Tommy Steele was born in Bermondsey, London in 1936. He had great success as a pop singer in Britain in the late 1950’s. He soon branched out into an all round entertainer and on film starred in “The Duke Wore Jeans” in 1957, “Tommy the Toreador” with Janet Munro in 1959, “Half a Sixpence” and then to Hollywood to make “Finian’s Rainbow” and “The Happiest Millionaire”.
He returned to England and after the movie “Where’s Jack” concentrated on an international stage career.
IMDB entry:Tommy Steele played in a televised celebrity squash match, beaten by Leonard Rossiter, not very long before the latter’s death. Ironically, Tommy conceded that Leonard was much fitter than he at the time.Television commercial, 1974, for his stage portrayal as Hans Christian Andersen.Owned and drove an American Excalibur from mid 60s.
Was nominated for Broadway’s 1965 Tony Award as Best Actor (Musical) for “Half a Sixpence” in the role of Arthur Kipps – which he later recreated for the film version of the same name, Half a Sixpence (1967). One of his co-stars was John Cleese.Evacuated from London during the WWII Blitz.His second single “Singin’ the Blues” reached No. 1 in 1956.
Has one daughter, Emma.The son of a tailor, he was discovered by Larry Parnes, who renamed him ‘Tommy Steele,’ and manufactured him into Britain’s first pop star.His first song “Rock With the Caveman” was a 1957 hit and, as a result, his sudden stardom was compressed quickly into a film as well (“The Tommy Steele Story”) even before there was a story to tell.In 1974 he composed and recorded an autobiographical cycle of twelve songs under the title of “My Life, My Song”.
Another of his talents was shown in the album sleeve for this recording which was illustrated with twelve of his own paintings and these together with other works were shown in a one-man exhibition at the Christopher Wade Gallery.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEnglish rock ‘n’ roll singer and actor Tommy Steele in an early film role, circa 1957. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
He has also developed a talent as a sculptor and two of his major works are on public display; “Bermondsey Boy” at the Rotherhithe Civic Centre and “Eleanor Rigby” which he gave to the City of Liverpool as a tribute to the Beatles.His one-man show, “An Evening with Tommy Steele,” ran for fourteen months at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1979/80 and is in the Guinness Book of Theatre Facts and Feats as “the longest running one-man show in West End history.”Has made more appearances than any other artist at The London Palladium.Often used the pseudonym “Jimmy Bennett” for his song writing partnership with Lionel Bart and Mike Pratt.The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Richard Haydn was a British character actor who spent most of his career working in Hollywood usually as prissy fusspots. He was born in Camberwell, London in 1905. His many films include “Forever and a Day” in 1943, “The Late George Apley”, “Cluny Brown” as the boyfriend of Jennifer Jones and son of Una O’Connor, “Five Weeks in a Balloon” and his most wekk known role as Max loyal friend of the Trapp family in “The Sound of Music”. It was good to see him in “Young Frankenstein”. He died in 1985 in Los Angeles.
IMDB entry:
Inimitable London-born character actor, noted for his put-on nasal delivery and pompous, fussy manner. Richard Haydn had a laborious start to his show business career, selling tickets in the box office of London’s Daly Theatre. This was followed by an unsuccessful stint with a comedy act in musical revue. For a change of pace, he became overseer of a Jamaican banana plantation only to see it wiped out by a hurricane. Returning home, he appeared in the 1926 West End production of ‘Betty of Mayfair’ and, soon after, also began to act on radio. It was in this medium, where he first found success, creating his signature character, the perpetually befuddled nasally-voiced fish expert and mother’s boy Edwin Carp. Haydn later immortalised the character in a book, The Journal of Edwin Carp.
The Carp routine opened the door for Haydn to appear with Beatrice Lillie on Broadway in ‘Noel Coward (I)”s ‘Set to Music’ (1939) and this, in turn, resulted in a contract with 20th Century Fox. While his screen debut in Charley’s Aunt (1941) was relatively straight-laced, he was more often seen in comedic roles where his lugubrious face and dignified, sometimes unctuous presence could be employed to scene-stealing effect. His notable characterisations in this vein include the over-enunciating Professor Oddly in Ball of Fire(1941), Rogers the butler in And Then There Were None (1945) and Mr. Wilson in Cluny Brown (1946). He essayed a rare villainous role as the odious Earl of Radcliffe in the period drama Forever Amber (1947) and was back in his best form as Mr.Appleton inSitting Pretty (1948). In The Late George Apley (1947), he played the character of Horatio Willing, ‘with a broad edge of wheezy burlesque’ (Bosley Crowther, New York Times, March 21 1947).
