British Actors Archives - Page 36 of 138

James Mason

Article from 2009 in “The Guardian” by David Thomson:

James Mason had good friends, and sometimes that is the measure of a man, especially in the picture business, where it’s all too easy to lose contact as golden opportunities fade away. Consider his situation in the late 1940s. After giving his youth and his early beauty to British pictures and theatre, he decided to go to Hollywood. There must have been people who told him he was too patrician, too intelligent, as well as too old to break through in America. But he made wonderful contacts. There was a chance of doing the Svengali-Trilby story (with Jane Wyman), and Mason longed to have Jean Renoir as its director because he could see that the Frenchman loved actors. Alas, that project fell through, but then Renoir offered Mason the role of the wounded veteran in his Indian picture, The River. I can’t do it, sighed Mason; I’m set to play the male lead in La Duchesse de Langeais – which was to be the comeback picture for Greta Garbo.

Historians still argue as to why that picture collapsed. Advancing into his 40s, Mason had reason to think of bad luck as he played Erwin Rommel in a couple of movies, Rupert of Hentzau in a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda and “Hendrik van der Zee” in the dotty but deliriously beautiful romance, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. In Britain, there were already superior figures in acting who marvelled over what was happening to “poor Jimmy Mason”. But as we come to celebrate today what would have been his 100th birthday, there are those who only wish there was more of Pandora, more Rommel and an entire picture about Rupert of Hentzau, the only interesting person in that whole Zenda nonsense.

In every decade, from the 1930s to the 80s, James Mason did some poor work in disappointing pictures, just as he missed out on mouth-watering opportunities. So, yes, it’s lamentable that he was to have been Prospero for Michael Powell, only for that Tempest to blow out. But don’t forget that their long friendship did lead somewhere: to Australia, for the quirky but vivid Age of Consent, where Mason was the film’s co-producer and he and Powell managed to discover the 18-year-old Helen Mirren to be the muse for the beachcomber painter Mason plays.

Yes, I know you can see Mason in these parts, but it’s just as evident that you hear him and, before we go any further, it’s vital to consider the unique and languid but impassioned voice of this man. Is it enough to say that he was a lad born in Huddersfield (the son of a wool merchant) who was sent to Cambridge to speak properly? Should we consider also his years on the Dublin stage as a prelude to his tragic figure in Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out – the film above all that promoted him from British pictures to a Hollywood player? Or is there not still something in Mason’s voice – aristocratic, but full of connoisseurship, too – that allowed the actor to become his true self just once, as the voice of Humbert Humbert in the film of Lolita? Humbert is not American. He is a scholar of comparative literature, as well as a judge of nymphets. He is a very bad man (if you like, or if you don’t like), but he may be the purest-spoken scoundrel in all the movies. For he has to deliver Nabokovian prose as if to say it was the most normal and sensible way of speaking the English language yet invented.

So Mason could be lord and nobleman, a very upper-class fellow – he did that from his Flaubert in the silly MGM production of Madame Bovary to Brutus in the same studio’s Julius Caesar, from Mr Jordan in Heaven Can Wait to the “prince of darkness” lawyer, Ed Concannon, in The Verdict. He could say something to another person so that one word seemed like a lash or a curare dart delivered in slow motion. This Mason was Mr Elocution, if you like, the personification of affectation and lingering insult or innuendo. But the same voice could burn with conviction – it does in Lolita, when he talks to his Lo, just as much as it did in A Star Is Born, with Judy Garland, in North By Northwest, with Eva Marie Saint, or in The Reckless Moment, with Joan Bennett, where he has the fine judgment to know that he is falling in love with the woman he is supposed to blackmail.

Pause over North By Northwest a moment. Why is it that, over the years, that crazed film calmly urges itself forward as maybe Hitch’s most entertaining picture? Well, of course, it’s the demented plot by Ernest Lehman, with the cornfields of Iowa leading to Mount Rushmore. And it’s also Cary Grant. But run the picture in your head a moment and isn’t it Mason’s voice you hear as Vandamm, the villain? Look at it again, if you doubt me – he’s the heart and head of the picture, and he is delighted to realise that North By Northwest is a frolic, a dance in mid-air, a fabulous absurdity. Of course, we love Grant and Saint and everyone else in it, but just look at Grant’s face and see the pleasure he feels at being placed beside so sublime a screen being as James Mason. (Time for a joke: in the year for which North By Northwest was eligible, 1959, Charlton Heston and Hugh Griffith won the acting Oscars for Ben-Hur.)

Mason never won an Oscar, though he was nominated three times – for A Star Is Born, The Verdict and Georgy Girl (the latter one of those pictures where he let his Yorkshire accent run riot and where, apparently, he took a deep shine to his co-star, Lynn Redgrave).

You might have thought that in a thousand words (so far), I’d have been able to mention all the worthwhile Mason films. But I haven’t even touched the Gainsborough period yet. In the war years (when Mason was a conscientious objector), he defined a new type in British pictures – the handsome, cruel mastermind who is irresistible to women. That is the Mason of The Man in Grey, a costume romance, where he dismantles Margaret Lockwood and Phyllis Calvert; The Wicked Lady, where he and Lockwood are highway robbers; and the cult classic, The Seventh Veil, where he is Ann Todd’s unkind guardian.

The same years include two other remarkable films: A Place of One’s Own, where he is the elderly husband, and The Upturned Glass – a film that Mason helped write – about a doctor fascinated with the psychology of murder. To say the least, that side of Mason – the mind that had ideas for films – was what made him most endearing to directors.

Once in America, he forged bonds with two of the least likely artists. First, he fell for Max Ophuls, effectively in exile, and did two films for him: Caught and The Reckless Moment. In the first, he is the doctor with a busy urban practice who takes in Barbara Bel Geddes as a secretary when she flees from her marriage to the tyrannical Robert Ryan. In The Reckless Moment, he plays a weak-willed villain, a man whose blackmail plans are thwarted by his own sentiments.

In both cases, Mason’s struggle to be decent and ordinary provides a foundation for the film. Equally, in every situation, Mason was the defender of Ophuls, a high-strung, stylistic perfectionist who was having a hard time in Hollywood.

A few years later, Mason became friends with another movie director, and an even more self-destructive man, Nicholas Ray. They wanted to do a story they had seen in the New Yorker about an idealistic teacher who is warped by his addiction to cortisone. The result, Bigger Than Life, is one of the great American films of the 50s, in which Ray’s dynamic use of colour and form is steadily attached to Mason’s tragic performance. In the slow reappraisal of American film by American critics, it’s worth saying that Caught, The Reckless Moment and Bigger Than Life (none of which was a hit) have now become standards by which other films are judged. In all these cases, the completion of the picture, as well as its initiation, owed a lot to the creative vision of an actor who was serving as an extra producer.

Is that all? By no means. To the end of his time (he died in 1984), Mason was doing intriguing small films such as Dr Fischer of Geneva and The Shooting Party. He was the star of works as different as The Deadly Affair, Mandingo, Cross of Iron and The Seagull (where he played Trigorin). He made Cry Terror! and The Decks Ran Red for that master of suspense, Andrew L Stone.

He was Sir Edward Carson to Peter Finch’s lead in The Trials of Oscar Wilde. He was toxic in The Pumpkin Eater and cool syrup in The Fall of the Roman Empire. He made every trashy costume seem as natural as a good suit and, for all his life, he seemed carried forward by the odd mixture of yearning and fatalism that prompted Humbert Humbert.

Graham Greene called it the marriage of sadness and pride. It is still there, to be treasured in something like 40 special films.

Odd Man Out (1947)

After making his name as the dashing, cruel-eyed star of wartime period costume pics, Mason did a 180-degree turn to play an made gunman staggering wounded through Belfast. Director Carol Reed assembles an arsenal of expressionist techniques to make this an early, and effective, British noir.

North By Northwest (1959)

Arguably Hitchcock’s finest, and maybe Mason’s, too – even though he didn’t have the lead role. Here he plays super-smooth microfilm smuggler Vandamm, egging on henchman Martin Landau to dispose of pesky Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.

