Wendy Hiller who has died aged 90, was stage-struck from the word go. It was the atmosphere, the teamwork – being there was everything.So in 1930 she joined the Manchester Repertory Theatre, Britain’s first such company. As a student, young Wendy was proud to be a dogsbody. Whatever came her way she did with a will: sweeping the stage, making the tea, setting the scenery, prompting, walking on.
What could be better? But one day she was sacked, and went home to Bramhall, Cheshire, to mope.
However, by chance, one of the company had adapted a book. Walter Greenwood’s novel Love On The Dole was set in the Depression; and the heroine needed a good Lancashire accent. Hadn’t the girl they had just fired been good at that sort of thing?
After touring from May to November 1934 in Ronald Gow’s adaptation, she became famous overnight when the play moved to London (in 1935) and New York (in 1936). It was the authenticity of her northern speech that did it: that and her frank, matter-of-fact manner as Sally Hardcastle, the mill girl ready to face a fate worse than death rather than have her family go hungry.
Not that the actor herself came from a poor family. Her father was a prominent cotton manufacturer, who had believed that unless she was rid of her Lancashire accent she stood no chance of marrying; so she had been dispatched to Winceby House school, Bexhill, to lose it.
In the London run, James Agate judged her Sally Hardcastle “magnificent”. The play “moved me terribly and must move anybody who still has about him that old-fashioned thing – a heart”. And the fate worse than death? It was Sally’s acceptance of an offer from a married bookmaker to provide for her and her family if she became his nominal housekeeper. In 1937, the actor in fact married her author, Ronald Gow, and her film triumph as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion (1938) came after playing both that role and Saint Joan at the Malvern festival for Bernard Shaw in 1936.
Whether it was her voice that made her fortune with its inimitable earthy quality, at once gritty and quavering, tremulous but clear in its deliberative phrasing, or whether the direct, no-nonsense northern personality of a girl to whom success came almost inadvertently, her temperament was to make all her acting seem honest, open, trustworthy and unaffected. This air of emotional integrity was to compel our attention for the next half century. Yet her speech, with its peasant inflections and hesitations, was crucial because its regional range was so hard to pin down – Lancashire for Sally Hardcastle, Bow Bells for Eliza Doolittle and Hardy’s Wessex for Tess Of The D’Urbervilles.
This was her next triumph. Again, the adaptation was by Ronald Gow, and to my mind it was her finest stage performance. In its sensibility, sincerity, passion and tragic power, there was nothing on the London stage to match it. It came for a week to St Martin’s Lane from the Bristol Old Vic in 1946, returning for a West End run in 1947. And though Gow deserved high praise for his handling of the novel, it was his wife who stole all our hearts with her rustic simplicity and emotional truth.
This ability to express transparent honesty astonished everyone. It was so hard, as one critic observed, not to believe in her. An actor may harbour heaps of personal sincerity, but unless she can transmit it to us she might as well be without it.
What continued to impress the student of acting was the way she went on to interpret – without perhaps ever excelling her role as Tess – everything from Shakespeare, lbsen, Shaw, Synge, Wilde, O’Neill and Henry James to Somerset Maughan, Robert Bolt, Royce Ryton and Alfred Uhry. Plain women or pretty, queens or flower girls, princesses or imprisoned spinsters, dominant wives or meek daughters.
Hiller had a particular feeling for supposedly unattractive women like Catherine Sloper in The Heiress (New York, 1947; Haymarket, 1950), perhaps because she knew she was no conventional beauty; taking over, in London, from Peggy Ashcroft as Evelyn Daly, the daughter and maid-of-all-work in NC Hunter’s Waters Of The Moon (Haymarket, 1951); or in the same play at Chichester 27 years later as the supremely fussy Mrs Whyte, of the expressive knitting needles; or as the deferential Miss Tina in Michael Redgrave’s version of The Aspern Papers (New York, 1962); or, 22 years later in the same play at Chichester, as the fierce and ancient Miss Bordereau.
Perhaps two of the most conspicuous surprises of her career came with her icy hauteur as a majestic Queen Mary in Royce Ryton’s version of the abdication crisis, Crown Matrimonial (Haymarket, 1972); and 16 years after that as an august, irascible American widow learning to live with her black chauffeur in Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer prize-winning play, Driving Miss Daisy (Apollo, 1988).
If Hiller never reached the heights as a Shakespearean actor, it was perhaps that the voice seemed too hard and the diction disjointed, though for the Old Vic (1955-56) she had plenty of passion for Portia in Julius Caesar. Watching her deeply moving Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, purists might complain of the poetry being cracked; but then the character itself was on the point of breakdown because the force of her anguish – dignity hanging on a thread – had brought the woman to the verge of physical collapse.
As Emilia to John Neville and Richard Burton alternating the parts of Othello and Iago, Hiller struck, as a critic put it, “fire from the tinder of the woman’s grief, rage and disillusion”; and as Helen in Tyrone Guthrie’s modern-dress Troilus and Cressida, the actor set the house on a roar as a vapid Edwardian beauty playing a waltz at the piano.
