Andrea Riseborough was born in Whitley Bay in 1981. She is one of Britain’s best young actresses with sterling performances in such films as “Made in Dagenham”. “Never Let Me Go”, the remake of “Brighton Rock” and “the Belfast set “Shadow Dancer”.
TCM overview:
It is alright if the name Andrea Riseborough seems a little unfamiliar. Though the actress has been a rising star in her native England for years, beginning with her role as an ambitious Labour Party researcher on the political satire “Party Animals” (BBC Two, 2007), the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduate has only appeared on American audiences’ radars since 2011, when she portrayed American divorcee and future Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson in Madonna’s divisive “W.E.” But those intervening four years found the preternaturally observant Riseborough pack in several memorable performances: she earned a BAFTA nomination for her nuanced turn as a young Margaret Thatcher in the made-for-TV movie “Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley” (BBC 4, 2008); was cast as a strong-willed factory machinist in the union drama “Made in Dagenham” (2010); and found the strong heart of a naively trusting wife in the 2010 remake of Graham Greene’s “Brighton Rock.” Her affinity for portraying determined women matched up perfectly with her role as Wallis Simpson, whose romance with King Edward VIII caused him to abdicate his throne in 1936 so they could marry. The film’s controversial reception did nothing to slow the thoughtful actress’ burgeoning career, however, and in 2012 she earned critical acclaim for her role as an IRA-member-turned-informant in “Shadow Dancer,” set in ’90s Belfast. Her next role, as a mysterious drone supervisor opposite Tom Cruise in the big-budget “Oblivion” (2013), highlighted her ability to shift from intense period piece to glossy Hollywood sci-fi. With a startling intensity and wise-beyond-her years talent, Andrea Riseborough is one to watch.
Born in 1981 in northern England a few days shy of Halloween, Riseborough was an inveterate people watcher from a young age. Keenly aware of her socio-economic status — her father worked as a car salesman, and her mother was employed as both a secretary and beautician — the young Riseborough closely observed those around her. Though she did well in the private school her parents placed her in, which they were able to afford thanks to the economic boom England enjoyed in the 1980s, she eventually dropped out and worked a number of odd jobs, including managing a Chinese restaurant, as a way to gain experience outside school walls. Her family lost everything in the early ’90s recession, and their resulting hardship supplied another experience for her to draw from.
Her interest in acting led her to enroll at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and after graduating from the internationally-renowned school in 2005, she quickly jumped from stage to screen with supporting roles in everything from the BBC made-for-TV movie “A Very Social Secretary” (2005) to the feature film “Venus” (2006), starring Peter O’Toole as a nearly-forgotten actor who becomes a mentor to his wild-child granddaughter. In 2006 she won a prestigious young actor’s award for her work in the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of the Swedish “Miss Julie” and “Measure for Measure,” one of Shakespeare’s not-quite-comedy, not-quite-drama “problem plays.” A year later she was cast in a breakout role on “Party Animals” as Kirsty, a political researcher not above using her feminine charms to rise to the top. It was that mix of dogged ambition and steely calculating that led to her being cast as a young Margaret Thatcher in the BAFTA-nominated “The Long Walk to Finchley,” which chronicled the future Prime Minister’s decade-long battle to win a Parliamentary seat. Her intense preparation and commitment to the character has since proved to be one of Riseborough’s greatest strengths.
The film, which skirted controversy by avoiding Thatcher’s politics and focusing on feminist ideals, also marked a stretch of challenging performances for Riseborough. In 2010 she was featured as a sewing factory machinist in “Made in Dagenham,” based on the 1968 female employee-led protests that shut down a Ford sewing factory and led to the Equal Pay Act of 1970. That same year she turned in a harrowing performance as a naive waitress in “Brighton Rock,” which could not have been farther from her confident turn as Simpson in the critically dismissed “W.E.” She next portrayed a defiant housewife in the alternate-reality World War II drama “Resistance” (2011), and appeared opposite Clive Owen in the critically-acclaimed “Shadow Dancer” as an IRA member whose attempt to leave the deadly organization leaves her paralyzed with fear. In 2013 she appeared in the cat-and-mouse thriller “Welcome to the Punch,” and later made her U.S. debut with her role as Tom Cruise’s aloof supervisor in the aptly named “Oblivion.”
