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Sir Ralph Richardson was one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century English-language theater, ascending to the height of his profession in the mid-1930s when he became a star in London's West End. He became the first actor of his generation to be knighted. He became Sir Ralph in 1947, and was quickly followed by Laurence Olivier in 1948, and then by John Gielgud in 1953. Co-stars and friends, the three theatrical knights were considered the greatest English actors of their generation, primarily for their mastery of the Shakespearean canon. They occupied the height of the British acting pantheon in the post-World War II years.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Widely regarded as one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native Great Britain and internationally, twice nominated for the Oscar and recipient of every major theatrical award in the UK and US, Ian Murray McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, to Margery Lois (Sutcliffe) and Denis Murray McKellen, a civil engineer and lay preacher. He is of Scottish, Northern Irish, and English descent. During his early childhood, his parents moved with Ian and his older sister, Jean, to the mill town of Wigan. It was in this small town that young Ian rode out World War II. He soon developed a fascination with acting and the theatre, which was encouraged by his parents. They would take him to plays, those by William Shakespeare, in particular. The amateur school productions fostered Ian's growing passion for theatre.
When Ian was of age to begin attending school, he made sure to get roles in all of the productions. At Bolton School in particular, he developed his skills early on. Indeed, his first role in a Shakespearian play was at Bolton, as Malvolio in "Twelfth Night". Ian soon began attending Stratford-upon-Avon theatre festivals, where he saw the greats perform: Laurence Olivier, Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Paul Robeson. He continued his education in English Drama, but soon it fell by the wayside as he concentrated more and more on performing. He eventually obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1961, and began his career in earnest.
McKellen began working in theatre over the next few years. Very few people knew of Ian's homosexuality; he saw no reason to go public, nor had he told his family. They did not seem interested in the subject and so he saw no reason to bring it up. In 1988, Ian publicly came out of the closet on the BBC Radio 4 program, while discussing Margaret Thatcher's "Section 28" legislation, which made the promotion of homosexuality as a family relationship by local authorities an offense. It was reason enough for McKellen to take a stand. He has been active in the gay rights movement ever since.
Ian resides in Limehouse, where he has also lived with his former long-time partner Sean Mathias. The two men have also worked together on the film Bent (1997) as well as in exquisite stage productions. To this day, McKellen works mostly in theatre, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 for his efforts in the arts. However, he has managed to make several quite successful forays into film. He has appeared in several productions of Shakespeare's works including his well received Richard III (1995), and in a variety of other movies. However, it has only been recently that his star has finally begun to shine in the eyes of North American audiences. Roles in various films, Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Apt Pupil (1998) and Gods and Monsters (1998), riveted audiences. The latter, in particular, created a sensation in Hollywood, and McKellen's role garnered him several of awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar nod. McKellen, as he continues to work extensively on stage, he always keeps in 'solidifying' his 'role' as Laurence Olivier's worthy 'successor' in the best sense too, such as King Lear (2008) / King Lear (2008) directed by Trevor Nunn and in a range of other staggering performances full of generously euphoric delight that have included "Peter Pan" and Noël Coward's "Present Laughter", as well as Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" (National Theatre Live: No Man's Land (2016)), both in acclaimed productions brilliantly directed by Sean Mathias.
McKellen found mainstream success with his performance as Magneto in X-Men (2000) and its sequels. His largest mark on the big screen may be as Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, which he reprised in "The Hobbit" trilogy. He also reprised the role of 'King Lear' with new artistic perspectives in National Theatre Live: King Lear (2018) offering an invaluable mesmerizing experience as a natural force of stage - and screen - of infinite generosity through his unsurpassable interpretation of the titanically vulnerable king.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Born in London, England, John Gielgud trained at Lady Benson's Acting School and RADA, London. Best known for his Shakespearean roles in the theater, he first played Hamlet at the age of 26. He worked under the tutelage of Lilian Bayliss with friend and fellow performer Laurence Olivier and other contemporaries of the National Theatre at the "Old Vic", London. He made his screen debut in 1924. Academy Award Best Supporting Actor, 1981, for Arthur (1981), Academy Award Nomination, 1964, for Becket (1964).- Writer
- Actor
- Music Department
Noel Coward virtually invented the concept of Englishness for the 20th century. An astounding polymath - dramatist, actor, writer, composer, lyricist, painter, and wit -- he was defined by his Englishness as much as he defined it. He was indeed the first Brit pop star, the first ambassador of "cool Britannia." Even before his 1924 drugs-and-sex scandal of The Vortex, his fans were hanging out of their scarves over the theater balcony, imitating their idol's dress and repeating each "Noelism" with glee. Born in suburban Teddington on 16 December 1899, Coward was on stage by the age of six, and writing his first drama ten years later. A visit to New York in 1921 infused him with the pace of Broadway shows, and he injected its speed into staid British drama and music to create a high-octane rush for the jazz-mad, dance-crazy 1920s. Coward's style was imitated everywhere, as otherwise quite normal Englishmen donned dressing gowns, stuck cigarettes in long holders and called each other "dahling"; his revues propagated the message, with songs sentimental ("A Room With A View," "I'll See You Again") and satirical ("Mad Dogs and Englishmen," "Don't Put Your Daughter On the Stage, Mrs. Worthington"). His between-the-wars celebrity reached a peak in 1930 with "Private Lives," by which time he had become the highest earning author in the western world. With the onset of World War II he redefined the spirit of the country in films such as This Happy Breed (1944), In Which We Serve (1942), Blithe Spirit (1945) and, perhaps most memorably, Brief Encounter (1945). In the postwar period, Coward, the aging Bright Young Thing, seemed outmoded by the Angry Young Men, but, like any modern pop star, he reinvented himself, this time as a hip cabaret singer: "Las Vegas, Flipping, Shouts "More!" as Noel Coward Wows 'Em in Cafe Turn" enthused Variety. By the 1960s, his reappraisal was complete -- "Dad's Renaissance", called it -- and his "Hay Fever" was the first work by a living author to be produced at the National Theatre. He was knighted -- at last -- in 1970, and died in his beloved Jamaica on 26 March 1973. Since his death, his reputation has grown. There is never a point at which his plays are not being performed, or his songs being sung. A playwright, director, actor, songwriter, filmmaker, novelist, wit . . . was there nothing this man couldn't do? Born into a musical family he was soon treading the boards in various music hall shows where he met a young girl called Gertrude Lawrence, a friendship and working partnership that lasted until her death. His early writings were mainly short songs and sketches for the revue shows popular in the 1920s, but even his early works often contained touches of the genius to come ("Parisian Pierrot" 1923). He went on to write and star (with Gertie) in his own revues, but the whiff of scandal was never far away, such as that from the drug addict portrayed in "The Vortex." Despite his obvious homosexual lifestyle he was taken to the hearts of the people and soon grew into one of the most popular writer/performers of his time.- Writer
- Actor
Terence Mervyn Rattigan was born in London on June 10, 1911, the son of a career diplomat and serial philanderer whose indiscretions resulted in his being cashiered by the Foreign Office. As a member of the lower upper-middle class in the inter-war period, the young Rattigan received a first-rate education at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford. His was a privileged, intellectual background that is reflected in his plays. For a decade after the Second World War, he was one of England's leading playwrights, but the eruption of the "kitchen-sink" school of English drama in the mid-1950s scuttled his critical reputation.
Rattigan achieved his first success as a playwright at age 25 with the light comedy "French Without Tears" (1936), which was a smash in the West End. Determined to do more serious work, he wrote the satirical social drama "After the Dance" in 1939, which skewered the failure of the class of "Bright Young Things" to prevent another war. The advent of World War II truncated the play's run, but Rattigan would continue to taste sweet success for a full generation, alternating between comedies and dramas.
In the post-war period, he established himself as a major English dramatist with "The Winslow Boy", "The Browning Version", "The Deep Blue Sea", and "Separate Tables", all of which were made into successful motion pictures. A Rattigan play displayed keen craftsmanship and finely-structured plots; emotion was hidden in the best English middle-class tradition, but was lurking in the depths. The typical Rattigan play was a sympathetic, witty study of middle-class people in emotional distress. There was often a love triangle or a general conflict in which decent people found themselves embroiled. These characters sublimated their emotions and passions; the psychic cost of repression was a focus and theme of Rattigan's work.
Rattigan's themes were personal: the illogicality of love; the conflict between idealized love and love as realized in the here and now; the pain of lost promise; and the defeat of potential greatness by human weakness. The themes and leitmotifs in Rattigan's plays were found beneath the surface; nothing was worn on the sleeve. They were elucidated by the playwright's craft, through a well-constructed story and skillfully-observed characters.
According to Rattigan's biographer Geoffrey Wansell, he had learned how to mask his feelings from his father, whose multiple love affairs, carried on in secret behind his wife's back, appalled his son. Also, Terence was a homosexual in an era rife with anti-gay sentiment; the persecution of those suffering from what was once termed "inversion" was all too real.
Rattigan lived behind a mask (he was very discreet about his own same-sex affairs), as did the characters in his plays. Emotions were buried lest their display cause even more pain, or scandal. Wansell believes that his reticence stemmed from a deeply-rooted aversion to emotional engagement. "Behind the apparently carefree mask lived a man crying out to be loved and appreciated," Wansell wrote, "but a man who was also incapable of demonstrating that need."
For a run of almost five straight years in the 1940s, Rattigan had plays appearing simultaneously on the boards of three adjacent West End theaters. In 1956 the English stage was revolutionized by John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger," in which emotions were (in the parlance of a later generation) allowed to "all hang out." Overnight, Rattigan's dreams of emotional repression were deemed old-fashioned. Dramatists, directors, and actors who stuck with the old "well-crafted", more subtle paradigm of drama were also deemed "old-fashioned" and suffered a professional eclipse. (Laurence Olivier, who had starred in Rattigan plays and movies made from his work, kept himself relevant by offering himself to Osborne, who crafted "The Entertainer" for him. It would be many years before his contemporaries John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson would make it out of the woods, outside of Shakespeare, in terms of contemporary drama. They appeared together in Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" 20 years after the changing of the guard).
"Look Back in Anger" was a cultural broadside against everything the Establishment represented, and Rattigan was very much part of that Establishment. In the introduction to his collected plays, published in 1959, Rattigan wrote of an archetypal playgoer, "Aunt Edna," whom he characterized as a "nice, respectable, middle-class, middle-aged maiden lady" to whom playwrights had to be responsive as she was the person who spent her money to go to the theater. What Rattigan was trying to say is that the theater must be responsive to its audience; to the new Turks, many of whom would later thrive in non-commercial, state-subsidized theater. Rattigan was a shameless old fart, pandering to the very class of people, the Aunt Ednas and the Miss Grundys, whom they despised and whose tastes, and the drama and comedies written to suit those tastes, debased the theater as an art form.
Rattigan's reputation declined and, overnight, his plays were derided by the critics. A very sensitive man who had a terrible fear of failure, Rattigan's confidence declined along with his critical reputation. He retaliated the new kitchen-sink school in interviews and via dialogue in his new plays, with the result that he underscored the new generation's contempt of him. Rattigan transformed himself into a caricature of the kind of playwright the new English theater was rebelling against: conservative, staid, old-fashioned, valuing craft above feeling, with no empathy for the modern world or for the majority of Britons. To them, he represented the complacency of a moribund Tory- and toff-dominated Britain that was no longer relevant after the Suez debacle of 1956.
Truthfully, among the post-1956 Rattigan plays are some of his finest work, including "Ross," "Man and Boy," and "Cause Celebre," but it didn't matter to the critics: he was considered hopelessly passé. Like the post- "The Night of the Iguana" Tennessee Williams, he was cruelly discarded as a contemporary artist of any relevance. He was a phantom of a past that vanished with Britain's world-power status after Suez.
Rattigan was first diagnosed with leukemia in 1962; it went into remission in 1964, but he suffered a relapse in 1968. Despising the "Mod" Britain of the 1960s, he moved to Bermuda. In that decade he supported himself by writing screenplays, and for a while he enjoyed the status as the world's highest-paid screenwriter. He was knighted in 1972 and moved back to England. His critical reputation saw a minor revival shortly before his death from cancer in 1977, and a major revival in the early 21st century after Karel Reisz staged a revival of "The Deep Blue Sea." Although he was never as successful in the United States as he was in Britain, Rattigan is increasingly being viewed in his homeland as one of the 20th century's finest playwrights.- Composer
- Music Department
- Writer
Andrew Lloyd Webber is arguably the most successful composer of our time. He is best known for stage and film adaptations of his musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Cats (1994), Evita (1996), and The Phantom of the Opera (2004).
He was born on March 22, 1948, in South Kensington in London, England, the first of two sons of William Lloyd Webber, an organist and composer. His mother, Jean Johnstone, was a pianist and violinist. Young Andrew Lloyd Webber learned to play various musical instruments at home and began composing at an early age. He continued his music studies at Westminster School, where his father was an organist. At the age of 9, young Andrew was able to play the organ and assisted his father during performances. In 1964 he went to Oxford University as a Queens Scholar of history.
In 1965 he met lyricist Tim Rice and dropped out of school to compose musicals and pop songs. In 1968 he had his first success with the West End production of 'Joseph and the Amasing Techicolor Dreamcoat'. From the 1960s to 2000s Lloyd Webber has been constantly updating his style as an eclectic blend of musical genres ranging from classical to rock, pop, and jazz, and with inclusion of electro-acoustic music and choral-like numbers in his musicals.
Andrew Lloyd Webber shot to fame in 1971 with the opening of his rock opera 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. His next successful collaboration with Tim Rice was the musical biopic 'Evita', based on the true story of Eva Peron of Argentina. Andrew Lloyd Webber has been constantly updating the genre of musical theatre. In 1981 he delivered 'Cats', based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and other poems by T.S. Eliot. It was produced at New London Theatre, where stage was designed as a giant junkyard with large-scale bottles and cans scattered around a huge tire representing a playground for cats dressed in exotic costumes who would come and go through the aisles. The record-breaking production of 'Cats' was on stage for 21 seasons, from 1981 - 2002, and became one of the most popular musicals of all time. It played the total of 8,949 performances in London and 7,485 in New York.
In 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber released his most successful musical, 'The Phantom of the Opera', based on the eponymous book by Gaston Leroux with the English lyrics by Charles Hart. 'The Phantom of the Opera' became the highest grossing entertainment event of all time, with total worldwide gross of 3,3 billion dollars and attendance of 80 million. It is also the longest running Broadway musical of all time and the most financially successful Broadway show in history. 'The Phantom of the Opera' was translated into several languages and was produced in more than twenty countries as "clones" of the original production, using similar staging, direction, costumes concept and sets design.