In the late 40’s, Haydn made a brief foray into directing. Of his three films for Paramount, the Bing Crosby vehicle Mr. Music (1950) enjoyed the best critical reviews. Among his later appearances on screen, that of Trapp family friend and promoter Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music (1965), is the one which most often comes to mind. Over the years, Haydn also made an impression as a voice actor in animated cartoons, notably on Warner Brothers Looney Tunes (‘Super-Rabbit’, 1943) and as the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland (1951). He had frequent guest roles on television and starred in one of the best-remembered episodes of Rod Serling‘s Twilight Zone (1959), ‘A Thing About Machines’ (1960), as the pedantic, machine-hating egocentric Bartlett Finchley. He also caricatured a Japanese businessman in an episode of Bewitched (1964).
In private life, Richard Haydn was a rather reclusive individual who liked horticulture, shunned interviews and was never particularly integral to the closely-knit British colony in Hollywood.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Jack Shepherd was born in Leeds in 1940. He is best known for the popular television series “Bill Brand” and “Wycliffe” which was set in Cornwall. His films include “The Virgin Soldiers” in 1969, “The Bed Sitting Room”, “Blue Ice”, “Escape from Sobibor”. He has aprofilic television career and most recently played David Morrissey’s father in “Thorne”.
IMDB entry:
Jack Shepherd was born in Leeds, on October 29th, 1940. His father was a cabinet maker and his mother an infant school teacher. He was educated at Roundhay School, Leeds and went on to study fine art at Kings College, Newcastle. After gaining a BA in Fine Art, he first studied acting at the Central School and then at the Drama Centre London, a drama school he helped found.
He worked at the Royal Court theatre from 1965 to 1969, and here he was involved in the first production of “Saved” by Edward Bond, and also “Narrow Road To the Deep North” and “Early Morning” by the same author. He won the “Most promising actor of year” in 1967, for his performance in David Storey‘s restoration of “Arnold Middleton”.
In 1971, he teamed up with the actor Richard Wilson and together they ran a drama studio in north London. Their intention was to provide workshops for professional actors to meet and develop their skills. Shepherd and Wilson took the classes on alternate weeks, each taking part in the others. It was during these times that Shepherd developed an interest in devising plays for theatre. He wrote “The Sleep of Reasons” which was produced at the Edinburgh festival in 1974; in 1982 he wrote “Real Time”; in 1983 he wrote the play “Revelations”; “Underdog” and “Clapperclaw” were both written for the BBC. Most recently, in 1998 he wrote “Half Moon”.
He was a member of the National Theatre from 1978 to 1986 and was a regular member of Bill Bryden‘s company in Cottlesloe. He appeared in “American Buffal” as Teach, and won “best actor” for his performance as Roma in “Glengarry Glen Ross”. He appeared as Hickey in “The Iceman Cometh” and a variety of biblical characters in the mysteries which were recently revived to celebrate the millennium.
During the 80s and 90s, he continued to work in television. Some of his work includes:Escape from Sobibor (1987), Blind Justice (1988), Ball-Trap on the Cote Sauvage (1989),A Day in Summer (1989) and, most famously, the part of Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe, in Wycliffe (1994) (from 1994-1998). His work has not been exclusive to theatre and television. He has appeared in several films throughout his long career; these include: The Virgin Soldiers (1969), Lights and Shadows (1988), Twenty-One(1991) and Wonderland (1999). Quite recently, Richard Wilson and Shepherd were re-united in the ITV six-part comedy series High Stakes (2001).
Not only does he act and write, he has also directed many stage plays, notably “Two Gentlemen of Verona” for the opening season at The Globe, “King Lear” at Southwalk Playhouse, “The School of Night” by Peter Whelan at Chichester and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Most recently, Shepherd has been seen in the ITV hit drama The Jury(2002) and in the BBC adaptation of Tony Parsons‘ Man and Boy (2002).