Lolita (1962)

Nabokov’s professorial paedophile terrified the life out of Hollywood’s star names, but Mason stepped up to play Humbert Humbert for Stanley Kubrick.(Both Laurence Olivier and David Niven turned it down.) Mason’s stuffed-shirt reticence, allied to his lasciviously clipped vowels, made him ideal for the role.

“The Times” obituary:

Mr James Mason, who died yesterday in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the age of 75, was a highly intelligent and creative cinema performer who appeared in more than 100 films. And though many of them were unworthy of his talent he could lift the poorest material just as he could enrich the best. He made a reputation in parts calling for moody and tyrannical introspection, notably as Ann Todd’s sadistic guardian in The Seventh Veil, before maturing into a versatile and dependable character player.

One of his best performances came under Sir Carol Reed’s direction in 1947, when he played a dying gunman on the run in Belfast in Odd Man Out. Soon afterwards, expressing his disenchantment with the British cinema, he left for Hollywood where, after a difficult start, he successfully built a new career.

James Mason was born in Huddersfield on May 15, 1909, the son of a textile merchant. He was educated at Marlborough and Peterhouse College, Cambridge where he took a first in architecture and got a taste for acting. His professional debut was at the Theatre Royal, Aldershot, in 1931 and two years later he made his first London appearance in Gallows Glorious at the Arts Theatre. He joined the Old Vic company and then the Gate Theatre in Dublin, where he played between 1934 and 1937.

He entered films in 1935, playing a reporter in Late Extra, but for several years most of his parts were in low budget “quota quickies”. In 1939, with two friends, Roy and Pamela Kelli-no, he set up his own film, I Met a Murderer, a crime story in which he was the killer of the title. He and Pamela Kellino were married two years later.

During the Second World War, he worked with ENSA and his film career finally took off through a series of costume melodramas which gave him the opportunity to create a memorable gallery of suave and vicious villains. The film that made him into a star was The Man in Grey, in which he took a whip to Margaret Lockwood; Fanny by Gaslight, They Were Sisters, and The Wicked Lady, also with Margaret Lockwood, followed in similar vein.

The Seventh Veil proved to be the most successful of all and from 1944 to 1947 Mason was voted Britain’s top box-office star. Among those who admired his performance in The Seventh Veil was the veteran American director, D W Griffith. But Mason had become increasingly unhappy with the films he was bing offered, and with what he saw as a monopolistic stranglehold on the industry by J Arthur Rank; and at the peak of his popularity he departed for Hollywood.

It was to be some time before the move paid off. Mason’s outspokenness did not endear him to Hollywood and his choice of parts was not always happy. He appeared in two films for the emigre director, Max Ophuls, Caught and The Reckless Moment, and made a splendid Rommel in The Desert Fox; while his Brutus in the 1953 production of Julius Caesar helped to make it one of the best screen versions of Shakespeare.

But it was not until 1954 when he played opposite Judy Garland in George Cukor’s remake of A Star is Born that he managed a major performance, a harrowing study of a man’s tragic decline, for which he gained an Oscar nomination. He brought the same nervous intensity to the part of a drug addict in Bigger Than Life (1956), a film which he also produced.

The best of his later roles was Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick’s film of the Nabokov novel, Lolita, which appeared in 1962. To his portrayal of a middle-aged man’s infatuation with a 12-year-old girl, Mason brought a degree of sympathy, combined with wry humour, that few other actors could have managed. With Odd Man Out, it ranks as his outstanding screen achievement.

Three years earlier he had been a memorable villain in Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest and had given an engagingly tongue in cheek performance in an adaptation of the Jules Verne story, Journey to the Centre of the Earth. He maintained a prolific output through the 1960s and 1970s, making two and three films a year, though many were routine assignments easily, and perhaps best, forgotten.

There was still, however, much to relish. His Timonides in The Fall of the Roman Empire was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary epic and he had good supporting parts in The Pumpkin Eater and as Gentleman Brown in Conrad’s Lord Jim. He added to his stock of German officers inThe Blue Max (1966) and in the same year he was in Georgy Girl, a story of the “swinging sixties”, and a John Le Carre thriller, The Deadly Affair.

In 1969 he turned producer again for Age of Consent, directed in Australia by Michael Powell; but a long-cherished Powell project, The Tempest, with Mason as Prospero, proved abortive. The martinet Yorkshire father in Spring and Port Wine was a tailor-made part, there were more Germans in Cross of Iron and The Boys From Brazil and a well judged Mr Jordan in the fantasy, Heaven Can Wait. He was superb as the old tutor recalling his days in India in James Ivory’s Autobiography of a Princess.

Once he became established in films, Mason returned only occasionally to the stage. He was in an unsuccessful Broadway play, Bathsheba, in 1947, and during the 1950s played Angelo in Measure for Measure and Oedipus in Oedipus Rex at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario.

3463467 Picture Show Magazine Cover, UK, 1950s; (add.info.: Celebrities); © The Advertising Archives.

TCM overview:

Despite decades on the British dramatic stage and in small, offbeat comedies, Bill Nighy remained one of England’s best kept secrets until scene-stealing supporting roles in a number of mainstream American hits led to his remarkable success after the age of 50. Following his series role on the widely acclaimed British serial “State of Play” (BBC One, 2003), Nighy had his international breakthrough with his casting as the villainous Viktor in the “Underworld” horror-action series and earned critical acclaim for the spark he injected into “Love Actually” (2003) with his role of an aging rock star. His lean, elegant stature immediately found a niche in witty blockbusters like “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (2005), while his portrayal of the cephalopod Davy Jones in the second and third installments of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise (2006-07) introduced him to a wider audience. He delivered strong performances in historical dramas as well, namely “The Constant Gardner” (2005) and “Valkyrie” (2008), and displayed his lighter side in whimsical comedies like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2012). Staying true to his roots as both a dramatic and comedic performer, Nighy managed to stay relevant to contemporary audiences on both sides of the Atlantic without sacrificing his stature as one of Britain’s finest performers.

William Nighy was born on Dec. 12, 1949 and grew up in Caterham, Surrey, just southwest of London, where his dad managed a garage and his mum worked as a psychiatric nurse. A restless, rock-n-roll-loving youth, he left school early and spent time traveling in France, taking on odd jobs while entertaining the notion of following in the footsteps of one his heroes, Ernest Hemingway, by becoming a writer. While his dreams of penning a great novel did not materialize, he did find a creative outlet in theater, urged to audition for a drama program by a girlfriend he was hoping to impress. He did more than impress her; he was actually accepted into the Guildford School of Drama and spent two years training there. By the mid-1970s, he was working regularly as a player and staffer at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, in addition to traveling with Van Load, a theater group he helped found which toured pubs, parking lots, prisons, and other places where the average public could have the chance to enjoy a live production. Nighy made his way onto the London stage, beginning what would be a long career with the National Theater and breaking into film with bit parts in the spy thriller “Eye of the Needle” (1981) and the family favorite “Little Lord Fauntleroy” (1980), among others. Nighy mostly stuck with theater and BBC radio dramas throughout the 1980s, appearing in “King Lear” at the National Theater and voicing radio adaptations of “Lord of the Rings” and the British sitcom, “Yes Minister.”

In 1989, Nighy raised his screen profile with a supporting role in Dwight Little’s adaptation of “Phantom of the Opera” (1989) and one in “Mack the Knife” (1989) co-starring Raul Julia and Richard Harris. He also appeared in Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” on the London stage in 1991, but by the following year, it was becoming clear that both the actor’s career and personal life were hampered by Nighy’s excessive drinking and drug habits. He became sober in 1992 and resumed his career with clear eyes and a starring role as an unscrupulous academic in a National Theater production of Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia.” Nighy’s first major movie role, alongside Robin Williams in Bill Forsyth’s “Being Human” (1993), was only given limited release but the actor enjoyed considerable attention for back-to-back stage runs in Chekhov’s “The Seagull” and David Hare’s “Skylight,” which toured the U.K. following a successful run at London’s Vaudeville Theater. The newly sober actor’s career continued to blossom with a role in the children’s fantasy feature “Fairytale: A True Story” (1997), and in the hilarious “Still Crazy” (1998), where he played an aging rocker who reunites with his 1970s rock band to relive the glory days. His work in the latter film was so beloved, he earned theEvening Standard‘s Peter Sellers Award for his comedic performance as the band’s egotistical lead singer.

