British Actors Archives - Page 39 of 138

Raymond Massey

TCM overview:

Exceptionally tall, with distinctive, unconventional features and a commanding presence, actor Raymond Massey built an impressive career out of playing reassuring authority figures and scheming villains equally well. The Canadian-born actor first honed his craft on the stages of the U.K. for nearly 10 years before venturing across the Atlantic to appear on Broadway as “Hamlet” and in early sound pictures like “The Speckled Band” (1931), in the role of Sherlock Holmes. Massey demonstrated his versatility with venomous characters in films like “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937) juxtaposed against his career-defining portrayal of the 16th U.S. president in “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1940), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play written with him in mind. Massey became the stuff of Hollywood legend when the aftermath of his divorce from actress Adrianne Allen inspired the beloved Tracy-Hepburn comedy “Adam’s Rib” (1949). As an actor, Massey continually impressed with is ability to make difficult characters sympathetic in such films as “The Fountainhead” (1949), opposite Gary Cooper, and as James Dean’s emotionally unavailable father in “East of Eden” (1955). A younger generation of fans came to appreciate his later work as Richard Chamberlain’s authoritative mentor Dr. Gillespie on “Dr. Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66). Even as his half-century career neared its end, Massey continued to make memorable contributions to such big-budget Hollywood offerings as the Western “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969). One of the first and best examples of a “working actor” in film, Massey never failed to elevate the integrity of any project.

Raymond Hart Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on Aug. 30, 1896. He was the son of Ann and Chester Daniel Massey, whose family roots could be traced back to pre-Revolutionary War America. Although Raymond participated in a few school productions while attending the Appleby School in Oakville, Ontario, the assumption was that he would eventually enter into his well-to-do family’s farm equipment business upon completing his education. As a member of the Canadian Officer’s Training Corps while attending the University of Toronto when World War I began, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Canadian Army. Massey served with a field artillery unit at France’s Western Front until he was wounded at Ypres in 1916. Hospitalized for several months and diagnosed with shell shock, he was later sent to the U.S., where he served as an artillery instructor for a time before rejoining the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in 1918 and being sent to Siberia in the wake of the Russian Communist Revolution. While stationed at Vladivostok, Massey was put in charge of entertainment for the troops, for whom he mounted several theatrical productions. In later years, the venerable actor related that it was then that the performing bug truly bit him, once and for all.

Upon being discharged, Massey attended Britain’s Balliol College, Oxford. The stay at Oxford was not a long one, however, and before long he was back home in Canada, where he attempted to make a go of it in the family business. But the thrill of the theater still called to Massey, who, upon the advice of renowned thespian John Drew and after pleading for permission from his patriarchal Methodist father, returned to England to pursue a career on the stage. Eventually the determined actor landed his first professional role in a 1922 production of Eugene O’Neill’s “In the Zone” and from that point forward, there was no looking back. Within four years, Massey was established on the stages of London as both an actor and director, and in less than a decade, he made trip back across the Atlantic for his Broadway debut as the star of a revival of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in 1931.

Although he had made a pair of brief, uncredited screen appearances two years prior, Massey’s first major film role was as Sherlock Holmes in the mystery “The Speckled Band” (1931), the first talkie to depict the exploits of the great detective. Other leading roles soon came in films like director James Whale’s superb “The Old Dark House” (1932), opposite Boris Karloff. Massey’s imposing features also allowed him to adapt easily to more villainous roles, such as the slithering Chauvelin in “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (1935). Massey had far from abandoned work on the stage, though, appearing on Broadway many times over the next two decades and earning accolades for such portrayals as “Ethan Frome” in 1936. Back on screen, he showed his bad side twice more as Black Michael opposite David Niven’s “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937) and as the conniving Prince Ghul in the British Empire epic, “The Drum” (1938). At 6’3″ tall, Massey was perfectly suited to play the legendarily lanky commander-in-chief in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1938) which was written specifically with the actor in mind by playwright Robert Sherwood.

Massey’s personal life took a decidedly truth-is-stranger-than-fiction turn in 1939 when he and his wife of 10 years, actress Adrianne Allen, entered into divorce proceedings. Massey and Allen were each represented by one-half of the husband and wife legal team of William and Dorothy Whitney. With the divorce finalized, the attorneys quickly divorced each other and went on to marry their respective famous clients – Massey and Allen. The bizarre turn of events later inspired husband and wife screenwriting team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin to pen the classic 1949 battle of the sexes comedy “Adam’s Rib,” starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. During their time as a couple, Massey and Allen had two children, Daniel and Anna, both of whom went on to enjoy acting careers of their own.

The following year, Massey reprised his most famous stage persona in the film version of “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1940), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He took on another historical figure that year with a wild-eyed, unsympathetic portrayal of the radical abolitionist John Brown in “Santa Fe Trail” (1940), starring Errol Flynn as Confederate Civil War hero J.E.B. Stuart. Working steadily throughout the war years, Massey took over the role his “Old Dark House” co-star Boris Karloff had originated on stage for director Frank Capra’s film adaptation of the play “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944), then lent his intimidating visage to the role of a stern prosecutor in the Heaven-set sequences of the imaginative Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger fantasy, “A Matter of Life and Death” (1945). Maintaining his ties to the stage, the actor returned to Broadway to play Professor Henry Higgins in the 1945 production of “Pygmalion.”