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Laurence Fox is best known for his portrayal of ‘James Hathaway’ in the popular television series “Lewis”. He was born in 1978 and is the son of acor James Fox. His movies include “Becoming Jane” in 2007 and “The King’s Speech”.
IMDB entry:
RADA-trained Laurence Fox is the third son of the actor James Fox and his wife Mary. He is a rising British actor who has appeared in several important films, plays, and television programs. He comes from a theatrical family and promises to have an illustrious career ahead of him.
Doris Lloyd, was born in Walton Liverpool in 1896. She began her acting career on Broadway in 1925 and began making movies in 1929. She became a well known character actress. Her movies include “Tarzan, The Ape man” in 1932, “Back Street”, “The Letter”, “Shining Victory”, “Midnight Lace” and later “Rosie” and “The Sound of Music”. She died in California in 1968.
IMDB entry:
Doris Lloyd was born on July 3, 1896 in Liverpool, England as Hessy Doris Lloyd. She was an actress, known for The Sound of Music (1965), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and The Time Machine (1960). She died on May 21, 1968 in Santa Barbara, California, USA. British stage actress who came to Hollywood in 1925 and stayed playing domestic and/or dowager support roles in costumers. Was a very popular radio & television actress, appearing in over 150 movies. Versatile character actress, who first appeared on stage with the Liverpool Repertory Theatre Company in 1914. Intended to merely visit her sister in the United States, but ended up settling down in California. Her lengthy movie career began in 1925 and included countless small parts as (British) charwomen, landladies and, occasionally, society matrons. Notable as a spy in ‘Disraeli’ (1929) and Nancy Sykes in the Monogram version of ‘Oliver Twist’ (1933). On Broadway in ‘An Inspector Calls’ (1947-1948,as Sybil Birling).
Gary Oldman is one of the best actors in movies to-day. He came to fame with his brilliant performance as ‘Sid Vicious’ in “Sid & Nancy” in 1986. He has had a string of worthwhile movies, the best I think is “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”.
TCM overview:
From the start of his career, actor Gary Oldman displayed an edgy intensity that brought verve to his portrayals of ambiguous and obsessive personalities. Equally at home as either heroes or villains, Oldman gained a well-earned reputation as a brilliant chameleon who first staked his claim playing wayward Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious in “Sid and Nancy” (1986). Following acclaimed turns as playwright Joe Orton in “Prick Up Your Ears” (1987) and a slick attorney in “Criminal Law” (1989), the actor was eerily indistinguishable as Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone’s conspiracy-driven “JFK” (1991). Oldman added to his vast array of characters by playing the famous Count in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992), a dreadlocked drug dealer in “True Romance” (1993), Ludwig von Beethoven in “Immortal Beloved” (1994) and a terrorist leader in “Air Force One” (1997). In the new millennium, he was conservative senator who vigorously challenged the appointment of the first woman to the vice presidency in “The Contender” (2000) and was virtually unrecognizable as the mangled Mason Verger in “Hannibal” (2001). While sometimes associated with small films, Oldman excelled in blockbusters, playing the mysterious Sirius Black in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004) and several sequels, and Lieutenant Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins” (2005) and “The Dark Knight” (2008). Though virtually unrecognized by awards until 2010’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” Oldman nonetheless remained an actor held in high esteem among critics, audiences and fellow actors, thanks to scores of acclaimed roles under his belt.
The son of a welder and a housewife, Leonard Gary Oldman was born on Mar. 21, 1958 in New Cross, London, England. An academically indifferent student, Oldman dropped out of school at 16 and found a job as a store clerk. He soon discovered his métier on stage, becoming active in the Young People’s Theater in Greenwich, England. He later won a scholarship to attend the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in Kent. Graduating in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in theater arts, Oldman quickly found regular gigs on stage. Oldman’s hard work and trademark intensity made him a favorite in Glasgow in the mid 1980s, culminating in the lead role in Edward Bond’s socially-conscious drama, “The Pope’s Wedding.” A huge hit with critics, the play earned Oldman’s two of the British stage’s top honors: the Time Out’s Fringe Award for Best Newcomer of 1985-86 and the British Theatre Association’s Drama Magazine Award as Best Actor of 1985.