Nighy continued to endear himself to British comedy fans in Ade Edmondson’s “Guest House Paradiso” (1999), an adaptation of the slapstick BBC series “Bottom.” For his lead role as a psychiatrist in the National Theater production of “Blue/Orange,” Nighy won a nomination from the prestigious Olivier Awards and enjoyed an extended run of the play on the West End. He resumed his film career with another pair of offbeat comedies – Paddy Breathnach’s “Blow Dry” (2001) and Peter Cattaneo’s “Lucky Break” (2002), which earned Nighy a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the London Film Critics Circle for playing one in a troupe of prison inmates who stage a play to cover up an escape attempt. Supporting roles in “The Lawless Heart” (2001), about complicated dalliances in a small English town and the period drama “I Capture the Castle” (2002) still did not quite establish Nighy as a well-known presence on British screens, but he finally enjoyed that position with a recurring role on the British comedy series “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet” in 2002. The following year, he exploded into American commercial cinemas playing the nefarious vampire elder Viktor in the horror actioner “Underworld” (2003). He endeared himself to an entirely different demographic in the ensemble romantic comedy “Love Actually” (2003), stealing the show from a hunky young cast with his spot-on performance as another over-the-hill rocker hoping for a comeback.

Nighy earned a slew of recognition including a BAFTA Award for Supporting Actor for “Love Actually,” and went on to give delightfully offbeat supporting performances in “very British” comedies “Shaun of the Dead” (2004), starring Simon Pegg as a twenty-something slacker fighting off zombies, and the long awaited adaptation of Douglas Adams’ sci-fi classic “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (2005), where he portrayed planet designer Slartibartfast. Making an about-face from his string of outrageous comedies, Nighy offered an excellent dramatic performance as a greedy British official in “The Constant Gardener” (2005), director Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of the John le Carré novel about a diplomat (Ralph Fiennes) whose wife (Rachel Wiesz) is murdered after discovering corruption between the pharmaceutical industry and Kenyan government. The film was one of the best reviewed of the year and earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for best film. The same year, Nighy earned his own Golden Globe nod for “The Girl in the Café” (HBO, 2005), in which he starred as a shy civil servant who meets a mysterious woman (Kelly MacDonald) and develops a life-changing relationship with her. Nighy revived his evil vampire leader in the bloody, over-the-top sequel “Underworld: Evolution” (2006), then earned his first Golden Globe win for starring as an executive whose personal life is a mess after he loses his wife in the BBC television movie, “Gideon’s Daughter” (2006).

The actor lent his velvety voice to the sewer-set animated film “Flushed Away” (2006) and continued to entertain family audiences as undead pirate Davy Jones in the box office record breaker “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” (2006). The fifty-something actor also made his Broadway debut in David Hare’s “The Vertical Hour,” for which he earned rave reviews, and had a supporting role in the highly acclaimed psychological drama “Notes on a Scandal” (2006) the same year. In the third blockbuster of the series, Nighy appeared as Davy Jones in “Pirates of the Caribbean 3” (2007) and followed up with an solemn but sympathetic portrayal of Freidrich Olbricht, a German general who conspired to kill Adolph Hitler, in Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie” (2008). From sharing the spotlight with star Tom Cruise, Nighy took front and center in the sequel “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” (2009), one of the better reviewed films of the series and one that found an enthusiastic reception at the box office.

Despite his success with giant Hollywood films, Nighy remained loyal to British cinema and returned to the U.K. sound stage for “Pirate Radio” (2009), Richard Curtis’ comedic chronicle of the underground radio movement that flourished in the U.K. in the 1960s. He went on to star as a hit man who falls for an intended victim (Emily Blunt) in the comedy “Wild Target” (2009) and also delivered the World War II drama “1939” (2009) and the live action/3-D animation hybrid “G-Force” (2009) the same year. Meanwhile, Nighy was the latest British actor to join the “Harry Potter” series, playing Rufus Scrimgeour, the new Minister of Magic, in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 1” (2010). After voicing Rattlesnake Jake in the animated “Rango” (2011) and Grandsanta in “Arthur Christmas” (2011), Nighy returned to his native country to star in “Page Eight” (BBC, 2011), playing a long-time MI5 officer trying to expose the fact that the Prime Minister (Ralph Fiennes) covered the torturing of prisoners overseas that ultimately cost British lives. Nighy’s performance was hailed with a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a miniseries or TV movie. He went on to play Hephaestus, a Greek god stripped of his powers for siding with Hades (Ralph Fiennes) in “Wrath of the Titans” (2012), and followed that with a turn as a rebel leader in the panned remake of “Total Recall” (2012). Showing his lighter side, Nighy was a retiree who had lost most of his savings and seeks respite alongside a group of fellow pensioners – including Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Tom Wilkinson – at “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2012).

In 2013, Nighy appeared in CGI form as a literally gigantic leader in the fantasy film “Jack the Giant Slayer,” featuring fellow U.K. actors Ewan McGregor and Nicholas Hoult. Later in the year, he reunited yet again with “Love Actually” director Richard Curtis as a time-traveling patriarch in the romantic comedy “About Time,” and he worked with another frequent collaborator, Edgar Wright, in a voice role for his apocalyptic comedy “The World’s End.”

TCM overview:

Prolific British film actor Michael Caine rose to fame as an icon of London’s ‘swinging ’60s,’ but four decades later, having contributed to some of cinematic history’s highest and lowest moments, he was recognized as an international film legend. Caine initially seemed an unlikely movie star, with his glasses and working class cockney accent, but with films like “The Ipcress File” (1965) and “Alfie” (1966), he came to personify the cultural upheaval of 1960s Britain, when the smashing of class barriers finally meant that regular blokes had a shot at the spotlight. With his foundation in repertory theater, Caine had already played hundreds of characters by the time he hit it big, and that background made him one of the most versatile leading actors on film. He deftly transitioned from gritty mobster (“Get Carter”), to scheming soldier (“The Man Who Would Be King”), warm-hearted doctor (“The Cider House Rules”), charming con man (“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”), erudite professor (“Educating Rita”) to transvestite psychologist murderer (“Dressed to Kill”). Caine convincingly inhabited some of the best-known characters in literature and world history – not through self-analysis and method acting, but by holding up a mirror to the audience, presenting them with truths about themselves. His realistic acting style and ability to connect with an audience earned the actor a reputation for being approachable and down-to-earth, despite his ultra-luxury lifestyle and bona fide star status. For Caine, this was no act, as he had risen from the poorest of the poor with all odds seemingly stacked against him.

Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr. in the charity wing of St. Olaves hospital in the Rotherhithe area of South London on March 14, 1933. The child of a fish market worker (with an unlucky gambling habit) and a cleaning woman, Caine was born with rickets from prenatal malnutrition and wore leg braces as a child. He was also diagnosed with blepharitis – an inflammation of the eyelids responsible for his heavy-lidded look, and a mild facial tic that was then known as St. Vitus dance. Caine’s younger brother Stanley was born two years later, and the family lived in a two-room flat with no electricity or running water. Generations of earlier Micklewhites may have been satisfied working at the fish market, but Caine – a voracious reader and avid moviegoer – knew that there was a better life out there and he was going to live it. However, there was little encouragement or opportunity for young working class toughs like Caine to explore drama. West End theaters were out of reach, drama lessons were unheard of, and the family did not have a TV, so for Caine, the movie theater became his second home. He idolized Humphrey Bogart, as much for the powerful onscreen characters he created as for the luxurious movie star lifestyle he lived, but Caine had no idea how one even began the journey from his South London flat to a Hollywood mansion. And the code of his class dictated that he was born a cockney and that was all he would ever be. But Caine’s intelligence and interest in the arts did make him different from the street gangs who did not quite accept him. He was finally given the chance to explore his interests at the age of 14, when he joined a local youth program designed to keep kids off the street. Their drama department gave Caine his first exposure to the stage, and he appeared in all their stage productions, as well as found a mentor in a film history teacher and short filmmaker who worked with the group, giving Caine an early education in filmmaking.