Other notable work of the period included a performance as General Ezra Mannon – an updated version of Greek King Agamemnon – in “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1947), the screen adaptation of O’Neill’s epic reinterpretation of “The Oresteia,” a trilogy of Greek tragedies by Aeschylus. He was sympathetic as the well-meaning but weak-willed newspaper magnate Gail Wynand in director King Vidor’s adaptation of author Ayn Rand’s treatise on individuality, “The Fountainhead” (1949), starring Gary Cooper as visionary architect Howard Roark. Still at the height of his powers, Massey was excellent years later as the proud and emotionally distant patriarch Adam Trask opposite James Dean in the filmed version of Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” (1955) and delivered a far more balanced portrayal in his second outing as John Brown in the under-appreciated “Seven Angry Men” (1955).

By the second half of the decade, Massey transitioned more predominantly into the burgeoning medium of television, appearing in guest spots on many of the popular anthology series of the day, such as “General Electric Theater” (CBS, 1953-1962). The venerable stage and film star became widely known by a new generation of audience as the gruff but caring Dr. Gillespie on the popular medical-drama “Dr. Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66), featuring a fresh-faced Richard Chamberlain in the title role. Fans of his work as the stern taskmaster Gillespie may not have been surprised when Massey made his personal politics known by actively campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during the 1964 race against incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson.

Long established as an elder statesman of screens both large and small, Massey continued to appear in projects, albeit with less frequency as the ’60s drew to a close. His final performance in a feature film was as a fortune-hunting preacher in the Gregory Peck Western “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969). This was followed a few years later by his last television appearances in the political-thriller “The President’s Plane is Missing” (ABC, 1973) and the family film “My Darling Daughter’s Anniversary” (ABC, 1973), starring one of his contemporaries, Robert Young. After battling a case of pneumonia for nearly a month, Massey died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on July 29, 1983, just weeks shy of his 87th birthday. Somewhat overshadowing the sad event was the passing of actor David Niven, Massey’s “Prisoner of Zenda” co-star, who died that same day.

By Bryce Coleman

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Adrienne Posta

“Wikipedia”:

Adrienne Posta (born Adrienne Luanne Poster, 4 March 1948) is an English film and television actress and singer, prominent during the 1960s and 1970s.^[1] She adopted the surname ‘Posta’ in 1966.^[2]^[3] She recorded a number of singles.^[1]^[2] She is now semi-retired and works as a teacher in the Midlands and at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.^[4]Posta is an honorary patron of the Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America.^[5]

Denis Gifford’s “Independent” obituary:

THE FAMOUS Bette Davis film All About Eve might have been named for Eve Boswell, the Fifties pop singer who had so many talents hidden under her pretty and petite physique that one could write a chapter on each. She sang both sweetly and sexily, encouraging her packed audiences not only to sing along but clap along, on and off the beat, but she could also play a classical piano piece to perfection, blow a hearty saxophone, toot a swinging clarinet, clatter a natty tap dance, leg a charming ballet step, record a long-playing selection in nine different languages, and in her retirement years run a school for singers in South Africa. Try that, Spice Girls!

Eve Boswell was born Eva Keleti, in Budapest, in 1924, the only daughter of a professional pair who toured the world with their musical act. Educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, she studied classical piano at the famous Lausanne Academy before joining her parents as a teenager. The act changed its name to the Three Hugos and as such made its debut in a Paris night-club. Young Eva, supposed to play the piano and join in some harmony singing, was so scared she ran off the stage.

When the Second World War was declared in September 1939 the act was on tour in England. Unhappily the family was classified as alien, so, taking a job with the Boswell Circus, they promptly departed for a tour of South Africa. Here Trevor McIntosh, the son of the owner, taught Eve to speak English, and the two fell in love. In time they married.

It was Trevor who encouraged the girl to sing and to change her name to Eve Boswell, after the circus. Soon she could be heard over South African radio singing with Roy Martin and his dance band from the Coconut Grove in Johannesburg. Adrian Foley (Lord Foley), a pianist and composer working in South Africa after the war, liked her voice. Alan Dell, the disc-jockey who was a local radio producer at that time, made some private recordings of her and Foley took them to London to play to prospective publishers.

Geraldo (Gerald Bright), then the top dance band leader, heard them, liked them and sent the girl a telegram offering her three months work. Eve, Trevor and their small son Michael promptly sold up their African homestead and sailed for England. She opened with Geraldo at the Blackpool Winter Gardens on 1 June 1949. At the end of her first week Geraldo cancelled her contract and gave her a new one for a whole year. In the end she stayed with him for more than two years.

