Steve Jackson was born in Doncaster in 1970. He played Trevor Dean in “Coronation Street” and in BBC’s “The Cops”. His films include “Hillsborough”, “Yasmin” and “In Denial of Murder”.
IMDB entry:Grew up in Armthorpe, a mining village around Doncaster, South Yorkshire. He attended Tranmoor Junior School and the Armthorpe Comprehensive School, leaving in 1989. He changed his name for a time to Steven Fury, eventually returning to his original name after a few bit parts in shows like Emmerdale. Currently (1999) he is staring in the second series of The Cops for the BBC.
Margaret Tyzack was born in 1931 in Essex. She joined the Royal Skakespeare Company in 1962. She came to prominence for her role as Winifrid Forsyte in the BBC production of “The Forsyte Saga” in 1967. She also starred on TV in “I, Claudius”. Her films include “2001, A Space Odyssey” in 1968 and in 1971, “A Clockwork Orange”. She won widespread acclaim for her role opposite Maggie Smith on the stage in “Lettice and Lovage” in 1991. Margaret Tyzack died in 2011.
“Guardian” obituary by Carole Woddlis:
Margaret Tyzack, who has died aged 79, was one of Britain’s greatest and most popular actors, working on stage, television and film for more than half a century. Sometimes described as being in the mould of Edith Evans and Flora Robson, she will be remembered particularly for performances in the golden age of BBC TV drama – Winifred in The Forsyte Saga (1967), Antonia in I, Claudius (1976) – as well as for stage performances such as Martha in the National Theatre’s revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1981), for which she won an Olivier award for best actress, and Lottie with Maggie Smith in Lettice and Lovage (1987 and 1990), which earned her both Tony and Variety Club stage actress of the year awards. In 2008, well into her 70s, she scored perhaps one of her finest triumphs on stage as the wily, wittily eccentric Mrs St Maugham in Michael Grandage’s outstanding revival of Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden at the Donmar with Penelope Wilton.
With her open face, broad eyes and generous mouth, there was perhaps always something a little melancholic about her – even pessimistic, a trait she readily admitted to – that found her playing more “mature” roles than her actual years. She once confessed: “I’ve always played older than myself.” It was an asset that served her richly.
Tyzack considered herself first and foremost a character actor, asserting that she “never wanted to be a star”. Immensely versatile, unassuming, modest and largely unrecognisable offstage, she often boasted that she could go shopping without being spotted, and lived quietly with her mathematician husband, Alan Stephenson, in Blackheath, south-east London. She could play kind, benign, a pillar of the empire (such as Lady Bruton in Marleen Gorris’s 1997 film of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway) or in the latter years of her career, a show-stealing, fur-clad battleaxe in His Girl Friday, John Guare’s stage adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page (National Theatre, 2003).
While there was something endearingly naive about her role as besotted Winifred, and comically understated as the reactionary matriarch in Mrs Dalloway, her depiction of Martha displayed a ferocity previously unrevealed in earlier roles that tended towards either the respectable, down to earth, or emotionally obsessive, sad or caring. In her later career, she seemed to acquire even greater force and magnetism with a trio of superb roles in Auntie and Me at Wyndham’s (2003), opposite Alan Davies, Southwark Fair at the National (2006) and The Chalk Garden.
Tyzack was born in Essex, brought up in Plaistow, east London, daughter of a Tate & Lyle foreman, and educated at St Angela’s Ursuline convent in Forest Gate. She once said she had become an actor by chance. “Really, I’m a refugee from the typing pool. That would have been the alternative. Or maybe selling something in Harrods.” She once mused on becoming a nurse. “A fortune teller,” she noted, “used to tell me I had healing in my hands.”
She was saved by a “wonderful drama teacher” who came to her school and took an interest in her. She went on to train at Rada, where she won a prize for comedy – forgoing her first choice, speech training, through lack of the required academic qualifications. She then went into repertory in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, where she made her first stage appearance, as a bystander in Shaw’s Pygmalion in 1951. Further work followed at the Royal Court and Nottingham Playhouse.
In 1969 she won her first acting award, a Bafta for her role as Queen Anne in the BBC’s The First Churchills. Two years later she took over from Eileen Atkins as Elizabeth I in Robert Bolt’s Vivat! Vivat Regina! at the Piccadilly. The following year, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she appeared as Volumnia in Coriolanus, Portia in Julius Caesar and Tamora in Titus Andronicus. As Volumnia, she was towering, a terrifying tigress fighting for her son’s life but also reducing Ian Hogg’s athletic warrior general to shuddering, childhood impotence.