Shepherd is an accomplished jazz musician, favouring the saxophone, but has also been known to play piano and flute in some of his television appearances.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: anonymous
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Maurice Denham was a profilic English character actor who envlivened many a British film from the 1940’s onwards. His films included “They Mad Me a Fugitive” in 1947, “Holiday Camp”, “Jassy”, “Madness of the Heart”, “The Captain’s Table” and “The Heroes of Telemark”. He died in 2002 at the age of 93.
Dennis Barker’s “Guardian” obituary:
That much-relished character actor Maurice Denham, who has died aged 92, was virtually a one-man chronicle of the decay of the respectable classes. Bald, intense, seedily immaculate, dead-eyed, slightly dotty, outwardly respectable and inwardly anarchic – his prototype delighted audiences in the great postwar years of the British film industry.
It was translated into radio, with comedians as varied as the manic Tommy Handley and the urbane Kenneth Horne, and into television from the first broadcasts from Alexandra Palace before the war, through The Lotus Eaters in the 1970s, to the 1980 series Edward And Mrs Simpson, when, almost inevitably, Denham played the pontificating Archbishop of Canterbury. He was also in Porridge, The Professionals and Peak Practice.
In more serious mode, he was perfect casting for high-ranking RAF officers masterminding the Battle of Britain, or admirals doing their best to cope, such as in the film of Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana (1959). But his more usual appearances were as would-be gentleman crooks battling with suspicious landladies and wronged women in a shower of bouncing cheques. He was almost always a gentleman, genuine or false; and though his range was broader than that, when he stepped out of the genteel rut the results were less assured.
As the fag-in-mouth petty crook Jack Rufus, in the film of Norman Collins’ landmark novel London Belongs To Me (1948) – perpetually short-changing a gullible and baby-faced Richard Attenborough – Denham seemed uncomfortable; and as an idiosyncratic Macbeth, in the 1961 Old Vic production, he lacked some of the power thought to be inseparable from the role.
“He has played so many put-upon little clerks and bobbyish hubbies that I had almost expected, things being what they are in Shakespeare these days, that we might be in for a ‘little man’ Macbeth,” wrote the critic Philip Hope Wallace in the Guardian. But he added: “Not at all. Mr Denham contrived to look if not bloody, bold and resolute, as the vision recommends, at least burly, jovial and cunning.”
This quietly eccentric actor was born to gentility in Beckenham, Kent, and educated at Tonbridge school. He had a variety of jobs before becom- ing an actor. As an engineer, he helped install the lifts at Broadcasting House. His heart, however, was elsewhere – in the parts he played as an amateur actor.
He was first spotted while with an amateur group at the Old Vic, and offered a job with Hull Rep, for which, in 1934, he made his first professional appearance, in The Marquise at the city’s Little Theatre. Two years later, he made his first professional appearance in London, in Rain Before Seven at the Arts Theatre, and then featured in a series of West End plays, usually playing ineffectual older characters.
At the same time, Denham was appearing before a minuscule audience in BBC television productions from Alexandra Palace, a way of dipping his toes into the new medium while he also tried out the possibilities of radio.
The war, in which he served in the Buffs, did not completely interrupt his career, and was a source of comic accents and mannerisms which he later exploited in Tommy Handley’s ITMA (It’s That Man Again), for which he played Mrs Lola Tickle, and in Kenneth Horne and Richard Murdoch’s bizarre life at a fictional RAF station, Much Binding In The Marsh. His slighty cracked officers became a speciality long before the Goons became fashionable. His talent as “man of a thousand voices” was displayed again in 1955, when he voiced every character in the animated Animal Farm.
Denham made his first film appearance in 1947 with a small part in The Man Within, alongside Richard Attenborough, and then found that his presence was virtually compulsory in every British film, from Madness Of The Heart (1949) to Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines (1965). In the 1970s, he was still going strong in a new wave of films like Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) and The Day Of The Jackal (1973), and, in 1986, his scholastic presence in Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road was moving. Practically every character he played was infused with an inner dignity, in spite of outward dissonances.