He was knighted Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1992, and was created an honorary life peer in 1997 as Baron Lloyd-Webber, of Syndmonton in the County of Hampshire. He won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song for Evita (1996), and received two more Oscar nominations. Among his other awards are seven Tonys and three Grammys, including his 1986 Grammy Award for Requiem in the category of best classical composition. In 2006 Andrew Lloyd Webber was Awarded Kennedy Center Honors. He owns seven London theatres, which he also restored. Outside of his entertainment career he developed a passion for collecting Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Victorian art. He was married three times and has five children. He is residing in England.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is currently working on his new opera titled 'Master and Margarita' based on the eponymous novel by Mikhail A. Bulgakov.- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Born 17 October 1946 in London, sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh is one of the most influential musical theatre producers in the world, responsible for producing hits such as "Les Misérables", "The Phantom of the Opera", "Miss Saigon", "Cats", and "Hamilton". His father, Ian Robert Mackintosh, was a Scottish timber merchant and jazz trumpeter and his mother, Diana Gladys (née Tonna), was a Maltese-French production secretary. He has a younger brother, Robert, who is also a producer. At 8 Mackintosh saw a production of the musical "Salad Days", which caused him to decide to become a theatre producer. He went to the Catholic Prior Park College in Bath. In his teens he worked as a stagehand, later becoming an assistant stage manager, an finally - in the 1970s - a producer. In 1981 he produced Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Cats", which became a huge success despite the initial doubts about whether singing cats were a good idea. This led to Mackintosh being approached by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, who asked him to produce what was then a French concept album called "Les Misérables" in London. Again, the musical was a huge success. In 1982 at the opening night of "Oklahoma!" in Adalaide, Mackintosh met an Australian theatre photographer Michael Le Poer Trench, who became his partner. In 1986 he produced Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical "The Phantom of the Opera", the Broadway production of which became the longest-running Broadway musical in history. He went on to produce a number of other musicals, including "Five Guys Named Moe", revival of "Follies" and West End Transfers of "Oklahoma!", "My Fair Lady", "Carousel" and "Avenue Q". In 1996 Mackintosh was knighted for his services to musical theatre. Two years later he celebrated his 30 years in the business with the concert gala Hey, Mr. Producer! The Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh (1998). His newer productions include revivals of "Oliver!" (with the role of Nancy cast via the show I'd Do Anything (2008)) and "Hair" as well as the his show "Hamilton". His group owns eight London theaters. He is also a patron of The Food Chain, a charity providing nutritional support for people living with HIV.- Music Department
- Writer
- Producer
A prolific lyricist and librettist, Tim Rice was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, in the fall of 1944. Rice pursued his university education at Lancing College and, briefly, at l'Universite de Paris - Sorbonne. He was considering a legal career around the time that he met Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1965. Three years later, the two young men composed a 20-minute pop oratorio that would eventually become "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat". The piece was premiered on 1st March 1968 at the Colet Court School in the City of London. During the following months, Rice and Webber lengthened the oratorio to 30 minutes, and a record album of "Joseph" (with Rice singing the role of "Pharaoh") was made at the end of 1968.
Remaining in partnership with Webber, his next project was "Jesus Christ Superstar". Introduced to the public as a concept album in 1970, the opera propelled Rice and Webber to international stardom. Staged versions appeared the following year, and their popularity led to the film Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Following "Superstar", Rice and Webber returned to their previous project and expanded it into (more or less) its finalised form. The concept album for "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" was released in 1974.
Inexplicably eclipsed by his collaborator, Rice may never have received the acclaim that he deserved for his contributions to the partnership. The death-throws of the Rice-Webber collaboration produced a third opera, called "Evita". Its concept album was released in 1976.
Rice continued on with a piece called "Blondel", which appeared in 1983. Set to music by Stephen Oliver, "Blondel" was arguably the most comic and witty of Rice's major works. The opera "Chess" followed, with its concept album arriving in 1984. Former ABBA songwriters Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson provided the music for "Chess", and the concept album was an international hit. "Chess" was staged in London in 1986 with great success, but the 1988 Broadway production was radically revised without Rice's knowledge or permission, and it was quickly shut down.
In 1987 Rice was asked by Freddie Mercury and Mike Moran to write lyrics for Freddie's album with Montserrat Caballé "Barcelona", released in 1988, one entitled "The Fallen Priest" and the other "The Golden Boy".
In 1991, he was hired to finish the lyrics for the Walt Disney film Aladdin (1992). Disney subsequently teamed him with Elton John for The Lion King (1994). Rice also composed additional lyrics for the stage version of Disney's film Beauty and the Beast (1991), which opened on Broadway in 1994. A stage version of The Lion King (1994) opened on Broadway in 1997, as he was working with Elton John on two new projects - "Aida", which opened on Broadway in 2000, and the Dreamworks film, The Road to El Dorado (2000).
The 1991 to 2000 period also saw a flurry of activity for Tim Rice's earlier works. Major revival productions of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" were staged in many parts of the world. Additionally, there was the film, Evita (1996), as well as the video-films Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (1991), and Jesus Christ Superstar (2000).
Apart from theatre and film, Rice has written recurring columns for UK newspapers, as well as having shown up regularly on BBC Radio and Television. In 1973, he founded a cricket side - The Heartaches - for which he serves as a manager as well as a player. He also makes regular contributions to various cricket magazines. He continues to have projects in development for the theatre and for film. Most anxiously awaited - especially by audiences in Canada and the United States - is, perhaps, a revival of the authentic 1986 London version of "Chess".- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Veteran entertainer Sir Bruce Forsyth had a career spanning eight decades, in which he went from struggling variety performer to Saturday night TV stardom. On the way, he became one of the most recognisable entertainers in the business, driven by what appeared to be inexhaustible energy. He became synonymous with the plethora of game shows that seemed to dominate television light entertainment in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, although he often felt he had become typecast as the genial quizmaster. And at an age when most performers would have put their feet up, his career enjoyed a huge revival with the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing (2004). Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson was born in Edmonton, north London, on 22 February 1928. His father owned a local garage and both his parents were Salvation Army members who sang and played music at home.
Bruce was a direct descendant of William Forsyth, a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society, whose name was given to the plant forsythia. His interest in showbusiness was kindled at the age of eight and he was reportedly found tap-dancing on the flat roof after watching his first Fred Astaire film.
He made his stage debut at the age of 14 as Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom, appearing bottom of the bill at the Theatre Royal, Bilston. Live entertainment was a way of escaping the pressures and dangers of wartime Britain, and there was a huge demand for acts, no matter how bad they were.
But there was to be no fast track to success. For the next 16 years he performed in church halls and theatres across the country, sleeping in train luggage racks and waiting for the big break. It came in 1958, at a time when he had been unemployed for more than three months and was seriously considering giving up on showbusiness. He was asked to present Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium (1955), a televised variety show, made by Lord Grade's ATV company for the ITV network. He'd finally found the fame he had always craved, appearing not in front of a couple of hundred people in a theatre, but the more than 10 million who regularly tuned in to the show.
Originally booked for two weeks, he stayed five years, by which time he was Britain's highest-paid entertainer, earning £1,000 a week (£18,700 in today's money). But he continued touring with his variety show and the strain of combining this with his Palladium appearances took a toll on his private life. He divorced his first wife, Penny Calvert, a dancer he'd met in the theatre, and she wrote an account of her husband's perpetual absence, called Darling, Your Dinner's in the Dustbin. A popular element in his Palladium show was a feature called Beat the Clock, in which contestants, egged on by Forsyth, had to complete quirky tasks as a huge clock ticked down.
The segment gave a hint of his future television role and he went on to host some of the most popular television game shows of the 1970s and 80s. With his catchphrases of "Nice to see you, to see you nice" and "Didn't he do well?" he reigned supreme at the helm of the BBC's Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game (1971) for six years from 1971, and again at the beginning of the 1990s. At its peak, the programme attracted 20 million viewers, who tuned in to watch Forsyth seemingly having more fun than the competitors, enthusing over the mundane prizes on the conveyor belt. The presenter argued with his BBC managers about the show's early evening timeslot but he eventually accepted his role as the "warm-up man" for Saturday night television.
His co-host on the show, Anthea Redfern, was each week encouraged to "give us a twirl". The couple married in 1973 but divorced six years later. It was on Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game (1971) that he introduced his famous "thinker" pose, appearing in silhouette at the beginning of each show. The idea came from the classic circus strongman pose, something he'd perfected during his days in variety. He repeated his success on ITV's Play Your Cards Right (1980), where the audience joined in the cries of "higher" or "lower" as the contestants tried to guess the value of a series of playing cards.
In 1995, a year after his final Generation Game appearance, he received a lifetime achievement award for variety at the British Comedy Awards and began hosting ITV's The Price is Right (1972). The entertainer was, by this time, a Rolls-Royce-driving multimillionaire and married since 1983 to Wilnelia Merced, a former Miss World. He later claimed that he regretted becoming so associated with game shows and wished he'd done more variety work on TV.
Play Your Cards Right (1980) was axed in 1999 and, with changing tastes in entertainment, his TV career began to slide. He returned to the theatre - but experienced an unexpected revival after his wife watched an edition of the satirical quiz, Have I Got News For You, and suggested he could present the programme. After calling show regular Paul Merton, he landed the gig and offered to be "a little bit deadpan". "But the team said, 'No, be Bruce Forsyth,'" he said. He used the occasion to parody some of his old game shows, much to the ill-disguised disgust of team captain Ian Hislop. But the appearance led to Forsyth, an accomplished tap dancer, being offered the job of hosting Strictly Come Dancing (2004), which began a year later. Viewed with scepticism when it launched, the celebrity dance show became one of the most-watched programmes on TV by the time it reached its fifth series in 2007. He brought his own brand of avuncular good humour to the proceedings - reassuring many of the contestants with the phrase "you're my favourites".
After missing a handful of episodes because of illness, he decided to "step down from the rigours" of presenting Strictly in 2014.
He continued to host the Christmas and charity editions of Strictly until 2014 - all of which were taped, as opposed to live broadcasts. Away from entertainment, Forsyth's biggest passion was golf and he took part in many pro-celebrity tournaments. His house was next to the course at Wentworth, where he played with many of the world's best players, practising in the bunker in his own back garden.
During his career, Forsyth's multiple talents and years of application sparked an enduring appeal. In 2011 he was knighted after years of campaigning by his fans and a parliamentary Early Day Motion signed by 73 MPs. But he suffered from ill health towards the end of his life, and in 2016 his wife revealed he still had "a bit of a problem moving", following major surgery a year earlier. Sir Bruce was one of the last entertainers from the tradition of music hall to be working on British television. In many ways his act barely changed. The same corny gags, the same toothy smile and, above all, the same manic enthusiasm. He is particularly remembered for his ability to transform run-of-the-mill party games into glorious moments of mayhem that enthralled contestants and audiences alike.
He died in August 2017 at his home in Virginia Water, Surrey, England, UK following a period of ill health. He was 89. He was survived by his third wife.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Sir Norman Wisdom has become the great British clown in the mold of Sir Charles Chaplin with his little man in the ill fitting suit and cloth cap. His character is an everyman, much put upon but struggling through to a (usually) happy ending. He was brought up in an orphanage after his mother died and his father disowned him. He joined the British Army at age 14 as a band boy and learnt to play the clarinet, drums and xylophone. In 1941, he went to India with the army and became a comedian by clowning around in camp concerts. When demobbed, he returned home and decided to try to get on the stage but couldn't find an agent who was interested in him.
After marrying his fiancee, Freda Simpson, he spent five weeks in America searching for an agent and work without success. On his return to Britain, he eventually found an agent resulting in him making his first stage appearance at Collins Music Hall on December 17, 1946. Over time, his talent and his popularity grew resulting in him making his first major film Trouble in Store (1953) followed by One Good Turn (1955). Before long, he was writing the screenplays for eight of his films, including The Square Peg (1958), Follow a Star (1959), A Stitch in Time (1963) and The Early Bird (1965). In addition to writing the screenplays, he also composed numerous songs including his theme song "Don't Laugh at Me ('Cause I'm a Fool)".- Producer
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- Director
Michael Parkinson was educated at Barnsley Grammar School. He left at the age of 16 and his ambition of becoming a professional cricketer was dashed when he was rejected by Yorkshire County Cricket Club. He turned to journalism, worked on several local newspapers in Yorkshire before joining the Manchester Guardian. Michael covered all sorts, from chip pan fires in Oldham to political conferences. He joined the Observer to write about sport and became a columnist with The Sunday Times.
His first work in television was as a current affairs producer at Granada Television. He joined the BBC as a reporter for "24 Hours". In 1969 he became the presenter of Granada's Cinema series. In 1971 he presented Thames Television's regular afternoon show, Teabreak. The BBC decided to give the still relatively young broadcaster his own evening chat show, "Parkinson", the same year. With his working class accent, Michael Parkinson was a breath of fresh air and over the next 11 years he interviewed many of the leading celebrities of the time.
The programme established him as one of the best known faces on television, and his fame resulted in his writing for the first edition of the British Cosmopolitan Magazine and his appearance with Jon Pertwee on the front of the Radio Times. His relaxed chat show was axed in 1982. Parkinson moved to ITV and became part of the Famous Five that launched TV AM. In 1998 the BBC resurrected "Parkinson" and the ageing presenter found himself back on prime-time. He presents his own show on BBC Radio 2, during which he plays much of his beloved jazz music. He maintains notoriety for his outspoken comments about other television personalities, the Government and the state of British sport. Michael currently claims he will retire before he's 70 and set about writing the book of his life.- Producer
- Director
- Production Designer
Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom and Europe before they eventually returned to Teesside. Scott wanted to join the British Army (his elder brother Frank had already joined the Merchant Navy) but his father encouraged him to develop his artistic talents instead and so he went to West Hartlepool College of Art and then London's Royal College of Art where he helped found the film department.
In 1962, he joined the BBC as a trainee set designer working on several high profile series. He attended a trainee director's course while he was there and his first directing job was on an episode of the popular BBC police series Z Cars (1962), Error of Judgement (1965). More TV work followed until, frustrated by the poor financial rewards at the BBC, he went into advertising. With his younger brother, Tony Scott, he formed the advertising production company RSA (Ridley Scott Associates) in 1967 and spent the next 10 years making some of the best known and best loved TV adverts ever shown on British television, including a series of ads for Hovis bread set to the music of Dvorak's New World Symphony which are still talked about today ("'e were a great baker were our dad.")
He began working with producer David Puttnam in the 1970s developing ideas for feature films. Their first joint endeavor, The Duellists (1977) won the Jury Prize for Best First Work at Cannes in 1977 and was nominated for the Palm d'Or, more than successfully launching Scott's feature film career. The success of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) inspired Scott's interest in making science fiction and he accepted the offer to direct Dan O'Bannon's low budget science fiction horror movie Alien (1979), a critical and commercial success that firmly established his worldwide reputation as a movie director.
Blade Runner (1982) followed in 1982 to, at best, a lukewarm reception from public and critics but in the years that followed, its reputation grew - and Scott's with it - as one of the most important sci-fi movies ever made. Scott's next major project was back in the advertising world where he created another of the most talked-about advertising spots in broadcast history when his "1984"-inspired ad for the new Apple Macintosh computer was aired during the Super Bowl on January 22, 1984. Scott's movie career has seen a few flops (notably Legend (1985) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)), but with successes like Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000) and Black Hawk Down (2001) to offset them, his reputation remains solidly intact.
Ridley Scott was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire at the 2003 Queen's New Year Honours for his "substantial contribution to the British film industry". On July 3, 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2018. BAFTA described him as "a visionary director, one of the great British film-makers whose work has made an indelible mark on the history of cinema. Forty years since his directorial debut, his films continue to cross the boundaries of style and genre, engaging audiences and inspiring the next generation of film talent."- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command.
However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983), Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).
As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema.
Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Bianca Jagger, Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John. In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Roger Moore will perhaps always be remembered as the man who replaced Sean Connery in the James Bond series, arguably something he never lived down.
Roger George Moore was born on October 14, 1927 in Stockwell, London, England, the son of Lillian (Pope) and George Alfred Moore, a policeman. His mother was born in Calcutta, India, to a British family. Roger first wanted to be an artist, but got into films full time after becoming an extra in the late 1940s. He came to the United States in 1953. Suave, extremely handsome, and an excellent actor, he received a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His initial foray met with mixed success, with movies like Diane (1956) and Interrupted Melody (1955), as well as The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954).