Tyzack was in the US in 1971, winning another award for her performance in the title role of a television version of Balzac’s Cousin Bette. Then in 1976 came the landmark TV drama I, Claudius, followed by three years at Stratford, Ontario, where she took on roles as Mrs Alving in Ibsen’s Ghosts, Queen Margaret in Richard III and the Countess in All’s Well That Ends Well.
If much of the early 1980s saw her exploiting her TV range, she also came even more into her own on stage. In 1983 she received a Tony nomination for her reprised role as the Countess in Trevor Nunn’s RSC production of All’s Well That Ends Well when it visited Broadway, and two years later was again picked out by New York’s Drama Desk critics for her performance as Rose, Viv’s mother, in Tom and Viv, Michael Hastings’s 1984 play about the tortured marriage between TS Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood, when it travelled to Broadway.
Some of Tyzack’s best work, however, was still to come. In 1987, she starred alongside Maggie Smith in Peter Shaffer’s quirky two-hander, Lettice and Lovage, a strange, whimsical tale of two women, one a fantasist, the other, Tyzack, a strict traditionalist, who are at first enemies, but forge an odd kind of friendship. With her dry humour, Tyzack proved the perfect foil to Smith’s high camp. The play ran for two years in London before moving to Broadway, where Tyzack received another Tony. Her partnership with Smith was revived in 1993 when she played Miss Prism to Smith’s Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Aldwych, a characterisation marked by its originality. For once Prism was no fusty spinster but, in Tyzack’s hands, an attractive and clever woman.
Other major roles at that time included the older sister to Felicity Kendal’s adventure-seeking Fiona, reminiscing about her younger sister’s Indian exploits, in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink at the Aldwych in 1995, and an imperious Lady Monchensey in Adrian Noble’s much admired revival of TS Eliot’s The Family Reunion, at the RSC (2000), where one critic described her face as “nothing less than a tragic mask when Harry, her pride and joy, relates his ‘unspeakable’ sorrow”. In 1993, she played Sybil Birling in Stephen Daldry’s mould-breaking revival of JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls at the Aldwych, and in 1996, scored one of her biggest successes in Alan Bennett’s Soldiering On (Chichester Festival Theatre, then at the Comedy Theatre in the West End). Playing Muriel, she conveyed the infinite distress of a woman whose lifetime code of denial was gradually being stripped away.
As the almost mute aunt to Alan Davies’s garrulous nephew in Auntie and Me, she was required only to lie in bed, but still managed to convey a wealth of meanings, switching between beatific smiles and nods. In between times, her TV and film work continued to flourish. Two particularly heavy years, 1980 and 1981, saw her appear in seven different television productions, including Paulina in Jane Howell’s adaptation of A Winter’s Tale.
In 1987, she appeared as Madame Lambert in Stephen Frears’s film of the ill-fated relationship between Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, in Prick Up Your Ears. She was also Miss Helen Seymour in Paramount’s television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, during the 1990s. Other television series in which she appeared included Miss Marple, Thacker, the dramatisation of Our Mutual Friend, Dalziel & Pascoe and Midsomer Murders. In 2005 she was the narrator’s grandmother in Radio 4’s all-star cast adaptation of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
Film appearances included The Whisperers (1967), two films for Stanley Kubrick – as Elena in 2001: Space Odyssey (1968) and a conspirator in A Clockwork Orange (1971) – Bright Young Things (2003), directed by Stephen Fry, and Richard Claus’s The Thief Lord (2005).
One lament, expressed early on in her career, was that because of the respectable parts she played, she never seemed to inspire the kind of salacious fan mail some of her peers received, but, she added, prophetically: “If my health and strength keep up, I shall go on until I’m fairly aged.” She went on to do precisely that, her last London stage appearance being as nurse to Helen Mirren’s Phèdre at the National in 2009, and her last anywhere as Mrs Higgins in My Fair Lady at the Théâtre du Chatelet, Paris, last Christmas. Illness compelled her to withdraw from a role in the television soap EastEnders in April.
In 1970 she was appointed OBE, and in 2010 CBE. She is survived by Alan and her son Matthew.
