Jack Buchanan was born in 1891 in Helensburgh, Scotland.Most of his career was on the stage but he did make some remarkable films including “Monte Carlo” in 1930 and “The Band Wagon” with Fred Astaire in 1953. He died in 1957.
IMDB entry:
Born in Scotland, Jack Buchanan made his stage acting debut in Britain in 1912, and on Broadway in 1924. Though he made his film debut in 1917 during the silent film era, Buchanan is probably best remembered for The Band Wagon (1953), co-starring with Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Nanette Fabray, James Mitchell, Oscar Levant and Robert Gist. Suffering from spinal arthritis, Buchanan died in London four years later.
Jean Cadell was born in Scotland in 1884. Her film de but was in 1915. In 1935 she went to Hollywood to make George Cukor’s “David Copperfield” where she played opposite W.C. Fields’s “Mr Micawber”. Her other films include “South Riding” in 1938 and “I Know Where I’m Going” in 1945. The late Simon Cadell and his sister Selina Cadell are the granchildren of Jean Cadell. She died 1n 1967
IMDB entry:
Yet another underrated performer from the Golden Age of British films was Scottish-born character actress Jean Cadell. Jean commenced her professional stage career in 1906 with “The Inspector General” at the old Scala Theatre in the London borough of Camden. Via a stint with the Glasgow Repertory, she then made her way to Broadway (1911) and London (1912), where she appeared in small roles at major venues like the Strand and Criterion Theatres, specialising in comedy plays (her favourite was George Bernard Shaw). Though she maintained a busy theatrical career throughout, she also acted in films from 1919. During the silent era, she usually played youthfully temperamental and emancipated women. As she advanced in age, her manner became increasingly salty. This, combined with her sharp features, flaming red hair and steely blue eyes led to her being more often than not typecast as acerbic spinsters or imperious dowagers. She had a brief sojourn in Hollywood as Mrs. Micawber (opposite the inimitable W.C. Fields) inDavid Copperfield (1935). Back in England, she gave valuable support in Pygmalion(1938) (as Mrs. Pearce), The Young Mr. Pitt (1942) (Mrs. Sparry, sternly instructing Robert Donat to “always keep-a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse”) and the fondly-remembered Ealing classic Whisky Galore (1949) (as Mrs. Campbell). Jean rounded off her career with a starring role in her penultimate film, the caper comedy A Taste of Money (1960), as an ageing spinster concocting the ‘perfect’ Soho bank heist.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Constance Collier was born in 1878 in Windsor. She made her stage debut at the age of 3 in “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”. In 1905 she married Irish actor Julian Boyles and they performed on the stage until his death in 1918. In the 1940’s she was a stalwart character actress in Hollywood films such as “Kitty” with Paulette Goddard and Ray Milland, “The Perils of Pauline” in 1947 with Betty Hutton and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” with James Stewart and Farley Granger. Constance Collier died in 1955 in New York.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
In a career that covered six decades, Constance Collier evolved into one of Broadway and London’s finest tragediennes during the first half of the 1900s. While the regal, dark-featured beauty who bore classic Romanesque features enjoyed a transcontinental career like a number of her contemporaries, her theatre success did not encourage an enviable film career. It wasn’t until her senior years that Constance engaged in a number of well-regarded supporting performances on screen. Later respect also came as one of Hollywood’s premiere drama and voice coaches.
She was born Laura Constance Hardie in Windsor, Berkshire on January 22, 1878, the only child of Auguste Cheetham and Eliza Georgina (nee Collier) Hardie, who were both minor professional actors. Young Constance made her stage debut at the age of three as a fairy in a production of “A Midsummer Nights Dream” and the die was cast. By age 6 she was appearing with famed actor/manager Wilson Barrett in “The Silver King”. An early break occurred in her teens (1893) when the tall, under-aged beauty was given consent by her parents to become a member of the famed George Edwardes-Hall “Gaiety Girls” dance troupe. Groomed extensively in singing, dancing and elocution, she managed to stand out among those others in the chorus line and went on to featured status in two of Edwardes-Hall’s biggest hits, “A Gaiety Girl” and “The Shop Girl” (both 1894).