Moore went into television in the 1950s on series such as Ivanhoe (1958) and The Alaskans (1959), but probably received the most recognition from Maverick (1957), as cousin Beau. He received his big breakthrough, at least internationally, as The Saint (1962). The series made him a superstar and he became very successful thereafter. Moore ended his run as the Saint, and was one of the premier stars of the world, but he was not catching on in America. In an attempt to change this, he agreed to star with Tony Curtis on ITC's The Persuaders! (1971), but although hugely popular in Europe, it did not catch on in the United States and was canceled. Just prior to making the series, he starred in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), which proved there was far more to Moore than the light-hearted roles he had previously accepted.
He was next offered and accepted the role of James Bond, and once audiences got used to the change of style from Connery's portrayal, they also accepted him. Live and Let Die (1973), his first Bond movie, grossed more outside of America than Diamonds Are Forever (1971); Connery's last outing as James Bond. He went on to star in another six Bond films, before bowing out after A View to a Kill (1985). He was age 57 at the time the film was made and was looking a little too old for Bond - it was possibly one film too many. In between times, there had been more success with appearances in films such as That Lucky Touch (1975), Shout at the Devil (1976), The Wild Geese (1978), Escape to Athena (1979) and North Sea Hijack (1980).
Despite his fame from the Bond films and many others, the United States never completely took to him until he starred in The Cannonball Run (1981) alongside Burt Reynolds, a success there. After relinquishing his role as Bond, his work load tended to diminish a little, though he did star in the American box office flop Feuer, Eis & Dynamit (1990), as well as the comedy Bullseye! (1990), with Michael Caine. He did the overlooked comedy Bed & Breakfast (1991), as well as the television movie The Man Who Wouldn't Die (1994), and then the major Jean-Claude Van Damme flop The Quest (1996). Moore then took second rate roles such as Spice World (1997), and the American television series The Dream Team (1999). Although his film work slowed down, he was still in the public eye, be it appearing on television chat shows or hosting documentaries.
Roger Moore was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire on December 31, 1998 in the New Years Honours for services to UNICEF, and was promoted to Knight Commander of the same order on June 14, 2003 in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to the charities UNICEF and Kiwanis International.
Roger Moore died of cancer on 23 May, 2017, in Switzerland. He was 89.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
The tall, handsome and muscular Scottish actor Sean Connery is best known as the original actor to portray James Bond in the hugely successful movie franchise, starring in seven films between 1962 and 1983. Some believed that such a career-defining role might leave him unable to escape it, but he proved the doubters wrong, becoming one of the most notable film actors of his generation, with a host of great movies to his name. This arguably culminated in his greatest acclaim in 1988, when Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an Irish cop in The Untouchables (1987), stealing the thunder from the movie's principal star Kevin Costner. Connery was polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine, and in 1999, at age 69, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man of the Century."
Thomas "Sean" Connery was born on August 25, 1930 in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh. His mother, Euphemia Maclean, was a cleaning lady, and his father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and truck driver. He also had a, Neil Connery, a plasterer in Edinburgh, who was eight years younger. Before going into acting, Sean had many different jobs, such as a milkman, lorry driver, a laborer, artist's model for the Edinburgh College of Art, coffin polisher and bodybuilder. He also joined the Royal Navy, but was later discharged because of medical problems. At the age of 23, he had a choice between becoming a professional soccer player or an actor, and even though he showed much promise in the sport, he chose acting and said it was one of his more intelligent decisions.
No Road Back (1957) was Sean's first major movie role, and it was followed by several made-for-TV movies such as Anna Christie (1957), Macbeth (1961) and Anna Karenina (1961) as well as guest appearances on TV series, and also films such as Hell Drivers (1957), Another Time, Another Place (1958), Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and The Frightened City (1961). In 1962 he appeared in The Longest Day (1962) with a host of other stars.
His big breakthrough came in 1962 when he landed the role of secret agent James Bond in Dr. No (1962). He played James Bond in six more films: From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983).
After and during the success of the Bond films, he maintained a successful career as an actor and has appeared in films, including Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Time Bandits (1981), Highlander (1986), The Name of the Rose (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Rising Sun (1993), The Rock (1996), Finding Forrester (2000) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003).
Sean married actress Diane Cilento in 1962 and they had Sean's only child, Jason Connery, born on January 11, 1963. The couple announced their separation in February 1971 and filed for divorce 2½ years later. Sean then dated Jill St. John, Lana Wood, Magda Konopka and Carole Mallory. In 1975 he married Micheline Roquebrune and they stayed married, despite Sean's well-documented love affair with Lynsey de Paul in the late '80s. Sean had three stepchildren through his marriage to Micheline, who was one year his senior. He is also a grandfather. His son, Jason and Jason's ex-wife, actress Mia Sara had a son, Dashiell Connery, in 1997.
Sean Connery died at the age of 90 on October 31, 2020, in Nassau, the Bahamas, where he resided for many years.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Sir Michael Redgrave was of the generation of English actors that gave the world the legendary John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, Britain three fabled "Theatrical Knights" back in the days when a knighthood for thespian was far more rare than it is today. A superb actor, Redgrave himself was a charter member of the post-Great War English acting pantheon and was the sire of an acting dynasty. He and his wife, Rachel Kempson, were the parents of Vanessa Redgrave, Corin Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave and the grandparents of Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson and Jemma Redgrave.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Kenneth Charles Branagh was born on December 10, 1960, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to parents William Branagh, a plumber and carpenter, and Frances (Harper), both born in 1930. He has two siblings, William Branagh, Jr. (born 1955) and Joyce Branagh (born 1970). When he was nine, his family escaped The Troubles by moving to Reading, Berkshire, England. At 23, Branagh joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he took on starring roles in "Henry V" and "Romeo and Juliet". He soon found the RSC too large and impersonal and formed his own, the Renaissance Theatre Company, which now counts Prince Charles as one of its royal patrons. At 29, he directed Henry V (1989), where he also co-starred with his then-wife, Emma Thompson. The film brought him Best Actor and Best Director Oscar nominations. In 1993, he brought Shakespeare to mainstream audiences again with his hit adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (1993), which featured an all-star cast that included, among others, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves. At 30, he published his autobiography and, at 34, he directed and starred as "Victor Frankenstein" in the big-budget adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein (1994), with Robert De Niro as the monster himself. In 1996, Branagh wrote, directed and starred in a lavish adaptation of Hamlet (1996). His superb film acting work also includes a wide range of roles such as in Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Valkyrie (2008) and his stunning portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn (2011), where once again he offered a great performance that was also nominated for an Academy Award.- Producer
- Actor
- Executive
Richard Branson was born on 18 July 1950 in Blackheath, London, England, UK. He is a producer and actor, known for Superman Returns (2006), Around the World in 80 Days (2004) and Electric Dreams (1984). He has been married to Joan Templeman since 20 December 1989. They have three children. He was previously married to Kristen Tomassi.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
John Clements hailed from southern England and was educated at St Paul's School in London and St John's College, Cambridge. His acting aspiration prompted his first stage appearance at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in 1930 in the play "Out of the Blue". Through the 1930s, he continued to develop his acting skills touring with the Ben Greet Company. It was in late 1935 he founded the Intimate Theatre at Palmer's Green in North London. There he provided weekly plays in repertory until 1941. During the war, he worked with Entertainments National Service Association (E.N.S.A) and from 1944 worked with the Old Vic Company headed by Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, while the theater group was resident at the New Theatre in London. Already he had broken in to films with the Anthony Kimmins science fiction story Once in a New Moon (1934). He had other small parts in two historically significant films of cinema: the Alexander Korda production Rembrandt (1936) with Charles Laughton and the unfinished I, Claudius (1937) of Josef Von Sternberg with its stellar British cast. Clements had another small but most memorable role in the adaption of the James Hilton novel Knight Without Armor (1937), as a young communist police official helping English spy Robert Donat and beautiful noblewoman Marlene Dietrich escape from the Russian Revolution. Clements finally got star billing with Richardson, being chosen by director Victor Saville for the rather soap opera-tinged South Riding (1938). The next year, again with Richardson, he had the romantic lead in his most recognized role as the principled coward who redeems himself fourfold in the epic The Four Feathers (1939) by the ever enterprising Korda Brothers. Though his films numbered less than 30, and into the 1940s the roles became decidedly 'B' in production value, his stage appearances numbered 200. And Clements had found himself drawn to directing as well as acting. He wrote, directed, and produced his film Call of the Blood (1948). Also, he functioned as actor-manager-producer in a number of West End theater productions from the mid-1940s into the early 1950s and others productions to 1957, acting with his second wife actress Kay Hammond to critical success. In 1955, he accepted the appointment as Advisor on Drama to Associated Rediffusion Ltd and also as one of the Board of Directors of the Saville Theatre. He was appointed Director of the Chichester Festival Theatre from 1966 to 1973. He had continued small supporting film and a few TV roles intermittently through the 1960s, his last film appearance being a cameo in the Richard Attenborough biographical flick Gandhi (1982). For his distinguished work as actor, director, and producer John Clements was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the Queen's Honours List 1956 and awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 1968 Queen's Honours List for his services to drama.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Robert Atkins was born on 10 August 1886 in Dulwich, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Black Magic (1949), Peg of Old Drury (1935) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1946). He was married to Ethel Gladys Davey and Mary Sumner (actress, 1888-1956). He died on 9 February 1972 in London, England, UK.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Born in 1949, Antony Sher was raised in South Africa before going to London to study at the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art between 1969 and 1971. After performing for the Gay Sweatshop theatrical group in "Thinking Straight" (1975), "The Fork" (1976), and "Stone" (1976), he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982. Three years later, his performance in the title role of "Richard III" won him a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and, in 1997, he won another Laurence Olivier Award for "Stanley".
Although he spent more time onstage, Sher appeared in a number of films and TV series, including The History Man (1981), Shadey (1985), The Young Poisoner's Handbook (1995) and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (1996). He gave a charming performance as Benjamin Disraeli in Mrs. Brown (1997), and played "Dr. Moth" in Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Sher was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Sir Patrick Stewart was born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, England, to Gladys (Barrowclough), a textile worker and weaver, and Alfred Stewart, who was in the army. He was a member of various local drama groups from about age 12. He left school at age 15 to work as a junior reporter on a local paper; he quit when his editor told him he was spending too much time at the theatre and not enough working. Stewart spent a year as a furniture salesman, saving cash to attend drama school. He was accepted by Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 1957.
He made his professional debut in 1959 in the repertory theatre in Lincoln; he worked at the Manchester Library Theatre and a tour around the world with the Old Vic Company followed in the early 1960s. Stewart joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, to begin his 27-year association. Following a spell with the Royal National Theatre in the mid 1980s, he went to Los Angeles, California to star on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), which ran from 1987-1994, playing the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. After the series ended, Stewart reprised his role for a string of successful Star Trek films: Star Trek: Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). Stewart continues to work on the stage and in various films. He was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 2010 Queen's New Year's Honours List for his services to drama.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Music Department
Sir Elton John is one of pop music's great survivors. Born 25 March, 1947, as Reginald Kenneth Dwight, he started to play the piano at the early age of four. At the age of 11, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. His first band was called Bluesology. He later auditioned (unsuccessfully) as lead singer for the progressive rock bands King Crimson and Gentle Giant. Dwight teamed up with lyricist Bernie Taupin and changed his name to Elton John (merging the names of saxophonist Elton Dean and Long John Baldry). The duo wrote songs for Lulu and Roger Cook. In the early 1970s, he recorded the concept album "Tumbleweed Connection." He became the most successful pop artist of the 1970s, and he has survived many different pop fads including punk, the New Romantics and Britpop to remain one of Britain's most internationally acclaimed musicians.
Elton John announced he was a bisexual in 1976, and in 1984, he married Renate Blauel. The marriage lasted four years before he finally came to terms with the fact that he was actually homosexual. In the 1970s and 1980s, he suffered from drug and alcohol addiction and bulimia but came through it. He is well known as a campaigner for AIDS research and he keeps his finger on the pulse of modern music, enjoying artists such as Eminem, Radiohead, Coldplay and Robbie Williams. He was knighted in 1997.- Music Artist
- Composer
- Actor
Sir Paul McCartney is a key figure in contemporary culture as a singer, composer, poet, writer, artist, humanitarian, entrepreneur, and holder of more than 3 thousand copyrights. He is in the "Guinness Book of World Records" for most records sold, most #1s (shared), most covered song, "Yesterday," largest paid audience for a solo concert (350,000+ people, in 1989, in Brazil). He is considered one of the most successful entertainers of all time.
He was born James Paul McCartney on June 18, 1942, in Liverpool General Hospital, where his mother, Mary Patricia (Mohin), was a medical nurse and midwife. His father, James "Jim" McCartney, was a cotton salesman and a pianist leading the Jim Mac's Jazz Band in Liverpool. He has Irish and English ancestry. Young McCartney was raised non-denominational. He studied music and art, and had a happy childhood with one younger brother, Michael. At age 11, he was one of only four students who passed the 11+ exam, known as "the scholarship" in Liverpool, and gained a place at Liverpool Institute for Boys. There he studied from 1953 to 1960, earning A level in English and Art.
At the age of 14, Paul McCartney was traumatized by his mother's sudden death from breast cancer. Shortly afterward, he wrote his first song. In July 1957 he met John Lennon during their performances at a local church fête (festival). McCartney impressed Lennon with his mastery of guitar and singing in a variety of styles. He soon joined Lennon's band, The Quarrymen, and eventually became founding member of The Beatles, with the addition of George Harrison and Pete Best. After a few gigs in Hamburg, Germany, the band returned to Liverpool and played regular gigs at the Cavern during 1961.
In November 1961, they invited Brian Epstein to be their manager, making a written agreement in January 1962. At that time McCartney and Harrison were under 21, so the paper wasn't technically legal, albeit it did not matter to them. What mattered was their genuine trust in Epstein. He improved their image, secured them a record deal with EMI, and replaced drummer Best with Ringo Starr. With a little help from Brian Epstein and George Martin, The Beatles consolidated their talents and mutual stimulation into beautiful teamwork, launching the most successful career in the history of entertainment.
The Beatles contributed to music, film, literature, art, and fashion, made a continuous impact on entertainment, popular culture and the lifestyle of several generations. Music became their ticket to ride around the world. Beatlemania never really ended since its initiation; it became a movable feast in many hearts and minds, a sweet memory of youth, when all you need is love and a little help from a friend to be happy. Their songs and images carrying powerful ideas of love, peace, help, and imagination evoked creativity and liberation that outperformed the rusty Soviet propaganda and contributed to breaking walls in the minds of millions, thus making impact on human history.
All four members of The Beatles were charismatic and individually talented artists, they sparked each other from the beginning. Paul McCartney had the privilege of a better musical education, having studied classical piano and guitar in his childhood. He progressed as a lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, as well as a singer-songwriter. In addition to singing and songwriting, Paul McCartney played bass guitar, acoustic and electric guitars, piano and keyboards, as well as over 40 other musical instruments.
McCartney wrote more popular hits for the Beatles than other members of the band. His songs Yesterday, Let It Be, Hey Jude, Blackbird, All My Loving, Eleanor Rigby, Birthday, I Saw Her Standing There, I Will, Get Back, Carry That Weight, P.S. I Love You, Things We Said Today, "Hello, Goodbye," Two of Us, Why Don't We Do It in the Road?, Helter Skelter, Honey Pie, When I'm 64, Lady Madonna, She's a Woman, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," Mother Nature's Son, Long And Winding Road, Rocky Raccoon, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Fool on the Hill, You Never Give Me Your Money, Your Mother Should Know, The End, Yellow Submarine, and many others are among the Beatles' best hits. Yesterday is considered the most covered song in history with over three thousand versions of it recorded by various artists across the universe.