• Margaret Maud Tyzack, actor, born 9 September 1931; died 25 June 2011
• This article was amended on 28 June 2011. The original said that Margaret Tyzack’s last stage appearance was as nurse to Helen Mirren’s Phèdre at the National in 2009. This has been corrected.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Perlita Neilson was born in 1933 in Bradford, Yorkshire. She made her movie debut in 1949 in “Three Bags Full”. Her other films include “The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan” in 1952 and “She Did’nt Say No” in 1958. She has also featured in several television series in the UK. She died in 2014.
“The Stage” obituary:
After being highly praised for her portrayal of the Jewish heroine in The Diary of Anne Frank (1956-57), Perlita Neilson was invited to star in Hollywood’s film version of the play. But she rejected the offer, saying that a film contract would have kept her away from the theatre for too long.
She was taken aback by her success in the play, which tells the harrowing tale of a Dutch schoolgirl who hid from the Gestapo for two years during the Second World War. She was also surprised to be chosen, as she was not Jewish herself.
But she hugely admired the adaptation from the book and received wise words from Frith Banbury, the director of the production at the Phoenix, who told her: “Never feel sorry for the people you are playing. Otherwise, it will get between you and the acting.”
She made her West End debut at the London Coliseum as one of the children in Irving Berlin’s musical, Annie Get Your Gun (1947-48). The following year, she made the first of two appearances in Peter Pan at the old Scala.
Her talents as an actress did not properly emerge until she appeared in Lace on Her Petticoat (1950-51) at the Ambassadors. The production transferred to Broadway, but Neilson did not enjoy the experience: “I did not think American theatres had the same atmosphere or audience and I missed London.”
From 1954 to 1955, she appeared at the Bristol Old Vic, where she was singled out for special praise for her performance as a servant in the British premiere of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Back in London, she was seen in a new translation of Chekhov’s The Seagull (1956) at the Saville, with Diana Wynyard and Hugh Williams.
She was a devotee of the plays of Shaw and relished her appearances in Heartbreak House (1961) at Wyndham’s and Getting Married (1967) at the Strand. Throughout her life, she was passionate about the theatre and admitted walking out of only one play she saw, Edward Bond’s surreal Early Morning, which alleged a lesbian relationship between Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale – something she found ridiculous.
Perlita Neilson, who was born Margaret Sowden in Bradford on June 11, 1933, died in Hove on April 7, aged 80.
“The Stage” obituary above can also be accessed online here.
Ralph Bates was born in Bristol in 1940. He is best known for his leading roles in a number of Hammer horror films of the early 1970’s including “Taste the Blood of Dracula”, “Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde” and “The Horror of Frankenstein”. He also starred in the very popular television series “Dear John”. Ralph Bates died in 1991. His daughter is the actress Daisy Bates.
IMDB entry:
The great, great nephew of the renowned French scientist Louis Pasteur developed into a strangely handsome dark haired, pale complexioned English actor. Ralph Bates was born in 1940 in Bristol, England and attended the University of Dublin and studied at the Yale Drama School. His dramatic talents first came to audiences attention playing the evil Emperor Caligula in the well received BBC TV series The Caesars (1968). However, the Hammer studios resurrection of the horror genre was then in full stride, and Bates was soon engulfed in the swirling cloak of Hammer’s success as he appeared in several horror films in quick succession. Firstly in a support role as demonic Lord Courtley in Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), followed as the lead character Baron Frankenstein in The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), then as Giles Barton in the sexy Lust for a Vampire (1971) and as the well meaning Dr. Jekyll in an unusual spin on the Robert Louis Stevenson story inDr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971), Bates brought a new zest to Hammer and with his stylish dialogue delivery and film acting methods, he quickly won himself quite a few fans in both critics and regular film goers!
Unfortunately, by the early 1970s there had been a downturn in Hammer studios fortunes, and Bates then found himself turning to more traditional character work in other production houses and he appeared in several films before snaring other superb villainous role as George Warleggan in the 18th century period piece Poldark (1975).
After Poldark, Bates himself kept busy in a few forgettable UK made TV shows and television film roles which did not really do justice to his remarkable talents. In the late 1980s his health rapidly deteriorated, and he passed away from cancer aged only 51 on 27th March 1991.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: firehouse44@hotmail.com
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Pater Copley had a long and profilic career as a character actor on British stage, film and television. He was born in 1915 in Hertfordshire. He began his stage career in 1932. Among his many films are “Golden Salamander” in 1950 with Anouk Aimee, “Saadia”, “Time Without Pity”, “Victim” and “The Shoes of the Fisherman”. Peter Copley died in 2008.