Caine left school at 16 and landed an entry-level production job at an industrial film company. At 18, he was called upon to do military service, and for the next two years, served overseas and even saw frontline combat in Korea. He made his glorious re-entry into civilian life working at a butter factory before landing a job as an assistant stage manager and eventually an actor at a repertory theater in West Sussex. However, a bout of post-war malaria forced him offstage for a time. After his recovery, he joined another repertory theater in the seaside town of Lowestoft. As with his earlier position, Caine barely made enough money to cover his living expenses, but the experience proved to be invaluable, with the actor often having to learn a new role every week.

While in Lowestoft, Caine met and fell in love with fellow troupe member Patricia Haines. The couple married and moved to London to try their acting luck, but Haines fared better. With his roles few and far between, Caine was forced to work as a plumber’s assistant and a baker. The financial pressure proved to be too much for the young couple, especially after the birth of their daughter, leaving both to eventually move back home with their parents and to divorce. Caine’s father died shortly thereafter and with the walls closing in on him, he escaped to Paris for a month, wandering the streets and sleeping in subway stations and brothels. He eventually dragged himself home to find a telegram from his agent, offering him a bit part in the military drama “Hell in Korea” (1956). This led to small, mostly uncredited appearances in more films and TV, alternating with civilian jobs and frequent moving from one cheap roommate situation to another. His misery had plenty of company, as he had made scores of friends who were struggling artists and actors, all hoping against hope that they would someday be household names – Harold Pinter, Terence Stamp, David Hockey, even his barber, Vidal Sassoon.

Caine, who had by now officially changed his stage name to Caine in order to appear in an actor’s equity production, carried on with play after play, eventually making it to the London’s famed West End in 1963. He understood that stage was his training ground, but Caine’s sights were still firmly set on becoming a film actor of the most glamorous sort. Not long afterwards, he went on an audition for a role as a cockney soldier in a war film, only to have the American director take one look at his lean frame and long blond locks and instead cast him in a leading role as an upper crust army officer. “Zulu” (1964) was truly Caine’s breakthrough, earning him more money than he had ever seen, as well as an offer to star in the espionage thriller “The Ipcress File” (1965) and a seven-year film contract. In “The Ipcress File,” Caine played working-class spy Harry Palmer – the antithesis of James Bond’s ridiculous glamour – who drank pints of beer rather than shaken martinis, and whose mode of transport was a public bus, not a snappy sports car. Caine gave an exceptional performance; his matter-of-fact delivery perfectly suited for the part. With his salary of 10,000 pounds a week, he moved his mother to a nicer flat, got himself a new place, and outfitted it with the best of everything.

“Ipcress” won Caine sizable fame, but “Alfie” (1966) succeeded in making the long-struggling, 33-year-old actor a household name. A swinging cockney cad with a great tailor and insatiable appetite for the ladies, Caine’s Alfie – along with the success of the Beatles – signaled a major shift in the British cultural voice away from the elite aristocracy and towards anyone who wanted to join the youth-driven party. Caine earned an Oscar-nomination for “Alfie” and made his U.S. debut later that year opposite Shirley MacLaine, who invited him to appear in the enjoyable comic caper “Gambit.” The full-time movie star reprised Harry Palmer with “Funeral in Berlin” (1966) and “Billion Dollar Brain” (1967), before churning out two American films for 20th Century Fox – “Deadfall” (1968) and “The Magus” (1968) – and starring in one of the most memorable films of his career, the action comedy classic, “The Italian Job” (1969).

Caine had established himself with wry, street smart characters who were ultimately likeable even when they were up to no good, but there was nothing he could not or would not tackle. Evolving with the climate of the times, Caine reflected the grittier, more violent atmosphere of the city streets with 1971’s landmark action film “Get Carter,” playing a hit man searching for the man who killed his own brother. In 1972, he held his own opposite acting giant Laurence Olivier in the psychological tete a tete, “Sleuth,” earning his second Best Actor Oscar nomination. In 1975, Caine was thrilled to receive an offer from director John Huston to take the leading role initially intended for his hero Humphrey Bogart in the epic adventure “The Man Who Would Be King.” He next revisited his flair for comedy in the classic Neil Simon ensemble romp “California Suite” (1978), playing a British tourist in Beverly Hills. Forever worried that his fortune might dry up and his fame disappear, Caine tried to stay as busy as possible, which explained why he finished out the decade with horrific missteps, “The Swarm” (1978) and “Beyond the Poseidon Adventure” (1979).

Caine had spent considerable time stateside during his career. With penal taxes threatening to bankrupt him, he and his second wife Shakira (also an actress and co-star of “The Man who Would Be King”) and their daughter moved to the famed Hollywood Hills, with Caine officially realizing his childhood dreams of the movie star life. He was welcomed to America with an offer from controversial director Brian DePalma to play a transvestite psychiatrist in his stylized thriller “Dressed To Kill” (1980) and one from Sidney Lumet to play opposite Christopher Reeve in the thriller “Deathtrap” (1982), which generated controversy for an onscreen kiss between the co-stars. With Caine’s next film, “Educating Rita” (1983), any recent trespasses were soon forgotten. Caine took home Golden Globe and BAFTA awards as well as another Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Dr. Frank Bryant, a college professor and failed poet whose alcoholic self-loathing turns a corner when he begins tutoring a hairdresser (Julie Walters) looking to improve her lot in life. Caine played the complexities of Bryant’s despairing soul with a stirring subtlety that reminded audiences why he had been a leading man for 20 years.

Caine finally picked up an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category for “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986). In what was arguably Woody Allen’s best ensemble piece, Caine was tenderly sympathetic as a cultured accountant who becomes lovestruck by his wife’s sister (Barbara Hershey), who is herself trapped in a suffocating relationship. Back in London, Caine gave a mesmerizing performance as a contemptible mob boss in Neil Jordan’s “Mona Lisa” (1986). Any discussion of Caine’s work during the 1980s should mention the actor’s theory that for every five films, you need one standout picture in order to survive. He knew from experience, having dodged the bullet several times. 1987’s “Jaws: The Revenge” and ’88’s “Bullseye” definitely fell into the clunker category, but Caine bounced back quickly with a Golden Globe-winning performance in the miniseries “Jack the Ripper” (CBS, 1988). Ever a delight when he returned to comedy, Caine’s sophistication paired nicely with the broad antics of Steve Martin in 1988’s classic con men comedy, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (1988).

By the 1990s, Michael Caine was again living in London and enjoying his status as an elder statesman of the cinema. For the first time since prior to becoming a film star, he appeared in a number of television projects, starring in 1990’s “Jekyll & Hyde” (ABC) and producing and starring in HBO’s spy drama “Blue Ice” (1993). He made a rare family film appearance as Scrooge in “A Muppet Christmas Carol”(1992), before reprising an aging Harry Palmer in Showtime’s original “Bullet to Beijing” (1995). If one mercifully overlooked the lackluster Steven Seagal vehicle “On Deadly Ground” (1994), Caine could be said to have made a most auspicious return to the big screen in his excellent but little seen performance as a ruthless safe cracker in “Blood & Wine” (1996). Instead, the film adaptation of the West End hit “Little Voice” (1998) proved to be Caine’s so-called comeback. As Ray Say, a Northern seaside town-dwelling talent scout whose London accent divulges his washed up status, the actor gave a stand-out performance in a film brimming with exceptional acting. Always keeping Ray Say’s pathetic desperation just below the surface until the end, Caine reached new heights in an already remarkable career. His show-stopping performance of “It’s Over” was nothing short of breathtaking, so it was not surprising that the legendary actor should win that year’s Golden Globe.