Since he was a teenager, McCartney honored the agreement that was offered by John Lennon in 1957, about the 50/50 authorship of every song written by either one of them. However, both were teenagers, and technically, being under 21, their oral agreement had no legal power. Still, almost 200 songs by The Beatles are formally credited to both names, regardless of the fact that most of the songs were written individually. The songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney was really working until the mid-60s, when they collaborated in many of their early songs. Their jamming on a piano together led to creation of their first best-selling hit 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' in 1963.
In total, The Beatles created over 240 songs, they recorded many singles and albums, made several films and TV shows. Thousands of memorable pictures popularized their image. In their evolution from beginners to the leaders of entertainment, they learned from many world cultures, absorbed from various styles, and created their own. McCartney's own range of interests spanned from classical music and English folk ballads to Indian raga and other Oriental cultures, and later expanded into psychedelic experiments and classical-sounding compositions. His creative search has been covering a range of styles from jazz and rock to symphonies and choral music, and to cosmopolitan cross-cultural and cross-genre compositions.
Epstein's 1967 death hurt all four members of The Beatles, as they lost their creative manager. Evolution of each member's creativity and musicianship also led to individual career ambitions, however, their legacy as The Beatles remained the main driving force in their individual careers ever since. McCartney and The Beatles made impact on human history, because their influence has been liberating for generations of nowhere men living in misery beyond the Iron Curtain.
Something in their songs and images appealed to everybody who wanted to become free as a bird. Their songs carrying powerful ideas of real love, peace, help, imagination and freedom evoked creativity and contributed to breaking chains and walls in the minds of millions. The Beatles expressed themselves in beautiful and liberating words of love, happiness, freedom, and revolution, and carried those messages to people across the universe. Their songs and images helped many freedom-loving people to come together for revolutions in Prague and Warsaw, Beijing and Bucharest, Berlin and Moscow. The Beatles has been an inspiration for those who take the long and winding road to freedom.
McCartney was 28 when he started his solo career, and formed his new band, Wings. His first solo album, "McCartney," was a #1 hit and spawned the evergreen ballad "Maybe I'm Amazed", yet critical reaction was mixed. He continued to release music with Wings, that eventually became one of the most commercially successful groups of the 70s. "Band on the Run" won two Grammy Awards and remained the Wings' most lauded work. The 1977 release "Mull of Kintyre" stayed at #1 in the UK for nine weeks, and was highest selling single in the UK for seven years. In 1978 McCartney's theme "Rockestra" won him another Grammy Award. In 1979, together with Elvis Costello, he organized Concerts for the People of Kampuchea. In 1979, McCartney released his solo album "Wonderful Christmastime" which remained popular ever since.
In 1980 McCartney was arrested in Tokyo, Japan, for marijuana possession, and after a ten-day stint in jail, he was released to a media firestorm. He retreated into seclusion after the arrest, and was comforted by his wife Linda. Yet he had another traumatic experience when his ex-band-mate, John Lennon, was shot dead by a crazed fan near his home in New York City on December 8, 1980. McCartney did not play any live concerts for some time because he was nervous that he would be "the next" to be murdered.
After almost a year of absence from the music scene, McCartney returned in 1982 with the album "Tug of War," which was well received by public and enjoyed great critical acclaim. He continued a successful career as a solo artist, collaborated with wife Linda McCartney, and writers such as Elvis Costello. During the 80s, McCartney released such hits as 'No More Lonely Nights' and his first compilation, "All the Best." In 1989, he started his first concert tour since the John Lennon's murder.
In 1994, the three surviving members of The Beatles, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr, reunited and produced Lennon's previously unknown song "Free as a Bird." It was preserved by Yoko Ono on a tape recording made by Lennon in 1977. The song was re-arranged and re-mixed by George Martin at the Abbey Road Studios with the voices of three surviving members. The Beatles Anthology TV documentary series was watched by 420 million people in 1995.
During the 1990s McCartney concentrated on composing classical works for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, such as "The Liverpool Oratorio" involving a choir and symphony, and "A Leaf" solo-piano project, both released in 1995. That same year he was working on a new pop album, "Flaming Pie," when his wife Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and caring for his wife during her illness meant only sporadic public appearances during that time. The album was released in 1997 to both critical and commercial success, debuting at #2 on both the UK and US pop charts. That same year he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II as Sir Paul McCartney for his services to music.
In April 1998, Linda McCartney, his beloved wife of almost 30 years, mother of their four children, and his steady partner in music, died of breast cancer. McCartney suffered from a severe depression and undergone medical treatment. He spent much of the next year away from the public eye, emerging only to campaign on behalf of his late wife for animal rights and vegetarian causes.
He eventually returned to the studio, releasing an album of rock n'roll covers in 1999. "Run Devil Run" made both Entertainment Weekly and USA Today's year-end top ten lists. McCartney also slowly returned to the public spotlight with the release of his another classical album, "Working Classical" in November 1999, in recording by the London Symphony Orchestra. His 2000 release "A Garland for Linda" was a choral tribute album, which raised funds to aid cancer survivors.
In 2000 he was invited by Heather Mills, a disabled ex-model, to her 32nd birthday. McCartney wrote songs dedicated to her, he and Mills developed a romantic relationship and became engaged in 2001. However, the year brought him a cascade of traumatic experiences. On September 11, 2001, Paul McCartney was sitting on a plane in New York when the World Trade Center tragedy occurred in front of his eyes, and he was able to witness the events from his seat. Yet there was another sadness, as his former band-mate George Harrison died of cancer in November, 2001.
Recuperating from the stressful year, McCartney received the 2002 Academy Award nomination for the title song to the movie Vanilla Sky (2001), and also went on his first concert tour in several years. In June, 2002, Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills married in a castle in Monaghan, Ireland. Their daughter, Beatrice Milly McCartney, was born in October 2003. Four years later, the high profile marriage ended in divorce, after a widely publicized litigation. "Whenever you're going through difficult times, I'm at the moment, it's really cool to be able to escape into music" says Paul McCartney.
In 2003 Paul McCartney rocked the Red Square in Moscow with his show "Back in USSR" which was attended by his former opponents from the former Soviet KGB, including the Russian president Vladimir Putin himself, who invited McCartney to be the guest of honor in the Kremlin. In 2004 Paul McCartney received a birthday present from the Russian president. In June 2004, he and Heather Mills-McCartney stayed as special guests at suburban Royal Palaces of Russian Tsars in St. Petersburg, Russia. There he staged a spectacular show near the Tsar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg where the Communist Revolution took place, just imagine.
In 2005 the Entertainment magazine poll named The Beatles the most iconic entertainers of the 20th Century. In 2006, the guitar on which Paul McCartney played his first chords and impressed John Lennon, was sold at an auction for over $600,000.
On June 18, 2006, Paul McCartney celebrated his 64th birthday, as in his song "when I'm Sixty-Four." McCartney's celebrity status, made it a cultural milestone for a generation of those born in the baby-boom era who grew up with the music of The Beatles during the 1960s. The prophetic message in the song has been intertwined with McCartney's personal life and his career.
In 2007 McCartney left his longtime label, EMI, and signed with Los Angeles based Hear Music. He learned to play mandolin to create a refreshing feeling for his latest album "Memory Almost Full," then appeared in Apple Computer's commercial for iPod+iTunes to promote the album. In June 2007 McCartney appeared together with Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, Olivia Harrison and Guy Laliberté in a live broadcast from the "Revolution" Lounge at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
His 3-DVD set "The McCartney Years" with over 40 music videos and hours of Historic Live Performances was released in November 2007. His classical album "Ecco Cor Meum" (aka.. Behold My Heart), recorded with the Academy of St. Martin of the Fields and the boys of King's college Choir, was voted Classical Album of the Year in 2007. That same year, Paul McCartney began dating Nancy Shevell. The couple married in 2011, in London. Sir Paul's "On the Run Tour" once again took him flying across world from July through December 2011 giving sold out concerts in the USA, Canada, UK, United Arab Emirates, Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
In July 2012, Paul McCartney rocked the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. He delivered a live performance of The Beatles's timeless hit "Hey Jude" and engaged the crowd of people from all over the world to join his band in a sing along finale. The show was seen by a live audience of close to 80000 people at the Olympic Park Stadium in addition to an estimated TV audience of two billion people worldwide.
On the long and winding road of his life and career, Sir Paul McCartney has been a highly respected entertainer and internationally regarded public figure.- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Producer
Tom Stoppard was born on 3 July 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]. He is a writer and producer, known for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Brazil (1985) and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990). He has been married to Sabrina Guinness since 2014. He was previously married to Miriam Stoppard and Jose Ingle.- Actor
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Bob Geldof was frontman for the late '70s to mid '80s Irish punk rock band the Boomtown Rats. He also conceived and co-wrote Band Aid's tune "Do They Know It's Christmas?" with his friend, musician Midge Ure of Ultravox, which became the 1984 Christmas number one in the UK and the best-selling British pop single until that time. Band Aid later evolved into Live Aid (1985), the first international real-time concert, broadcast across the globe for two days. Band Aid and Live Aid (1985) were created to bring relief to the starving in Ethiopia. Geldof was knighted by the British Conservative government in 1986 for his achievement.- Producer
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One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, producer or writer since launching the summer blockbuster with Jaws (1975), and he has done more to define popular film-making since the mid-1970s than anyone else.
Steven Allan Spielberg was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Leah Frances (Posner), a concert pianist and restaurateur, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer who worked in computer development. His parents were both born to Russian Jewish immigrant families. Steven spent his younger years in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, and later Saratoga, California. He went to California State University Long Beach, but dropped out to pursue his entertainment career. Among his early directing efforts were Battle Squad (1961), which combined World War II footage with footage of an airplane on the ground that he makes you believe is moving. He also directed Escape to Nowhere (1961), which featured children as World War Two soldiers, including his sister Anne Spielberg, and The Last Gun (1959), a western. All of these were short films. The next couple of years, Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would portend his future career in movies. In 1964, he directed Firelight (1964), a movie about aliens invading a small town. In 1967, he directed Slipstream (1967), which was unfinished. However, in 1968, he directed Amblin' (1968), which featured the desert prominently, and not the first of his movies in which the desert would feature. Amblin' also became the name of his production company, which turned out such classics as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg had a unique and classic early directing project, Duel (1971), with Dennis Weaver. In the early 1970s, Spielberg was working on TV, directing among others such series as Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and Murder by the Book (1971). All of his work in television and short films, as well as his directing projects, were just a hint of the wellspring of talent that would dazzle audiences all over the world.
Spielberg's first major directorial effort was The Sugarland Express (1974), with Goldie Hawn, a film that marked him as a rising star. It was his next effort, however, that made him an international superstar among directors: Jaws (1975). This classic shark attack tale started the tradition of the summer blockbuster or, at least, he was credited with starting the tradition. His next film was the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a unique and original UFO story that remains a classic. In 1978, Spielberg produced his first film, the forgettable I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and followed that effort with Used Cars (1980), a critically acclaimed, but mostly forgotten, Kurt Russell/Jack Warden comedy about devious used-car dealers. Spielberg hit gold yet one more time with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with Harrison Ford taking the part of Indiana Jones. Spielberg produced and directed two films in 1982. The first was Poltergeist (1982), but the highest-grossing movie of all time up to that point was the alien story E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg also helped pioneer the practice of product placement. The concept, while not uncommon, was still relatively low-key when Spielberg raised the practice to almost an art form with his famous (or infamous) placement of Reese's Pieces in "E.T." Spielberg was also one of the pioneers of the big-grossing special-effects movies, like "E.T." and "Close Encounters", where a very strong emphasis on special effects was placed for the first time on such a huge scale. In 1984, Spielberg followed up "Raiders" with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), which was a commercial success but did not receive the critical acclaim of its predecessor. As a producer, Spielberg took on many projects in the 1980s, such as The Goonies (1985), and was the brains behind the little monsters in Gremlins (1984). He also produced the cartoon An American Tail (1986), a quaint little animated classic. His biggest effort as producer in 1985, however, was the blockbuster Back to the Future (1985), which made Michael J. Fox an instant superstar. As director, Spielberg took on the book The Color Purple (1985), with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, with great success. In the latter half of the 1980s, he also directed Empire of the Sun (1987), a mixed success for the occasionally erratic Spielberg. Success would not escape him for long, though.
The late 1980s found Spielberg's projects at the center of pop-culture yet again. In 1988, he produced the landmark animation/live-action film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The next year proved to be another big one for Spielberg, as he produced and directed Always (1989) as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Back to the Future Part II (1989). All three of the films were box-office and critical successes. Also, in 1989, he produced the little known comedy-drama Dad (1989), with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson, which got mostly mixed results. Spielberg has also had an affinity for animation and has been a strong voice in animation in the 1990s. Aside from producing the landmark "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", he produced the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), Animaniacs (1993), Pinky and the Brain (1995), Freakazoid! (1995), Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain (1998), Family Dog (1993) and Toonsylvania (1998). Spielberg also produced other cartoons such as The Land Before Time (1988), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), Casper (1995) (the live action version) as well as the live-action version of The Flintstones (1994), where he was credited as "Steven Spielrock". Spielberg also produced many Roger Rabbit short cartoons, and many Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs and Tiny Toons specials. Spielberg was very active in the early 1990s, as he directed Hook (1991) and produced such films as the cute fantasy Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). He also produced the unusual comedy thriller Arachnophobia (1990), Back to the Future Part III (1990) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). While these movies were big successes in their own right, they did not quite bring in the kind of box office or critical acclaim as previous efforts. In 1993, Spielberg directed Jurassic Park (1993), which for a short time held the record as the highest grossing movie of all time, but did not have the universal appeal of his previous efforts. Big box-office spectacles were not his only concern, though. He produced and directed Schindler's List (1993), a stirring film about the Holocaust. He won best director at the Oscars, and also got Best Picture. In the mid-90s, he helped found the production company DreamWorks, which was responsible for many box-office successes.
As a producer, he was very active in the late 90s, responsible for such films as The Mask of Zorro (1998), Men in Black (1997) and Deep Impact (1998). However, it was on the directing front that Spielberg was in top form. He directed and produced the epic Amistad (1997), a spectacular film that was shorted at the Oscars and in release due to the fact that its release date was moved around so much in late 1997. The next year, however, produced what many believe was one of the best films of his career: Saving Private Ryan (1998), a film about World War Two that is spectacular in almost every respect. It was stiffed at the Oscars, losing best picture to Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Spielberg produced a series of films, including Evolution (2001), The Haunting (1999) and Shrek (2001). he also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993), which were financially but not particularly critical successes. In 2001, he produced a mini-series about World War Two that definitely *was* a financial and critical success: Band of Brothers (2001), a tale of an infantry company from its parachuting into France during the invasion to the Battle of the Bulge. Also in that year, Spielberg was back in the director's chair for A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a movie with a message and a huge budget. It did reasonably at the box office and garnered varied reviews from critics.