If the ventures into lbsen were less remarkable – When We Dead Awaken (Edinburgh Festival, 1968), Mrs Alving in Ghosts (Arts, Cambridge, 1972) and Mrs Borkman for the National Theatre (1975-76) – you could count on the power of her grief; though the irony of her comedy playing was something to savour, perhaps because it was scarcer. Her deliberative delivery as Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest (Watford, 1981) had us hanging on every word without reference to Edith Evans.
Even opposite one of the most ruthlessly accomplished exponents of considered speech, Robert Morley, as the Prince Regent, to her ill-fated, independent Princess Charlotte in Norman Ginsbury’s The First Gentleman (New, 1945) the young actor held her own in a rivetting duel of personalities which to my mind she won on points – as if to illustrate the difference between acting for effect and acting for truth.
Her best films, after Pygmalion, were Shaw’s Major Barbara (1941), I Know Where I’m Going (1945), Separate Tables (1958, for which she won an Oscar as the manager), Sons And Lovers (1960), A Man For All Seasons (1966) and Murder On The Orient Express (1974). She seemed as true on screen as on the stage, and there might have been more; but the stage stole her heart.
Wendy Hiller was appointed OBE in 1971 and created dame in 1975. Her husband died in 1993, and she is survived by a son and a daughter.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
· Wendy Hiller, actor, born August 15 1912; died May 14 2003
Maggie Smith has won two Academy Awards for her performances in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and “California Suite”. She has acted on stage in the UK, Canada and the U.S.. She has many film appearances and once she comes onto the screen, she can command all the attention. She is an actress supreme.
“To the British, there is currently no more delectable comedienne in the world than Maggie Smith. She cares little for films, so the bulk of her work has been confined to the stage with occasional forays into TV. As with Vanessa Redgrave (whom she doesn’t resemble one jot) theatre critics do not seem so much to review her work as write her love-letters. Ronald Bryden wrote in the ‘Observer’ in 1969 ‘ Will it be possible in the future to convey the quality which indisputably makes her a great comedienne?’ Her effects are not of the kind that critics can analyse. Yet unlike the fabled stars of the past, she is earthbound, she is innocent and vulnerable and very much afraid of being found out.
She lives on a perpetual knife edge of inadequacy, from which she distracts us hopefully, by prattling on what is normally a series of non sequiturs (or at least sounds like them)., When she is on a winning streak she cannot disguise her glee – though even then she is likely to go pale with self-doubt. She’s too canny not to know she’s pathetic and funny. That sense of humour seems to desert her as she turns increasingly to drama but the touch and the timing remains as sure”. – Davis Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The Independent Years”. (1991)
TCM overview:
One of the most revered actresses on both sides of the Atlantic, Maggie Smith created a gallery of indelible characters on stage and screen, which ran the gamut from repressed spinsters to comical eccentrics. Smith quickly became an actress of note with performances in several Shakespeare plays before making an auspicious feature debut in “Nowhere to Go” (1959), before stealing the show in “The VIPs” (1963) and gaining international acclaim for her Oscar-winning performance in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969). While making her name in dramatic roles, Smith proved equally adept at comedy, particularly with a standout turn as a sophisticated sleuth among an all-star cast in “Murder by Death” (1976). She earned another Academy Award for her brilliant portrayal of a crumbling actress in “California Suite” (1978) before transitioning to a repressed spinster in “A Room with a View” (1986).
Though she appeared in a supporting capacity in broad Hollywood movies like “Hook” (1991) and “Sister Act” (1992), Smith found comfort on Broadway and London stages while continuing to earn acclaim for smaller films like “Tea with Mussolini” (1998) and Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park” (2001). Smith reached her widest audience with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001) and its numerous sequels, and earned critical acclaim as Dowager Countess of Grantham on the wildly popular series “Downton Abbey” (ITV/PBS, 2010- ), allowing her the opportunity to impress a whole new generation as she continued to maintain her reputation as one of the greatest actresses of all time.
Born on Dec. 28, 1934 in Ilford, Essex, England, Smith was raised by her father, Nathaniel, a pathologist at Oxford University, and her mother, Margaret. From the time she was eight years old, Smith was determined to become an actress. At age 17, Smith was playing Viola in a production of “Twelfth Night” (1952) and the Oxford Playhouse School, where she also served as an assistant stage manager while studying her craft. Four years later, Smith was singing and dancing on Broadway in the sketch revue “New Faces of ’56” (1956), while making her uncredited film debut as a party guest in “Child in the House” (1956).
Following her London stage debut in “Save My Lettuce” (1957), Smith made her official film debut in the crime drama, “Nowhere to Go” (1959), which earned her a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Newcomer. Back to the stage once again, she joined The Old Vic Theatre and performed in productions of “As You Like It” (1959) and “Richard II” (1959) before being cast opposite Laurence Olivier for a production of “Rhinoceros.”