Segueing into television in the mid-to-late 1980s, Oldman brought some of his famous intensity to his small screen roles. An early example was evidenced in one of Oldman’s first screen performances as an explosive skinhead in director Mike Leigh’s telefilm “Meantime” (BBC, 1983). Oldman later consolidated his wild man persona with two very different, yet similarly doomed iconoclastic figures from English culture: punk rock legend Sid Vicious in the poignant and uncompromising cult classic “Sid and Nancy” (1986), and later the irreverent gay playwright Joe Orton in the finely tuned biopic “Prick up Your Ears” (1987). Though excellent in both roles, Oldman was more remembered for his turn as Vicious, portraying the heroin-addicted bassist in frighteningly accurate fashion. Meanwhile, Oldman continued his exploration of human darkness, traveling to North Carolina to play the mysterious long-lost son of Theresa Russell in Nicolas Roeg’s bizarre psychological drama “Track 29” (1987).
In the United States, Oldman displayed his remarkable talent for mimicking American accents and myriad regional dialects. The fruits of his labor resulted in Oldman giving convincing performances as a big-city attorney in “Criminal Law” (1988), a down-home Southern fried mental institution inmate in “Chattahoochee” (1990) and an Irish-American gangster in “State of Grace” (1990). But it was his dead-on impersonation of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1991) that truly cemented his status as a human chameleon; few were able to distinguish the actor’s characterization from the stock footage of the real Oswald. Based on the strength of his performance in “JFK,” director Francis Ford Coppola offered him the lead in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992). As the titular bloodsucker, Oldman proved equally compelling in various incarnations – as a wizened old man, a dapper aristocrat and a snarling monster – standing out amid the lavish makeup and visually sumptuous costumes and sets. Oldman was predictably electrifying in his next outing, playing ruthless wannabe Rastafarian pimp Drexl Spivy in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted “True Romance” (1993). Though Oldman was onscreen for only a few minutes, his dominating performance echoed throughout the rest of the movie.
Like many actors, Oldman had his share of demons to battle – in his case, alcohol. Oldman’s off-screen binges led to occasional brushes with the law, including a 1991 arrest for driving under the influence. After he completed “The Scarlet Letter” (1995), Oldman checked into rehab and underwent treatment. Once sober, he returned to Hollywood to reactivate his career and raise money for “Nil By Mouth” (1997), a dream project he wanted to write and direct. Meanwhile, Oldman was seen in varying degrees of success, making villainous turns in “The Fifth Element” (1997), “Air Force One” (1997) and “Lost in Space” (1998). Finally, he managed to raise enough money – thanks to an assist from “Fifth Element” director Luc Besson – to make “Nil By Mouth,” a blistering semi-autobiographical examination of a working-class family torn apart by alcoholism. From its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where it picked up the Best Actress trophy for Kathy Burke (as the abused wife), to its 1998 theatrical release, the film earned substantial critical praise for its unflinching writing, assured direction and stunning performances.
Oldman next lent his vocal talents to the animated feature “The Quest for Camelot” (1998), then made a rare excursion into television to play Pontius Pilate in the CBS miniseries “Jesus” (1999-2000). Later in 2000, he was back on the big screen as a conservative U.S. senator attempting to block the appointment of a female colleague as the first woman vice president in “The Contender,” written and directed by Rod Lurie. The timely material – which included a sex scandal and pointed references to embattled U.S. president Bill Clinton – marked the actor’s first time as an executive producer. Rumors of a tension-filled the set were rampant prior to the film’s release and disputes between Oldman and Lurie soon became fodder for public consumption. Not one to suffer fools, Oldman expressed his unhappiness with his character’s depiction as the villain. While his arguments with Lurie and the film’s distributor DreamWorks played out in the press, “The Contender” failed to make its mark with audiences.