Spielberg has been extremely active in films there are many other things he has done as well. He produced the short-lived TV series SeaQuest 2032 (1993), an anthology series entitled Amazing Stories (1985), created the video-game series "Medal of Honor" set during World War Two, and was a starting producer of ER (1994). Spielberg, if you haven't noticed, has a great interest in World War Two. He and Tom Hanks collaborated on Shooting War: World War II Combat Cameramen (2000), a documentary about World War II combat photographers, and he produced a documentary about the Holocaust called Eyes of the Holocaust (2000). With all of this to Spielberg's credit, it's no wonder that he's looked at as one of the greatest ever figures in entertainment.- Producer
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Pioneering radio and TV reporter who was the dominant figure in American broadcast journalism during its early years. His dramatic, in-person coverage of the Anschluss (German union with Austria), the 1939 German-Soviet invasion of Poland, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, brought him widespread renown among the public and eternal esteem among his fellow journalists.- Director
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Trevor Nunn was born on 14 January 1940 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, UK. He is a director and writer, known for Twelfth Night (1996), Les Misérables (2012) and Cats (2019). He was previously married to Imogen Stubbs, Sharon Lee Hill and Janet Suzman.- Actor
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Peter Blake was born on 25 June 1932 in Dartford, Kent, England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for For the Sake of Appearance (1973), Battle of Britain (2000) and Eric Clapton: 24 Nights (1991). He was previously married to Jann Haworth.- Actor
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George Shearing was born on 13 August 1919 in Battersea, London, England, UK. He was an actor and composer, known for Bedtime Stories (2008), Green Book (2018) and The Muppets (2011). He was married to Eleanor Geffert and Beatrice Bayes. He died on 14 February 2011 in New York City, New York, USA.- Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave is a retired British rower who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000. He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships golds. He is regarded as one of Britain's greatest-ever Olympians, the most successful male rower in Olympic history, and the only man to have won gold medals at five Olympic Games in an endurance sport.
In 2002, Redgrave was ranked number 36 in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. As of 2012 he is the third most decorated British Olympian after Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Bradley Wiggins. He has carried the British flag at the opening of the Olympic Games on two occasions. In 2011 he received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year - Lifetime Achievement Award. - Actor
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Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre, invited by Laurence Olivier, who could see the talent in Hopkins. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967).
From this moment on, he enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. Many successes came later, and Hopkins' remarkable acting style reached the four corners of the world. In 1977, he appeared in two major films: A Bridge Too Far (1977) with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell. In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980). Two good television literature adaptations followed: Othello (1981) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982). In 1987 he was awarded with the Commander of the order of the British Empire. This year was also important in his cinematic life, with 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), acclaimed by specialists. In 1993, he was knighted.
In the 1990s, Hopkins acted in movies like Desperate Hours (1990) and Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). His most remarkable film, however, was The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He also got a B.A.F.T.A. for this role.- Composer
- Music Department
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Antony Hopkins was born on 21 March 1921 in Bush Hill Park, Edmonton, London, England, UK. He was a composer and writer, known for Decameron Nights (1953), Billy Budd (1962) and Cast a Dark Shadow (1955). He was married to Beatrix Taylor and Muriel Alison Purves. He died on 6 May 2014 in Ashridge, Hertfordshire, England, UK.- Actor
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Acting chameleon Sir Tom Courtenay, along with Sir Alan Bates and Albert Finney, became a front-runner in an up-and-coming company of rebel upstarts who created quite a stir in British "kitchen sink" cinema during the early '60s. An undying love for the theatre, however, had Courtenay channeling a different course from the aforementioned greats and he never, by his own choosing, attained comparable cinematic stardom.
The gaunt and glum, fair-haired actor was born Thomas Daniel Courtenay into modest surroundings on February 25, 1937, in Hull, East Yorkshire, England, the son of Thomas Henry Courtenay, a ship painter, and his wife, Anne Eliza (née Quest). Graduating from Kingston High School there, he trained in drama at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. His reputation as an actor grew almost immediately with his professional debut in 1960 as Konstantin in "The Seagull" at the Old Vic. Following tours in Scotland and London with the play, Tom performed in "Henry IV, Part I" and "Twelfth Night" (also at the Old Vic) before assuming the title role of Billy from Albert Finney in the critically acclaimed drama "Billy Liar" at the Cambridge Theatre in 1961. The story, which tells of a Yorkshire man who creates a fantasy world to shield himself from his mundane middle-class woes, was the initial spark in Tom's rise to fame.
The recognition he received landed him squarely into the heap of things as a new wave of "angry young men" were taking over British cinema during the swinging '60s. Singled out for his earlier stage work at RADA, he was eventually handed the title role in the war film Private Potter (1963), but it was his second movie that clinched stardom. Winning the role of Colin Smith in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Courtenay invested everything he had in this bruising portrayal of youthful desolation and rebellion. As a reform school truant whose solitary sentencing for robbing a bakery leads to a reawakening and subsequent recognition as a long distance runner, he was awarded a "Promising Newcomer" award from the British Film Academy, It was Courtenay then, and not Finney, who recreated his stage triumph as Billy Fisher in the stark film version of Billy Liar (1963). British Film Academy nominations came his way for this and for his fourth movie role in King & Country (1964). Vivid contributions to the films King Rat (1965), the ever-popular Doctor Zhivago (1965), which earned him his first Oscar nomination, and The Night of the Generals (1967) followed.
Despite all this cinematic glory, Courtenay did not enjoy the process of movie-making and reverted to his first passion -- the theatre -- beginning in 1966. Displaying his versatility with roles in such classic works as "The Cherry Orchard," "Macbeth" (as Malcolm), "Charley's Aunt," "The Playboy of the Western World," "Hamlet," "She Stoops to Conquer," "Peer Gynt" and "Arms and the Man," he still found scattered work in films, including The Day the Fish Came Out (1967), A Dandy in Aspic (1968) and Otley (1969), but none matched his earlier brilliance. In 1971 he took a self-imposed, decade-long sabbatical from filming.
Forming a sturdy association with the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester that would last over a decade, he continued to impress with lead roles in "The Rivals" and "The Prince of Homburg". Following his huge success as the libidinous Norman in "The Norman Conquests" in London, he made his Broadway debut with "Otherwise Engaged" (1977) and earned a Tony nomination and Drama League Award in the process. It was his second Tony-nominated triumph in "The Dresser" in 1980-1981, however, that lured Courtenay back to films when he was asked to recreate the role for the large screen. The Dresser (1983) co-starred Tom as the mincing personal assistant to an appallingly self-destructive stage star played by Albert Finney (Paul Rogers played the role with Tom on Broadway) who struggles to get the actor through a rigorous performance of "King Lear". Both British actors received Oscar nominations but lost the 1984 "Best Actor" award to American Robert Duvall.
Since then Tom has appeared on occasion in TV and film roles -- usually in support. A few standouts include the films Let Him Have It (1991), Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999), Last Orders (2001) and Nicholas Nickleby (2002), as well as the TV mini-series A Rather English Marriage (1998), for which he earned a British Television Award, Little Dorrit (2008) and the series Unforgotten (2015) for which he won a BAFTA award.
Over the years Sir Tom has excelled in solo stage shows as well. As a chronic alcoholic in "Moscow Stations," he won the 1994 London Critics Circle Theatre and London Evening Standard Theatre awards for "Best Actor." In 2002, he wrote the one-man show "Pretending To Be Me," based on the letters and writings of poet Philip Larkin. In the past decade he has continued to distinguish himself on both the classical ("King Lear," "Uncle Vanya") and contemporary ("Art") stages.
Courtenay's marriage to actress Cheryl Kennedy lasted about a decade (from 1973 to 1982). In 1988 he married Isabel Crossley, a stage manager at the Royal Exchange Theatre in London. He has no children from either marriage. In 1999, Sir Tom Courtenay was awarded an honorary doctorate from Hull University and in 2000 published his memoir "Dear Tom: Letters From Home", which earned strong reviews. Knighthood came a year after that.- Actor
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Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.
One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsingør), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).
There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.
In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.
More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).- Costume Designer
- Art Department
- Camera and Electrical Department
Cecil Beaton was born on 14 January 1904 in London, England, UK. He was a costume designer, known for My Fair Lady (1964), Gigi (1958) and Anna Karenina (1948). He died on 18 January 1980 in Broadchalke, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, UK.- Producer
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David's father was the Rev. W.J. Parradine Frost who died in 1967, his mother Mona, born in 1903, lived in Beccles, Suffolk. He had a sister, Mrs Margaret Bill who lived in Whitby. He owned 'Sweet Briar Cottage in Eastbridge near Theberton, Norfolk, a Georgian town house in Knightsbridge, London and a hotel suite in New York. His marriage to actress Lynne Frederick in 1981 lasted 6 months.- Actor
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Richard Attenborough, Baron Attenborough of Richmond-upon-Thames, was born in Cambridge, England, the son of Mary (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College and wrote a standard text on Anglo-Saxon law. The family later moved to Leicester where his father was appointed Principal of the university while Richard was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
His film career began with a role as a deserting sailor in In Which We Serve (1942), a part that contributed to his being typecast for many years as a coward in films like Dulcimer Street (1948), Operation Disaster (1950) and his breakthrough role as a psychopathic young gangster in the film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, Brighton Rock (1948). During World War II, Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force.
He worked prolifically in British films for the next 30 years, and in the 1950s appeared in several successful comedies for John Boulting and Roy Boulting, including Private's Progress (1956) and I'm All Right Jack (1959). Early in his stage career, Attenborough starred in the London West End production of Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap", which went on to become one of the world's longest-running stage productions. Both he and his wife were among the original cast members of the production, which opened in 1952 and (as of 2007) is still running.
In the 1960s, he expanded his range of character roles in films such as Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) and Guns at Batasi (1964), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the regimental Sergeant Major. He appeared in the ensemble cast of The Great Escape (1963), as Squadron Leader "Roger Bartlett" ("Big X"), the head of the escape committee.
In 1967 and 1968, he won back-to-back Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor, the first time for The Sand Pebbles (1966), starring Steve McQueen, and the second time for Doctor Dolittle (1967), starring Rex Harrison. He would win another Golden Globe for Best Director, for Gandhi (1982), in 1983. Six years prior to "Gandhi", he played the ruthless "Gen. Outram" in Indian director Satyajit Ray's period piece, The Chess Players (1977). He has never been nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category.
He took no acting roles following his appearance in Otto Preminger's The Human Factor (1979), until his appearance as the eccentric developer "John Hammond" in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993). The following year, he starred as "Kris Kringle" in Miracle on 34th Street (1994), a remake of the 1947 classic. Since then, he has made occasional appearances in supporting roles, including the historical drama, Elizabeth (1998), as "Sir William Cecil".
In the late 1950s, Attenborough formed a production company, "Beaver Films", with Bryan Forbes and began to build a profile as a producer on projects, including The League of Gentlemen (1960), The Angry Silence (1960) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961), also appearing in the first two of these as an actor.
His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), and his acting appearances became more sporadic - the most notable being his portrayal of serial killer "John Christie" in 10 Rillington Place (1971). He later directed two epic period films: Young Winston (1972), based on the early life of Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far (1977), an all-star account of Operation Market Garden in World War II. He won the 1982 Academy Award for Directing for his historical epic, Gandhi (1982), a project he had been attempting to get made for many years. As the film's producer, he also won the Academy Award for Best Picture. His most recent films, as director and producer, include Chaplin (1992), starring Robert Downey Jr. as Charles Chaplin, and Shadowlands (1993), based on the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. Both films starred Anthony Hopkins, who also appeared in three other films for Attenborough: "Young Winston", "A Bridge Too Far" and the thriller, Magic (1978).
Attenborough also directed the screen version of the hit Broadway musical, "A Chorus Line" (A Chorus Line (1985)), and the apartheid drama, Cry Freedom (1987), based on the experiences of Donald Woods. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films. His most recent film as director was another biographical film, Grey Owl (1999), starring Pierce Brosnan.
Attenborough is the President of RADA, Chairman of Capital Radio, President of BAFTA, President of the Gandhi Foundation, and President of the British National Film and Television School. He is also a vice patron of the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund.
He is also the patron of the UWC movement (United World Colleges), whereby he continually contributes greatly to the colleges that are part of the organization. He has frequented the United World College of Southern Africa(UWCSA) Waterford Kamhlaba. His wife and he founded the "Richard and Sheila Attenborough Visual Arts Center". He also founded the "Jane Holland Creative Center for Learning" at Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland in memory of his daughter, who died in the Tsunami on Boxing Day, 2004. He passionately believes in education, primarily education that does not judge upon color, race, creed or religion. His attachment to Waterford is his passion for non-racial education, which were the grounds on which Waterford Kamhlaba was founded. Waterford was one of his inspirations for directing Cry Freedom (1987), based on the life of Steve Biko.
He was elected to the post of Chancellor of the University of Sussex on 20 March 1998, replacing the Duke of Richmond and Gordon. A lifelong supporter of Chelsea Football Club, Attenborough served as a director of the club from 1969-1982 and, since 1993, has held the honorary position of Life Vice President. He is also the head of the consortium, "Dragon International", which is constructing a film and television studio complex in Llanilid, Wales, often referred to as "Valleywood".
In 1967, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He was knighted in 1976 and, in 1993, he was made a life peer as Baron Attenborough, of Richmond-upon-Thames in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
On 13 July 2006, Attenborough and his brother, David Attenborough, were awarded the titles of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University". Lord Attenborough is also listed as an Honorary Fellow of Bangor University for his continued efforts to film making.
Attenborough has been married to English actress Sheila Sim, since 1945. They had three children. In December 2004, his elder daughter, Jane Holland, as well as her daughter Lucy and her mother-in-law, also named Jane, were killed in the tsunami caused by the Indian Ocean earthquake. A memorial service was held on 8 March 2005, and Attenborough read a lesson at the national memorial service on 11 May 2005. His grandson, Samuel Holland, and granddaughter, Alice Holland, also read in the service.
Attenborough's father was principal of University College, Leicester, now the city's university. This has resulted in a long association with the university, with Lord Attenborough a patron. A commemorative plaque was placed on the floor of Richmond Parish Church. The university's "Richard Attenborough Centre for Disability and the Arts", which opened in 1997, is named in his Honor.
His son, Michael Attenborough, is also a director. He has two younger brothers, the famous naturalist Sir David Attenborough and John Attenborough, who has made a career in the motor trade.
He has collected Pablo Picasso ceramics since the 1950s. More than 100 items went on display at the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester in 2007; the exhibition is dedicated to his family members lost in the tsunami.- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Born 8 May 1926, the younger brother of actor Lord Richard Attenborough. He never expressed a wish to act and, instead, studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, graduating in 1947, the year he began his two years National Service in the Royal Navy. In 1952, he joined BBC Television at Alexandra Palace and, in 1954, began his famous "Zoo Quest" series. When not "Zoo Questing", he presented political broadcasts, archaeological quizzes, short stories, gardening and religious programmes.
1964 saw the start of BBC2, Britain's third TV channel, with Michael Peacock as its Controller. A year later, Peacock was promoted to BBC1 and Attenborough became Controller of BBC2. As such, he was responsible for the introduction of colour television into Britain, and also for bringing Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) to the world.
In 1969, he was appointed Director of Programmes with editorial responsibility for both the BBC's television networks. Eight years behind a desk was too much for him, and he resigned in 1973 to return to programme making. First came "Eastwards with Attenborough", a natural history series set in South East Asia, then The Tribal Eye (1975) , examining tribal art. In 1979, he wrote and presented all 13 parts of Life on Earth (1979) (then the most ambitious series ever produced by the BBC Natural History Unit). This became a trilogy, with The Living Planet (1984) and The Trials of Life (1990).