By 1962, Smith was earning her first accolades in the Peter Shaffer double bill “The Private Ear” and “The Public Eye.” The following year, she earned plaudits for her first major film role, playing a love-starved secretary secretly attracted to her boss in “The VIPs” (1963); her stellar performance led co-star Richard Burton to half-jokingly accuse her of “grand larceny.” Also in 1963, Olivier invited her to become a charter member of the National Theatre and cast her as his Desdemona in “Othello,” which she recreated on screen in the 1965 film version, earning her first Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress.
Meanwhile, the 1960s were a heady time for Smith. In addition to building her impressive resume with acclaimed roles, she embarked on a torrid love affair with the still-married actor, Robert Stephens, causing a minor scandal when she gave birth to their first child in June 1967. Following their marriage that same year, she and Stephens ironically co-starred as illicit lovers in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969); critics and audiences were captivated by her performance as a neurotic and fascistic Scottish schoolteacher, which was impressive enough to earn her an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Having taken time out to give birth to a second son in 1969, Smith was back at the top of her game in 1972, headlining a London revival of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” and starring as the oddball relative sojourning across Europe in “Travels With My Aunt,” a performance that netted her another Best Actress Oscar nomination. Following the collapse of her union with Stephens due to her success and his alcoholism, she embarked on a second marriage to playwright and old beau Beverley Cross, while turning in quality performances in films like “Murder by Death” (1976), an all-star whodunit spoof in which she played the cultured wife of Dick Charleston (David Niven).
Two years later, she delivered an acclaimed performance in the Agatha Christie adaptation of “Death on the Nile” (1978), before Neil Simon provided her with one of her richest roles in “California Suite” (1978). Smith played Diana Barrie, an insecure British actress coping with a crumbling marriage to her Hollywood husband (Michael Caine) and the spotlight glare brought on by an Academy Award nomination. Although her onscreen character may have lost the coveted statue, Smith took home the Oscar in real life for her nuanced portrayal.
In 1979, Smith returned to Broadway to recreate her London success in Tom Stoppard’s play “Night and Day,” earning herself a deserved Tony Award nomination. After a supporting part in Peter Ustinov’s mildly entertaining “Evil Under the Sun” (1982), Smith proved to be a hilarious foil for Michael Palin in two comedies: “The Missionary” (1982) and “A Private Function” (1984). She excelled as the repressed chaperone who lives vicariously through her young charge (Helena Bonham Carter) in the Merchant Ivory production of “A Room with a View” (1986), in which she displayed her natural ability for delivering witty dialogue with irresistible aplomb and expert timing.
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Her performance earned Smith both a BAFTA Award and Golden Globe, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. As the decade waned, she made a rare, but indelible small screen appearance delivering an Alan Bennett monologue in “Bed Among the Lentils,” which was shown on the U.S. “Masterpiece Theatre” (PBS) series. She also had one of her best dramatic roles as the repressed spinster who blossoms when she finds romance with a con man (Bob Hoskins) in the feature, “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” (1987).
Smith was honored by playwright Peter Shaffer when he tailored his stage comedy “Lettice and Lovage” (1988) specifically for the actress; it proved to be a triumph in both London and New York, and added a Tony Award to her growing trophy collection. In 1990, she was dubbed Dame Margaret Natalie Smith Cross – her full name at the time – by Queen Elizabeth II, after having been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1970. Meanwhile, Smith was lovely as the aged Wendy Darling in Steven Spielberg’s misfire, “Hook” (1991), although playing a character much older than herself eventually led to typecasting. For much of the rest of the decade, her onscreen personae tended toward the dour elderly types, ranging from the tart Mother Superior in “Sister Act” (1992) and its sequel, to her Emmy-nominated turn as a Southern matriarch in the small screen remake of Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly, Last Summer” (PBS, 1993). After playing Layd Bracknell in a highly praised turn in the London stage revival of “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1993), Smith received a BAFTA Award nomination for her portrayal of the no-nonsense housekeeper Mrs. Medlock in “The Secret Garden” (1993).
Although she was enjoying a strong career as a character player in films, Smith kept returning to the stage, appearing in several high-profile, critically acclaimed performances, including in the London production of Edward Albee’s award-winning “Three Tall Women” (1994) and as the Duchess of York in “Richard III” (1995), starring Ian McKellan. Following a London stage reprisal of her television role in “Bed Among the Lentils” (1996), she starred in the Albee-penned “A Delicate Balance” (1997), while earning praise for her turn as the meddlesome aunt in the period romantic drama, “Washington Square” (1997). Heading back to the big screen, Smith was impressive as a grande dame in Italy whose misguided admiration for Benito Mussolini recalled Jean Brodie’s admiration of Franco in “Tea with Mussolini” (1998); the film cast her opposite an equally impressive Dame Judi Dench. She earned another BAFTA Award; this time for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The following year, she was featured as Aunt Betsey in a retelling of “David Copperfield” (BBC, 1999), which netted another Emmy nod after the program aired stateside on PBS.