Caine’s big screen renaissance also included a fifth Oscar nomination and second win for Best Supporting Actor in Lasse Hallstrom’s “The Cider House Rules” (1999). Caine was back at the top of his game as a New England orphanage-running abortionist, and it was the actor’s keen subtlety that saved what might have been a treacly sentimental parable into something of moving relevance. The 66-year-old actor celebrated his latest landmark by taking a year off for the first time in his life since he began working at age 16. He wrote and released the entertaining autobiography What’s It All About? and decided to retire. For Caine, retirement meant taking small supporting roles as they interested him, but passing on leads that would take months to shoot and involve rigorous promotional tours. Still, to Caine, essentially retirement still meant appearing in two or three movies a year. He took a small role in the pointless Stallone-helmed remake of his early hit “Get Carter” (2000), and likewise paid homage to the cheeky spy dramas he helped popularize in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” (2002), playing the equally randy father of Mike Myer’s “shagadellic” secret agent.

Caine “came out of retirement” in 2002 and earned some of the best acting notices of his career for playing a British journalist covering the early days of Vietnam’s revolt against the French government in Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American.” He earned another Best Actor Academy Award nomination and went back to smaller roles with “Batman Begins” (2006), the stylish period thriller “The Prestige” (2006), and Alfonso Cuarón’s apocalyptic “Children of Men” (2006).

In 2007, Caine again revisited an earlier triumph with an updated version of 1972’s “Sleuth,” playing the aging writer role that had been Laurence Olivier’s and Jude Law in Caine’s original role as the young upstart vying for the writer’s wife. Despite the screenplay by Caine’s old friend Harold Pinter and direction by Kenneth Branagh, the overwrought film lacked the allure of the original. Law had previously starred in a 2004 remake of “Alfie,” but like most remakes of Caine’s prime work, it paled in comparison.

All actors had their side investments and pet projects, and for Michael Caine it was being a restaurateur. Caine, at one time, had partnerships in five restaurants, including his first venture, Langan’s Brasserie in London and the English-style grille Shepherd’s. The actor took an active role in running the businesses and could frequently be seen dining under his own awnings. He eventually sold all of his restaurant interests, but added another title to his long resume in the summer of 2007 when he released the CD Cained, a collection of chill-out tracks. Though he was admittedly far north of the electronica music’s demographic, Caine was a big fan of chill-out music and after years of making compilations for friends, he was encouraged by his friend Elton John to release his own collection of favorites.

Caine’s body of work was recognized in 1999 with an Evening Standard British Film Awards Lifetime Achievement Award. The following year, he was knighted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the UK Empire Awards. The National Board of Review honored Caine with a Career Achievement Award and the San Sebastian Film Festival recognized the actor with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. The Film Society of Lincoln Center honored Caine with a star-studded Gala Tribute in 2004. Caine accepted his honor with the expected witty charm: ”I’ve been practicing humility all day. It’s very difficult for someone who’s been an actor for 40 years.”

“

1720342 Beau Brummel de CurtisBernhardt avec Stewart Granger et Elizabeth Taylor 1954; (add.info.: Beau Brummel de CurtisBernhardt avec Stewart Granger et Elizabeth Taylor 1954).

When Stewart Granger was the hottest male property around the British studios he was seldom taken seriously. He was just too good-looking, involved in too many junky films – and by his own admission – too arrogant. His relationship with the press was poor, so he was irritatingly labelled ‘glamour boy’. The name hardly stuck, but he never managed to get away from the dimpled teeth-flashing he-male roles he started with and only in glimpses has he been able to show that there is something more in him”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars- The International Years”. (1972)

Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary from 1993:

James Lablache Stewart (Stewart Granger), actor: born London 6 March 1913; married 1938 Elspeth March (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1948), 1950 Jean Simmons (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1960), 1964 Viviane Lecerf (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1969); died Santa Monica, California 16 August 1993.

TALL, DARK, debonair and rakishly handsome, Stewart Granger was one of the greatest British stars of the Forties, and went on to become one of the handful to achieve true international stardom in Hollywood. He was one of that quartet of stars – along with Margaret Lockwood, James Mason and Phyllis Calvert – who became associated with the enormous successes made by the Gainsborough Studios under the auspices of Maurice Ostrer, starting with The Man in Grey (1943), and including Fanny by Gaslight, Love Story, Madonna of the Seven Moons (all 1944), and Caravan (1946).

Granger’s dashing good looks, energy, humour and the arrogance that laced his romantic ardour made him the British cinema’s foremost sex symbol, with a huge teenage following, and in Hollywood he took his place among the greatest swashbucklers with at least one of his movies, Scaramouche (1952), a masterpiece comparable to the best of Errol Flynn. Though Mason was the finer actor, Granger achieved greater popularity in the Hollywood cinema, and it is ironic that Mason’s finest role there, as Norman Maine in A Star is Born (1954), went to him only after Granger turned it down. It is to be regretted that Granger’s enormous ego (to which he freely confessed) did not allow him to accept the role or the character roles later in his career that might have sustained and enhanced his reputation.

He was born James Stewart in London in 1913 and had planned to be a doctor. But he lacked the dedication (as he later admitted) to continue medical studies. A friend suggested that since he had a car and a good set of clothes he could find work as a film extra for a guinea a day. Work at the studios during 1933 – the Babe Daniels musical A Southern Mai, Allan Dwan’s I Spy, in which he acted as stand-in for Ben Lyon, and Give Her a Ring are his only known credits from this period – aroused an interest in acting and Granger won a scholarship to the Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art. He served a long apprenticeship in the theatre, working with the Hull and Birmingham repertory companies at the Malvern Festival (1936-37), where his performance as Magnus in The Apple Cart won the approval of its author, George Bernard Shaw, as well as that of the critics, and making his London debut at Drury Lane in 1938 in a short-lived musical version of Sanders of the River called The Sun Never Sets. He later talked warmly of these early years: ‘I learnt acting in the reps, where the audience teaches you – particularly timing.’

At Birmingham he had met the actress Elspeth March, and in 1938, while he was appearing at the Gate Theatre in Serena Blandish with Vivien Leigh, he and March were married. The same year he was given his first sizable screen role, as the romantic lead in So This Is London. His billing read Stewart Granger, the name he had taken to avoid confusion with the Hollywood actor, though throughout his life he would be known to his friends as ‘Jimmy’. In 1939 he and his wife starred in a season of plays in Aberdeen, including Hay Fever, Arms and the Man and On Approval – Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray were juveniles with the company.

After touring with the Old Vic as Dunois in St Joan, Granger was given a small role in Pen Tennyson’s admirably understated saga of the wartime navy Convoy (1940) before his acting career was interrupted by war service. He joined the Gordon Highlanders, then won a commission with the Black Watch but was invalided out with an ulcer. He resumed his career with two supporting film roles, in Secret Mission (1942) and Thursday’s Child (1943), before being asked to take over the role of Maxim DeWinter in a successful London stage production of Rebecca, and it was while appearing in this that he tested for The Man in Grey. This florid Regency melodrama was an unprecedented success, establishing a ‘house style’ that Gainsborough Pictures would market for several years to come and boosting the careers of all four stars. Granger, the least known, was an overnight sensation, causing the critic CA Lejeune to state in her review, ‘I don’t know of any British actor I would sooner sign as a prospect.’

Granger had indeed been signed to a contract. Before the release of The Man in Grey he had been assigned to The Lamp Still Burns, a restrained tribute to the nursing profession, then he was cast again with Calvert and Mason in Fanny by Gaslight, another great Gainsborough hit. Granger liked Mason, who shared his traits of independence and an outspoken disdain for the films they were making, but he envied Mason his villainous roles, maintaining they were more interesting than the heroic ones he was playing. He had particular disdain for his next two scripts.

Love Story starred Margaret Lockwood as a concert pianist with a fatal disease and Granger as the engineer she falls for – he does not know that she is dying, she does not know that he is going blind. With a background of pounding Cornish waves and a popular musical piece called ‘Cornish Rhapsody’, it was the sort of heady stuff to which audiences of the time flocked, and it was the perfect showcase for the mixture of bravado and vulnerability that was to make the best of Granger’s performances so appealing.

In Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944) Granger was a Romany gypsy who wooed a tempestuous hoyden (Calvert), in reality a society matron with a split personality. It was another gigantic success and the song a dubbed Granger sang, ‘Rosanna’, became a hit. Though Granger described these films as ‘terrible’ he also conceded that ‘they provided the escapism people needed’. (Whether regarded as camp, nostalgia or just plain fun, they are still giving pleasure 50 years on.)