His services to television were recognised in 1985, and he was knighted to become Sir David Attenborough. The two shorter series, "The First Eden" and "Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives" were fitted around 1993's spectacular Life in the Freezer (1993), a celebration of Antarctica and 1995's epic The Private Life of Plants (1995), which he wrote and presented. Filming the beautiful birds of paradise for Attenborough in Paradise (1996) in 1996 fulfilled a lifelong ambition, putting him near his favourite bird. Entering his seventies, he narrated the award-winning Wildlife Specials (1995), marking 40 years of the BBC Natural History Unit. But, he was not slowing down, as he completed the epic 10-part series for the BBC, The Life of Birds (1998) along with writing and presenting the three-part series State of the Planet (2000) as well as The Life of Mammals (2002). Once broadcast, he began planning his next projects.
He has received honorary degrees from many universities across the world, and is patron or supporter of many charitable organisations, including acting as Patron of the World Land Trust, which buys rain forest and other lands to preserve them and the animals that live there.- Actor
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- Soundtrack
Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).
Guinness is really most remembered for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy for which he receive a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In the 1970s, Guinness made regular television appearances in Britain, including the role of George Smiley in the serialisations of two novels by John le Carré: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness was also one of three British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who made the transition from Shakespearean theatre in England to Hollywood blockbusters immediately after the Second World War.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Sir Peter Jackson made history with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, becoming the first person to direct three major feature films simultaneously. The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King were nominated for and collected a slew of awards from around the globe, with The Return of the King receiving his most impressive collection of awards. This included three Academy Awards® (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture), two Golden Globes (Best Director and Best Motion Picture-Drama), three BAFTAs (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film and Viewers' Choice), a Directors Guild Award, a Producers Guild Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award.
As a follow up to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 2005, Jackson directed, wrote, and produced King Kong, for Universal Pictures. The film grossed over $500 million and won three Oscars®.
Jackson previously received widespread acclaim for his 1994 feature Heavenly Creatures, which received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Screenplay. Other film credits include The Frighteners, starring Michael J. Fox; the adult puppet feature Meet the Feebles; and Braindead, which won 16 international science fiction awards, including the Saturn. Jackson also co-directed the television documentary Forgotten Silver, which also hit the film festival circuit.
Jackson directed the Academy Award®-nominated The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of the acclaimed best-selling novel by Alice Sebold and produced the worldwide sci-fi hit District 9. He was a producer on Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in 2011, with two more films set to come out in the future.
His most recent films include producer of 2018's action film Mortal Engines, based on a post-apocalyptic world where cities ride on wheels and consume each other to survive. Following Mortal Engines, he produced They Shall Not Grow Old, a documentary on World War I with never-before-seen footage. BAFTA nominated the film for Best Documentary, and it won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing from the Motion Picture Sound Editors.
Jackson's next project is the music documentary The Beatles: Get Back, which he directed and produced, due to be released August, 2021.
Jackson works closely with partner Dame Fran Walsh, with whom he shares his writing and producing credits, as well as a family. Jackson has a special interest in WWI memorabilia and is the proud owner of several aircraft from that era.- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Actor
Michael Balcon started in films as a distributor, then a producer from the early 1920s, helping to launch the career of Alfred Hitchcock. In the 1930s, Balcon was prominent in building up a huge annual production programme of films for both Gainsborough and Gaumont-British. Head of MGM-British, 1936-38, then in charge of production at Ealing. Knighted in 1948. After Ealing, produced some films independently (A Boy Ten Feet Tall (1963)), and helped form Bryanston Films, a group of independent film makers, including several ex-Ealing colleagues such as Basil Dearden and Michael Relph. After a frustrating period as Chairman of British Lion (1964-68), in which he found it impossible to fulfill his commitment to support a continuity of indigenous production, he became Chairman of the British Institute's Experimental Film Fund before retiring in 1972.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Sir Michael Gambon was born in Cabra, Dublin, Ireland, to Mary (Hoare), a seamstress, and Edward Gambon, an engineer. After joining the National Theatre, under the Artistic Directorship of Sir Laurence Olivier, Gambon went on to appear in a number of leading roles in plays written by Alan Ayckbourn. His career was catapulted in 1980 when he took the lead role in John Dexter's production of "Galileo". Since then, Gambon has regularly appeared at the Royal National Theatre and the RSC. Roles include, King Lear, Othello, Mark Anthony and Volpone. He was described by the late Sir Ralph Richardson as being "The Great Gambon" and he is now considered to be one of the British theatre's leading lights. He was made a CBE in 1992.- Writer
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- Additional Crew
He was educated at Eton College and at Oxford University (Christs Church), Oxford, England. He gained the rank of Lieutenant in the service of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He fought in the Second World War between 1939 and 1945. He wrote the book "Sub-Lieutenant", published in 1942. He graduated from Oxford University in 1948 with the degree of Master of Arts (M.A.). He was the librarian between 1948-49 at Ashbridge College.
He wrote "Nelson's Band of Brothers" (published 1951), "One Man's Meat" (published 1953), and "Murder Story" (published 1954). He was a newscaster for ITN between 1956 and 1958. He held the office of Chancellor of the Navy Records Society between 1957 and 1960. In 1958 he fought the Rochdale by-election, as a Liberal candidate. In 1959 he fought for the Rochdale seat in the general election, again as a Liberal candidate.
He was a commentator and TV presenter for BBC, ITA, ATV, ABC and Yorkshire TV, on various show including Panorama, Face the Press, 24 Hours, Midweek, and Newsday between 1960 and 1979. He wrote the book "Ten Rillington Place" (which was published in 1961), "The Trial of Stephen Ward" (published 1964), "Very Lovely People" (published 1969). "Pursuit: the chase and sinking of the Bismarck" (published 1974), "A Presumption of Innocence: the amazing case of Patrick Meehan" (published 1975), "The Portland Spy Case" (published 1979), "Menace: the life and death of the Tirpitz" (published 1979), "Wicked Beyond Belief" (published 1980), "The Airman and the Carpenter" (published 1985), "On MY Way to the Club" (published 1989), "Euthanasia: the good death" (published 1990), "Truth to Tell" (published 1991), and "In Bed With an Elephant: a journey through Scotland's past and present" (published 1995).- Actor
- Producer
Widely regarded as one of the greatest stage and screen actors both in his native UK and internationally, the unparalleled Nigel Hawthorne was born in Coventry, England on 5 April 1929, raised in South Africa and returned to the UK in the 1950s with his extensive work as a great gentleman of acting following during the decade as well as in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. His portrayal of 'Sir Humphrey Appleby' in the BBC comedy Yes Minister (1980) won him international acclaim in the 1980s. In 1992, he was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for his sublime interpretation of 'George III' in Alan Bennett's hit stage play, "The Madness of King George III" and he was also nominated for an Academy Award of Best Actor in a Leading Role in its brilliant film adaptation The Madness of King George (1994), both of them exquisitely directed by Nicholas Hytner.- Actor
- Director
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Herbert Beerbohm Tree was born on 17 December 1852 in Kensington, London, England, UK. He was an actor and director, known for King John (1899), Henry VIII (1911) and The Tempest (1905). He was married to Lady Tree. He died on 2 July 1917 in Marylebone, London, England, UK.- Director
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Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.- Writer
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Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a funny walk.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in Walworth, London, England on April 16, 1889, to Hannah Harriet Pedlingham (Hill) and Charles Chaplin, both music hall performers, who were married on June 22, 1885. After Charles Sr. separated from Hannah to perform in New York City, Hannah then tried to resurrect her stage career. Unfortunately, her singing voice had a tendency to break at unexpected moments. When this happened, the stage manager spotted young Charlie standing in the wings and led him on stage, where five-year-old Charlie began to sing a popular tune. Charlie and his half-brother, Syd Chaplin spent their lives in and out of charity homes and workhouses between their mother's bouts of insanity. Hannah was committed to Cane Hill Asylum in May 1903 and lived there until 1921, when Chaplin moved her to California.
Chaplin began his official acting career at the age of eight, touring with the Eight Lancashire Lads. At age 18, he began touring with Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, joining them on the troupe's 1910 United States tour. He traveled west to California in December 1913 and signed on with Keystone Studios' popular comedy director Mack Sennett, who had seen Chaplin perform on stage in New York. Charlie soon wrote his brother Syd, asking him to become his manager. While at Keystone, Chaplin appeared in and directed 35 films, starring as the Little Tramp in nearly all.
In November 1914, he left Keystone and signed on at Essanay, where he made 15 films. In 1916, he signed on at Mutual and made 12 films. In June 1917, Chaplin signed up with First National Studios, after which he built Chaplin Studios. In 1919, he and Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists (UA).
Chaplin's life and career was full of scandal and controversy. His first big scandal was during World War I, at which time his loyalty to England, his home country, was questioned. He had never applied for American citizenship, but claimed that he was a "paying visitor" to the United States. Many British citizens called Chaplin a coward and a slacker. This and other career eccentricities sparked suspicion with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), who believed that he was injecting Communist propaganda into his films. Chaplin's later film The Great Dictator (1940), which was his first "talkie", also created a stir. In the film, Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, the film grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations.
Another scandal occurred when Chaplin briefly dated 22 year-old Joan Barry. However, Chaplin's relationship with Barry came to an end in 1942, after a series of harassing actions from her. In May 1943, Barry returned to inform Chaplin that she was pregnant and filed a paternity suit, claiming that the unborn child was his. During the 1944 trial, blood tests proved that Chaplin was not the father, but at the time, blood tests were inadmissible evidence, and he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child turned 21.
Chaplin also was scrutinized for his support in aiding the Russian struggle against the invading Nazis during World War II, and the United States government questioned his moral and political views, suspecting him of having Communist ties. For this reason, HUAC subpoenaed him in 1947. However, HUAC finally decided that it was no longer necessary for him to appear for testimony. Conversely, when Chaplin and his family traveled to London for the premier of Limelight (1952), he was denied re-entry to the United States. In reality, the government had almost no evidence to prove that he was a threat to national security. Instead, he and his wife decided to settle in Switzerland.
Chaplin was married four times and had a total of 11 children. In 1918, he married Mildred Harris and they had a son together, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who lived only three days. Chaplin and Harris divorced in 1920. He married Lita Grey in 1924, who had two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin. They were divorced in 1927. In 1936, Chaplin married Paulette Goddard, and his final marriage was to Oona O'Neill (Oona Chaplin), daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1943. Oona gave birth to eight children: Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin, Eugene Chaplin, Jane Chaplin, Annette-Emilie Chaplin, and Christopher Chaplin.
In contrast to many of his boisterous characters, Chaplin was a quiet man who kept to himself a great deal. He also had an "un-millionaire" way of living. Even after he had accumulated millions, he continued to live in shabby accommodations. In 1921, Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1972, he was honored with an Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century". He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1975 New Year's Honours List. No formal reason for the honour was listed. The citation simply reads "Charles Spencer Chaplin, Film Actor and Producer".
Chaplin's other works included musical scores that he composed for many of his films. He also authored two autobiographical books, "My Autobiography" (1964) and its companion volume, "My Life in Pictures" (1974).
Chaplin died at age 88 of natural causes on December 25, 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His funeral was a small and private Anglican ceremony according to his wishes. In 1978, Chaplin's corpse was stolen from its grave and was not recovered for three months; he was re-buried in a vault surrounded by cement.
Six of Chaplin's films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress: The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940).
Charlie Chaplin is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American cinema, whose movies were and still are popular throughout the world and have even gained notoriety as time progresses. His films show, through the Little Tramp's positive outlook on life in a world full of chaos, that the human spirit has and always will remain the same.- Actor
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- Soundtrack
Alan Bates decided to be an actor at age 11. After grammar school in Derbyshire, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Following two years in the Royal Air Force, he joined the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre. His West End debut in 1956, at 22, was also the company's first production. In the same year Bates appeared in John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger," a play that gave a name to a generation of postwar "angry young men." It made Bates a star and launched a lifetime of his performing in works written by great modern playwrights -- Harold Pinter, Simon Gray, Storey, Bennett, Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard (as well as such classic playwrights as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and William Shakespeare). Four years later Bates appeared in his first film, a classic: The Entertainer (1960), in which he plays one of Laurence Olivier's sons. More than 50 film roles have followed, one of which, The Fixer (1968) (from a novel by Bernard Malamud) earned an Academy Award nomination for Bates. He married Victoria Ward in 1970. Their twin sons, Benedick and Tristan, were born in 1971. Tristan died during an asthma attack in 1990; Ward died in 1992. Bates threw himself into his work to get through these tragedies, and spoke movingly about the effects of his losses in interviews. He was the Patron of the Actors Centre in Covent Garden, London; Bates and his family endowed a theatre there in memory of Tristan Bates, who, like his father and brother, was an actor. With few exceptions, Bates performed in premium works, guided by intuition rather than by box office. For each role he created a three-dimensional, unique person; there is no stereotypical Alan Bates character. Women appreciate the sensitivity he brought to his romantic roles; gay fans appreciate his well-rounded, unstereotyped gay characters; and the intelligence, humor and detail - the smile that started in the eyes, the extra pat or squeeze, the subtle nuances he gave to his lines, his beautiful, flexible voice - are Bates hallmarks that made him special to all his admirers. The rumpled charm of his youth weathered into a softer but still attractive (and still rumpled) maturity. In his 60s Alan Bates continued to divide his time among films, theatre and television. His 1997 stage portrayal of a travel writer facing life's big questions at the bedside of his comatose wife in Simon Gray's "Life Support" was called "a magnificent performance, one of the finest of his career" (Charles Spencer, Sunday Telegraph, 10 August 97). His last two roles in New York earned critical praise and all the Best Actor awards Broadway can bestow. He was knighted in January 2003, and only a few weeks later began treatment for pancreatic cancer. He was positive that he would beat the disease, and continued to work during its course, only admitting to being "a bit tired." His courage and strength were remarkable, and even in his final days his humor remained intact. After his death, there was an outpouring of affection and respect. As Ken Russell said in his Evening Standard tribute, "The airwaves have been heavy with unstinted praise for Alan Bates since his untimely death . . . All the tributes were more than justified for one of the great actors ever to grace the screen and stage."- Director
- Writer
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The son of Elsie Ellen, a dressmaker, and William Leslie Parker, a house painter, Alan Parker was a London advertising copywriter in the 1960s and early 1970s with Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP), an ad agency. He formed a partnership with David Puttnam as his producer (Puttnam had been a photographers' agent), and left CDP to become a full-time director of television commercials before moving onto feature films.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
German-American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor André George Previn (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin, in Berlin) was for eight decades a hugely influential and prolific figure in jazz, as well as classical and film music. Being Jewish, Previn's family was forced to leave Hitler's Germany in 1939. Hollywood naturally beckoned, since André's grand uncle (Charles Previn) was already well established as musical director at Universal (1936-42). Child prodigy André recorded his first piano jazz album at the age of sixteen while continuing studies at Beverly Hills High School.
He joined MGM at age 17 in 1946 (initially as an uncredited music supervisor/arranger), later as orchestra conductor and still later as a composer of film scores. He remained under contract at the studio until 1960. During his tenure in Hollywood, he was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning four (all for Best Adapted Score: Gigi (1958), Porgy and Bess (1959), Irma la Douce (1963), and My Fair Lady (1964)). In the 1950s, he recorded several acclaimed jazz albums with drummer Shelly Manne and pianist Russ Freeman, featuring excellent tracks like "Who's on First" and "Strike Out the Band". He began conducting with the St. Louis Symphony in 1961 while still working primarily as a jazz and studio musician. Much of his recorded work consisted of show tunes adapted for jazz. Gradually, his interest in classical music won out.