Nor was he frightened to appear at smaller theatres in efforts to broaden his scope. His Uncle Vanya, at Hampstead Theatre in 1979, and his Incident At Tulse Hill, at the same theatre, were evidence of versatility beyond his trademark parts.
I n person, Denham was as good, unpredictable fun as he was in his comic roles. He listed his hobbies as golf and conducting gramophone records. Julian Belfrage, his agent for most of a career that included well over 100 films, once took him with other clients, such as Harold Pinter and Peter Hall, to a Grand National party. In the sweep, Denham drew a horse called Go Far. When it was ahead at the first fence, he started shouting loud encouragement and jumping up and down like a schoolboy expecting to win a fortune, desisting only when the horse crossed the finishing line almost last. But, said Belfrage, such eccentricities were immaterial. If all his clients had been like Maurice Denham, he would have had a carefree life, because he was good company, personally pleasant and always in work.
His last role was as an aristocrat in The Beggar Bride in 1997, which starred Spooks actress Keeley Hawes.
In 1936, Denham married Elizabeth Dunn, by whom he had two sons and a daughter; she died in 1971. He was awarded the OBE in 1992. · Maurice Denham, actor, born December 23 1909; died July 24 2002
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Ursula Jeans was born in 1906 in Simla, India. Her sister Isabel was also an actress. Ursula made her stage debut on the London stage in 1925. She was married to the actor Roger Livesey until her death in 1973. Her movies include “Friday the Thirteenth” in 1933″Over the Moon”, “The Dambusters”, “North West Frontier” and “Heaven’s Above”.
IMDB entry:
Fair-haired, blue-eyed British actress with a long career on the London stage. She was born Ursula Jean McMinn in India, schooled in London and trained for acting at RADA. Ursula made her theatrical debut at the Criterion Theatre in 1922. From the 1930’s, she specialised in classical plays by Shakespeare and Shaw, performing primarily at the Old Vic and with the Sadler’s Wells Company. During World War II, she worked under the auspices of the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), along with her second husband, the actor Roger Livesey. They often appeared together on stage and enjoyed a particularly successful run on the West End in a play written specifically for them by J.B. Priestley: “Ever Since Paradise”. In the late 1950’s, the Liveseys toured Australia and New Zealand in “The Reluctant Debutante”. On screen, they had previously appeared in both the stage and screen versions of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp(1943).
Ursula’s relatively few film roles generally saw her as genteel, devoted wives, like her Mrs. Molly Wallis in The Dam Busters (1955). She was rather more effective, however, as the officer’s wife Lady Windham in North West Frontier (1959), or as the middle-class widow Martha Dacre, coming to terms with the aftermath of the war in The Weaker Sex(1948).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Wendi Peters was born in 1968 in Blackburn, Lancashire. She is best known as Cilla Battersby in “Coronation Street”.
IMDB entry:
Wendi Peters was born on February 29, 1968 in Blackburn, Lancashire, England as Wendy Louise Dawson. She is an actress, known for Coronation Street (1960), In Love and War(1996) and Coronation Street: Out of Africa (2008). She has been married to Kenny Linden since October 30, 1992. They have one child.
Patience Collier was born in 1910 in London. Her film debut was in Norman Wisdom’s “The Girl on the Boat” in 1961. She already was a regular performer on British television. Her other films include “The Wild Affair” with Nancy Kwan, “Baby Love” with Diana Dors, “Every Home Should Have One” with Marty Feldman, “Countess Dracula”, “Fiddler on the Roof”, and “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” with Meryl Streep in 1981. She died in 1987.
John Savident was born in 1938 in Guernsey, Channel Islands. He is best known for his role as Fred Elliott in “Coronation Street”. His films include”Battle of Britain” in 1969, “A Clockwork Orange” in 1971 and “Mountains of the Moon” in 1990.
Article in “MailOnline”:
Coronation Street star John Savident notched up roles in cinema classics and Hollywood blockbusters before finally finding fame for his larger-than-life character in Britain’s longest-running soap.
Although a familiar face for his string of minor roles on screen, it was butcher Fred Elliott who made him a household name after 30 years in acting.
He was born in Guernsey, to a father who was a local fisherman and a Swiss mother. They moved when Savident – whose real surname is Joseph – was just three years old, settling in Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester.