I first met Peter Copley, who has died aged 93, when I directed him as Orgon in a production of Molière’s Tartuffe at the Bristol Old Vic in 1985. We became immediate friends; I found an actor of huge experience but astonishingly open to new ideas. We staged Tartuffe on two levels joined by a steep staircase, and “Coppers” (as he was known to his family and friends), already in his 70s, developed a performance, egged on by me, that had him running up and down the stairs in an increasing frenzy. It was perhaps not surprising that Shosh, his wife, kept an eye on us both from then on. She made it clear that Peter ending The Cherry Orchard as a naked Firs was a concept too far.
By the time I met Peter he was at an age when most people’s careers would be ending. Perhaps he never had the ego to be an Olivier, Gielgud or Guinness – though he had worked with them all – but he had an admirable position as a busy, working actor, widely recognised from his television roles along with numerous films and West End shows.
Born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, he studied acting at the Old Vic school under Harcourt Williams and Murray Macdonald. He made his stage debut as the gaoler in the Old Vic production of The Winter’s Tale in 1932, and his West End debut three years later. His wartime naval service (1940-41) was sandwiched between a wide range of theatrical work, including a tour of south America with Edward Stirling (1936), a season at the Gate, Dublin (1939), wartime touring and a spell as director of the Worthing rep (1945). From 1945 to 1950, he was at the centre of Olivier’s Old Vic Company at the New Theatre, St Martin’s Lane. He would talk about performing in Hamburg immediately after the war – seeing SS men sitting, broken, on the pavement, and finding a copy of Mein Kampf alongside the Bible in a dressing room.
Review after review singled Peter out – as a great swordsman in Cyrano de Bergerac (1945) opposite Ralph Richardson, or as the comic Ananias in the Old Vic’s The Alchemist (1947), years later at the Duke of York Theatre in Tom Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase (1980), or for his Teiresias in Katie Mitchell’s Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Phoenician Women (1995). He loved working at the RSC, in productions including The Cherry Orchard (1997) and Henry IV part II (2000).
He appeared on television hundreds of times, in everything from The Forsyte Saga to The Avengers, The Bill and One Foot in the Grave. His last appearance was as Greyhald Spold in Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic this year.
He was in many movies, including a role as the jeweller alongside the Beatles in Help! (1965), and worked with some of the great directors. Only four years ago, he was in Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist and returned from Poland (where it was shot) with stories of how the director coaxed a the child performers. He was impressed, a little shocked, but was, at 90, thrilled that, watching the children and director work, he still felt he was learning about acting. This, from a man who had worked with Steven Spielberg (on Empire of the Sun, 1987) and appeared in epoch-defining films such as Basil Dearden’s Victim (1962).
It was this openness that made Peter a special actor. He was delicate, subtle and always stimulated. Not necessarily powerful or bombastic, he knew how to listen and to react, holding the audience – in any medium – by drawing them in rather than hitting them hard. He was never tedious about acting. Highly intelligent, well read and knowledgeable, he believed that his craft came first from instinct and observation, and that intellect could get in the way.
Peter had been a Communist party member in the 1940s and early 50s, and while he renounced the Soviet model, he remained a committed socialist. He trained as a lawyer and was called to the Middle Temple bar in 1963, though he never practised. He was actively involved in the actors’ union Equity and, until recently, was a venerable part of the campaign to reopen the Bristol Old Vic. Between 1980 and 1995, he appeared in 25 theatre productions including a heartbreaking John of Gaunt in Richard II (1985) and the ghost and player king in Hamlet (1991).
Shosh – the formidable novelist Margaret Tabor – was Peter’s third wife, and they had a remarkable partnership. They had moved to Bristol in 1981, and when I became artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic in 1988, they gave me a key to their house, saying that whenever, night or day, I needed food and, more likely, a drink, I should help myself.
When my growing family moved to London, Shosh was clear: Peter could work in town if he lived with us. He was irrepressible, and most mornings – with two performances that day – would set off to an exhibition. His love of art came from his parents, the printmaker John Copley and the painter Ethel Gabain. We breathed more easily when he sat in the living room reading. At least we knew where he was.
Peter was married firstly to the actor Pamela Brown, secondly to the actor Ninka Dolega and then to Shosh. He is survived by her, his daughter Fanny and stepchildren Gid and Emma.
