Flaming Star” (1960), Steele proved an ill-fit for the Hollywood cookie cutter and was replaced after a week of shooting. An actor’s strike drove Steele back to Europe, where her haunting beauty was used to good effect in a string of Gothic horror films, beginning with Mario Bava’s “Black Sunday” (1960). In the ensuing years, Steele skulked through such lurid chillers as “The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” (1962), “Castle of Blood” (1964) and “Terror-Creatures from Beyond the Grave” (1965), in which she brought sex appeal to characters of both pure and dark motives. Federico Fellini found a place for the slinky actress in his masterful “8-1/2” (1963) while German New Wave director Volker Schlöndorff offered Steele one of her better roles in “Young Törless” (1966), but the glut of cheap European fright flicks in which she found herself mired drove Steele back to North America. No longer an ingénue, she married a Hollywood screenwriter and cashed in on her cult credibility with meaty roles in Jonathan Demme’s “Caged Heat” (1974), David Cronenberg’s “Shivers” (1975) and Joe Dante’s “Piranha” (1978). Finding a measure of artistic satisfaction behind the camera, Steele won an Emmy as the producer of the 1988 miniseries “War and Remembrance” while learning to enjoy her lifetime association as horror cinema’s reigning scream queen.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.