British Actors Archives - Page 23 of 136

Patricia Dainton

Wikipedia entry:

Patricia Dainton was born in 1930 and is a British actress who appeared in a number of film and television roles between 1947 and 1961. She was born in Hamilton, Scotland, and made her screen debut in the 1947 film Dancing with Crime. She trained at the Rank Organisation‘s “charm school”.

She was born in Hamilton, Scotland, the daughter of film and stage agent Vivienne Black.^[She left Scotland at age ten, moving to London. She attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London and the Cone school of dance.

After her stage debut at Stratford-upon-Avon, Dainton acted in the suburbs of London, with roles in Babette, Watch on the Rhine, Quiet Wedding, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Dainton’s “dancing and acting debut in Technicolor” came in The Dancing Years, with her screen debut in the 1947 film Dancing with Crime. She trained at the Rank Organisation‘s “charm school”. (Another source says that Dainton “made her first film debut in 1942 in The Bells Go Down.”). Her twin brother, George Bryden also made a couple of film and stage appearances around this time.

Patricia was married to the actor turned producer Norman Williams and they had two children.

55 years after her last film role, she appeared in the public eye again, both attending the Renown Film Festival and providing introductions to her films in “An Afternoon with Patricia Dainton” on her 86th Birthday for TalkingPictures TV.

“Quinlan’s Movie Stars”:

Blue-eyed Dresden china blonde. Born in Scotland and on the stage as a teenager. Started as a glamourpuss following a Rank contract but did well later on as a beleaguredt,declcate but resourceful heroine. Seemed to lack a career drive to become a bigger star.

Telegraph Obituary in 2023:

A graduate of the Rank Charm School, she was picked out by Gielgud and Novello but gave up her career to bring up a family

ByTelegraph Obituaries7 June 2023 • 6:00am

Patricia Dainton at the Screenwriters Ball in London in 1963 CREDIT: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Patricia Dainton, the actress, who has died aged 93, starred in Britain’s first daily television soap, Sixpenny Corner, launched by ITV on its second day of transmission in 1955.

The serial featured a cast of unknowns, with the exception of the Rank Charm School graduate who first attracted attention with her hoofing talents in The Dancing Years, a 1950 film version of Ivor Novello’s London stage musical.

In Sixpenny Corner she and Howard Pays played the soap’s leading couple, Sally and Bill Norton, newlyweds starting married life by taking over a rundown garage business in the “old country” town of Springwood. She even featured on the cover of the first TV Times alongside Lucille Ball.

Sixpenny Corner, broadcast on weekday mornings, Monday to Friday, was devised by Jonquil Antony and Hazel Adair as a television version of the popular BBC radio serial Mrs Dale’s Diary, for which they wrote.

Howard Pays and Patricia Dainton as the newlyweds Bill and Sally Norton in Sixpenny Corner CREDIT: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Once the first six recorded episodes were broadcast – beginning with Sally and Bill’s wedding reception – each 15-minute edition was screened live from a studio, first in Kensington, then Wembley.

“We got there at 7am and put on our make-up,” recalled Dainton. “About 8.30, we would meet the crew, which was a different one every day. We would do one straight run-through of the episode, check our make-up and then do the programme.”

An early lunch would be followed by a rehearsal for the next day’s episode and, later, Sunday rehearsals were added. The cast were relieved of the tough schedule only when the serial was dropped after nine months.

The Stage’s critic, while applauding Dainton and Pays for portraying a “likeable couple”, had observed: “This serial is pretty milk-and-watery and is not likely to keep housewives away from their morning chores.”

One of those housewives said: “It’s too ordinary and doesn’t hold me. I’d rather have Mrs Dale, when I can listen and get on with the house at the same time.”

While Hazel Adair created the soaps Compact and Crossroads, and Howard Pays became a successful agent and the father of the actress Amanda Pays, Patricia Dainton – who had married the actor-producer Norman Williams in 1952 – eventually gave up her career for her family.

She was born Margaret Bryden Pate in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, on April 12 1930, the daughter of George Pate and his wife, Vivienne, née Black. At the age of six she appeared in a charity show in aid of the blind at the Garrick Theatre, Southport.

After excelling in ballet lessons, she moved to London aged 10 and trained in dancing and acting at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, then the Cone School of Dancing.

Patricia Dainton signs an autograph for Margaret Roberts, future Prime Minister, at Dartford Fete in 1951 CREDIT: Personalities/Topfoto

The professional name Patricia Dainton came when Margaret elongated Pate and her mother – assistant manager of John Gielgud’s acting company before becoming a theatrical agent – picked Dainton from a book, believing that agents and casting directors “skim over” the beginning of an alphabetical list. Then, she explained: “If you find what you want among the ‘Ds’, you don’t look any farther.”

In 1943, Patricia Dainton made her screen début, uncredited, in The Bells Go Down, a wartime drama starring Tommy Trinder, and appeared in The Windmill Man at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Two years later, Gielgud picked the actress, then 14, to play the fairy Peaseblossom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the West End. Her twin brother, George Bryden, was also in it before appearing in a handful of films.