Geraldo’s band was a broadcasting favourite (“Hello again – we’re on the radio again!”) and his new singer was heard over many a BBC programme. Two months after her debut date she cut her first record, “Again”, but as was traditional at the time she was billed, not by name, but as “Vocal Refrain”. She suffered this indignity through several recordings, including a romantic version of the comedian Reg Dixon’s signature tune, “Confidentially”, before getting her proper billing in April 1950 with “I Can Dream Can’t I”. (All her records from 1949 to 1959 were on the Parlophone label.)

In July 1950, while Geraldo and his band were playing for holidaymakers aboard the Queen Mary, Boswell returned to South Africa for a working holiday, and also supplied the singing voice for the Hollywood star Vera- Ellen in her British film Happy Go Lovely (1950). Vera-Ellen was a wonderful dancer but hopeless as a singer. This would turn out to be Boswell’s only brush with the cinema, a tragedy considering her prettiness and her talent.

Boswell parted with Geraldo in January 1952 and with her husband as her manager launched herself on a solo career. Her first big success was supporting the comedian Derek Roy in a variety tour of his radio series, Happy Go Lucky. Roy had also begun as a vocalist for Geraldo, and the two recorded a well-sung duet called “Dance Me Loose”. A cover version of an Arthur Godfrey disc, it failed to make the hit parade.

Many radio appearances during this time included The Forces Show, a 60- minute spectacular starring Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne – the Much Binding in the Marsh pair – as hosts; Workers’ Playtime, the midday series for factory hands; Henry Hall’s Guest Night; and finally in 1954 her own series, Time To Dream. This was compered by Alan Dell, who had by now come to England to further his own radio career. She also crossed the Channel via recordings to star in a Radio Luxembourg series called Family Album. This featured Philip Green and his Orchestra and was sponsored by Marshall Ward, the catalogue company.

Her first true hit came in August 1952, “Sugar Bush”, with its chorus of “Oh we’re never not gonna go home, we won’t go” and the extra gimmick of the closing chorus being sung in Afrikaans. She was so thrilled with its success that she named her pet poodle Bush, and added her first caption to her variety billing: “Eve Boswell the Bush Girl”. More than a year later, still billed the same way, she appeared in the Royal Variety Performance at the London Coliseum.

She was back double-billed with Derek Roy and supported by the newcomer Tommy Cooper (“TV’s Mad Magician”), in a Southport summer season show, Happy and Glorious (1954), but the continuous work proved too much. Just as an edition of The Forces Show was about to go on the air (Sunday 3 October) she collapsed and a doctor in the house diagnosed nervous exhaustion. Two weeks later she was back on tour and that Christmas made her pantomime debut in Humpty Dumpty at Dudley. Once again Derek Roy and Tommy Cooper were her co-stars.

More variety followed, both in South Africa and England, plus a number of shows for television. These included Hit Parade, Commonwealth Cavalcade, and Off the Record, in which the former bandleader Jack Payne tried to adapt his radio disc-jockey format for television. Her song hits continued with the Afrikaans “Skokiaan” for which she invented a “New Sound”, a combination of low-blown clarinet and vibraphone; and in October 1955 her one and only major hit. This was “Pickin’ a Chicken”, a South African tune with new words composed by Paddy Roberts. Intended as the “B”, to the long-forgotten “Blue Star”, this lively number shot to No 9 on the British hit parade.

In June 1956 she visited America to promote her new release deal with Capitol Records, appearing on radio and television. Returning to open The Big Show at Blackpool Opera House, she co-starred with the American comedians George and Bert Bernard, who mimed to gramophone records dressed up as the Andrews Sisters. She made her entrance in a well-staged circus scene, bursting through a paper hoop and juggling, a hitherto unknown talent that surprised the audience. In fact they didn’t know who she was until she started to sing.

Unhappily another breakdown followed, then the work continued non-stop; pantomimes, summer shows, records, and her first LP, on which she sang 10 songs in nine different languages. It was called Sugar and Spice (1956). One major touring show was Harold Fielding’s Music for the Millions (1957); she appeared with the classical pianists Rawicz and Landauer, the television comic Arthur Haynes, and pop stars Micki and Griff. There were also Sunday concerts including one at the Blackpool Opera House with Johnnie Ray the crying crooner. Nineteen fifty-eight saw her based at Blackpool for a 22-week run of You’ll Be Lucky, supporting the top radio comedian Al Read; the title was his catchphrase. An even longer season, 24 weeks, followed in 1959, this time in Glasgow. She backed the Scots comic Jimmy Logan in Five Past Eight.

Always a globe-trotter, Boswell became the first “English” singer to have her own show on Hungarian television (1960), returning to Scotland for another long run with Jimmy Logan. Yet another new talent amazed her audiences; she and Logan played a duet on the bagpipes.

But with the rock ‘n’ roll revolution of the Sixties Boswell’s multi- talents lacked the simplistic basic beat which it seemed all the teenagers wanted, and gradually, sadly, she faded from public view.

One of her last shows was a guest spot on Granada’s Wheel-tappers & Shunters Social Club in the Seventies, where she soon had an overjoyed audience clapping along with a selection of her past hits. Of course, “Sugar Bush” made a clapping climax. Remarkably and by sheerest chance, the Granada Plus channel re-ran this very programme only a week or so ago; an ideal if slightly premature tribute.