By the late 1960s, Previn had settled in England and in 1968 was made principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, a position he occupied for eleven years. His popularity led to cameo TV appearances (including a famous sketch for the 1971 Christmas special of the The Morecambe & Wise Show (1968), in which he appeared as "Mr. Andrew Preview") and television advertising (Vauxhall, Ferguson TX portable television etc.). From 1985 to 1989, he was musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as with the Royal Philharmonic (1985-88, subsequently also principal conductor, from 1988-91).
In 1993, he was appointed conductor laureate of the London Symphony and three years later was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to music. He won 10 Grammy Awards (including two for jazz and two for film music) and was nominated for six Emmys. Previn latterly returned to recording jazz albums with, among others, Ella Fitzgerald (1983), Joe Pass & Ray Brown (1989), and Kiri Te Kanawa (1992). Two excellent tribute albums released, respectively in 1998 and 2000 for Deutsche Grammophon, were 'We Got Rhythm: A Gershwin Songbook' and 'We Got it Good: An Ellington Songbook'.
Married (and divorced) five times, his ex-wives included Dory Previn and Mia Farrow. Previn died in New York on February 28, 2019, aged 89.- Writer
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- Actor
Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer of Irish descent, considered a major figure in crime fiction. His most famous series of works consisted of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories (1887-1927), consisting of four novels and 56 short stories. His other notable series were the "Professor Challenger" stories (1912-1929) about a scientist and explorer, and the "Brigadier Gerard" stories (1894-1910) about a French soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Doyle's literary works have frequently been adapted into film and television.
In 1859, Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to an Irish Catholic family. His father was Charles Altamont Doyle (1832 - 1893), a professional illustrator and water-colorist who is primarily remembered for fantasy-style paintings. Doyle's mother was Mary Foley (1837-1920). Through his father, Doyle was a nephew of the antiquarian James William Edmund Doyle (1822 - 1892), the illustrator Richard Doyle (1824-1883), and the gallery director Henry Edward Doyle (1827 -1893). Doyle's paternal grandfather was the political cartoonist and caricaturist John Doyle (1797-1868).
During his early years, Doyle's family had financial problems due to his father's struggles with depression and alcoholism. They received financial support from affluent uncles, who also financed Doyle's education. From 1868 to 1870, Doyle was educated at Hodder Place, a Jesuit preparatory school located at Stonyhurst, Lancashire. From 1870 to 1875, Doyle attended Stonyhurst College, a Roman Catholic boarding school. He disliked the school due to its rather limited curriculum, and the constant threats of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation used to discipline students.
From 1875 to 1876, Doyle received further education at Stella Matutina, a Jesuit school located at Feldkirch, Austria. His family wanted him to perfect his use of the German language, but this school offered a wider range of study subjects. Stella Matutina attracted student from many countries, and was more cosmopolitan in nature than Doyle's previous schools.
Doyle decided to follow a medical career. From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. He also took botany lessons at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. During his university years, Doyle started writing short stories. He had trouble finding a publisher, and "Blackwood's Magazine" (1817-1980) rejected his submitted work. Doyle's first published short story was "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley" (1879), featuring a demon in South Africa. That same year, Doyle published his first academic article in a science journal. The article examined the uses of the flowering plant Gelsemium as a poison. As an experiment, Doyle self-administrated doses of the poison and recorded the symptoms.
In 1880, Doyle worked for a while as a doctor in the whaling ship "Hope". In 1881, following his graduation from medical school, Doyle served as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba. In 1882, Doyle and a former classmate established a medical practice in Plymouth, Devon. Their partnership failed, and Doyle soon started his own practice in Southsea, Hampshire. He did not have many patients, so he decided to resume writing fiction to supplement his income.
In 1886, Doyle created the character of Sherlock Holmes. He loosely based his creation on his former college teacher Joseph Bell (1837 - 1911), inspired by Bell's emphasis on the importance of "deduction and inference and observation". Doyle completed the first Holmes novel, "A Study in Scarlet" (1887), and sold the rights to the publishing house "Ward, Lock & Co." (1854-1964). The novel's publication was delayed until November, 1887, but it was well-received by professional critics.
Doyle next completed the sequel novel "The Sign of the Four" (1890), commissioned from the American literary magazine Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (1868-1915). He started writing short stories about Holmes for the British literary magazine "The Strand Magazine" (1891-1950).
Besides Holmes stories, Doyle wrote seven historical novels between 1888 and 1906. He wrote "Micah Clarke" (1889), as a fictionalized account of the Monmouth Rebellion (1685) and its consequences. The novel also voices Doyle's arguments against religious extremism. He wrote "The White Company" (1891) to examine the role of mercenaries in 14th-century warfare, depicting the campaigns of Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376) in the Kingdom of Castile. He wrote "The Great Shadow" (1892) to feature the experiences of soldiers in the Battle of Waterloo (1815). He wrote "The Refugees" (1893) to examine the fates of Huguenot refugees who were fleeing 17th-century France to escape religious persecution by Louis XIV (1638-1715, reigned 1643-1715). He wrote "Sir Nigel" (1906) to examine the early phases of the Hundred Years' War (1337 - 1453). He regarded these novels to be his best literary work, though they were never as popular as his crime novels.
In 1900, Doyle served as a volunteer doctor in the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902), though he had no previous military experience. He was stationed at a field hospital at Bloemfontein. At about this time, Doyle wrote the non-fiction book "The Great Boer War" (1900), which covered in detail the early phases of the war. He also wrote the companion work "The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct" in order to defend the British Empire from accusations of misconduct in its military efforts. These works were translated in multiple languages, and were appreciated by the British government. For his services to the British Empire, Doyle was knighted in 1902. In 1903, Doyle became a knight of the Order of Saint John, a British royal order of chivalry that was based on the original Knights Hospitaller.
In 1906, Doyle was involved in efforts to exonerate the lawyer George Edalji, a mild-mannered man who had been convicted of animal mutilations on insufficient evidence. Doyle helped publicize other instances of miscarriages of justice, and convinced the public that there was need of reforms in the legal system. In 1907, British authorities reacted to this campaign by establishing the Court of Criminal Appeal.
In 1909, Doyle wrote the non-fiction work "The Crime of the Congo" (1909). In the book, Doyle denounced the human rights abuses in the Congo Free State, and claimed that the Belgian colonial forces had enslaved the local population. He quoted testimonies from many witnesses and tried to convince the public of a need to intervene in the area.
World War I (1914-1918) was a difficult time for Doyle , as several of his relatives and friends died due to the war. Doyle's son Kingsley was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Somme (1916), and never fully recovered. Kingsley died of pneumonia in 1918, while still hospitalized. Doyle's brother, Brigadier-general Innes Doyle, died of pneumonia in 1919. Doyle's brother-in-law, the famous author E. W. Hornung, died of pneumonia in 1921. The series of deaths led Doyle to further embrace Spiritualism, and that faith's claims about existence beyond the grave. He spend much of the 1920s as a missionary of Spiritualism, and investigated supposed supernatural phenomena. He also wrote many non-fiction spiritualist works. In 1926, Doyle financed the construction of a Spiritualist Temple in Camden, London.
In July 1930, Doyle suffered a heart attack while staying in his then-residence, Windlesham Manor, in Crowborough, Sussex. He spend his last moments in reassuring his wife Jean Leckie that she was wonderful. He was 71-years-old at the time of his death. He was survived by two sons and two daughters. His daughter Jean Conan Doyle (1912 - 1997) was the copyright holder of much of her father's works until her own death.
Since Doyle was no longer a Christian at the time of his death, his family declined giving him a Christian burial place. Doyle was buried in Windlesham Manor's rose garden. His remains were later re-interred in Minstead churchyard, New Forest, Hampshire. His wife's remains were buried beside him. His gravestone epitaph described him as "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man of letters".
Doyle is long gone, but his works have remained popular into the 21st century. Doyle has been cited as an influence on later crime writers, and Agatha Christie's earliest novels were strongly influenced by Sherlock Holmes' stories. His life's events have inspired several biographies, and a number of fictionalized accounts.- Actor
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Anthony Quayle was born in Ainsdale, Southport, Lancashire, England in September 1913. He completed his education at Rugby School and had a brief spell at RADA, before treading the boards for the first time as the straight man in a music hall comedy act in 1931. Tall, burly, round-faced and possessed of a powerful and resonant voice, he was mentored early on in his career by the well-known stage director Tyrone Guthrie. Letters of introduction led to steady employment with the Old Vic Company by September 1932, and a succession of small roles in classical parts. Quayle's reputation as an actor grew steadily, and, in 1936, he appeared on Broadway opposite Ruth Gordon in 'The Country Wife'. For the next few years, he consolidated his position as a Shakespearean actor. When the Second World War began, he was among the first in his profession to enlist, serving with the Royal Artillery and rising to the rank of major. Some of his wartime experiences, such as coordinating operations with Albanian partisans as part of the secret Special Operations Executive, were destined to be paralleled by his fictional post-war screen exploits as incisive army officers or spies. With the war still fresh in his mind, he subsequently published two novels (respectively in 1945, and in 1947), 'Eight Hours from England' and 'On Such a Night'.
In 1946, Quayle also made his debut as a theatrical director with a London production of 'Crime and Punishment'. Between 1948 and 1956, he had a distinguished tenure as director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, bringing into the company some of the biggest stars of the stage, including Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. Though acting in films from 1938, the theatre remained his favorite medium. He played diverse roles with great intensity and professionalism, achieving critical acclaim as Petruchio and Falstaff, Tamburlaine and Galileo (on Broadway) and the original role of Andrew Wyke in Anthony Shaffer's play 'Sleuth' (played in the first screen version by Olivier). In motion pictures Quayle tended to portray tough, dependable authority figures. He was good value for money as Commodore Harwood in Pursuit of the Graf Spee (1956), as the enigmatic Afrikaner captain in Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and as the stuffy, by-the-book Colonel Harry Brighton, who nonetheless appears to have a degree of admiration for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Due to his classical training, Quayle was often used in historical epics, giving one of his best performances as Cardinal Wolsey in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), earning him an Academy Award nomination. His voice was heard as narrator of The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and on radio in anything from 'The Ballad of Robin Hood' to Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Purloined Letter'.
The year prior to receiving his knighthood, Quayle founded the touring Compass Theatre Company, and served as its director until a few months before his death from cancer in October 1989.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. His father, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, was a Kenyan-born medical doctor, of Gujarati Indian descent, and his mother, Anna Lyna Mary (Goodman), was an English actress. Ben began to act in stage plays during the 1960s. He soon became a successful stage actor, and also began to have roles in films and television. His birth name was Krishna Bhanji, but he changed his name to "Ben Kingsley" soon after gaining fame as a stage actor, fearing that a foreign name could hamper his acting career.
Kingsley first earned international fame for his performance in the drama movie Gandhi (1982). His performance as Mohandas K. Gandhi earned him international fame. He won many awards - including an Academy Award for Best Actor. He also won Golden Globe, BAFTA and London Film Critics' Circle Awards. After acting in Gandhi (1982), Ben was recognized as one of the finest British actors.
After his international fame for appearing in Gandhi (1982), Kingsley appeared in many other famous movies. His success as an actor continued. His performance as Itzhak Stern in the drama movie Schindler's List (1993) earned him a BAFTA nomination for best supporting actor. Schindler's List (1993) won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. During the late 1990s, Kingsley acted in many successful movies. He played Sweeney Todd in the television movie The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1997), for which he was nominated for the Screen Actors' Guild Award. His other notable role was as Otto Frank in the television movie Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001), for which he won the Screen Actors' Guild Award.
In 2002, Kingsley was appointed Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Years Honours for his services to drama. In 2013, he received the BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Filmed Entertainment. That same year, he also received the Fellowship Award at the Asian Awards in London, England.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Sir Dirk Bogarde, distinguished film actor and writer, was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde on March 28, 1921, to Ulric van den Bogaerde, the art editor of "The Times" (London) newspaper, and actress Margaret Niven in the London suburb of Hampstead. He was one of three children, with sister Elizabeth and younger brother Gareth. His father was Flemish and his mother was of Scottish descent.
Ulric Bogaerde started the Times' arts department and served as its first art editor. Derek's mother, Margaret - the daughter of actor and painter Forrest Niven - appeared in the play "Bunty Pulls The Strings", but she quit the boards in accordance with her husband's wishes. The young Derek Bogaerde was raised at the family home in Sussex by his sister, Elizabeth, and his nanny, Lally Holt.
Educated at the Allen Glen's School in Glasgow, he also attended London's University College School before majoring in commercial art at Chelsea Polytechnic, where his teachers included Henry Moore. Though his father wanted his eldest son to follow him into the "Times" as an art critic and had groomed him for that role, Derek dropped out of his commercial art course and became a drama student, though his acting talent at that time was unpromising. In the 1930s he went to work as a commercial artist and a scene designer.
He apprenticed as an actor with the Amersham Repertory Company, and made his acting debut in 1939 on a small London stage, the Q Theatre, in a role in which he delivered only one line. His debut in London's West End came a few months later in J.B. Priestley's play "Cornelius," in which he was billed as "Derek Bogaerde". He made his uncredited debut as an extra in the pre-war George Formby comedy Come on George! (1939).
The September 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union triggered World War II, and in 1940 Bogarde joined the Queen's Royal Regiment as an officer. He served in the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit and eventually attained the rank of major. Nicknamed "Pippin" and "Pip" during the war, he was awarded seven medals in his five years of active duty. He wrote poems and painted during the war, and in 1943, a small magazine published one of his poems, "Steel Cathedrals," which subsequently was anthologized. His paintings of the war are part of the Imperial War Museum's collection.
Similar to his character, Captain Hargreaves, in King & Country (1964), he was called upon to put a wounded soldier out of his misery, a tale recounted in one of his seven volumes of autobiography. While serving with the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit, he took part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which he said was akin to "looking into Dante's Inferno".
In one of his autobiographies, he wrote, "At 24, the age I was then, deep shock stays registered forever. An internal tattooing which is removable only by surgery, it cannot be conveniently sponged away by time."
After being demobilized, he returned to acting. His agent re-christened him "Dirk Bogarde," a name that he would make famous within a decade. In 1947 he appeared in "Power Without Glory" at the New Lindsay Theatre, a performance that was praised by Noël Coward, who urged him to continue his acting career. The Rank Organization had signed him to a contract after a talent scout saw him in the play, and he made his credited movie debut in Dancing with Crime (1947) with a one-line bit as a policeman.
His first lead in a movie came that year when Wessex Films, distributed by Rank, gave him a part in the proposed Stewart Granger film Sin of Esther Waters (1948). When Granger dropped out, Bogarde took over the lead. Rank subsequently signed him to a long-term contract and he appeared in a variety of parts during the 14 years he was under contract to the studio.
For three years he toiled in Rank movies as an apprentice actor without making much of a ripple; then in 1950, he was given the role of young hood Tom Riley in the crime thriller The Blue Lamp (1950) (the title comes from the blue-colored light on police call-boxes in London), the most successful British film of 1950, which established Bogarde as an actor of note. Playing a cop killer, an unspeakable crime in the England of the time, it was the first of the intense neurotics and attractive villains that Bogarde would often play.
He continued to act on-stage, appearing in the West End in Jean Anouilh's "Point of Departure". While he was praised for his performance, stage acting made him nervous, and as he became more famous, he began to be mobbed by fans. The pressure of the public adulation proved overwhelming, particularly as he suffered from stage fright. He was accosted by crowds of fans at the stage door during the 1955 touring production of "Summertime," and his more enthusiastic admirers even shouted at him during the play. He was to appear in only one more play, the Oxford Playhouse production of "Jezebel," in 1958. He never again took to the boards, despite receiving attractive offers.