Before finding his feet on the stage, the star pounded the beat as a policeman in Manchester for six years, training alongside John Stalker who went on to become Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester.
During those days he suffered a stabbing injury when he tried to break up a vicious gang fight, taking an injury to the arm. “I thought I’d had it,” he recalled.
He pursued his acting ambitions through amateur productions but a chance remark in a pub led to him quitting the force to treat the boards full-time.
Discussing his desire to turn professional in a pub while appearing in South Pacific, a producer overheard him and offered him a part as Robin Hood in a London panto. He went on to star in numerous stage productions, embracing the West End and Royal National Theatre.
Early film roles included parts in Battle Of Britain, Stanley Kubrick’s controversial A Clockwork Orange – banned for years at the director’s insistence – and later Gandhi.
His skills also brought him to the attention of Hollywood producers, with roles in the Bruce Willis film, Hudson Hawk, and Loch Ness. Savident’s vaguely menacing demeanour made him perfect for TV villains, such as the blackmailer Raffles in the BBC dramatisation Middlemarch. He was also lined up to play disgraced publisher Robert Maxwell in a stage production but legal problems scuppered the show. Away from the Street the actor’s real voice is rather more refined than the broad Lancashire accent he adopts for the part. “I made Fred speak like the loud Lancashire people you used to meet in pubs – you could hear them from the other side,” he once recalled. I’ve got that booming voice anyway. I’m forever getting told at home, ‘stop booming John’.” In the Street the butcher’s love life has been an ongoing saga. He has long had his eye on Audrey Roberts and recently proposed, but was turned down. Elliott also wooed Rita, and the pair have remained good friends. He married Maureen in 1997 but she eventually ran off and left him.
In real life, Savident is married to theatrical director Rona with two grow-up children.
The above “MailOnline” article can also be accessed online here.
Marty Wilde was born Reginald Leonard Smith in a nursing home in Blackheath on April the 15th 1939, he was the only son of Reginald and Jessica Smith.
Marty lived in Greenwich until he and his mother moved to different parts of the country to follow Reg senior who was a Sandhurst trained Sergeant and was posted to Devon – and then on to Capel Curig North Wales to help train new army recruits for the war effort, and Marty attributes his time spent in these beautiful areas to the great love he has for the countryside.
When the war finished, Marty and family moved back again to Greenwich, and Marty began school at Halstow Road Primary School. He was there for several years before he went on to Charlton Central Secondary Modern School, finally leaving at the age of 15, and in his own words “totally unqualified” where he became a messenger boy in the city of London for a firm of brokers in Rood Lane, Eastcheap, and for a couple of years got to know Eastcheap pretty well.
Whilst running from office to office in the day time with the latest market prices of pepper and rubber, he would day dream about his future and window gaze in all the expensive tailor shops windows just hoping something exciting might happen for him and that one day he might be able to afford them – since he desperately wanted to become a singing star. He was fortunate enough to have learned to play the ukulele at a young age and this was later to prove fortuitous as the uke has the same tuning as a guitar, so, making it easy for him to move on and play the teenagers favourite instrument of the time. Marty formed a group with some of his local friends called Reg Smith and the Hound dogs, and he and the group would eventually play with some success at local gigs in the South of England, until eventually, bit by bit, word got around about this new band. As news about the new band began to filter to London, Marty was approached by Joe Brunnely, a music publisher.
Joe offered Marty two weeks work as a solo artist in the West End of London. One week would be at the Blue Angel night Club, and the second week being at the Condor club which was in Soho. The Condor Club attracted lots of the personalities and stars of the day, such as Sterling Moss, and it was also rumoured – Princess Margaret. Whilst earning £1 a night plus a bowl of spaghetti, Marty was noticed by Larry Parnes, who, as Tommy Steele’s manager, was the most powerful manager in the UK, but when Larry went back stage to speak to Marty, he was told Marty had gone home rather swiftly, as he had to catch the last bus home to Greenwich. Marty had no idea that he had been spotted by the countries number one manager. However, Larry, being the business man he always was managed to obtain Marty’s address from the owners of the club, and the following day he headed down to Greenwich with a contract in his pocket and approached his parents to sign Marty up. Marty was under age to sign for himself.
The contract was signed and the career of Marty Wilde had begun….