Legit ingénue roles in “Her Advocate”, “Tommy Atkins” and “The Sign of the Cross” followed. Just after the turn of the century (1901) she was invited to join the theatre company of the esteemed Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who had been searching for a comparably tall leading lady to play opposite him. She remained with his company at His Majesty’s Theatre for six years where she built up a formidable classical resumé. Alongside Sir Herbert in such plays as “Ulysses”, “The Eternal City” and “Nero”, Constance also proved a fine Shakespearean with her Olivia, Viola, Portia, Mistress Ford and Cleopatra at the top of the list. She also made a noteworthy Nancy Sykes in “Oliver Twist” which she toured extensively both here and abroad. During this time (1905), she married British-born actor ‘Julian L’Estrange’.
Ms. Collier made a successful American stage debut in 1908 with “Samson” at the Garrick Theatre in New York opposite well-known American actor/playwright William Gillette, thereby placing herself solidly among the most popular and respected actresses of the day. Among her subsequent Broadway offerings were “Israel” (1909), “Trelawney of the Wells” (1911), “Oliver Twist” (1912), “Othello” (1915) and “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (1917).
Sir Herbert and Constance both appeared as extras in the silent D.W. Griffith classicIntolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916). While still in the U.S., he filmed Macbeth (1916) with Constance as his Lady Macbeth. Not only was the Shakespearean film poorly received but her starring appearances in two other silents released earlier that year, The Tongues of Men (1916) and The Code of Marcia Gray(1916), were also overlooked.
Tragedy struck in October of 1918. She and husband L’Estrange had begun a Broadway run together of “The Ideal Husband” only a month earlier. During the run he contracted the deadly Spanish influenza which had spread worldwide and died of pneumonia at the untimely age of 40. The grief-stricken actress finished the play’s run into November then returned to England where she appeared in the films The Impossible Woman (1919),Bleak House (1920) and The Bohemian Girl (1922). Among her London theatre successes were “Our Betters” (1923) at the Globe Theatre, which ran for over twelve months, and “Hamlet” wherein she played Queen Gertrude opposite John Barrymore‘s Great Dane (1925) at the Haymarket Theatre. Constance also moved into writing and penned her own play “Forever”, which was based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel “Peter Ibbetson”. She then co-wrote with actor/friend Ivor Novello the play “The Rat” (1924) in which Novello starred and Constance produced.
The advent of sound provided the exciting opportunity for the eloquent Collier to work in the U.S., but not necessarily as an actress. By helping established silent film stars transition into talkies, she became Hollywood’s foremost drama and voice coach. Finding less and less time for stage work, she directed a Broadway production of “Camille” in 1931. She did, however, manage to appear in productions of “Peter Ibbetson” (1931), which she also staged, “Dinner at Eight (1932) and “Hay Fever” (1933) all in New York. Her final Broadway curtain call was taken as Madame Bernardi in “Aries Is Rising” (1939) at New York’s Golden Theatre.
In later years, she continued to coach (among her students were Marilyn Monroe) and write, but she also found time to return to the large screen in a dozen or so films, usually providing stately support. She appeared in a range of movies from the Shirley Temple vehicle Wee Willie Winkie (1937) to the film noir piece The Dark Corner (1946). Better known roles during this period include those in Stage Door (1937), playing, quite appropriately and amusingly, the resident drama coach, An Ideal Husband (1947), excellent as Lady Markby, and Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rope (1948). Her last film was Whirlpool(1949).
Constance died of natural causes in New York on April 25, 1955, and left behind her 1929 memoirs “Harlequinade”. She had no children.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Angela Douglas was born in Gerrard’s Cross, Buckinghamshire in 1940. She made her film debut in 1959 in “The Shakedown”. She was leading lady to Tommy Steele in “It’s All Happening”. Other films includeThe Comedy Man” with her husband Kenneth More, “Carry on Cowboy”, Carry on Screaming” and “John Goldfarb, Please Come Home” which she made in Hollywood with Shirley MacLaine in 1964.
IMDB Entry:
Angela Douglas is without a doubt a very classy actress, who is remembered by million for her “Carry On…” career as well as other character roles.
Absolutely amazing in Carry on Cowboy (1966) as gorgeous, all-singing and trigger happy Annie Oakley, she eventually appeared in four “Carry On…” films and her best performance was probably as “The Princess Jelhi” in Carry On… Up the Khyber (1968).
Her entire “Carry On…” career is one of class not bawdiness, and she is a true heroine from the film’s most successful period. She is often seen today in character roles in television and film.
She was happily married to actor Kenneth More for 14 years, after originally meeting him on the set of Some People (1962) in Bristol.