Denis Gifford

Eva Keleti (Eve Boswell), singer: born Budapest 11 May 1924; married three times, first to Trevor McIntosh (one son); died Durban, South Africa 13 August 1998

Eve Boswell

Rachel Gurney

Eric Shorter’s obituary in “The Guardian” in 2001:

Rachel Gurney, who has died aged 81, was one of the most elegant and serene exponents of well-bred femininity and aristocratic assurance on the postwar London stage and in television, in particular as the moneyed Belgravian matriarch, Lady Marjorie Bellamy, in the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs, which lightly examined the English class system.

On the stage, where her career spanned nearly half a century, Kenneth Tynan drew attention to her talent by attacking the West End management. After watching her 1956 performance in Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden, which the Guardian critic Philip Hope-Wallace rated “an English rose of a comedy” and “the acme of perfect drawing-room acting”, Tynan wrote: “Rachel Gurney shows once again how foolish the theatre has been to neglect her.”

Raised in Eton, where her father was a housemaster – her mother, Irene Scharrer, was a concert pianist – Gurney was very much to the manner born. She was often cast in upper-class roles, but used to say that she would have preferred to have played one of the servants: “They are much nicer people.”

Educated at Challoner school, London, she dithered between an academic and a musical future, before settling for the theatre at an early age. Trained at the Webber-Douglas school, she made her debut at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1945, as Leda, in Giraudoux’s Amphitryon 38.

Within a year, she had landed a West End job in The Guinea Pig, appropriately playing a public school house-master’s daughter experimenting with “a scholarship boy of humble parentage”. One critic credited her with “a performance of rare delicacy”. Immediately the play’s long run ended, there was another West End role, that of Lady Katherine, in a 1947 revival of Bridie’s A Sleeping Clergyman.

Since two West End supporting roles in as many years hardly provided a promising young actor with the experience she needed, Gurney joined the Bristol Old Vic, notably playing a baronet’s fiancée in Peter Watling’s Rain On The Just, a play about upper-class families in decline.

Back in the West End in 1949, she was a well-to-do family’s married daughter in Lesley Storm’s drama, Black Chiffon (Westminster), before joining Alec Clunes’s prestigious Arts Theatre Club for a season of Shaw one-acters and Granville-Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance, in which she was the girl whom the young hero finally fancies, when he has sifted the family scandal.

After 18 months in The Chalk Garden came a tour of India and Ceylon, in a Shakespearean recital for the British Council. Then, in 1959, Gurney resumed her aristocratic characterisations by taking over from Celia Johnson as the Countess of Rhyall in that lightest of light comedies, The Grass Is Greener. She followed that with Lady Chiltern, in An Ideal Husband (Piccadilly, 1966), Lady Chavender, in a Dublin festival production of Shaw’s On The Rocks, in which she toured England, and Mrs Darling, in Peter Pan (Palladium, 1975).

In a spate of Shaw revivals in the United States, Gurney then turned up as Mrs Clandon, in You Never Can Tell (1977), Hesione Hushabye, in Heartbreak House, and Lady Britomart, in Major Barbara, as well as Mrs Prentice, in Joe Orton’s What The Butler Saw (1980).

Ever the trouper, in 1989 she toured with Derek Jacobi in Richard II and Richard III. Among her 1990s stage credits were Uncle Vanya (Cottesloe, 1992), and tours of Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking The Code (1992) and Rattigan’s Separate Tables (1993), which reached the West End.

Among Gurney’s television credits since 1950 were Lady Carbury, in the original BBC production of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, Portrait Of A Lady, Moonstone and Little Sir Nicholas.

Her marriage to the writer Denys Rhodes was dissolved in 1950 after five years. They had a daughter.

· Rachel Gurney Lubbock, actor, born March 5 1920; died November 24 2001

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

2523615 ARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY?: ARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY, US poster, from left: Ray Milland, Betty Field, Patricia Morison, 1942; (add.info.: Affiche du film ARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY? de Norman Taurog avec Ray Milland, Betty Field, Patricia Morison, 1942 ); Everett Collection.

Ray Milland’s TCM profile:

Ray Milland was named Best Actor of 1945 for his performance as an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend. It was a career making film — and a record making Oscar® acceptance. Milland is the only Best Actor winner to have not spoken a single word when accepting the Oscar. Instead of a speech, Milland simply bowed and made a graceful exit. In his career, like his speech, Milland’s style was often understated. He spent many years in Hollywood playing B-movie romantic leads and the buddies and rivals of the films’ male stars. The Lost Weekend should have launched Milland into stardom at long last. It proved, instead, to be the pinnacle of a 50-year career of an actor who didn’t take Hollywood fame too seriously and was willing to take on roles others might not equate with an Oscar® winner.