• Peter Copley, actor, born May 20 1915; died October 7 2008
Richard E. Grant was born in 1957 in Swaziland. After his education, he moved to the UK to begin a career as an actor. He has starred in the cult “Withnail and I” and after it’s success began appearing in Hollywood and international films. His other films include “L.A. Story” with Steve Martin, “The Player” with Tim Robbins, “The Age of Innocence” with Daniel Day-Lewis and “Gosford Park” among many others.
TCM Overview:
Lanky, British player who has had some success in mainstream Hollywood features. Grant began acting in his native South Africa, where he founded the multi-ethnic Troupe Theater Company. In 1982, he moved to London to stomp the boards in fringe and repertory productions. Grant made his English TV-film debut in Les Blair’s improvisational satire, “Honest, Decent and True” (1985). The next year, he entered films as the star of “Withnail & I” (1986), writer-director Bruce Robinson’s brilliant observation of the eccentricities of English actors in the 1960s. As the acerbic Withnail, Grant conveyed the great likability of a mostly vile character. He reteamed with Robinson for “How to Get Ahead in Advertising” (1988), a scathing comic indictment of the industry’s morals or lack thereof. Here he was Dennis Dimbleby Bagley, an ad exec whose head is taken over by an evil boil.
Grant’s American film credits in the early 90s include some of Hollywood’s more notorious productions. He co-starred as the husband of Anais Nin in “Henry & June” (1990), the first film to receive the NC-17 rating. He also played the mad English villain opposite Bruce Willis in the much-maligned “Hudson Hawk” (1991). Grant had supporting roles in Robert Altman’s “The Player”, as the English filmmaker who initially refuses to compromise his “artistic integrity”, and Francis Ford Coppola’s florid “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (both 1992), as Dr. Seward. He worked with another one of cinema’s titans, Martin Scorsese, in the opulent adaptation of Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” (1993), as a smug member of turn-of-the-century New York’s high society. He reteamed with Altman for “Ready-to-Wear (Pret-a-Porter)” (1994) as an eccentric homosexual and portrayed a grieving widower coping with a newborn in “Jack and Sarah” (1995). The following year, he played a wealthy suitor to Nicole Kidman’s Isabel Archer in Jane Campion’s “Portrait of a Lady” and appeared as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Trevor Nunn’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”. Also in 1996, Grant published “With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E Grant” in England.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Maria Aitken was born in 1945 in Dublin. She is the sister of politican Jonathan Aitken. She has starred on the stage and on film and television in Britain. Her films include “Doctor Faustus” in 1967, “Half Moon Street”, “A Fish Called Wanda” in 1988 and as Lady Edwina Mountbatten in “Jinnah” in 1998. Her son is the actor Jack Davenport.
Brian McFarlane’s “Encyclopedia of British Film”:
Tall slender comedy actress, granddaughter of Lord Beverbrook, famous on stage for witty performances in such plays as “Private Lives”in 1980 and “The Women” in 1986 and on television. She has so far made only a few films but was memorably funny as John Cleese’s permanently and justifiably bad-tempered wife in “A Fish Called Wanda” in 1988. The sort of sequel “Fierce Creatures”, sadly gave her comic talents little scope.
Tommy Steele was born in Bermondsey, London in 1936. He had great success as a pop singer in Britain in the late 1950’s. He soon branched out into an all round entertainer and on film starred in “The Duke Wore Jeans” in 1957, “Tommy the Toreador” with Janet Munro in 1959, “Half a Sixpence” and then to Hollywood to make “Finian’s Rainbow” and “The Happiest Millionaire”.
He returned to England and after the movie “Where’s Jack” concentrated on an international stage career.
IMDB entry:Tommy Steele played in a televised celebrity squash match, beaten by Leonard Rossiter, not very long before the latter’s death. Ironically, Tommy conceded that Leonard was much fitter than he at the time.Television commercial, 1974, for his stage portrayal as Hans Christian Andersen.Owned and drove an American Excalibur from mid 60s.
Was nominated for Broadway’s 1965 Tony Award as Best Actor (Musical) for “Half a Sixpence” in the role of Arthur Kipps – which he later recreated for the film version of the same name, Half a Sixpence (1967). One of his co-stars was John Cleese.Evacuated from London during the WWII Blitz.His second single “Singin’ the Blues” reached No. 1 in 1956.