Miss Douglas made an appearance in north Wales in late September 2005 to unveil a plaque dedicated to the filming of Carry On… Up the Khyber (1968). Part of the movie had been shot in Llanberis, north Wales. She was quoted on BBC News saying that she loved appearing in Carry on Cowboy (1966) and Carry On… Up the Khyber (1968) and that they were her favourites.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Bobby G
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Kevin McNally was born in 1956 in Bristol. His films include “The Spy Who Loved Me” in 1977, “The Long Good Friday”, “Cry Freedom”, “Johnny English”, “Valkyre” and “The Raen”. He is married to actress Phyllis Logan.
IMDB entry:
Kevin McNally was born on April 27, 1956, in Bristol, England. He grew up in Birmingham where he attended Redhill and Mapledene Junior schools and Central Grammar School for Boys. At the age of 16, he got his first job at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. A year later he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1975 he won the Best Actor Bancroft Gold Medal for his stage performance. McNally’s most notable stage performances in London’s West End include his appearance as Alan Bennett opposite Maggie Smith in ‘The Lady in the Van’ and opposite Juliette Binoche in ‘Naked’. He also starred as Richard in Terry Johnson’s ‘Dead Funny’ at the Savoy Theatre.
Since 1976 McNally has been involved in numerous TV productions beginning with his portrayal of the Roman ruler Castor, son of Tiberius, in the acclaimed BBC history seriesI, Claudius (1976) and his portrayal of Drake Carne in the popular series Poldark (1975). His career on television ascended after his work in Masada (1981) and in the cult TV series Doctor Who: The Twin Dilemma (1984). During the 1980s and 1990s McNally established himself as a reputable and versatile actor on both the British and American TV. He played a broad variety of leading and supporting characters ranging from the Soviet politician Kirov in Stalin (1992) to homicide detective Jack Taylor in Chiller (1995), and from an insecure son, Alan Hook, in TV series Dad (1997) to a convicted murderer James Hopkin in Bloodlines (2005). His portrayal of Frank Worsley in Shackleton (2002) as well as the role of Harry Woolf in Life on Mars (2006) are among his best known works for television.
Kevin McNally has been enjoying a happy family life with Scottish actress Phyllis Loganand his two children. He resides with his family in Chiswick, London, England.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Steve Shelokhonov
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Jared Harris was born in London in 1961. He is the son of the actor Richard Harris. His film debut was in 1989 in “The Rachel Papers”. His other films include “Natural Born Killers”, in 1994, “White Lies” and “Lost in Space”.
IMDB entry;
Jared Harris was born Jared Francis Harris in London, England. He is the son of famous Irish actor Richard Harris and Welsh actress Elizabeth Harris (Elizabeth Rees), and brother of Damian Harris and Jamie Harris.
Despite being the son of esteemed Irish actor Richard Harris, Jared showed little interest in following his father’s career, until he was cast in a college production while attending North Carolina’s Duke University (USA), where he studied drama and literature, in the early 1980s.
After graduation, Jared returned to the UK where he attended Central School of Speech and Drama, along such future stars as ‘Jason Isaccs’ and ‘James Nesbitt.’ After graduation, Jared joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing in ‘Mark Rylance”s Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, the Silent Woman and A Clockwork Orange. In 1989, he had his screen debut in The Rachel Papers (1989).
In 1990, while on vacation in New York, Jared auditioned for the role of Hotspur in Henry IV part 1., which he played at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Still in New York, Jared appeared in the off-Broadway play Ecstasy, for which he won an Obie Award in 1992.
Joyce Chancellor was born in 1906 in Dublin. Her entire career was in British films and the early days of television. Her film debut was in 1934 in “Irish Hearts”.
Jeannie Carson was born in 1928 in Pudsey, Yorkshire. She had some leading roles in British films before she became popular in America on television in the series “Hey Jeannie” in 1956. Her UK movies include “As Long As They’re Happy” and “An Alligator Named Daisy”. She is married to the actor Biff McGuire and livces in California.
In her early British films, she performed under the name Jean Carson, but later changed her given name to “Jeannie” to avoid confusion with the similarly named American actress Jean Carson.[2] Carson became an over-night star in Love From Judy, a musical by Hugh Martin and Jack Gray, and produced by Emile Littler, that played at the Saville Theatre in London from 1952 to 1953.
In 1956, Carson starred in her own series Hey, Jeannie!, which aired on CBS. The series lasted one season before being canceled in 1957.