Granger at last played a villain in his next film, Sidney Gilliatt’s Waterloo Road (1944), as a shady black marketeer who has dodged the draft and tries to steal the lonely wife (Joy Shelton) of a serviceman (John Mills). It was a splendidly gritty slice of wartime life and climaxed with a fist-fight between the two men which was uncompromisingly realistic for its day and achieved considerable notoriety. News of Granger’s fan following had by now spread to the United States, and when his next film, Gabriel Pascal’s financially disastrous Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), opened there, one critic described him as ‘the pet of the British bobby-soxers’.

Just before the war’s end, Granger did an Ensa tour through Europe performing Gaslight with Deborah Kerr, with whom he became romantically involved. (Granger later claimed in his autobiography that Kerr had initially seduced him in a London taxi, to which the actress’s response when queried on the story was, ‘What a gallant man he is]’) He then mistakenly turned down The Wicked Lady because the part of the highwayman was too small. James Mason took the role in Gainsborough’s most successful film. Instead, Granger did a sprawling but popular melodrama, Caravan (1946) and a highly fictionalised account of the life of Paganini, The Magic Bow (1946).

The actor’s arrogance and volatile temperament had not endeared him to some of his co-stars – during the filming of The Man in Grey his colleagues wrote a joint letter to his agent insisting that his strong language be curbed – and when Calvert was cast with him for the fourth time in The Magic Bow she rang him to ask if they should do it. He replied, ‘If you’re talking about our personal feelings, no. But if you’re talking about Our Public, yes.’ Yehudi Menuhin played the violin on the soundtrack, but the script was poor. Granger’s champion Lejeune gave it a one-word review (‘Fiddlesticks’) and even the public was disappointed.

Cinema was changing in the postwar atmosphere and though more realism was injected into Granger’s next few films, they failed to match his earlier successes at the box-office; Frank Launder’s Captain Boycott (1947), based on the true story of an Irish farmers’ revolt against unprincipled landlords, Marc Allegret’s Blanche Fury (1948), a tragic tale of treachery and murder, and Basil Deardon’s Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), the story of Sophie Dorothea’s doomed romance with Konigsmark, were all too grim for popular acceptance, though the last two had beautiful colour photography and splendid performances.

Granger had during this time been falling in love with the talented and beautiful actress Jean Simmons, though he confessed to some concern about their difference in age (she was 16 years younger). In 1949 he and March were divorced, and he conceived the idea for an updating of the Daddy Longlegs story as a vehicle for himself and Simmons. The result, Adam and Evelyne (1949), was a charming and popular romantic comedy, but the couple followed this with an ill-advised stage production of Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness. Granger later stated that he thought they would be applauded for choosing such a challenging project rather than a safe commercial venture, but the brooding, morbid piece (Simmons played a mentally retarded peasant) was disliked by audiences and regarded by critics as another example of Granger’s arrogance and pretensions.

Long aware that international stardom could only be achieved in Hollywood, Granger was delighted when MGM offered him the lead in King Solomon’s Mines (1950). Made partially in Africa, it was a creditable version of H. Rider Haggard’s adventure classic with Granger a dashingly heroic Allan Quatermain. It got his Hollywood career off to a rousing start, but his hesitancy to sign a long-term contract with the studio lost him the lead in Quo Vadis?, and when he finally committed himself he was rewarded with an uneasily comic version of Kipling’s Soldiers Three and a mild comedy- thriller, The Light Touch.

Next, though, came what is probably Granger’s finest film, George Sidney’s Scaramouche (1952), an exquisitely fashioned adaptation of the Rafael Sabatini classic with Granger as a roistering devil-may-care playboy-poet who, setting out to avenge his friend’s death by sword, becomes a fencing champion and joins a pantomime troupe to conceal his identity. Ardently wooing the demure Janet Leigh, exchanging verbal barbs with his waspish mistress Eleanor Parker, performing slapstick with the troupe or fencing as to the manner born, Granger is superb in a swashbuckling performance to rank with the best.

Sumptuously produced and directed with visual panache, the film builds excitingly to its memorable climax, a seven-minute swordfight in a theatre taking the protagonists over the boxes, through corridors, down the immense foyer staircase and finally on to the stage where props and curtains are slashed in this great action sequence. Scaramouche was a subject dear to Granger’s heart – he had read the book as a child and seen the 1923 silent version – and another classic of the past, The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), provided him with another fine heroic role. A scene-by- scene remake of the 1937 version (the film’s director, Richard Thorpe, had a Moviola on the set running the original), it tends to be underrated due to the classic quality of the earlier version, but Granger, Deborah Kerr and James Mason are excellent substitutes for the original cast and the final sabre duel is very exciting.

Granger and Simmons were married in 1950, and she joined him later in Hollywood when her remaining contract with Rank was bought by Howard Hughes. In 1953, while Granger was making Salome with Rita Hayworth, he and Simmons sued Hughes, who was claiming that he had the actress under personal contract for seven years. Much of Hollywood was sceptical at their taking on such a Goliath, but they won and Simmons was able to star at MGM in Young Bess (1953) with Granger, Charles Laughton and Deborah Kerr supporting the radiant star. Granger would later cite this as his best Hollywood film.

The couple owned a house overlooking the San Fernando Valley and regular visitors to their Sunday brunches included Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding (who had been an extra with Granger), Richard and Sybil Burton, and Spencer Tracy, after whom they named their daughter. Granger had two children by his first marriage, Jamie and Lindsay, who lived with the couple in Hollywood for several years while growing up.

It was Tracy who suggested to the director George Cukor that Granger would be perfect as Norman Maine in A Star is Born after the first choice, Cary Grant, had turned it down. Granger auditioned with Judy Garland at Cukor’s home but the director’s insistence on advising on every vocal inflexion annoyed the actor and he walked out. He later expressed regret at turning down the role which proved the highlight of his old friend James Mason’s Hollywood career. It is highly probable that Granger would have been superb as the alcoholic former swashbuckler who sees his wife’s star rising as his fades, and it would doubtless have helped a career which was starting to fade.

Granger played the title-role in Beau Brummel (1954), which had only gorgeous decor to recommend it. The film caused a scandal in England when chosen for the Royal Film Performance since it shows the descent into madness of King George III. Fritz Lang’s Moonfleet (1955) was a disappointing smuggling adventure but Footsteps in the Fog (1955), made in England with Simmons, was an effective Victorian thriller. Granger finally worked with Cukor on Bhowani Junction (1956), an interesting attempt to film John Masters’s novel set against 1947 anti-imperialist India. Granger began a lifelong friendship with his co-star Ava Gardner, but Cukor was disparaging about him. ‘I wanted Trevor Howard; Granger was just a movie star.’

His contract coming to an end, he was given less important films by the studio, and he turned down the role of Messala in Ben Hur rather than be billed below Charlton Heston. Although 43 years old, he refused to see himself in character parts, while being disarmingly modest about his abilities: ‘I know I haven’t a nutshell of talent compared to my wife, Jean Simmons,’ he said in 1958. The couple had been very much in love, but the long separations involved in their careers eventually put a strain on the marriage and they were divorced in 1960, the year Granger made his last truly successful film as a star, Henry Hathaway’s rollicking comedy adventure North to Alaska, co-starring John Wayne.

Granger showed that he could still play a swashbuckling role with flair in Swordsman of Sienna (1961), but most of his films for the next decade were made on the Continent, including three as the German author Karl May’s western hero Old Surehand, and in the Seventies he become active in television movies. He played the villain in the 1978 adventure The Wild Geese, supporting his old friend Richard Burton, and in 1990 returned to the theatre, touring England and then making an acclaimed Broadway debut in Somerset Maugham’s The Circle with Rex Harrison and Glynis Johns

Wikipedia entry:

Jonathan Newth (born 6 March 1939 in Devon) is a British actor, best known for his performances in television.