Milland was born Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones on January 3, 1905 in Wales. He made his start in British films in 1929 – his first two films were The Plaything and The Lady from the Sea (both 1929). In 1930, Milland made his way to Hollywood and took a stage name. There are several versions of how “Ray Milland” came to be. In some accounts the name was a version of his stepfather’s name Mullane. Others suggest the moniker came from the flat mill lands that surround Milland’s hometown of Neath. This second explanation mostly likely did play a part. As with most people’s life decisions, there was another influential factor – his mother. In his 1974 autobiography Wide-eyed in Babylon, Milland recalls arguing for hours with his agent over the name. Fed up, Milland claims he got up and said, “I don’t really care what you call me. I must keep the initial R because my mother had it engraved on my suitcases. Other than that, I don’t really care, but if you all don’t come up with something soon, I’m packing these suitcases and going back to the mill lands where I came from.” And so the name Ray Milland remained.

Milland’s early days in Hollywood were made up of supporting roles. One of his first films, Way for a Sailor(1930) cast him opposite John Gilbert and Wallace Beery. Other memorable films of his early career include:Strangers May Kiss (1931) with Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery; the James Cagney-Joan Blondell crime drama Blonde Crazy (1931); the romantic comedy Just a Gigolo (1931); and Payment Deferred(1932) with Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Sullivan. By the late ’30s Milland had made the jump to more leading roles in films like Easy Living (1937) with Jean Arthur, Wise Girl (1937) opposite Miriam Hopkins, and the romantic musical-comedy Irene (1940). The 1940s brought more first rate films like the Billy Wilder comedy The Major and the Minor (1942) with Ginger Rogers, the haunted house story The Uninvited(1944) and Fritz Lang’s spy thriller Ministry of Fear (1944).

1945 would bring Milland the best role of his career with The Lost Weekend. Ironically, since this film has become so synonymous with Milland, he was not director Billy Wilder’s first choice for the part. Actors such as Cary Grant and Jose Ferrer were considered before him – and like most Hollywood stars, they wanted nothing to do with what was sure to be an unpopular film. Studio advisors also warned Milland that the film’s grim subject matter could offend viewers and hurt his career. On the other hand, Wilder, once he settled on Milland, correctly predicted that the actor would win the Oscar®. Not only was he right, but Milland also became the first actor to win both the Oscar® and the leading acting award at Cannes for the same role.

Despite his success in The Lost Weekend, Milland’s Hollywood life was largely unchanged. He followed up the film with three unremarkable pictures that might’ve been made years earlier in his career; there was the romantic comedy The Well-Groomed Bride (1946) with Olivia de Havilland, the western California (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck and the comedy The Trouble with Women (1947) opposite Teresa Wright. Two high points in those post-Lost Weekend years were the noir thriller, The Big Clock (1948), and Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954) where Milland had a chance to play the villain. For the most part, however, Milland was no longer getting “A” roles.

As several stories from his early career illustrate, Milland was always a risk taker. He had a near-fatal accident while filming Hotel Imperial (1939). The script called for him to jump on a horse, and being an accomplished horseman, Milland insisted on doing the stunt himself. Unfortunately when he made the jump, the saddle came loose and Milland fell into a pile of broken masonry. He was hospitalized for weeks with fractures and lacerations. Another stunt on I Wanted Wings (1941) found Milland on a test flight where he thought he’d take a jump (he was an amateur parachutist). But engine trouble forced the plane to land before he could jump. On the ground, Milland told the story to his costumer who went suddenly pale. Apparently, the parachute Milland had almost jumped with contained no parachute at all – it was just a prop. With a history of taking risks like these, it probably came as no surprise when Milland took his career in his own hands in the 1950s and began directing.

Milland made his directorial debut in 1955 on the Republic western A Man Alone. He would go on to direct several more films including The Safecracker (1958) and Panic in the Year Zero! (1962). In his later career, Milland turned his attention largely to television. He co-starred in two TV series – the comedy Meet Mr. McNuttyand the crime-drama Markham. He also appeared in a number of made-for-TV movies, including the popular mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). Milland also turned up in a number of low budget horror features such as Roger Corman’s cult sci-fi drama, X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963) and Frogs (1972). And he made something of a comeback in 1970’s Love Story, where he played Oliver Barrett III (Ryan O’Neal’s father). He also starred as an evil business mogul in Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain (1975).

Never one to be interested in the limelight, Milland was, on a personal level, something of a book-lover and homebody. He was married to the same woman, his wife Malvina, from 1932 until his death on March 10, 1986.

by Stephanie Thames

The above TCM profile can also be accessed online here.

Vivien Leigh is one of the truly most beloved actors on film. She is best remembered for her Oscar winning roles as ‘Scarlett O’Hara’ in “Gone With the Wind” in 1939 and ‘Blance Du Bois’ in Tennessee William’s “A Streetcar Bamed Desire” in 1951. I think her best performance was as ‘Myra’ in “Waterloo Bridge” in 1940. She was born in India in 1913 and died in the U.K. in 1967 at the age of 53.