In 1960, Carson married her second husband, actor Biff McGuire,[2] while both were starring in the Broadway revival of Finian’s Rainbow. The couple toured together in 1961 in Camelot, with McGuire as King Arthur and Carson asGuenevere. Later, they performed at the Seattle Repertory for fifteen years, often together. McGuire and Carson live in Los Angeles.
Keith Baxter was born in Newport, Wales in 1933. He has had an illustrious stage career. His films include “The Barretts of Wimploe Street” in 1957 with Jennifer Jones and Bill Travers, “Chimes at Midnight” with Orson Welles in 1965 and “Ash Wednesday” with Elizabeth Taylor in 1973.
His IMDB entry:
Keith Baxter was born on April 29, 1933 in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales as Keith Baxter-Wright. He is an actor, known for Merlin (1998), Berlín Blues (1988) and Falstaff – Chimes at Midnight (1965).
When Taylor finally recovered from pneumonia and they moved the production to Italy (they had built a fake Alexandria harbor outside of London!), Baxter had other commitments.
An Associate Member of RADA.
The Telegraph obituary in 2023:
Keith Baxter, who has died aged 90, was regarded by theatre colleagues as one of the most underrated actors, directors and dramatists of his generation; he worked for more than 60 years, primarily on stage with the occasional roles in feature films and on television.
He was also an outstanding writer, contributing book reviews and features to The Daily Telegraph and publishing a rollicking book of memoirs, My Sentiments Exactly (1998), with a cast of characters – Coward, Gielgud, Olivier, Tennessee Williams, “Binkie” Beaumont, Orson Welles – that reads like a Who’s Who of 20th century theatre.
It was Welles who provided the springboard for Baxter’s career when he cast the classically handsome 26-year-old actor as Prince Hal in Chimes at Midnight, Welles’s version of Shakespeare’s King Henry IV histories which brought the comic figure of Falstaff (played by Welles) to the fore. As a film (1965) it has come to be seen as a masterpiece. But it began as a stage play, which opened in Belfast in the spring of 1960.
The production, Baxter recalled, was shambolic. The earl leading the procession to Hal’s coronation as Henry V “got drunk on the boat train before it left King’s Cross and never sobered up”; Henry IV was played by Reggie Jarman, who was profoundly deaf and mostly lip-read his cues. During dress rehearsal, “Reggie’s massive deaf-aid (held in place by a large square of Elastoplast) thudded to the ground in the middle of the Battle of Shrewsbury.”
Hotspur was played by Alexis Kanner, a muscular Canadian who could not understand why he had to lose the duel with Prince Hal and suggested all sorts of wheezes, including Hal stabbing him in the back, to avoid such a humiliation: “At the dress rehearsal, as I came lumbering on for the fight encased in armour from head to toe, Kanner’s voice rang out behind me: ‘If I mistake not thou art Harry Monmouth!’ Falstaff and I turned to face him. Kenner had stripped off all his armour and unbuttoned his shirt to the navel. He looked like the boy in Tiananmen Square with his shopping bag facing the tanks.
“Welles looked at him, darkening with temper. ‘I’ve got to show why I lose, if I’m the greatest,’ Kanner faltered. ‘What choice do I have?’ ‘A very clear choice,’ said Orson. ‘Back to the wardrobe or back to Canada.’”
Yet notices were excellent and the production moved to Dublin where, after one performance, Baxter was having a shower when he was called to Welles’s dressing room to meet Laurence Olivier. “What impressed Olivier the most was that I had fallen 12 feet into the orchestra pit when Hotspur had improvised a new move in the duel… Was I marked from my fall? He made a little moue of disappointment when he saw only a nasty bruise. Did I have nothing else? I told him I had slept on the floor of Gary Raymond’s flat in Brixton and a spring had burst through the mattress and slashed my left buttock, leaving a scar. Olivier moved to inspect it and Orson laughed: ‘Remember Larry! You’re a married man!’”
Thus launched, Baxter went to Broadway to play Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons to Paul Scofield’s Sir Thomas More, for which he won a Theatre World Award in 1962. Then in 1964, while he was playing in EM Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread in London, a telegram arrived from Spain: “Dearest Keith Have Gielgud as the King Margaret Rutherford as Mistress Quickly Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet Ralph Richardson as Narrator Stop I am playing Falstaff Stop Please come Love Orson”.