Oldman found himself in another situation with his prominent follow-up role as the exorbitantly wealthy, but hideously disfigured Mason Verger in “Hannibal” (2001). Some reported that the actor originally wanted screen credit. But when he was relegated to third billing, he allegedly opted to take no credit at all. Other articles claimed that he did not want to be identified for the sake of surprise, since the character required prosthetics that would render whoever played the role unrecognizable. Producer Dino De Laurentiis clearly stated at a press conference, however, that Oldman was indeed playing the role, pointing out that an actor of that stature deserved to be recognized for his contribution to the film. Although he spent much of his career playing psychotics and sadistic characters, Oldman underwent a career makeover in the mid-2000s similar to that of Sir Ian McKellen. Eschewing his more typical adult-oriented fair, Oldman began accepting a string of roles that played to younger audiences.
Among his likeable, more sympathetic characters was Sirius Black, a recurring character in the “Harry Potter” series. First introduced in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004), Oldman reprised his role for its two subsequent sequels, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005) and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (2007). Around the same period, Oldman delighted comic-book fan boys around the world by taking the role of Gotham City Police Lieutenant (and later Commissioner) Jim Gordon in “Batman Begins” (2005), a reboot of the lucrative Batman film franchise. Oldman later reprised the role in “The Dark Knight” (2008). He next portrayed several characters in Disney’s 3-D animated take on the Charles Dickens classic, “A Christmas Carol” (2009), lending both voice and image to Jacob Marley, former business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey), Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. Goldman also voiced General Grawl in “Planet 51” (2009), an animated spoof on alien culture and 1950s Americana.
The following year, Goldman embraced his villainous side as a post-apocalyptic powerbroker opposite Denzel Washington in “The Book of Eli” (2010) then voiced the foul peafowl Lord Shen in the hugely successful animated sequel “Kung Fu Panda 2” (2011). That same year, he played a vengeful werewolf slayer in the critically panned fantasy-thriller “Red Riding Hood” (2011) and reprised the role of Sirius Black for the final chapter of the blockbuster franchise “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2” (2011). Capping off an exceptionally busy season, Oldman admirably filled the shoes of the great Sir Alec Guinness when he took on the role of semi-retired Cold War-era spy George Smiley in the feature adaptation of John le Carré’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (2011). While Guinness’ lauded interpretation for the BBC in the late-1970s had set the bar impossibly high, Goldman’s impressive run at the character was at the center of one of the U.K.’s highest grossing films of the year. Finally, after a long and versatile career filled with great performances, Oldman nabbed his first-ever Academy Award nomination with a Best Actor nod for “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
Sticking to a string of high-profile projects, Oldman returned for “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012), the emotive conclusion of Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and had a supporting part in John Hillcoat’s tense Prohibition-era drama “Lawless” (2012), both of which also featured fellow Brit Tom Hardy. After turning up with Marion Cotillard in a controversial religion-skewering video for David Bowie’s single “The Next Day,” Oldman went head-to-head with Harrison Ford in the poorly received corporate drama “Paranoia” (2013). Still in the midst of a hot streak, however, Oldman also filmed key roles in the sci-fi movies “RoboCop” (2014) and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Rupert Everett came to film fame when he repeated his stage role in the film adaptation of “Another Country” in 1981. He also starred in “Dance With A Stranger” with Miranda Richardson and “My Best Freind’s Wedding” with Julia Roberts. A frequest stage performer is is currently starring on London’s West End in “The Judas Kiss” a play about Oscar Wilde.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
British-born Rupert Everett grew up in privileged circumstances but the wry, sometimes arrogant, intellectual was a rebel from the very beginning. At the age of 7 he was placed into the care of Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College where he trained classically on the piano. He was expelled from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London for clashing with his teachers and instead apprenticed himself at the avant-garde Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre in Scotland, performing in such productions as ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Heartbreak House’.