Credits include: Emergency Ward 10, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Ace of Wands, The Troubleshooters, Z-Cars, Callan, Van der Valk, The Brothers, Softly, Softly, Poldark, Doctor Who, Notorious Woman, Secret Army (Barsacq), The Professionals, The Nightmare Man, The Day of the Triffids, Tenko (Colonel Clifford Jefferson), Triangle, Angels, Juliet Bravo, After Henry, Boon, Bugs,The Bill, Agatha Christie’s Poirot (Dumb Witness), Peak Practice, Heartbeat and The Spire (Play at Sailsbury Cathedral).

Roy Marsden

Roy MarsdenWorking full time in the theatre. Roy has chosen to devote his full attention to acting and directing on stage. His latest effort was his own production of “A Christmas Carol” that he not only directed but also played Scrooge. His days as Commander Adam Dalgliesh are surely over as the new BBC production of PD James’ latest book “Death in Holy Orders” will star Martin Shaw as Dalgliesh. [March 2003]

On his television series “Airline”: It was one of the most enjoyable programmes I ever made. Learning to fly those old DC-3s was terrific. And I enjoyed playing Ruskin enormously because he had hope. Of course, he was a pain up the tushie most of the time, but then you’d see that youthful desire to actually get out and triumph against enormous odds. I identified with that character the most.

Lee Evans was born on February 25, 1964 in Avonmouth, Bristol, England. He is an actor and writer, known for There’s Something About Mary (1998), The Fifth Element (1997) andMousehunt (1997). He has been married to Heather Nudds since September 22, 1984. They have one child.

“Guardian” obituary:

Veronica Horwell
The Guardian, Monday 17 March 2003 00.19 GMT

An interviewer from the Guardian once spent four hours recording Dame Thora Hird, who has died aged 91, stopping only because he ran out of tapes. “Listen to this,” he enthused afterwards, and turned up the sound of her singing a rude ditty about “balls” (rhymed with “orchestra stalls”) that she had written 60 years earlier. The journalist had interrogated Hollywood’s top brass across their studio desks, but they never fired him up as did this octagenarian in a wheelchair, talking about God and Morecambe Co-op.He was responding to a national institution, venerable yet rorty, both Queen Mum and a Donald McGill seaside postcard. She was 86 in the year of that interview, and had just won the second of her three Bafta awards as best television actress – this time for Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologue, Waiting For The Telegram, playing a centenarian who wept on remembering that she had not bedded her sweetheart the night before he left to die in the trenches.

Hird was not, she would sharply remind those who confused life and art, as old as the character – “It’s not actually me, love, it’s acting. That’s what I’m paid for, it’s pretending” – although she could just recall the first world war wounded convalescing in Morecambe. But then she could recall everything, even the names of her classmates at the Misses Nelson’s prep school: Vera Muff, Madge Peel, Ada Lob and Maudie Poles.

The Morecambe of Madge and Ada was home to Hird. Her dad, James Henry Hird, was manager of the Royalty theatre, and later of the entertainments on the pier, where a weekly ticket admitted holidaymakers to a pocket opera company and Madame Rosa Vere, who dived off in red tights every high tide, after which her mother passed the hat. Thora’s own mother, Mary, had carried her daughter on stage at eight weeks old; mam was acting a lass who had been done wrong by the squire’s son, and the bundled baby played the result. Theatre then was a reliable local business, like undertaking or clog repairs.

On leaving school, Hird worked for 10 years behind the Co-op cash desk, storing away the look of Mrs Edale, “who always sucked a split pea”, and Mrs Bradley, trying to feed 10 kids on nowt, and practised their mannerisms by night in the Royalty rep, while dad coached her timing and checked her inflections.

George Formby spotted her in 1939, wanted her to play his mother and sent up a casting director from Ealing Studios to peer through his monocle at her. She was too young for the role, but was put under film contract anyway -£10 a week between parts and £10 a day in work. They gave her a £5 note to cover the fare, and she arrived at the studios to the sound of the first air raid siren of the second world war.

Hird had sworn to her mam that she would, one day, wear a sequin-spangled frock, fur coat and orchids, and her mam had said she hoped it would keep fine for her; but on the wartime day when the beginnings of West End success financed a £50-fur, second-hand gown and slightly passé orchids, it poured down. She remained mindful of her dad’s exactitude about timing. The night before he died, he told her: “You’re a wonderful artist. I’ve lived to see you perform like you did tonight.”

Hird had her own family by then. In Morecambe, she had fancied James Scott, a drummer in the Winter Gardens orchestra, and they had courted decorously for four years, with him coming round to her mam’s for supper every night until they married in 1937 (the wedding photos were all teeth and arum lilies). They returned from honeymoon with 3s 8d left. He believed in her: “You will get on,” he said when they were broke, “and when you do, we’ll go round the world.” They laughed for an hour at that.

Scott put down £25 on the plot of land which eventually became their house at Prompt Corner, complete with the luxury of a built-in kitchen cabinet. He said he wished he could give Hird more on their first anniversary than a bunch of chrysanths, and she said, you can, you can give me a baby: in 1938, their daughter Janette pulled into the world, with fish servers in lieu of forceps. When Hird did get on, Scotty became her house-husband, cook and chaffeur, and manager to both Hird and Janette, who had a movie career as a child and teenage actor. Scotty served his war as a bedpan-wallah with the RAF – his wife’s description.

Through the 1950s in British cinema, Hird was one of the company of what you might call the Real National Theatre – actors always present because they represented the familiar and the true. On screen and stage, in more than 700 roles, she drew on those customers she had shelved in her memory at the Co-op. Until the 1960s, she was usually cast condescendingly – from a gawky maid named Eunice Sidebottom up to about middling dragon landlady. As she said later, she had not been at the front of the queue when the looks were given out, so she was always a character – yes, she played the nurse in Romeo And Juliet.

Yet she was John Osborne’s favourite actor – cast, at his request, in The Entertainer (1960) – both because of her ability to turn moods on a sixpence and because one of her specialities was Osborne’s pet hate, the narrow-minded mother-in-law with pretensions. Her best in that line was in John Schlesinger’s A Kind Of Loving (1962), with Alan Bates as her angry young son-in-law: Hird shoved in your face the power in that vernacular adjective “interfering”. She could do the dismissive mother of a floppy lad, too – Alan Bennett wrote her one in his television play Me, I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1978), in which she tells him that being called Trevor is no bar to greatness; there had been a Trevor who had done well for himself in Northern Gas.

Hird was a natural for television. Long before her alliance with Bennett, there had been a clutch of amiable series: Meet The Wife; her matriarch of an undertaker’s family in In Loving Memory; The First Lady, in which her county councillor owed much to her own Auntie Nellie, who had hissed an aspirational “Yice” for “yes”, and never proffered a plate of biscuits ungraced by a doiley. What seemed eccentricity in her work was really extreme precision about the concerns of a local world. She set the tone of the women in The Last Of The Summer Wine.

Hird’s conversation shared with Bennett’s writing the exactly-placed names – a cup of Horlicks, a tumbler of dandelion and burdock – and a sense of a vast, lost innocence, of a world where knobbly knees were life’s norm. They also shared a certain humour – “Dear Thora, Just come up to change the lavatory seat, love Alan” read one of his postcards from Yorkshire – and a disdain for approximation: “That’s an ‘if’, not a ‘but’, and when you do a Bennett it is an ‘if’, not a ‘but’,” she remarked about memorising his scripts.

The first solo he created for her, A Cream Cracker Under The Settee, in the original Talking Heads series, won her first Bafta award in 1988. Her character faced a lonely death after a fall in the isolation of home. Bennett forced Hird towards her core toughness – no mawkishness permitted – as did Derec Longden in Lost For Words, his 1999 play about the last weeks of his mother’s life. “Do you want to be buried, mum, or cremated?” asks the son. “Oh, I don’t know, love,” Hird answers; then, after a pause timed to a nanosecond: “Surprise me.”

An easier side of her was visible for decades in television religious broadcasts, including her own series, Praise Be! Her chapel Christianity could come over comfy, although her relationship with “me pal oopstairs” clearly sustained her as the eventide fell. She used to say she had done a deal with him – no pain, when she was filming, in exchange for bearing whatever hurt when resting. Osteoarthritis demanded repeated hip replacements, she had a heart bypass and angina, and was immobilised after a kitchen fall too close to a Bennett script: “I was taking the little strings off the French beans, and I sat off the chair.”