Welles had befriended Spanish film producers who were uninterested in Shakespeare but wanted him to make Treasure Island. He had agreed on condition that he could make Chimes at Midnight at the same time. He had no intention of making Treasure Island, but a budget of $800,000 was agreed and Welles got away with the deception by building sets that could be used in either film and casting each actor in both.
In Madrid Baxter was introduced to the producers: “One said ‘Señor Baxter, Doctor Livesey!’, and I didn’t really know what that meant, but Orson said ‘we’re going to have lunch!’ … I said ‘what was that about Doctor Livesey?’ he said ‘Well, I’ve agreed what they want me to do, and I’ve agreed that I’m going to play Long John Silver in a technicolor version of Treasure Island, and you’re going to play Doctor Livesey.’ I said ‘Really? What’s Sir John Gielgud going to play?’ ‘Oh, he’s going to play Squire Trelawney, but he doesn’t know’. I said ‘are you going to tell him?’ ‘I don’t think so…’”
Next day they drove to Alicante to a large ship which had been used in the 1962 film of Billy Budd: “There were the producers, and champagne, and a lot of laughter – ‘bravo Orson!’ – and Orson said ‘are we ready?’ and somebody said ‘yes!’, and he said ‘action!’ and the mainsail dropped on the boat, and somebody said ‘cast off aft!’ and Orson said ‘cut!’ and everybody drank some champagne, and he said ‘lets clear off now, we can go’. I never saw a shot of Treasure Island ever again after that.”
Welles announced that the cast would wear what he called “undress armour” : “A boy brought in a wicker basket labelled Samuel Bronson Studios. So I stripped down to my underpants, and this is what I wore [in the film]: a pair of knitted chainmail trousers and a T-shirt, and over that I wore a jerkin thatCharlton Heston had worn in El Cid, and on top of that I wore a very, very nice yellow suede waistcoat which had been worn by Jayne Mansfield in The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw.”
Earlier Baxter had been dispatched to meet Gielgud and his temperamental Hungarian partner Martin Hensler at the airport and was sent to fetch him from their hotel: “Martin said “it’s terrible here! The electricity, she don’t work! The elevator, she don’t work! We have to carry our luggage! I want to go home!’ and John said ‘Oh Keith, you look rather fancy. What am I wearing? Is the armour wonderful?’ And I said ‘well, Orson’s got this wonderful idea, John…’
A “dour Scots boy” brought in “a big sheet with a knot in it, and he opened it and he said ‘there, choose what you want’.” Gielgud plucked out a pair of scrunched-up tights: “He held them there and he said ‘ooh… shall I get crabs, do you think?’ .. He went to his bedroom, door open,.. he said ‘oh it is such fun dressing up! I do love being an actor!’
“Then he came out and he’d found a pair of boots, he’d found a nice jerkin, he said ‘oh, perhaps I can have a great brooch?’ I said ‘I don’t know if there are any large brooches around,’ and he said ‘well I can have the crown,’ I said ‘the crown hasn’t arrived from England yet,’ he said ‘oh well, we’ll just have to do our best… I know all my lines,’ and then mercifully somebody said ‘Mr Welles is waiting for you!’”
The film was dogged by problems and had to be put on hold midway when Welles ran out of money (he was eventually bailed out by Harry Saltzman). Baxter recalled that Welles lived in dread of the taxman, and suspected every American who turned up out of the blue to be an agent of the IRS. He also suffered from stage fright and delayed most of his scenes until the end of filming. The soundtrack was post-dubbed months later, he, Welles and Michael Aldridge recording voices for several characters in post-production.
“It was a miracle of sorts that the film was made,” reflected Paul Bailey in The Daily Telegraph, “and doubly miraculous that it is, unquestionably, the finest Shakespearean movie of them all.”
Until Welles left Europe in 1977 for America, Baxter recalled, “the Welles family meant as much to me as my own”, and in his subsequent career Welles remained for Baxter, as Peter Bogdanovich put it in his biography of Welles, “a kind of artistic conscience”.
In 1998 Baxter returned to Chimes at Midnight at Chichester Festival Theatre, this time as Henry IV, with Simon Callow as Falstaff and Tam Williams as Hal. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer described Baxter’s king, “ill, guilt-ridden, coldly arrogant yet deeply desirous of affection from his son” as “an intense, commanding performance”.
Baxter came to be regarded as a consummate theatre man. On Broadway he was best known for his award-winning 1970 performance (Drama Desk and Outer Critics) in Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth as Milo Tindle, playing out a deadly game of cat and mouse with Anthony Quayle’s (and later Paul Rogers’s) Andrew Wyke.