TCM Overview:

British military family stationed in India. Despite her heritage, she remains best-known for her two most successful screen roles as American Southern belles.After a childhood traveling Europe, an apprenticeship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a brief marriage, Leigh began her career in 1935 with several small stage and screen roles. After making a hit onstage in “The Masque of Virtue” (1935), she was signed by Alexander Korda and appeared as a pretty ingenue in such films as “Fire Over England” (1937), opposite Laurence Olivier, and “Storm in a Teacup” (also 1937), with Rex Harrison. Korda loaned her to MGM for “A Yank at Oxford” (1938), which did more for Robert Taylor than Leigh. That same year, she displayed her screen charisma and charm as a Cockney petty thief who is befriended by street performer Charles Laughton and romanced by songwriter Rex Harrison in the frothy “Sidewalks of London/Saint Martin’s Lane”. While making her mark in features, Leigh continued to polish her talents onstage, notably as Ophelia to Olivier’s “Hamlet” in 1937.

By this time, Leigh and Olivier were romantically involved. When he went to the US in late 1938 to make “Wuthering Heights”, Leigh followed and won the much-coveted role of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind” (1939). Her Scarlett was a headstrong, willful and colorful portrayal. Despite much flack about a relatively unknown Brit taking the role of the quintessential Southern belle, Leigh was triumphant, won an Oscar and became a bigger star than Olivier (whom she married in 1940).

Leigh failed to immediately follow up on her tremendous promise. She starred onstage with Olivier in “Romeo and Juliet” (1940) and made two films. In the fine remake of “Waterloo Bridge” (1940), Leigh’s beauty heightened her portrayal of a ballerina in love with an upper-class soldier (Robert Taylor). Through a series of plot machinations, she is reduced to prostitution and has a bittersweet reunion with Taylor, whom she thought was killed during the war. The role was the first of many in which her character suffered mental collapse–ironically mirroring her own bouts with mental illness. She again was a woman of questionable virtue in the biopic of an historical tart in “That Hamilton Woman” (1941, opposite Olivier). Her subsequent career was slowed to fits and starts by the tuberculosis which eventually killed her, and by her own emotional instability.

For the rest of her career, Leigh alternated between the stage and screen, giving electrifying, emotional performances in both mediums. She appeared in six films after her initial bout with Hollywood, first in the British productions “Caesar and Cleopatra” (1946), opposite Claude Rains, and as “Anna Karenina” (1948). Her next huge hit was recreating her stage role as the fragile, emotionally unstable Blanche Du Bois in Elia Kazan’s film of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951). Her performance as the outsider is enhanced by playing off her Method-trained co-stars, notably Marlon Brando’s stunning Stanley, Kim Hunter’s torn Stella and Karl Malden’s gentle Mitch. Leigh earned a second Best Actress Oscar playing this damaged woman trailing the tattered threads of her sanity behind her, a role some felt was eerily close to Leigh’s own personality at times. Her last films consisted of stellar performances as emotionally unstable women in less than stellar films: “The Deep Blue Sea” (1955), as a frustrated, suicidal wife; “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” (1961), based on a Tennessee Williams’ story, as an elegant, middle-aged actress who is ample bait for Warren Beatty’s gigolo; and Stanley Kramer’s all-star “Ship of Fools” (1966), as an embittered, flirtatious divorcee.

Leigh was, perhaps, happier onstage. She and Olivier toured with the Old Vic company in the late 1940s and early 50s, in such plays as “The School for Scandal”, “Anthony and Cleopatra”, “Caesar and Cleopatra”, “Richard III” and “Antigone.” She was directed by Olivier in “The Skin of Our Teeth” (1945) and “The Sleeping Prince” (1954) and scored successes with “Duel of Angels” (1958) and “Look After Lulu” (1959), directed by Noel Coward. In 1963, she made her American musical stage debut in “Tovarich”, winning a Tony Award. But health problems began to interfere with her ability to sustain a long run and she frequently missed performances. Her last stage appearance was in “Ivanov” in 1966.

Leigh’s private life was as stormy as any of her roles. After twenty tempestuous years, she and Olivier divorced in 1960, and her mental illness often transformed her intelligent and sweet nature, making professional and personal relationships problematic at times. By the time she died, a ravaged 53 years old, Vivien Leigh had become one of the broken butterflies she had so often played on stage and screen.

IMDB entry:

One of the most indispensable of character actors, Leo G. Carroll was already involved in the business of acting as a schoolboy in Gilbert & Sullivan productions. Aged 16, he portrayed an old man in ‘Liberty Hall’. In spite of the fact, that he came from a military family, and , perhaps, because of his experience during World War I, he decided against a military career in order to pursue his love of the theatre. In 1911, he had been a stage manager/actor in ‘Rutherford and Son’ and the following year took this play to America. Twelve years later, Leo took up permanent residence in the United States. His first performance on Broadway was in ‘Havoc’ (1924) with Claud Allister, followed by Noel Coward‘s ‘The Vortex’ (1925, as Paunceford Quentin). Among his subsequent successes on the stage were ‘The Green Bay Tree’ (1933) as Laurence Olivier‘s manservant, ‘Angel Street’ (aka ‘Gaslight’,1941) as Inspector Rough, and the ‘The Late George Apley’ (title role). The latter, a satire on Boston society, opened in November 1944 and closed almost exactly a year later. A reviewer for the New York times, Lewis Nichols, wrote “His performance is a wonderful one. The part of Apley easily could become caricature but Mr.Carroll will have none of that. He plays the role honestly and softly.” The play was filmed in 1947, with Ronald Colman in the lead role. Leo’s film career began in 1934. He was cast, to begin with, in smallish parts. Sometimes they were prestige ‘A pictures’, usually period dramas, such as The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) and Wuthering Heights (1939).