As the new millennium dawned, Smith brought a poignant sense of loss to her turn as a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy in the elegiac “The Last September” (2000). Her next screen role as the stern, shape-shifting Professor Minerva McGonagle in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001), exposed her to her widest audience to date while earning a legion of new young fans. But it was her turn as the indelible, acid-tongued Constance, Countess of Trentham, in Robert Altman’s clever blend of country house murder mystery and sharp upstairs-downstairs satire, “Gosford Park” (2001), that gave the actress some of her biggest plaudits of her long career. Smith stood out among a massive all-star cast that included everyone from Helen Mirren, Clive Owen and Emily Watson to Kristin Scott Thomas, Michael Gambon and Stephen Fry. For her work, she earned numerous critical accolades, including nods at the BAFTA Awards, Golden Globes and Oscars. Meanwhile, she reprised Professor McGonagle for the sequels, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”(2002) and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004). After gracing the big screen as one of three bickering women (including Shirley Knight and Fionnula Flanagan) in “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” (2002), Smith embarked on one of the most anticipated theatrical events of her career – an on-stage teaming with Judi Dench in David Hare’s new play, “The Breath of Life” (2002), which was reprised on Broadway in 2003.
Smith next received an Emmy Award among other accolades for her role in the acclaimed small screen adaptation of William Trevor’s novel, “My House in Umbria” (HBO, 2003), in which she played an English romance novel writer who invites fellow survivors of a terrorist bombing to join her at her Italian villa. Smith next starred in the British-made “Ladies in Lavender” (2004), a period drama in which she played a spinster living with her sister (Judi Dench) in an idyllic coastal town outside Cornwell. Meanwhile, she reprised Professor McGonagle in a more diminished capacity for “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005), “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (2007) and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009). Smith did shine, however, as Rowan Atkinson’s secretive housekeeper in “Keeping Mum” (2006) and opposite Anne Hathaway in the Jane Austen-inspired romantic drama, “Becoming Jane” (2007).
After co-starring alongside Maggie Gyllenhaal and Emma Thompson in the sequel “Nanny McPhee Returns” (2010), Smith earned an Emmy nomination for “Capturing Mary” (HBO, 2010), in which she played a once brilliant writer and critic whose life was destroyed by an evil social climber (David Williams) from her heady youth. Meanwhile, she earned Emmy Awards in 2011 and 2012 for her performance as the sharp-tongued Violet Crawley, the traditional and protective Dowager Countess of Grantham on the British period drama “Downton Abbey” (ITV, 2011). While trading pointed barbs with family and servants on the show, Smith continued making feature films, bringing imbalance to a foursome of opera singers in “Quartet” (2012) – for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy – and earning critical praise for her performance as a retired housekeeper suspicious of Asians in John Madden’s ensemble comedy “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2012).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Mike McCrann article on LA Frontiers.com:.
The 1969 Academy Awards handed out in April, 1970 reflected great change in American films. There was so much social conflict going on as the War in Vietnam was polarizing the country. It was the era of protest—youth vs. establishment—and the films nominated that year showed that old style musicals and feel good comedies were on their way out. Midnight Cowboy won Best Picture, becoming the first X-rated film to win the award. (After seeing The Wolf of Wall Street, what passed for X in 1969 seems pretty tame today.)
But the old guard still held their ground. John Wayne won his only Academy Award for True Grit. Nobody really thought he gave the year’s best performance. It was more of a career award.
John Wayne had been nominated once before in 1949 for Sands of Iwo Jima, but his greatest performances in the John Ford classics: Fort Apache, The Quiet Man and especially The Searchers had gone unrewarded. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voighthad given spectacular performances in Midnight Cowboy, but voters obviously thought John Wayne was way overdue.
The Best Actress race was even more amazing. Three of the performances were great, and the other two memorable in their own way.
Today Dame Maggie Smith is a revered legend. We watch her year after year on Downton Abbey. She collects Golden Globes and Emmys without having to show up.
But back in 1969 Maggie Smith was truly in her ascendancy. Previously she had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Olivier’s Othello. Her breakthrough performance came in 1963 when she stole The VIP’s from superstars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Playing the lovelorn secretary to sexy Rod Taylor, Maggie Smith was truly moving amid all the melodramatics.
In1967, Maggie Smith committed highway robbery again when she highjacked The Honey Pot from Academy Award winners Rex Harrison and Susan Hayward and French actress Capucine. This late Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve) comedy is a true classic. Ignored on its release, the wonderful retelling of Volpone is worth seeking out. (Available on Amazon on demand DVD.)
Four of the five nominees were there. The only one missing was Maggie Smith. She was home in England. She wasn’t going to win anyway. Jean Brodie had opened early in the year and was only a modest hit. But Maggie Smith had appeared at The Ahmanson Theater in LA in January and was the critics’ darling. Still nobody thought she had a chance.