In London, Baxter performed opposite Maggie Smith in The Country Wife, and was Mark Antony to her Cleopatra at the Stratford Festival in Canada in 1976. In 1991 he and Joan Collins were the divorced couple who meet by accident while on their honeymoons with new spouses in Coward’s Private Lives. Film gigs included the forgettable Ash Wednesday (1973) with Elizabeth Taylor (Baxter recalled Richard Burton grumpily hanging around the set and verbally abusing his wife. The pair divorced for the first time the following year).
Baxter never made any bones about being gay, though he regarded his sexuality as “not something that one needs to proclaim. I mean, one supports the right issues, of course.” But, as he told an interviewer, “My generation of actors became actors to become all the people we were not.”
Baxter was born Keith Stanley Baxter-Wright in Newport, Monmouthshire on April 29 1933 to Stanley Baxter-Wright, a Merchant Navy captain, and his wife Emily, née Howell, and educated at Newport High School then, after the family moved to Barry, Glamorgan, at Barry Grammar School.
As a boy, Baxter enjoyed making model theatres, and at school his talents were spotted by Teifion Phillips, an idiosyncratic history teacher, who propelled him towards Rada and, as his protégé’s stage career unfolded, was often present and critically discerning in the audience.
During his time at Rada, where he was a bronze medal winner, Baxter shared a flat with Alan Bates, a classmate. He made his theatre and screen debuts 1957 as Ralph in Tea and Sympathy at the Comedy Theatre, and in the remake of the film The Barretts of Wimpole Street.
Baxter became a stalwart of classical plays in the West End, Broadway and elsewhere by playwrights such as Congreve, Sheridan, Shaw, Chekhov – and especially Shakespeare. He was associated for many years with Chichester Festival Theatre, both as an actor and as a director, and regularly directed shows at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC, where he appeared earlier this year in Hamlet playing the Ghost, the Player King and the Gravedigger.
His television work included appearances in Gideon’s Way, The Avengers, Hawaii Five-O, Thriller (1976) and the 1998 mini-series Merlin. He wrote several plays including 56 Duncan Terrace, Cavell and Barnaby and the Old Boys. Recently he had a reading of a new play he had written at the home of Joan Plowright, a lifelong friend who had played Edith Cavell in his play.
Baxter’s friendships were for life. Sheridan Morley thought that by Gielgud’s death, Baxter had become the theatrical knight’s closest friend, and at his 90th birthday party earlier this year Baxter was sitting between Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, the latter a close and loving support to him.
In his memoir, Baxter gave a moving account of his close platonic friendship with the playwright Tennessee Williams, whom he had come to know in New York in 1970 when Williams was nursing the critical wounds received after a series of failed plays. In the mid-1970s Baxter directed and played the lead in the Vienna and London stage productions of Williams’s The Red Devil Battery Sign, one of a string of late career flops. The friendship deepened with visits to Williams’s home in Key West, Florida, though Williams never rediscovered the muse that had brought him fame in the 1940s and 1950s.
Other friends included King Charles – and Queen Camilla, whom he described as “humorous and modest” with an unshowy dignity. In a 2007 C4 documentary about the then Duchess of Cornwall, Baxter recalled her taking him and a group of Sandringham house guests for a late-night swim in the sea. “It was a balmy evening and there was a swirling mist. While we were in the water it suddenly cleared to reveal there were about 20 nudists on the beach. Nobody was particularly fazed but it was sweet to see one nude lady trying to curtsey…”
Baxter recalled how once, after Williams had stayed with him in London, his cleaning lady found a piece of paper covered with Williams’s scribblings in the bed he had slept in. Not sure whether they were important, Baxter called Williams to report the discovery. “What does it say?” Williams asked.
Baxter read him the fragment. “The clock ticks,” it began, “with a sound that is infinitely more gentle than any word that was spoken tonight. It reminds me not to fear the prison of present time. It will pass. I shall have escaped.”
“Oh, baby,” Williams said. “I do write such rubbish sometimes.”
In his entry in Debrett’s People of Today, Baxter gave his recreation as “The sea”. He lived near it, in the Chichester Harbour village of Bosham, sailed on it, often with his golden retriever, Charley, and was finally claimed by it after suffering a heart attack while swimming on holiday in Corsica.
Keith Baxter is survived by his husband Brian Holden.
Keith Baxter, born April 29 1933, died September 24 2023