In 1984 Everett successfully filmed a lead role in Another Country (1984), which he had performed earlier on stage and shot to international attention, becoming one of England’s hottest new star. But again the wickedly sharp and suave rebel doused his own fire by clashing with the press and even with his own fans. In 1989 Everett openly declared his own homosexuality — an announcement that could have mortally wounded his film career. Instead, over time, it seems to have had the opposite effect. His career revitalized as Julia Roberts‘ gay confidante in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), and he has continued to impress notably in the classics area with Shakespeare in Love (1998) (as Christopher Marlowe), An Ideal Husband (1999) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream(1999) (as Oberon). Lately he has enhanced both films with his royal portrayals in To Kill a King (2003) and Stage Beauty (2004), and television with his effortlessly suave Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (2004). His predilection for smug and smarmy villains of late such as the cartoonish Dr. Claw inInspector Gadget (1999) has extended into voice animation with his “unprincely” Prince Charming character in Shrek 2 (2004).
In making his landmark decision to “come out”, Rupert becomes a living testament disproving the theory that a truly talented and successful romantic leading man cannot survive the career-killing stigma of being openly gay.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Jean Simmons has always been taken for granted, As a child player in Britain she was expected to be one of the best child players and she was: she was expected to become a big international name and she did. In Hollywood for over 20 years she was given good roles because she was reliable and she played them, or most them, beautifully. But she was never a cult figure, one of those who adorn magazine covers, or someone the fan magazines write about all the time. It was not or is not that she simply did or does her job – she is much better than that, she is not a competent actress, she is a very good one – by Hollywood standards a great one, if you take the Hollywood standard to be those ladies who have won Oscars. She was not even nominated for Best Actress Oscar till 1969. She not even nominated for “Elmer Gantry” (and that year Elizabeth Taylor won). Maybe it does not help to have been so good so young” – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – 2 The International Years” (1972)
Jean Simmons was a major star actress in British movies of the late 1940’s with important roles in such films as “Great Expectations” in 1946, “Hungry Hill”, “Black Narcissus” and The Clouded Yellow”. She went to Hollywood in 1950 and was a major international star for over ten years starring in “The Robe” opposite Richard Burton in 1953, “Young Bess” with Spencer Tracy”, “Guys and Dolls” with Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra and in 1960, “Elmer Gantry” opposite Burt Lancaster. She continued acting in film, television and on the stage up to her death at the age of 80 in 2010.
David Thompson’s “Guardian” obituary:
Jean Simmons, who has died aged 80, had a bounteous moment, early in her career, when she seemed the likely casting for every exotic or magical female role. It passed, as she got out of her teens, but then for the best part of 15 years, in Britain and America, she was a valued actress whose generally proper, if not patrician, manner had an intriguing way of conflicting with her large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief – or more than her movies had in their scripts. Even in the age of Vivien Leigh andElizabeth Taylor, she was an authentic beauty. And there were always hints that the lady might be very sexy. But nothing worked out smoothly, and it is somehow typical of Simmons that her most astonishing work – in Angel Face (1952) – is not very well known.
At first, she was a schoolgirl given her dream. Born in north London, she grew up in the suburb of Cricklewood, and was swept from dancing classes to the studio to be Margaret Lockwood’s younger sister in Give Us the Moon (1944). Several other films followed, with modest roles: Mr Emmanuel; Kiss the Bride Goodbye; Meet Sexton Blake; a singer in The Way to the Stars; and a slave girl for Leigh in Caesar and Cleopatra.
But then David Lean cast her as Estella in Great Expectations (1946); Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger chose her to be the temple dancer with a jewel in her nose for Black Narcissus (1947); and Laurence Olivier borrowed her away from her J Arthur Rank contract so that she could be a blonde Ophelia in his Hamlet (1948). It was noted at the time that an anxious Leigh, Olivier’s wife, chose to be on set whenever Simmons was working – just in case.