When Cliff Robertson announced Maggie Smith, there were audible gasps in the audience. Jane Fonda probably deserved the Oscar, but she had already started her life as a protester and combined with her open use of marijuana, she alienated enough of the old guard Academy to cost her the award.
Liza Minnelli could easily have won her Oscar, but she would never have repeated for Cabaret three years later.
Maggie Smith and Jean Brodie have become one and the same. Beautiful, funny, dominating and always in control, Maggie Smith gave us the template for all the great Smith performances that would follow.
Hollywood royalty was heavily favored in 1969. Liza Minnelli and Jane Fonda were the new Queens of Tinseltown. But Maggie Smith – one day to be Dame Maggie – took the award and never looked back. Maggie Smith has been dazzling audiences for 50 years and we can only hope that she never retires.
“Daily Mail” interview with Maggie Smith can be found here.
Irish times obituary in 2024.
Not many actors have made their names in revue, given definitive performances in Shakespeare and Ibsen, won two Oscars and countless theatre awards, and remained a certified box-office star for more than 60 years. But then few have been as exceptionally talented as Dame Maggie Smith, who has died aged 89.
She was a performer whose range encompassed the high style of Restoration comedy and the sadder, suburban creations of Alan Bennett. Whatever she played, she did so with an amusing, often corrosive, edge of humour. Her comedy was fuelled by anxiety, and her instinct for the correct gesture was infallible
The first of her Oscars came for an iconic performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). But Smith’s pre-eminence became truly global with two projects towards the end of her career. She was Professor Minerva McGonagall in the eight films of the Harry Potter franchise (she referred to the role as Miss Brodie in a wizard’s hat) between 2001 and 2011. Between 2010 and 2015, in the six series of Downton Abbey on ITV television (sold to 250 territories around the world), she played the formidable and acid-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham, Lady Violet, a woman whose heart of seeming stone was mitigated by a moral humanity and an old-fashioned, if sometimes overzealous, sense of social propriety.
Early on, one critic described Smith as having witty elbows. Another, US director and writer Harold Clurman, said that she “thinks funny”. She was more taut and tuned than any other actor of her day, and this reliance on her instinct to create a performance made her reluctant to talk about acting, although she had a forensic attitude to preparation. With no time for the celebrity game, she rarely went on television chatshows – her appearance on Graham Norton’s BBC TV show in 2015 was her first such in 42 years – or gave newspaper interviews.
Edward Judd was born in Shangai in 1932. His career peak was in the mid 1960’s. He starred in one classic science fiction “The Day the Earth Caught Fire”. He went to Hollywood in 1964 but made on ly one film there “Strange Bedfellows” with Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida. His career seems to have stalled with the end of the 1970’s and he died in 2009.
Edward Judd “Guardian” obituary:
Edward Judd, who has died aged 76, seemed set for stardom when he gained a leading role in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), the film that foresaw global warming. It led to Judd being seriously considered for the role of James Bond in Dr No (1962), the first of the endless series.
However, the career of the well-built, square-jawed British actor, who had worked consistently in films and television since the age of 16, failed to ignite in the way he expected.
In fact, Judd’s role as an out-of-luck reporter suffering the trauma of divorce, writer’s block and alcoholism, who comes across the scoop of the century in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, was not only his first substantial part but probably his best. However, some years later, Val Guest, the director, recalled Judd’s “difficult” behaviour during the shooting, which he put down to feelings of inferiority in his first big role.
In the film, Judd discovers that because the Soviets and the west detonated nuclear tests simultaneously, the earth has been knocked off its axis and is moving closer to the sun. Judd is particularly effective at delivering some witty lines, and the scene where he and Janet Munro strip down to their underwear because of the rapidly rising temperature is surprisingly sexy.
Judd was born to expatriate English parents in Shanghai. On their return to England during the second world war, he got a small role as a public schoolboy in Roy Boulting’s The Guinea Pig (1948). He continued to get parts, often uncredited, in British films in the 1950s: a boxer in The Good Die Young (1954), a soldier in X: The Unknown (1956), a policeman in The Man Upstairs (1958), a naval officer in Sink The Bismarck! and a warder in The Criminal (both 1960).
After his break in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Judd was given the lead as a rather dour commander of a German submarine manned by a British crew to confuse the enemy in Mystery Submarine (1963). In the same year, he played opposite Susan Hayward in Stolen Hours, a feeble British remake of the Bette Davis melodrama Dark Victory. Poor Hayward is dying of an unspecified disease and Judd is her dashing, racing-driver boyfriend who knows that he could be killed at any time, but says: “I don’t want to be told you’re going to get yours in the 10th lap.”