After Scotty died of a stroke in 1994, Hird hired professional help, and worked on to pay their wages. There was still family, Janette and the grandchildren. It is a curious fact that her son-in-law was the singer Mel Torme (obituary, June 7 1999); she had visited the family in Beverly Hills 24 times – “It’s perfect for a holiday, but there’s no corner shop, love.”

Her autobiography, Scene And Hird, appeared in 1976. She was made an OBE in 1983, got an hon DLitt from Lancaster University in 1989, and became a dame in 1993. She met Princess Diana nine times and the Queen repeatedly, but it did not modify her memory of who she had been. “Never forget,” she told an awed reporter, “I scrubbed my mother’s steps when I was younger… Will you fetch me mink?”

· Thora Hird, actor, born May 28 1911; died March 15 2003

Johnny Briggs

Johnny Briggs was born in London on Sept 5, 1935, to Ernest and Rose Briggs, Johnny had a younger sister, Barbara, who died in 1955 at age 15. As a boy, he sang soprano in a church choir and during World War II he was evacuated to the safety of the English countryside. Back in London he won a scholarship, at age 12, to the Italia Conti Stage Academy. Among his classmates were Nanette Newman and Anthony Newley. A scattering of parts followed in movies, stage plays and TV shows. In 1953 Johnny began two years of service in Germany with the Royal Tank Regiment. He then resumed his acting career.

In 1961 he married Caroline Sinclair and they had two children, Mark and Karen, before divorcing in 1975. In 1975 Johnny married schoolteacher Christine Allsop and they’ve had four children: Jennifer, Michael, Stephanie, and Anthony. British audiences know him best as ‘Mike Baldwin’, the part he played on the Coronation Street (1960) TV series for more than 20 years beginning in 1976.

American audiences are more likely to remember him as the young sailor who was stripped to the waist and flogged in 1962’s Damn the Defiant!(1962)! Though working less frequently these days, Johnny remains an avid golfer.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: dinky-4 of Minneapolis

Johnny Briggs died in 2021.

“Guardian” obituary in 2021.

The actor Johnny Briggs, who has died aged 85, was cast as the flash cockney Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street in 1976 to boost audience figures for the northern soap opera in the south of England. He ended up staying for 30 years.

Mike arrived with experience in the rag trade, opened a factory, Baldwin’s Casuals, where he was a tough boss with no time for unions – and went to bed with Bet Lynch, the Rovers Return barmaid.

A string of lovers followed, and the biggest bombshell came when Mike had an affair with Deirdre Barlow, whose husband, Ken, became his arch-enemy. The 1982-83 love triangle was one of the serial’s most popular storylines, with unprecedented newspaper coverage debating whether Deirdre should stay with Ken. In the end, almost 20 million viewers watched the episode in which they were reconciled. Such was the massive public interest that the electronic scoreboard at Old Trafford – where Manchester United were playing against Arsenal – informed the 56,000 football fans: “Deirdre and Ken united again!”

Johnny Briggs, left, as Mike Baldwin with Roy Barraclough as Alec Gilroy and Julie Goodyear playing Bet Gilroy.Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

A sweet-talking Romeo, Mike then fathered a son with Maggie Dunlop and married four times. The first marriage, to Susan Barlow – Ken’s daughter – was guaranteed to make the drama soar. Then came Jackie Ingram, Alma Sedgewick and Linda Sykes. Alma was the love of his life and the couple were reunited when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In true soap style, Mike was eventually revealed to be the father of two more children, Adam, the son he believed did not exist because Susan had terminated the pregnancy, and Danny, born after Mike’s fling with his brother’s wife many years earlier. He made Danny a partner in Underworld, his knicker factory.

When Briggs, described by one critic as having “twinkling eyes and slightly shifty charm”, tired of the increasingly busy Coronation Street filming schedules, Mike was written out with a heart attack in 2006 – dying on the cobbles in the arms of Ken Barlow.

Briggs was born in Battersea, south-west London, the son of Ernest, a joiner and carpenter, and Rose (nee Good). He was evacuated to Surrey and Cheshire during the second world war, when Rose, worked in a munitions factory. In Cheshire, he sang solo treble in a chapel choir.

Back home in the capital after the war, he was awarded a scholarship to the Italia Conti Stage Academy aged 12. Millicent Martin, Nanette Newman and Anthony Newley were all in his year and Briggs was soon in the chorus of an Italian opera company visiting London (Cambridge theatre, 1947). Over the years, he joined the company’s annual production, performing in La Bohème, Tosca, Falstaff and Rigoletto.

William Roache, left, playing Ken Barlow takes on Johnny Briggs as Mike Baldwin in a 1986 episode of Coronation Street. Photograph: ITV/Shutterstock

Briggs also had bit parts in the films Hue and Cry (1947) and Oliver Twist (1948), before a more significant role in The Kite, one of four Somerset Maugham short stories in Quartet (1948), filmed on Wimbledon Common with George Cole. More uncredited appearances followed in other films, including the Ealing Studios comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).Advertisementhttps://664bc5a338de357a5151cda9c30b099c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

Briggs appeared in his first stage play, Life With Father, at Northampton repertory theatre in 1949, the year he performed alongside a young Audrey Hepburn in the chorus of the London revues Sauce Tartare and Sauce Piquante (Cambridge theatre). When his voice broke, Briggs stuck to acting and joined Dewsbury repertory company (1950).

On leaving Italia Conti, he became a stage hand and spotlight operator at the Windmill theatre, and did two years’ national service as a driving instructor and gunner in the 8th Royal Tank Regiment.

Briggs had his first credited screen role, as Skinny Johnson, one of the gang of juvenile delinquents, in the film Cosh Boy (1952), starring Joan Collins. More parts followed in Second Fiddle (1957), Sink the Bismarck! (1960), Light Up the Sky! (1960), The Bulldog Breed (1960), HMS Defiant (1962, as a young sailor stripped to the waist and flogged), Doctor in Distress (1963) and three Carry On films – as one of the kilted Third Foot and Mouth Regiment in Up the Khyber (1968), a plasterer in Behind (1975) and a major’s put-upon driver in England (1976).

Briggs acted with a rep company in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, before taking the role of Kevin in the original production of Arnold Wesker’s play The Kitchen (Royal Court, 1959).

By the 1960s he was getting regular television work and found fame as DS Russell (1964-66) in the later years of No Hiding Place. The 5ft 7in actor put lifts in his shoes to land the role. “Give yourself an extra inch, because you’re a bit small,” he was advised by the crime drama’s star, Raymond Francis, who played DCS Lockhart in the hugely popular series. Briggs eventually wore a specially made pair of shoes that gave him an extra three inches.

Later came the parts of Clifford Leyton (1973-75), boss of a taxi firm, in the soap opera Crossroads, and Spiggy in the sitcom Thick as Thieves (1974). His long-running Coronation Street role followed a brief appearance as a lorry driver in the serial in 1974. After leaving, Briggs had one-off roles in Agatha Christie’s Marple: Nemesis, and Holby City (both 2007), and Doctors (2009). He was the caravan park operator Fin Morgan in the short-lived teen soap Echo Beach (2008).

Off screen, Briggs enjoyed playing golf and spending time at his holiday home in Florida. His autobiography, My Life As Mike Baldwin, was published in 1998 and he was appointed MBE in 2007.

Briggs is survived by his children, Mark and Karen, from his first marriage, to Caroline Hover (they married in 1961 and divorced in 1975), and by Jennifer, Michael, Stephanie and Anthony, from his second marriage, to Christine Allsop (they married in 1977 and divorced in 2006).

• John Ernest Briggs, actor, born 5 September 1935; died 28 February 2021

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

James Mason

Bill Nighy

Michael Caine

Stewart Granger

Jonathan Newth

Roy Marsden

Roy Marsden

Lee Evans

Thora Hird

Johnny Briggs

Johnny Briggs

“Guardian” obituary in 2021.

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