Leo was a consummate method actor who truly ‘lived’ the parts he played, and, as a prominent member of Hollywood’s British colony, attracted the attention of Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, the famous director liked him so much, that he preferred him to any American actor to play the part of a U.S. senator in Strangers on a Train (1951). A scene stealer even in supporting roles, Leo G. Carroll lent a measure of ‘gravitas’ to most of his performances, point in case that of the homicidal Dr. Murchison in Spellbound (1945) (relatively little screen time, but much impact !) and the professor in North by Northwest(1959). On the small screen, Leo lent his dignified, urbane presence and dry wit to the characters of Cosmo Topper and Alexander Waverly, spymaster and boss of Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964), the part for which he is chiefly remembered.

Leo G. Carroll appeared in over 300 plays during his career and the stage remained his preferred medium. He once remarked “It’s brought me much pleasure of the mind and heart. I owe the theatre a great deal. It owes me nothing” (NY Times, October 19,1972).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

May Whitty

TCM overview:

Dame May Whitty was a delightful character actress of numerous first-class productions of the late 1930s and 1940s. Typically playing a distinguished aunt, mother, grandmother, or dowager, her presence brought an authentic English air to any film ( yes, even more so than Gladys Cooper ). Proud, gentle, kindly, and altogether charming, she was indeed the ideal symbol of British dignity.

Dame May Whitty was born on June 19, 1865 in Liverpool, England, the daughter of a newpaper journalist/editor. Her first encounter with the world of acting was in a stage production of The Mountain Sylph at the court theatre in Liverpool. She was sixteen years old and danced in the chorus. Within a year, she made her London stage debut and quickly became a seasoned performer. By the turn of the century she was well-known on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1918, she was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire ( being only the third actress to recieve that honor at that time ) for her philantropic services to Britain. Always willing to serve a good cause, she displayed her selfless service again by helping out for the war effort during World War II and appeared in “Forever and a Day” and “Stage Door Canteen”, both made to boost morale and the sales of war bonds. Even upon her death, her will requested that rather then giving flowers at her funeral the money should be used to send CARE packages to England.

She was busy across the pond and on Broadway during the 1920s and 30s, and it was in 1932 that she was offered the co-starring role in Emlyn William’s new play, “Night Must Fall.” Reluctant at first to accept the role of the wheel-chair bound,chocolate-loving old lady who is beguiled by a psychopathic killer, it was to become one of her best performances. The show was a great success in England, and she reprised the role on Broadway and once again in 1937 for the MGM film of the same name opposite Robert Montgomery. At the tender age of 72 she made her Hollywood film debut. Not only was it a magnificent performance, but she was nominated for an Academy Award for it too! And thus began a wonderful career as a supporting actress in many fine productions for MGM and other studios.

She played the medium in “The Thirteenth Chair” ( MGM, 1937 ) and the next year starred in her most memorable role, that of charming old Miss Froy, an espionage agent who mysteriously disappears onboard a train while returning home to England, in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes”. In 1940, Dame May was asked if she thought of retiring, “Quit? Only the aged and infirm quit, and I am neither. So long as I can do my bit, I’ll keep right on doing it.”

In the early 1940s, she reached the peak of her film productivity and played in a number of fine films for MGM and other studios…in “Raffles” ( 1940 ) she played the Lady Kitty Melrose who’s diamonds are stolen by the renowned Amateur Cracksman; in “Suspicion” ( 1941 ) she played Joan Fontaine’s mother, and in “Mrs.Miniver” ( 1942 ) she was Lady Beldon, the perennial winner of the town’s annual rose competition, and grandmother to Teresa Wright. For a change from her more usual high-society roles, she played the down-to-earth Dolly ( her real-life husband Ben Webster played her spouse in the film ) in “Lassie Come Home”; she was the elderly villager of Penny Green in “If Winter Comes” ; and in “The White Cliffs of Dover” ( 1944 ) she played the lovable governess Nanny. “Gaslight” saw her returning to her prestigious roles, this time as Ingrid Bergman’s garrulous neighbor on Thorton Square. In the thriller “My Name is Julia Ross” she played the wealthy mother who tried to convince secretary Nina Foch that she was her son’s wife, and in “Green Dolphin Street” she was the wise Mother Superior to Donna Reed.

In 1947 her husband of 55 years, Ben Webster, passed away. Dame May Whitty made the films “The Sign of the Ram” ( with Susan Peters ) and “The Return of October” that year but had to be replaced by Lucille Watson in “Julia Misbehaves” due to illness. On May 29, 1948 she died at the age of 82. Many of Hollywood’s British colony friends attended the funeral including C.Aubrey Smith, Edmund Gwenn, Herbert Marshall, Brian Aherne and Boris Karloff.