The following year, Judd was a brawny Viking called Sven in the Anglo-Yugoslav production of The Long Ships, starring Richard Widmark. First Men in the Moon (1964), an enjoyable adaptation of the HG Wells novel, co-starred Judd and Martha Hyer, managing to keep straight faces while being captured by Selenites (men in insect suits) and threatened by a giant caterpillar.
Naturally, he was billed below Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida in Strange Bedfellows (1965), but was visible enough as a London gent who becomes involved with La Lollo. In contrast, playing a scientist, he had to avoid getting caught in the tentacles of slithery creatures that live on bone marrow in Island of Terror (1966). In The Vengeance of She (1968), Judd was a psychiatrist who is bewitched by a girl (Olinka Berova), who thinks she is the reincarnation of a 2,000-year-old queen, Ayesha. He is foolhardy enough to accompany her to an ancient lost city.
Parallel to his film career, Judd appeared regularly on television, from the 1950s series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, and later in Emmerdale Farm, The New Avengers, The Professionals and The Sweeney. He was also in Flambards, a mini-series for Yorkshire TV, as the arrogant and bullying disabled owner of the eponymous mansion.
But his association with Hammer and sub-Hammer horrors continued, with parts in The Vault of Horror (1973); The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983), as the sinister servant Barrymore; and as a police inspector in Jack the Ripper (1988). But there were periods of unemployment, due in part to his heavy drinking.
Judd was married twice, both times to actors. His first wife, Gene Anderson, died in 1965. His second, Norma Ronald, with whom he had two daughters, died in 1993. His daughters survive him.
Edward Judd, actor, born 4 October 1932; died 24 February 2009
Among science fiction fans, McShane is known for playing the character Dr. Robert Bryson in Babylon 5: The River of Souls. In a 2004 interview with The Independent, McShane stated that he wished that he had turned down the role of Bryson as he had struggled with the technical dialogue and found looking at Martin Sheen, who was wearing an eye in the middle of his forehead, to be the most embarrassing experience that he had ever had while acting.
In 1985, he appeared as an MC on Grace Jones‘ Slave to the Rhythm, a concept album which featured his narration interspersed throughout and which sold over a million copies worldwide.
In 2009, McShane appeared in Kings, which was based on the biblical story of David. His portrayal of King Silas Benjamin, an analogue of King Saul, was highly praised with one critic saying: “Whenever Kings seems to falter, McShane appears to put bite marks all over the scenery.”
McShane announced on April 20, 2017 that a script for a two-hour Deadwood movie had been submitted by creator David Milch to HBO and that a film is as close as ever to happening. “[A] two-hour movie script has been delivered to HBO. If they don’t deliver [a finished product], blame them,” McShane said.[34]The film began production in October 2018.[35]
On 30 August 1980, McShane married actress Gwen Humble (born 4 December 1953). They live in Venice, California.
Twiggy was born Lesley Hornby in Neasdon, London in 1949. The 60’s supermodel icon Twiggy made a few films in the 1970’s. “The Boy Friend” directed by Ken Russelll is of particular interest. She is now the fashion face of Marks and Spencer department store.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Top model of the late 1960s who made skinny an “inny” along with other famous skinny models such as Jean Shrimpton (“The Shrimp”), Veruschka von Lehndorff, and Penelope Tree (“The Tree”). She was born Leslie Hornby in Twickenham, Middlesex, England on September 19, 1949, one of three daughters of William Norman and Helen Hornby. By blending pop art with fashion, the doe-eyed, pouty-lipped gamine with the angelic puss and boyish crop took the industry by storm at age 17 defining the age of “flower power”. She originally was nicknamed “Sticks” because of her reed-thin figure, but then switched it to “Twigs” and, finally, “Twiggy.” A model for a scant four years, she had never even walked the runways by the time she exploded onto the scene. Educated at the Kilburn High School for Girls, her look and image was an instant globular sensation. She was even imitated by Mattel when they issued a “Twiggy Barbie” in 1967 and by Milton Bradley who created a board game out of her. Lunch boxes, false eye lashes, tights, sweaters, tote bags and paper dolls — all these bore her famous moniker. In her prime she graced the covers of Vogue and Tatler, and even had her own American publication “Her Mod, Mod Teen World.” The “psychedelic ’60s” would not have been the same without her.
In 1970, Twiggy was able to parlay her incredible success into a respectable career in film and TV and on the musical theater stage. It was the iconoclastic director Ken Russellwho instilled in her the ambition to move away from modeling and study acting, voice and dance. An extra in his movie The Devils (1971), Russell ushered her front-and-center with the jazz-age musical The Boy Friend (1971), his homage to the Busby BerkeleyHollywood musicals. Taking on the role originated on stage by Julie Andrews, Twiggy was awarded a Golden Globe for her efforts.