Has one daughter, Emma.The son of a tailor, he was discovered by Larry Parnes, who renamed him ‘Tommy Steele,’ and manufactured him into Britain’s first pop star.His first song “Rock With the Caveman” was a 1957 hit and, as a result, his sudden stardom was compressed quickly into a film as well (“The Tommy Steele Story”) even before there was a story to tell.In 1974 he composed and recorded an autobiographical cycle of twelve songs under the title of “My Life, My Song”.
Another of his talents was shown in the album sleeve for this recording which was illustrated with twelve of his own paintings and these together with other works were shown in a one-man exhibition at the Christopher Wade Gallery.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEnglish rock ‘n’ roll singer and actor Tommy Steele in an early film role, circa 1957. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
He has also developed a talent as a sculptor and two of his major works are on public display; “Bermondsey Boy” at the Rotherhithe Civic Centre and “Eleanor Rigby” which he gave to the City of Liverpool as a tribute to the Beatles.His one-man show, “An Evening with Tommy Steele,” ran for fourteen months at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1979/80 and is in the Guinness Book of Theatre Facts and Feats as “the longest running one-man show in West End history.”Has made more appearances than any other artist at The London Palladium.Often used the pseudonym “Jimmy Bennett” for his song writing partnership with Lionel Bart and Mike Pratt.The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Richard Haydn was a British character actor who spent most of his career working in Hollywood usually as prissy fusspots. He was born in Camberwell, London in 1905. His many films include “Forever and a Day” in 1943, “The Late George Apley”, “Cluny Brown” as the boyfriend of Jennifer Jones and son of Una O’Connor, “Five Weeks in a Balloon” and his most wekk known role as Max loyal friend of the Trapp family in “The Sound of Music”. It was good to see him in “Young Frankenstein”. He died in 1985 in Los Angeles.
IMDB entry:
Inimitable London-born character actor, noted for his put-on nasal delivery and pompous, fussy manner. Richard Haydn had a laborious start to his show business career, selling tickets in the box office of London’s Daly Theatre. This was followed by an unsuccessful stint with a comedy act in musical revue. For a change of pace, he became overseer of a Jamaican banana plantation only to see it wiped out by a hurricane. Returning home, he appeared in the 1926 West End production of ‘Betty of Mayfair’ and, soon after, also began to act on radio. It was in this medium, where he first found success, creating his signature character, the perpetually befuddled nasally-voiced fish expert and mother’s boy Edwin Carp. Haydn later immortalised the character in a book, The Journal of Edwin Carp.
The Carp routine opened the door for Haydn to appear with Beatrice Lillie on Broadway in ‘Noel Coward (I)”s ‘Set to Music’ (1939) and this, in turn, resulted in a contract with 20th Century Fox. While his screen debut in Charley’s Aunt (1941) was relatively straight-laced, he was more often seen in comedic roles where his lugubrious face and dignified, sometimes unctuous presence could be employed to scene-stealing effect. His notable characterisations in this vein include the over-enunciating Professor Oddly in Ball of Fire(1941), Rogers the butler in And Then There Were None (1945) and Mr. Wilson in Cluny Brown (1946). He essayed a rare villainous role as the odious Earl of Radcliffe in the period drama Forever Amber (1947) and was back in his best form as Mr.Appleton inSitting Pretty (1948). In The Late George Apley (1947), he played the character of Horatio Willing, ‘with a broad edge of wheezy burlesque’ (Bosley Crowther, New York Times, March 21 1947).
In the late 40’s, Haydn made a brief foray into directing. Of his three films for Paramount, the Bing Crosby vehicle Mr. Music (1950) enjoyed the best critical reviews. Among his later appearances on screen, that of Trapp family friend and promoter Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music (1965), is the one which most often comes to mind. Over the years, Haydn also made an impression as a voice actor in animated cartoons, notably on Warner Brothers Looney Tunes (‘Super-Rabbit’, 1943) and as the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland (1951). He had frequent guest roles on television and starred in one of the best-remembered episodes of Rod Serling‘s Twilight Zone (1959), ‘A Thing About Machines’ (1960), as the pedantic, machine-hating egocentric Bartlett Finchley. He also caricatured a Japanese businessman in an episode of Bewitched (1964).
In private life, Richard Haydn was a rather reclusive individual who liked horticulture, shunned interviews and was never particularly integral to the closely-knit British colony in Hollywood.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
