British Actors Archives - Page 37 of 129

Ray Milland

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.

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

Hilda Plowright

Hilda Plowright was born on November 29, 1890 in Swaffham, Norfolk, England. She was an actress, known for Summer Magic (1963), 36 Hours (1965) and Partners of the Plains(1938). She died on October 9, 1973 in San Diego, California, USA.

John Lyons was born on September 14, 1943 in London, England. He is an actor, known for A Touch of Frost (1992), Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) and Action Jackson (1988)

Jenny Tomasin

“Independent” obituary:

The role of Ruby Finch, the dim-witted, put-upon scullery maid in Upstairs, Downstairs forever dreaming of running away with Rudolph Valentino, brought Jenny Tomasin fame worldwide. The familiar cry of “Oh, Ruby!” from the Bellamy household’s cook, Mrs Bridges, in response to the accident-prone servant’s clumsiness, was perhaps the closest the saga came to having a catchphrase.

Tomasin joined the programme for just one episode in its second series, in 1972, but her portrayal of the downtrodden Ruby was so admired that she was kept on until Upstairs, Downstairs ended three years later. She was seen “downstairs” alongside others including Angela Baddeley as the grumpy but warm-hearted Mrs Bridges, George Jackson as the dour butler Hudson, Jean Marsh as the pivotal housemaid Rose and Pauline Collins as the day-dreaming parlour maid Sarah in the drama set at 165 Eaton Place, London, against a background of events from the Edwardian era and First World War to the General Strike and Wall Street Crash. In typical fashion, Ruby once shocked her fellow servants by announcing that she was leaving for a job in a munitions factory, only for it to be blown up with her inside. She took the long walk back to Belgravia, her face blackened, and was reinstated.

The programme was Britain’s most successful period drama of the 1970s, watched by 300 million people in 50 countries, including the US, where it won seven Emmys. When it ended, Tomasin felt a big hole had been left in her life and compared it to bereavement. Plans for Ruby to join Hudson and Mrs Bridges in a sequel, running a seaside boarding-house, were abandoned following Baddeley’s death.

However, Ruby was a double-edged sword. The character was popular but frequently described as “TV’s ugly duckling” and, Tomasin believed, left her typecast as maids, restricting her future career, while “upstairs” stars such as Simon Williams and Lesley-Anne Down saw their careers soar.

“I had to wear these drab outfits and no make-up,” she recalled in the 2002 television documentary After Upstairs, Downstairs. “There was one particular incident when I was out with my boyfriend for a meal. I was feeling sexy and attractive, and suddenly somebody yelled out, ‘Oh, look, there’s Ruby!’ I looked at my boyfriend and said, ‘I don’t want to stay here.’ It just felt awful.”

Born in Leeds in 1936, Tomasin had childhood ambitions to act or write. Despite her parents’ objections, she broke into acting and appeared on stage until she made her screen début in 1972 as a Young Conservative whose parents try to marry her off to the fraudulent Australian of the title (Barry Crocker) in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, a film written by Barry Humphries (who played Aunt Edna Everage) and the director Bruce Beresford.

Before she finished her run as Ruby, Tomasin took the carbon-copy role of a waitress, Florence Baker, in the motel-set soap opera Crossroads, which she played on and off from 1974-79. There were also one-off appearances in The Dick Emery Show (1976), The Onedin Line (1977) and the sitcom That’s My Boy (1985), as well as the small part of Mrs Simmons in the little-seen film Mister Quilp (1975), based on The Old Curiosity Shop. Tomasin also acted one of the child mill workers in later episodes of Midnight is a Place (1977-78).

After she played Naomi Tolly, whose farmer father died in a tractor accident, in Emmerdale Farm (1980-81) and Tasambeker, “ex-ter-min-ated” by the Time Lord’s nemeses in the 1985 Doctor Who story “Revelation of the Daleks”, Tomasin’s appearances became rarer. She took the role of a traffic warden in the 1990 film Just Ask for Diamond and was typecast as a maidservant in a BBC adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and the cook in Beeban Kidron’s television film of Cinderella (2000).

On stage and back to type, Tomasin played a parlour maid in a West End production of Man and Superman (Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 1982), starring Peter O’Toole, with the cast reprising their performances in a television film version the same year. She was also in pantomimes and national tours of Blithe Spirit (1988-89), as Edith, the maid, Lettice and Lovage (1990-91) and The Marquise (2004), in which she acted Kate O’Mara’s devoted maid.

Tomasin believed her television career might be experiencing a revival when she returned to Emmerdale (as the serial was retitled in 1989) in the role of Noreen Bell (2005-06), a cantankerous, palm-reading, wig-wearing pensioner whose garden fence was painted by Val Lambert as part of a community service order. Noreen became friends with Val but died in a gas explosion while looking round a show home.

It was Tomasin’s last screen role, but the character’s legacy lives on. The money bequeathed by Noreen to Val enabled her to buy a half-share in The Woolpack pub, where last orders are called with the Noreen Bell bell. However, Tomasin – who never married – always remained optimistic that more work would come along. As she said in 2002: “I’ve been through such hard times, but I can always bounce back again. I still believe great things are just ahead.”

Anthony Hayward

Jenny Tomasin, actress: born Leeds 30 November 1936; died London c. 12 January 2012.

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Ray Milland

Leo G. Carroll

May Whitty

Gareth Thomas

Obituary in “The Telegraph” in 2016.

Martyn Green

Sushil Chudasama

Hilda Plowright

John Lyons

Jenny Tomasin

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