Though Twiggy has worked from time to time on TV, her exposure has been somewhat limited. She hosted a couple of self-titled shows in England and co-starred in the very short-lived sitcom Princesses (1991) here in America, but not too much else. The singing stage is a different story. She made her West End debut as “Cinderella” in 1974 and played Eliza Doolittle in a legit performance of “Pygmalion” in 1981. In 1983 she reunited with her “Boy Friend” co-star Tommy Tune and together dazzled Broadway audiences as a tapping twosome with “My One and Only,” a warm, nostalgic revamping of the Gershwin classic “Funny Face.” The charming waif went on to appear in a 1997 London revival ofNoel Coward‘s “Blithe Spirit,” then played star Gertrude Lawrence alongside Harry Groener‘s Coward in the song-and-sketch musical “Noel and Gertie” (later retitled “If Love Were All”), which focused on the close “blendship” between the two icons all to the accompaniment of 20 Coward songs.
Back to her modeling ways, Twiggy came out of retirement to be photographed by the likes of John Fwanel and Annie Liebovitz in the 90s and has recently joined the professional elite of judges led by Tyra Banks on the reality show America’s Next Top Model (2003).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
When Sally met Kevin. These two actors are stalwarts of “Coronation Street” who were forever sending their daughters Rosie and Sally upstairs after a feed of beans on toast. Occasionally different actresses came downstairs but Sally and Kevin never seemed to notice.
This actress’s autograph was one of the most elusive to obtain as she retired from the scene some years before her early death in 2002. Her film highlights occurred early in her career as the woebegone Fanny Robin abandoned by Terence Stamp for Julie Christie in “Far From the Madding Crowd”. Her other notable film part was as leading lady to David Hemmings in the Galway made “Alfred the Great”.
Prunella Ransome was a fey and hauntingly vulnerable redheaded beauty who only made a handful of major films, and never achieved the major stardom she so richly deserved. However, she was absolutely unforgettable as the pathetic Fanny Robin, abandoned by her lover Sergeant Troy – played by ’60s icon Terence Stamp – for having mistakenly jilted him on their wedding day in John Schlesinger’s masterful 1967 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd”.Her father, Jimmy Ransome, was the headmaster of West Hill Park, a private school for boys aged 7 to 13 located in Titchfield in Hampshire, from 1952 to 1959; and she was born on the 18th of January 1943 in Croydon in Surrey, a massive suburban area to the south of London which, in demographic terms, could not be more mixed, including as it does many tough multicultural districts, such as West Croydon and Thornton Heath, the largest council estate in Europe in the shape of New Addington, and wealthy middle class enclaves such as Sanderstead.Her career began in 1967 with a television series, “Kenilworth”, based on the historical novel by Sir Walter Scott in which she had the vital role of Amy Robsart, first wife of Lord Robert Dudley, who met her death by falling down a flight of stairs.On the back of this major role, she made her incredible debut as Fanny Robin, for which she was deservedly nominated for the 1967 Golden Globe for best supporting actress, only to lose out to Carol Channing for the role of Muzzy Van Hossmere in “Thoroughly Modern Millie”. While “Crowd” was not a major box office success, despite some critical acclaim, it has come to be viewed by many as an unsung masterpiece. Despite this extraordinary early burst of success, she wasn’t to appear onscreen for a full two years, when she featured opposite another idol of the swinging sixties, David Hemmings, in “Alfred the Great”, directed by Clive Donner, as Alfred’s love interest, Aelhswith.A good deal of British television work followed, until she landed her third and final major film role, as Grace Bass, wife of Zachary Bass – played by Richard Harris – a character loosely based on American frontiersman, Hugh Glass, in the action western, “Man in the Wilderness”, directed by Richard C. Sarafian.
After this, most of her work was for television, although she was to appear in two further films, one of which,
“¿Quién puede matar a un niño?”, directed by Narciso IbáñezSerrador in 1976 has a cult following among horror fans. The other, “Marianne Bouquet” is a little known erotic movie helmed in 1972 by French actor-director, Michel Lemoine.
From ’76 to ’84, she worked pretty solidly for TV, and among the programmes in which she had major roles during this period were “Crime and Punishment” (1979), directed by Michael Darlow, and featuring John Hurt as Raskolnikov and “Sorrell and Son” (1984), based on the novel by Warwick Deeping, and directed by Derek Bennett. After this, though, she vanished from British television screens for a full eight years, and was only to appear in a further three more productions, the last one being in 1996. According to the Internet Movie Database, she died in 2002, although other web sites give the date of her death as 2003, and there is no information as to the circumstances of her death, other than it occurred in Suffolk. For my part, I’ll treasure those few moments she graced the screen in “Far From the Madding Crowd”, and especially the fathomless heartbreak in her face as she watches her beloved Sergeant Troy walk out of her life forever, but for a final reunion so heartbreaking it destroyed both their lives, Fanny’s within a few hours, Troy’s after a period wandering the earth as a soul in torment.
Michael Craig is a stalwart presence in British Rank films of the 1950’s. He is particularly noteworthy in “The Angry Silence” with Richard Attenborough and the war film “A Hill in Korea”. He emigrated to Australia in the 1970’s and continued his career there mainly in television.