Hamlet won the Oscar for best picture, and Simmons was nominated for best supporting actress; in fact, she lost to Claire Trevor in Key Largo. However, she was by then an expert at the Oscars, for she attended the previous year and four times was on stage to accept awards on behalf of Great Expectations and Black Narcissus. Cecil B DeMille, in the audience, was so impressed that he offered her the female lead in his upcoming Samson and Delilah (the Hedy Lamarr role). She had to decline – for Hamlet’s sake – but no young actress was being talked about more.
For a while she remained in Britain. She was also in the Daphne du Maurier tale of an Irish feud, Hungry Hill (1947); and she was suitably preyed upon by Derrick DeMarney in Uncle Silas, adapted from the Sheridan Le Fanu novel. Then, in 1949, with Donald Houston, she was one of two young people shipwrecked on a desert island in The Blue Lagoon. Showing a good deal of flesh for its day (Brooke Shields took her role in the 1980 remake), this was reckoned as a rather daring film – and it was almost certainly viewed, and re-viewed, by Howard Hughes. Then, in the same year, she played the adopted daughter of Stewart Granger in Adam and Evelyne. In fact, the handsome Granger was 16 years her senior, and married once, having divorced Elspeth March in 1948. But the couple fell deeply in love, married and would soon set out together for Hollywood as a kind of middleweight Olivier and Leigh.
25th August 1956: British-American actress Jean Simmons (1929 – 2010) is featured for the cover of Picture Post magazine. Original Publication: Picture Post Cover – Vol 72 No 8 – pub. 1956. (Photo by IPC Magazines/Picture Post/Getty Images)
But that was not before three 1950 films – So Long at the Fair, a period thriller in which she was romantically paired with Dirk Bogarde; Cage of Gold; and The Clouded Yellow, in which she established a fascinating mood with Trevor Howard. And so, aged only 21, she went to Hollywood. But whereas Granger was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (and would play Allan Quartermain, the Prisoner of Zenda and Scaramouche), she was the oblivious dream child of Hughes at RKO, which had bought her contract from Rank. The strange tycoon was obsessed with her personally, and he laid siege to her romantically and professionally so that she did not work for over a year. Only one thing emerged from the stand-off, Angel Face, in which she is a spoiled child and lethal temptress who seduces nearly everyone she meets (most notably Robert Mitchum). The brilliant picture was directed by Otto Preminger and photographed by the great veteran Harry Stradling. Thus it contains – and she sustains – some of the most luminous close-ups ever given to a femme fatale. How far she understood the picture is unclear. One can only say that it is a rare tribute to unrequited love.
Hughes yielded in the courts in 1952, and Simmons was able to begin a run of costume films, some of them important productions (such as The Robe), but many of them giving her too little to do: in Androcles and the Lion; as Elizabeth I in Young Bess (with Granger, Deborah Kerr and Charles Laughton); very good, though too pretty, as the young Ruth Gordon in George Cukor’s The Actress – she worked especially well with Spencer Tracy. But then the films grew more routine: Affair With a Stranger (with Victor Mature); with Richard Burton and CinemaScope in The Robe – there may have been a fling with Burton; She Couldn’t Say No – she should have; the dreary The Egyptian; A Bullet Is Waiting, in which she was expected to take Rory Calhoun as co-star; Désirée – ruined by the languid mockery of co-star Marlon Brando; and Footsteps in the Fog (with Granger).
She took a risk, singing If I Were a Bell and The Eyes of a Woman in Love, to be Sister Sarah in the movie of Guys and Dolls (1955). The producer, Sam Goldwyn, had wanted Grace Kelly for the part. But director Joseph L Mankiewicz was more than happy with Simmons: “An enormously underrated girl. In terms of talent, Jean Simmons is so many heads and shoulders above most of her contemporaries, one wonders why she didn’t become the great star she could have been.” No one argued, though many observers noted that Mankiewicz was also deeply in love with his actress. Still, it is worth speculating, and noting that nothing sounds wrong or unpromising about this schedule – Jean Simmons in Roman Holiday, in Vertigo, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?