Her daughter Margaret was a famous actress herself as well as a notable stage producer and director and in 1969 she wrote an autobiography ( The Same Only Different ) covering both her and her mother’s careers.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Obituary in “The Telegraph” in 2016.

Gareth Thomas, who has died aged 71, was a regular face on the television screens and a much respected stage actor, but he became best-known as Roj Blake, the title character in the BBC’s cult sci-fi television series Blake’s 7, which ran from 1978 to 1981.

Thomas appeared on stage in many productions, including Royal Shakespeare productions of Twelfth Night (as Orsino), Othello (as Cassio) and Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie (as Matt Burke). He appeared in English Shakespeare Company productions of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. Other stage credits included King Lear, Educating Rita, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Crucible and Equus.

On television he was Shem in the ITV sci-fi series Star Maidens (1976) and astrophysicist Adam Brake in the fantasy series Children of the Stones (ITV, 1977). He appeared in Torchwood and Coronation Street, and was Bafta-nominated for his performances in Stocker’s Copper, a 1972 BBC Play for Today set during a Cornish clay miners strike, and Morgan’s Boy (1984), a BBC drama in which he played a Welsh hill farmer whose teenage nephew from Manchester (Martyn Hesford) comes to live with him.

Morgan’s Boy was his favourite television role, but it was Blake’s 7 that won the bigger audiences.

Gareth Thomas (centre) as Roj Blake, with fellow intergalactic renegades Paul Darrow (left) and Michael Keating (right), in Blake's 7 — Gareth Thomas (centre) as Roj Blake, with fellow intergalactic renegades Paul Darrow (left) and Michael Keating (right), in Blake’s 7 CREDIT: TELEVISION STILLS

The show was created by Terry Nation, creator of Doctor Who’s Daleks, who later described it as “The Dirty Dozen in space”. Set in the “third century of the second calendar”, the series depicted an Earth under the yoke of a totalitarian galactic federation which drugs its citizens into placid submission. Thomas’s character was the dissident leader of a motley crew of renegades, battling the authorities from the deck of the spacecraft Liberator.

Some derided the show as ridiculous, but it was ahead of its time in characterisation and plot, and its unlikely heroes had dark histories and flawed personalities.

Blake’s 7 proved an instant success, attracting an audience of 10 million viewers. It became a cult classic, partly for its dystopian view of the future, and partly for its wobbly sets and shoestring-budget costumes and special effects. Even when the series ended, its memory was kept alive by fan clubs and conventions.

In fact Thomas, as the title character, only appeared in 28 of the show’s 52 episodes as, after two seasons, he told the producers he had had enough. As a result Blake was declared “Missing in Action” and his intergalactic crew spent the next two series looking for him – finding him in a finale which saw all the main characters killed.

Like many actors who become typecast, Thomas struggled for a while to get good parts, but he remained philosophical: “One episode of Blake’s 7 will have been seen by more people than all the Royal Shakespeare Company shows I’ve done put together. People stop me in the street and say, ‘Oi, you know who you used to be don’t you?’ I always answer, ‘yes and I still am’.”

Gareth Thomas was born on February 12 1945 in Wales, attended King’s School, Canterbury, and trained at Rada. In later life he recalled being accident-prone as a young actor. In his first professional theatre appearance, his big scene involved walking on stage and opening a door. The door came off its hinges and he had to walk off stage with it. During an early appearance in pantomime, as King Rat, he lost his tail mid-performance.

After making his television debut as Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet in 1965, in 1967 he appeared in Hammer Films’ Quatermass and the Pit as the workman who discovers alien skeletons in the Underground.

“They built up this very expensive plaster of Paris tube station wall with real clay carefully put in and the alien skeleton set behind it,” he said. “The director told me to take a pickaxe and hit the top of the clay so that the whole section of wall would fall away. He suggested a rehearsal first, and warned me not to actually hit the thing. So I swung the pick, stopped it dead an inch from the wall … and the head flew off and smashed the whole thing. There was a moment’s absolute silence broken only by the director yelling ‘props’! It took three hours to rebuild.”

Gareth Thomas as Peter Graves in the HTV drama To Each His Own (1991) CREDIT: ITV/REX FEATURES

Thomas’s other television credits included The Avengers, Z-Cars, Sutherland’s Law, Bergerac, Casualty, Taggart, Heartbeat and Midsomer Murders. On stage in 2010 he gave an acclaimed performance as Ephraim Cabot in Desire Under the Elms at the New Vic Theatre.

In 2012, he reprised his role as Blake in The Big Finish’s audio series Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles. In 2013 he appeared as Brother Cadfael in Middle Ground Theatre Company’s adaption of The Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters.

He is survived by his wife, Linda, and a son; a daughter predeceased him.

Gareth Thomas, born February 12 1945, died April 13 2016

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Raymond Massey

Adrienne Posta

Eve Boswell

Rachel Gurney

Ray Milland

Vivien Leigh

Leo G. Carroll

May Whitty

Gareth Thomas

Obituary in “The Telegraph” in 2016.

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