IMDB entry:
A veritable everyman of stage and screen, both big and small, but relatively unfamiliar to American audiences, Michael Craig is of Scots heritage, born in India to a father on military assignment. When he was three, the family returned to England, but by his eleventh year, they moved on to Canada – where he undoubtedly acquired his North American accent. Michael Craig left school for the Merchant Navy at 16, but finally returned to England and the lure of the theater.
By 1947, he debuted on stage and, in 1953, Sir Peter Hall gave him his first lead stage role. In the meantime, he was trying his hand at extra work and had speaking roles by 1954. This eventually led to discovery by Rank Films and a list of lead movie roles into the early 1960s. When his 7-year contract with that company expired, he was optioned by Columbia Pictures and his Hollywood career commenced. Yet his American work is perhaps only modestly remembered in two films, ironically co-American productions with the UK, Mysterious Island (1961), and Australia, the Disney TV installment, Ride a Wild Pony (1975).
By the mid-1970s, Michael Craig’s TV and film work was heavily concentrated in Australia (where he still resides) and composed a depth or roles, both comedic and dramatic, that has included memorable and solid character pieces as he has matured in age. As a screen writer, he has written for and created several British TV series. And he has never been far from the stage, remaining a familiar face in both London and New York theater.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: William McPeak
“Wales Online”:
He’s romanced some of the country’s finest leading ladies on stage and on screen but now actor Michael Craig is preparing for the role of a retired judge. Karen Price asks him about his career MICHAEL CRAIG has worked with some of the biggest leading actresses during his career.
Original Cinema 3-Sheet Poster – Movie Film PostersOne Sheet; Movie Poster; Film Poster; Cinema Poster;
From playing Barbra Streisand’s husband in the hit West End production Funny Girl, to co-starring with Julie Andrews in the film Star and Honor Blackman in the play Move Over Mrs Markham. But it’s now, at the age of 80, he says he’s found the role of a lifetime.
The actor, who lives in Monmouthshire, is playing Judge John Biddle in the play Trying, which opens next week at London’s Finborough Theatre. Michael Craig, who spent many years living in Australia, premiered the role in Sydney to great acclaim.
Written by Canadian playwright, Joanna McLelland Glass, it deals with coming to terms with ageing, loss of status, physical and mental deterioration and the acceptance of the inevitability of all that. It also charts the building of a loving, trusting relationship between two apparently incompatible people: an 81-year-old retired American judge and his 25-year-old Canadian secretary. They are both based on real people – the judge, Francis Biddle, was the Chief Justice at the Nuremberg Trials and subsequently Attorney General to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and the playwright was actually his secretary, who is called Sarah in the play. “It’s a fine piece of writing and in the best sense of the words, a really entertaining evening in the theatre,” says Craig, who was born in India to British parents as his father was in the forces. The play was a success in Sydney and when Michael Craig and his second wife Susan decided to relocate to the UK to be nearer their family, he had the idea of staging it here. His brother Richard Gregson is an experienced producer and agent and after reading the play he started making inquiries about revising it for British audiences.
It’s now set to be staged at the London theatre and it’s proving to be something of a family affair – his niece Sarah is one of the producers. Craig, who now lives in Whitebrook, near Monmouth, enjoys playing the character. He has been forgotten and it kind of rankles a bit: next page “He has been forgotten and it kind of rankles a bit,” he says of the judge. “It’s true that people do get forgotten, no matter how eminent they’ve been.” The actor admits he’s nervous about opening the play in London. “But I’m also being optimistic. When we did it in Sydney it was a real crowd pleaser.”
Michael Craig began his career as a stage assistant for a rep company in Farnham, Surrey, and the roles started coming in. “I did a lot of movies, many of which come back to haunt me on late-night telly,” he laughs. He describes Streisand as “a great talent” and Andrews as “a real pro”. He also worked with a young Judi Dench before she started her career as an actress. “She would come and paint scenery at the Theatre Royal in York. Her brother was in the company,” he says. “It was great fun working with her.”
Many years later he played Horner to her Mrs Pinchwife in Wycherly’s The Country Wife at the Nottingham Playhouse. Craig’s other stage roles include playing opposite Peggy Ashcroft in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Wars of the Roses and with Ian Holm, in Harold Pinter’s Tony award-winning production of The Homecoming in New York.
Michael Craig television credits include, The Commodore in Doctor Who, Saint Joan with Janet Suzman and John Gielgud, and for his long-standing role as the curmudgeonly Doctor William Sharp in the long-running Australian Medical series, G.P. He was recently amazed to find himself voted The Most Trusted Man in Australia.
Michael Craig
As well as acting, he is also an award-winning writer. His television play, The Fourth Wish won two Australian Best TV Drama awards. So does he miss all those roles which saw him romancing some of our finest leading actresses? “There’s no point in missing what you can’t have,” he laughs. “It’s enough to be able to think, ‘been there, done that, now what’s next?’.”