• Jean Merilyn Simmons, actor, born 31 January 1929; died 22 January 2010
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
When one considers that she was barely past 25 in 1955, it is all the stranger that her films slipped so far in quality: Hilda Crane; as secretary to gangster Paul Douglas in This Could Be the Night; with Paul Newman in Until They Sail; with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston in the big western, The Big Country; This Earth is Mine. One notable exception to this trend was Home Before Dark (1958), where Simmons was outstanding as a woman who has had a nervous breakdown.
By then, her marriage to Granger had come apart. But in 1960, she married again, the writer-director Richard Brooks, and he immediately raised her horizons by casting her as the evangelist opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry. Lancaster and Shirley Jones won Oscars in that film, but Simmons was not even nominated. Thereafter, she sportingly played the female lead in Spartacus, and had some overlong, giggle-making love scenes with its star, Kirk Douglas – “Put me down, Spartacus, I’m having a baby!”
That would prove to be her last big picture, for the slide was now evident: The Grass is Greener (1960, a rather middle-aged comedy); All the Way Home, adapted from James Agee’s novel, in which she was very good, but which went unnoticed; Life at the Top (done back in Britain); Mister Budd- wing; Divorce American Style and Rough Night in Jericho. Then Brooks did all he could to revive her fortunes in The Happy Ending (1969), about a miserable wife whose dreams of marriage, based on the movie Father of the Bride, have turned to disillusion. She got an Oscar nomination for it (she lost to Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), but rather more out of respect than conviction. In truth, she always seemed too strong-willed and amused for weepy material. Indeed, she might have done Jean Brodie.
More or less, in the early 1970s, she seemed to retire. The marriage to Brooks came to an end in 1977, and there were stories that she was drinking too much. In the early 1980s she checked herself in to the Betty Ford clinic and spoke publicly about her addiction.
Then she started to work in television, and sometimes it was only the end credits that told one that that had been Jean Simmons. She was in The Thorn Birds (1983); she did a TV version of Great Expectations where she was Miss Havisham (1989); was an admiral called in for an investigation in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991); and was in How to Make an American Quilt (1995). She went into semi-retirement and was often too shy to accept invitations to film festivals. But around 75, she changed: she did a wonderful voice performance in Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), and she was deeply touching as a dying poet in Shadows in the Sun (2009). She attended the Telluride Film Festival, Colorado, in 2008 and she was interviewed at a Lean centenary celebration in Los Angeles where she was still as pretty, seductive and mischievous as she had been as Estella in Great Expectations.
The recollection of those early years brings out the paradox of her career, for if she had made only one film – Angel Face – she might now be spoken of with the awe given to Louise Brooks. She is survived by her daughters Tracy, from her marriage to Granger, and Kate, from her marriage to Brooks.
Don Henderson was born in Leytonstone in 1932. His first television credit was in a production of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” in 1968. His movies include “Brannigan” in 1975 and “Voyage of the Damned”. He died in 1997.
Anthony Hayward;s “Independent” obituary:
One of television’s most enduring detectives of the Seventies and Eighties was the eccentric George Bulman, who was first seen in the thriller series The XYY Man, before moving on to fight crime under cover in the long-running Strangers and then retiring to work as a clockmaker in Bulman, but finding that he could not entirely give up his past.
Perfectly at home as the quirky character, who enjoyed music, reading and playing with his electric trainset. Just as Inspector Morse was later to indulge a love of opera, Bulman would quote Shakespeare and other classics. It was Henderson’s portrayal of the detective that helped to raise the programme to a level above the run-of-the-mill police series. By the time he had taken Bulman into semi- retirement, Henderson made the character memorable for the plastic shopping bag that was always with him, gold-rimmed Edwardian reading glasses and a generally scruffy image.
This was, in fact, a reflection of the actor in real life, who admitted to owning just one suit and wore jeans for his second wedding, to the actress Shirley Stelfox, in 1979. This came two years after the death of Henderson’s first wife, Hilary, from a mystery lung disease. In 1980, Henderson underwent treatment for throat cancer that left him with burns that he often hid with a scarf. The cancer, which he overcame, also meant that he spoke in a whisper. Another of the unmarried Bulman’s trademarks was his pair of grey woolly gloves, worn by Henderson to cover up the wedding ring he could not remove from his finger.