“I suppose I must have done pretty well,” said Patricia Dainton, “because, when that came to the end of its run, Ivor Novello sent for me to understudy as Grete [on tour] in The Dancing Years.”

Patricia Dainton and canine companion in 1954 CREDIT: Popperfoto via Getty Images

Her talents were also spotted by the Rank Organisation. After signing a three-year contract with its Company of Youth – commonly known as the Rank Charm School – she had small parts in the B-movies Love in Waiting, A Piece of Cake (both 1948) and Don’t Ever Leave Me (1949).

When she was dropped in 1949, Novello came to the rescue. He recalled her understudying the innkeeper’s daughter in The Dancing Years tour and put her in the treacly Technicolor film version of his Viennese romance.

This began a seven-year contract with Associated British that included starring roles alongside John Bentley in the crime dramas Hammer the Toff, Paul Temple Returns and Tread Softly (all 1952).

Shortly after playing a terminally ill murderer in The Third Alibi and a model with an unconsummated holiday romance in Ticket to Paradise (both 1961), Patricia Dainton left acting behind to bring up her children. She made a return to the screen in 2016 for An Afternoon with Patricia Dainton on the Talking Pictures TV channel, reminiscing about her career and presenting some of her films

Patricia Dainton’s husband died in 2010. They had a son and three daughters.

Patricia Dainton, born April 12 1930, died 31 May 2023

IMDB entry:

James Kenney was born on July 20, 1930 in London, England as Kenneth Berwick. He was an actor, known for Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951), The Slasher (1953) and Ambush in Leopard Street (1962). He died on January 15, 1982 in London.

British actor who found many roles in the 1950s displaying boyish naivete, in both the stage and screen versions of Cosh Boy (1952). Often confused with Irish born actor James Berwick. James Berwick was born James Kenny, and used this name when working in the USA. The similarity of both their real and stage surnames often causes confusion.

Roland Culver was born on August 21, 1900 in London, England as Roland Joseph Culver. He was an actor, known for Thunderball (1965), Dead of Night (1945) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). He was married to Nan Hopkins and Daphne Rye. He died on March 1, 1984 in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England.

James Simmons is an actor, known for Henry V (1989), Les Misérables (2012) and The Confession (2010).

His 2002 obituary in “The Telegraph”:

Michael Elphick, the actor, who has died aged 55, made his name in the early 1980s playing a collection of villains for television; he went on to star in Boon, the popular television series about a motorcycle-riding “urban cowboy”, and recently appeared in EastEnders as the despicable Harry Slater.

Robust and ruggedly good-looking in his prime, Elphick always looked older than he was, and with his gruff Cockney accent and splendid lip-curling sneer he often played menacing hard men. However, he was cast against type in 1982 when he was given his first starring role in the television series Private Shultz. Elphick played an ineffectual petty criminal who attempts to dupe the Nazis out of their stolen art treasures.

Three years later he starred in Boon, playing the dim but decent eponymous hero, an ex-fireman who founds a motorcycle courier agency in Birmingham, then sets up a private detective agency, which later moves to Nottingham. The somewhat uninspiring setting and storylines were enlivened by Elphick’s superior acting, and the supporting cast, which included David Draker as Boon’s eternally optimistic business partner and Neil Morrissey as his dopey assistant, Rocky. “I never really expected it to be a success,” Elphick recalled, “the stories were about a very ordinary bloke.”

Boon was a hit, but by 1988 Elphick’s heavy drinking was having a damaging effect on filming and he made the first of many attempts to dry out. The series was re-commissioned and Elphick became one of the most familiar and respected actors on the small screen.

Last year he joined the cast of EastEnders as “Uncle Harry” Slater. Years of drinking had ravaged his looks, but he gave a convincingly sinister performance when it was revealed that Harry Slater had sexually abused his niece and was the father of her teenage daughter. When his character was eventually killed off, one tabloid newspaper squawked “the worst pervert in soap is heading for justice!

Uncle Harry was his last role, and Elphick was forced to leave the show when once again his drinking began to hamper his performance. “I’ve always been a terrible hedonist,” he confessed, “I get bored very easily.”

Michael Elphick was born on September 19 1946 at Chichester, Sussex, into a Catholic family and was educated at a local secondary school, where he excelled at rugby.

He left school at 15 and started work as a builder on the construction of the Chichester Festival Theatre. After becoming an apprentice electrician at the theatre he worked on several shows starring Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and Sybil Thorndike. It was Olivier who encouraged him and recommended that he attend drama school. “He gave me two speeches to learn,” Elphick recalled, “and I got offered places at all the schools I auditioned for, including RADA, but I went to Central because that’s where Olivier went.”

On leaving Central, Elphick toured with repertory companies throughout the 1960s. Despite appearing most often as what he called “the Cockney thug”, his performances were often favourably noted in reviews. In 1967 he made his film debut in Dino de Laurentis’s Fraulein Doctor. Two years later he made his television debut in Roads to Freedom, in which one critic described him as “versatile but evil-looking”.

Throughout the 1970s, Elphick’s typecasting moved from mindless “heavies” to a selection of sinister, brooding roles. He starred in Arthur Hopcraft’s The Nearly Man (1972) and Holding On (1973), and his appearance in Granada Television’s This Year, Next Year (1977) captivated The Sunday Telegraph’s television critic, who described him as “barrel-chested, capaciously-bellied and, judging by his morning splosh in the water tank . . . well hung”.

Elphick’s big break came, however, when he appeared in Dennis Potter’s television drama Blue Remembered Hills (1979), in which adult actors portrayed children. He described his role as “still the bully but in short pants”.

The following year Elphick played Claudius in the Royal Court production of Hamlet. The play was distinguished by Jonathan Pryce’s contorted rendering of Hamlet’s “possession” by his father’s ghost and by the overt sexuality of Elphick’s Claudius. One critic claimed that it was “the first time I understood why Gertrude remarried so quickly”.

The success of Private Schultz led to appearances in almost every well known television series, including Auf Weidersehen Pet, The Sweeney, The Professionals and Smiley’s People. He starred opposite Angela Thorne in the stolid situation comedy Three Up Two Down and also appeared in films as diverse as Quadrophenia (1979), The Great Train Robbery (1979), Privates on Parade (1982), The Elephant Man (1980) and Gorky Park (1983). The latter was filmed in Helsinki, where Elphick justified his predilection for a bottle of vodka a day as the only way to keep warm.

His career was always dogged by his alcoholism, which, at times, he seemed to have beaten. But despite numerous drunken episodes and more than the occasional sexual indiscretion, Elphick was rarely out of work.

In Withnail and I (1988) he played a menacing poacher who kept an eel down his trousers, and in 1991 he appeared in Stanley and the Women on ITV, playing a battered old alcoholic.

Two years later he starred in Harry, a drama series about a hardened hack. “Elphick”, said The Daily Telegraph “is one of those actors who couldn’t give a bad performance if you put a lighted match between his toes and told him to ham it up.”

After the death of his long-term companion Julia Alexander in 1996, Elphick began drinking again in earnest. They had met as teenagers and he was shattered by the loss. But despite threatening suicide he rallied and returned to the stage in Loot.

One of his last roles was in 2000, when he appeared as Peggoty’s suitor, Barkis, in a BBC production of David Copperfield. Elphick put his gravelly voice to good use once more with the well known line: “Barkis is willin’ “.

He is survived by a daughter from his relationship with Julia Alexander.

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

“Wikipedia” entry:

Jack Warner OBE (24 October 1895 – 24 May 1981) was an English film and television actor. He is closely associated with the role of PC George Dixon, which he played until the age of eighty; but was also for some years one of Great Britain’s most popular film stars.

Warner was born in London, his real name being Horace John Waters. His sisters Elsie and Doris Waters were well-known comediennes who usually performed as “Gert and Daisy“.

Warner attended the Coopers’ Company’s Grammar School for Boys in Mile End, while his sisters both attended the nearby sister school, Coborn School for Girls in Bow. The three children were choristers at St. Leonard’s Church, Bromley-by-Bow, and for a time, Warner was the choir’s soloist. During the First World War he served as a driver in the Royal Flying Corps .

Warner first made his name in music hall and radio. By the early years of the Second World War, he was nationally known and starred in a BBC radio comedy show Garrison Theatre, invariably opening with, “A Monologue Entitled…”. He became known to cinema audiences as the patriarch in a trio of popular post-World War II family films beginning with Here Come the Huggetts. He also co-starred in the 1955 Hammer film version of The Quatermass Xperiment and as a police superintendent in the 1955 Ealing Studios black comedy The Ladykillers.

It was in 1949 that Warner first played the role for which he would be remembered, PC George Dixon, in the film The Blue Lamp. One observer predicted, “This film will make Jack the most famous policeman in Britain“.^[Although the police constable he played was shot dead in the film, the character was revived in 1955 for the BBC television series Dixon of Dock Green, which ran until 1976. In later years though, Warner and his long-past-retirement-age character were confined to a less prominent desk sergeant role. The series had a prime-time slot on Saturday evenings, and always opened with Dixon giving a little soliloquy to the camera, beginning with the words, “Good evening, all”. According to Warner’s autobiography, Jack of All Trades, Elizabeth II once visited the television studio where the series was made and told Warner “that she thought Dixon of Dock Green had become part of the British way of life”.^[5]

Warner was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1965. In 1973, he was made a Freeman of the City of London. Warner commented in his autobiography that the honour “entitles me to a set of 18th century rules for the conduct of life urging me to be sober and temperate”. Warner added, “Not too difficult with Dixon to keep an eye on me!”

He died of pneumonia in London in 1981, aged 85. The characterisation by Warner of Dixon was held in such high regard that officers from Paddington Green Police Station bore the coffin at his funeral.

Warner is buried in East London Cemetery.

The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.