The only son of a carpenter, Henderson was born in London in 1932 and brought up in Epping, Essex. Having grown up in a working-class environment, he was embarrassed by wealth in later years and said: “I could never have a chauffeur or servants because I’d be so bad at telling them what to do. I dislike giving orders. It isn’t me.”
Henderson did not become a professional actor until his thirties, after working in amateur theatre and spending almost 20 years of his working life as a dental technician in the Army, a CID officer with Essex police and a salesman. Then, he accepted a “dare” from a friend to audition for the Royal Shakespeare Company, was taken on and stayed for six years, from 1966 to 1972, taking parts that included Perolles in All’s Well That Ends Well, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, the title-role in Peer Gynt and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Henderson later played Floyd in Sam Shepard’s Melodrama Play in New York.
He first became known to television viewers in the BBC drama series Warship (1973-77), which followed the adventures of the frigate HMS Hero and her crew. Many television roles followed, in programmes such as Poldark, Softly Softly, Dixon of Dock Green, Ripping Yarns, Dick Turpin and The Onedin Line.
But it was the character of George Bulman that made Henderson a household name. The XYY Man (1976-77), based on a novel by Kenneth Royce, introduced Bulman as a police sergeant in the story of a cat burglar, Spider Scott (Stephen Yardley), who was recruited to work with British intelligence services. Bulman progressed to his own series, Strangers (1978-82), in the rank of detective sergeant, serving in Unit 23, a police squad working under cover in the North of England.
From 1980, Bulman and his colleagues’ unit was renamed the Inter City Squad and attempted to solve crimes nationwide. Mark McManus, who later starred as the tough Glasgow detective Taggart, was their boss, Chief Superintendent Lambie. By the end of the final, fifth series of Strangers, Bulman had been promoted to the rank of detective inspector.
Henderson revived the character in two series of Bulman (1985, 1987), who by then had retired from the force but maintained a contact in the British Secret Service. He did freelance detective work while running a small antiques shop that specialised in repairing clocks. “You were born to be a detective, not a clock mender,” he was told by his assistant, Lucy McGinty (played by Siobhan Redmond), the criminologist daughter of a former colleague.
Teaming up with the former EastEnders actor Leslie Grantham, as Frank and Danny Kane in two series of the gangland thriller The Paradise Club (1989-90), Henderson played a defrocked priest reunited with his brother after the death of their tyrannical mother. He also appeared in the 1987 children’s fantasy series Knights of God, mixing religion and the Arthurian legend, and throughout the Eighties and Nineties – despite his star status – the prolific actor was happy to continue taking character roles in dozens of television programmes, such as Jemima Shore Investigates, Annika, Dead Head, Doctor Who, Minder, Dempsey and Makepeace, Last of the Summer Wine, Moon and Son, Look At It This Way, The New Statesman, Cracker, The Detectives, Harry, Medics and Casualty.
He also joined his friend Michael Elphick to present the cookery series The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Cookery, as well as acting in television films and plays such as Mavis, Squaring the Circle, Black and Blue and Pat and Margaret.
Henderson’s film appearances included roles in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968, with the RSC), Callan (1974), the Oscar-winning special- effects extravaganza Star Wars (1977, as General Tagge), Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), Carry On Columbus (1992), As You Like It (1992), The Trial (1993), The Wind in the Willows (1996) and Preaching to the Perverted (1997, as yet unreleased).
Donald Francis Henderson, actor, writer and producer: born London 10 November 1932; twice married (one son, one daughter, one stepdaughter); died Warwick 22 June 1997.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Vernon Kay was born in 1974 in Manchester. He is known for his television work on such British shows as “All Star Family Fortune”. He is married to TV presenter Tess Daly.
Stephen Haggard was a British actor and poet who was born in Guatemala in 1911. He made his stage debut in Munich in 1930. His films include “Whom the Gods Love” in 1936, “Jamaica Inn” in 1939 and “The Young Mr Pitt” in 1942. He died in 1943 in Egypt during World War Two.