He first acted for American expatriate director Joseph Losey in The Sleeping Tiger (1954). Losey, a Communist and self-described Stalinist at the time, had emigrated to England after being blacklisted in Hollywood after he refused to direct The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) at RKO Pictures, which was owned by right-wing multi-millionaire Howard Hughes at the time, and he was accused in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee of being a Communist. The director, like Bogarde, would not find his stride until the early 1960s, and Losey and Bogarde would build their reputations together.
First, however, Losey had to overcome Bogarde's reluctance to star in a low-budget film (shot for $300,000) with a blacklisted American director. Losey, who had never heard of Bogarde until he was proposed for the film, met with him and asked Bogarde to view one of his pictures. After seeing the film, Bogarde was enthusiastic, and Losey talked him into taking the role, which he accepted at a reduced fee (Losey originally was not credited with directing the film due to his being blacklisted in the States). A decade later they would make more memorable films that would be watersheds in their careers.
It was not drama but comedy that made Dirk Bogarde a star. He achieved the first rank of English movie stardom playing Dr. Simon Sparrow in the comedy Doctor in the House (1954). The film was a smash hit, becoming one of the most popular British films in history, with 17 million admissions in its first year of release. As Sparrow, Bogarde became a heartthrob and the most popular British movie star of the mid-50s. He reprised the character in Doctor at Sea (1955), Doctor at Large (1957).
The title of the latter film may have described his mood as a serious actor having to do another turn as Dr. Sparrow between his career-making performances in Losey's The Servant (1963), with a script by Harold Pinter, and Losey's adaptation of the stage play King & Country (1964), in which Bogarde memorably played the attorney for a young deserter (played by Tom Courtenay).
Bogarde, hailed as "the idol of the Odeons" in honor of his box-office clout, was offered the role of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1959) by producer Harry Saltzman and director Tony Richardson, based on the play that touched off the "Angry Young Man" and "Kitchen Sink School" of contemporary English drama in the 1950s. Though Bogarde wanted to take the part, Rank refused to let him make the film on the grounds that there was "altogether too much dialog." The part went to Richard Burton instead, who went over-the-top in portraying his very angry, not-so-young man.
After this disappointment, Bogarde went to Hollywood to play Franz Liszt in Song Without End (1960) and to appear in Nunnally Johnson's Spanish Civil War drama The Angel Wore Red (1960) with Ava Gardner. Both were big-budgeted films, but hampered by poor scripts, and after both films failed, Bogarde avoided Hollywood from then on.
He was reportedly quite smitten with his French "Song Without End" co-star Capucine, and wanted to marry her. Capucine, who suffered from bi-polar disorder, was bisexual with an admitted preference for women. The relationship did not lead to marriage, but did result in a long-term friendship. It apparently was his only serious relationship with a woman, though he had many women friends, including his I Could Go on Singing (1963) co-star Judy Garland.
In the early 1960s, with the expiration of his Rank contract, Bogarde made the decision to abandon his hugely successful career in commercial movies and concentrate on more complex, art house films (at the same time, Burt Lancaster made a similar decision, though Lancaster continued to alternate his artistic ventures with more crassly commercial endeavors). Bogarde appeared in Basil Dearden's seminal film Victim (1961), the first British movie to sympathetically address the persecution of homosexuals. His career choice alienated many of his old fans, but he was no longer interested in being a commercial movie star; he, like Lancaster, was interested in developing as an actor and artist (however, that sense of finding himself as an actor did not extend to the stage. His reputation was such in 1963 that he was invited by National Theatre director Laurence Olivier to appear as Hamlet to open the newly built Chichester Festival Theatre. That production of the eponymous play also was intended to open the National Theatre's first season in London. Bogarde declined, and the honor went instead to Peter O'Toole, who floundered in the part.)
Jack Grimston, in Bogarde's "Sunday Times" obituary of May 9, 1999, entitled "Bogarde, a solitary star at the edge of the spotlight," said of the late actor that he "belonged to a group that was rare in the British cinema. He was a fine screen player who owed little to the stage. Dilys Powell, the Sunday Times film critic, wrote of him before her own death: 'Most of our gifted film players really belonged to the theater. Bogarde belonged to the screen.'" Bogarde had won the London Critics Circle's Dilys Powell award for outstanding contribution to cinema in 1992.
Appearing in "Victim" was a huge career gamble. In the film, Bogarde played a married barrister who is being blackmailed over his closeted homosexuality. Rather than let the blackmail continue, and allow the perpetrators to victimize other gay men, Bogarde's character effectively sacrifices himself, specifically his marriage and his career, by bravely confessing to be gay (homosexuality was an offence in the United Kingdom until 1967, and there reportedly had been a police crackdown against homosexuals after World War II which made gay men particularly vulnerable to blackmail).
The film was not released in mainstream theaters in the US, as the Production Code Administration (PCA) refused to classify the film and most theaters would not show films that did not carry the PCA seal of approval. "Victim" was the antithesis of the light comedy of Bogarde's "Doctor" movies, and many fans of his character Simon Sparrow were forever alienated by his portrayal of a homosexual. For himself, Bogarde was proud of the film and his participation in it, which many think stimulated public debate over homosexuality. The film undoubtedly raised the public consciousness over the egregious and unjust individual costs of anti-gay bigotry. The public attitude towards the "love that dared not speak its name" changed enough so that within six years, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalizing homosexual acts between adults passed Parliament. Bogarde reported that he received many letters praising him for playing the role. His courage in taking on such a role is even more significant in that he most likely was gay himself, and thus exposed himself to a backlash.
Bogarde always publicly denied he was a homosexual, though later in life he did confess that he and his manager, Anthony Forwood, had a long-term relationship. When Bogarde met him in 1939, Forwood was a theatrical manager, who eventually married and divorced Glynis Johns. Forwood became Bogarde's friend and subsequently his life partner, and the two moved to France together in 1968. They bought a 15th-century farmhouse near Grasse in Provence in the early 1970s, which they restored. Bogarde and Forwood lived in the house until 1983, when they returned to London so that Forwood could be treated for cancer, from which he eventually died in 1988. Bogarde nursed him in the last few months of his life. After Forwood died, Bogarde was left rudderless and he became more reclusive, eventually retiring from films after Daddy Nostalgia (1990).
Mark Rowe and Jeremy Kay, in their obituary of Bogarde, "Two brilliant lives - on film and in print," published in "The Independent" on May, 9, 1999, wrote, "Although he documented with frankness his early sexual encounters with girls and later his adoring love for Kay Kendall and Judy Garland, he never wrote about his longest and closest relationship - with his friend and manager for more than 50 years, Tony Forwood. Sir Dirk said the clues to his private life were in his books. "If you've got your wits about you, you will know who I am." The British documentary The Private Dirk Bogarde: Part One (2001) made with the permission of his family, stressed the fact that he and Forwood were committed lifelong partners.
In the same issue, the National Film Theatre's David Thompson, in the article "The public understood he was essentially gay," wrote about Bogarde at his high-water mark in the 1950s, that "Audiences of that time loved him . . . Very few people picked up on the fact that there was a distinct gay undertone. It says something about British audiences of the time. He had the good fortune to break out of that prison, and it came through the film Victim (1961), where he played a gay character, and through meeting with Joseph Losey, who directed him in The Servant (1963). For the first time, Bogarde's ambivalence was exploited and used by film."
Bogarde's sexuality is not the issue; what was striking was that it was an act of personal courage for one of Britian's leading box-office attractions to appear in such a provocative and controversial film. Even in the 21st century, many mainstream actors are afraid to play a gay character lest they engender a public backlash against themselves, which is much less likely than it was more than 40 years ago when Bogarde made "Victim."
Apart from sociology, "Victim" marks the milestone in which critics and audiences could discern the metamorphosis of Bogarde into the mature actor who went on to become one of the cinema's finest performers. Most of Bogarde's best and most serious roles come after "Victim," the film in which he first stretched himself and broke out of the mold of "movie star." He received the first of his six nominations as Best Actor from the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) for the film.
Bogarde co-starred with John Mills in The Singer Not the Song (1961), and with Alec Guinness in Damn the Defiant! (1962) (a.k.a. "Damn the Defiant!"). In 1963 he reunited with Losey to film the first of two Losey films with screenplays by Pinter. Bogarde's participation in the two Losey/Pinter collaborations, The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967), in addition to 1964's "King & Country", solidified his reputation. Critics and savvy moviegoers appreciated the fact that Bogarde had developed into a first-rate actor. For his role as the eponymous servant, Bogarde won BAFTA's Best Actor Award. He had now "officially" arrived in the inner circle of the best British film actors.
These three films also elevated Losey into the ranks of major directors (Bogarde also starred in Losey's 1966 spy spoof Modesty Blaise (1966), but that film did little to enhance either man's reputation. He turned down the opportunity to appear in Losey's The Assassination of Trotsky (1972) due to the poor quality of the script).
Philip French, in his obituary "Dark, exotic and yet essentially English", published in "The Observer" on May 9, 1999, said of Bogarde, "Losey discovered something more complex and sinister in his English persona and his performance as Barrett, the malevolent valet in 'The Servant,' scripted by Harold Pinter, is possibly the most subtle, revealing thing he ever did - by confronting his homosexuality in a non-gay context."
Losey told interviewer Michel Ciment that his work with Bogarde represented a turning point in the actor's career, when he developed into an actor of depth and power. He also frankly admitted to Ciment that without Bogarde, his career would have stagnated and never reached the heights of success and critical acclaim that it did in the 1960s.
Interestingly during the filming of "The Servant." Losey was hospitalized with pneumonia. He asked Bogarde to direct the film in order to keep shooting so that the producers would not cancel the film. A reluctant Bogarde complied with Losey's wishes and directed for ten days. He later said that he would never direct again.
Bogarde co-starred with up-and-coming actress Julie Christie in John Schlesinger's Darling (1965), for which Christie won a Best Actress Oscar and was vaulted into 1960s cinema superstardom. During the filming of the movie, both Bogarde and Christie were waiting to hear whether they would be cast as Yuri Zhivago and his lover Lara in David Lean's upcoming blockbuster Doctor Zhivago (1965). Christie got the call, Bogarde didn't, but he was well along in the process of establishing himself as one of the screen's best and most important actors. He won his second BAFTA Best Actor Award for his performance in "Darling."
Bogarde went on to major starring roles in such important pictures as The Fixer (1968), for which Alan Bates won a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. While Bogarde never was nominated for an Oscar, he had the honor of starring in two films for Luchino Visconti, The Damned (1969) ("The Damned") and Death in Venice (1971), based on Thomas Mann's novella "Death in Venice." Bogarde felt that his performance as Gustav von Aschenbach, the dying composer in love with a young boy and with the concept of beauty, in "Death in Venice" was the "the peak and end of my career . . . I can never hope to give a better performance in a better film."
Visconti told Bogarde that when the lights went up in a Los Angeles screening room after a showing of "Death in Venice" for American studio executives, no one said anything. The silence encouraged Visconti, who believed it meant that the executives were undergoing a catharsis after watching his masterpiece. However, he soon realized that, in Bogarde's own words, "Apparently they were stunned into horrified silence . . . A group of slumped nylon-suited men stared dully at the blank screen." One nervous executive, feeling something should be said, got up and asked, "Signore Visconti, who was responsible for the score of the film?"
"Gustav Mahler," Visconti replied.
"Just great!", said the nervous man. "I think we should sign him."
After "Venice", Bogarde made only seven films over the next two decades and was scathing about the quality of the scripts he was offered. To express himself artistically, he began to write. In his third volumes of autobiography, he wrote, "No longer do the great Jewish dynasties hold power: the people who were, when all is said and done, the Picture People. Now the cinema is controlled by vast firms like Xerox, Gulf & Western, and many others who deal in anything from sanitary-ware to property development. These huge conglomerates, faceless, soulless, are concerned only with making a profit; never a work of art . . . "
He rued the fact that "it is pointless to be 'superb' in a commercial failure; and most of the films which I had deliberately chosen to make in the last few years were, by and large, just that. Or so I am always informed by the businessmen. The critics may have liked them extravagantly, but the distributors shy away from what they term 'A Critic's Film', for it often means that the public will stay away. Which, in the mass, they do: and if you don't make money at the box-office you are not asked back to play again."
However, the courageous artist was not to be daunted: "But I'd had very good innings. Better than most. So what the hell?" His well-written works were enthusiastically received by critics and the book-buying public.
Bogarde appeared in another film that flirted with the theme of German fascism, Liliana Cavani's highly controversial The Night Porter (1974) ("The Night Porter"). He played an ex-SS officer who encounters a woman with whom he had been engaged in a sado-masochistic affair at a World War II Nazi extermination camp. Many critics found the film, which featured extensive nudity courtesy of Charlotte Rampling, crassly offensive, but no one faulted Bogarde's performance.
He played Lt. Gen. Frederick "Boy" Browning in the all-star blockbuster A Bridge Too Far (1977). Although some of his fellow actors were World War II veterans, only Bogarde had been involved in the actual battle. His performance arguably is the best in the film. Appearing in Alain Resnais' art house hit Providence (1977) gave Bogarde the opportunity to co-star with John Gielgud. He also starred in German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's Despair (1978), with a script by Tom Stoppard. Though the film was not much of a critical success, Bogarde's acting as 1930s German businessman Hermann Hermann, a man who chooses to go mad when faced with the paradoxes of his life in his proto-fascist fatherland, was highly praised.
Bogarde enjoyed working with Fassbinder. He wrote that "Rainer's work was extraordinarily similar to that of Visconti's; despite their age difference, they both behaved, on set, in much the same manner. Both had an incredible knowledge of the camera: the first essential. Both knew how it could be made to function; they had the same feeling for movement on the screen, of the all-important (and often-neglected) 'pacing' of a film, from start to finish, of composition, of texture, and probably most of all they shared that strange ability to explore and probe into the very depths of the character which one had offered them."
After his experience with Fassbinder, he acted only four more times, twice in feature films and twice on television. Bogarde was nominated for a Golden Globe for playing Roald Dahl in The Patricia Neal Story (1981). He got rave reviews playing Jane Birkin's father in Bertrand Tavernier's Daddy Nostalgia (1990), his last film.
In 1984 Bogarde was asked to serve as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, a huge honor for the actor, as he was the first Briton ever to serve in that capacity. Two years earlier he had been made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des lettres 1982. A decade later, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 1992.
Bogarde won two Best Actor Awards out of six nominations from the British Academy of Film & Television Arts, for "The Servant" and "Darling" in 1964 and 1966, respectively. He was also nominated in 1962 for "Victim," in 1968 for "Accident" and Our Mother's House (1967) and in 1972 for "Morte a Venezia."
Bogarde suffered a stroke in 1996, and though it rendered him partially paralyzed, he was able to recover and live in his own flat in Chelsea. However, by May of 1998 he required around-the-clock nursing care, and he had his lawyers draw up a "living will," also known as a no-resuscitation order. Bogarde publicly came out in favor of voluntary euthanasia, becoming Vice President of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. He publicly addressed the subject of his own "living will," which ordered that no extraordinary measures be taken to keep him alive should he become terminally ill.
The living will proved unnecessary. Dirk Bogarde died of a heart attack on May 8, 1999, in his home in Chelsea, London, England. According to his nephew Brock Van den Bogaerde, the family planned to hold a private funeral but no memorial service in accordance with his uncle's wish "just to forget me." Bogarde wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in France, and accordingly, his remains were returned to Provence.
Margaret Hinxman, in her May 10, 1999, obituary in "The Guardian", said of him, "At his peak and with directors he trusted - Joseph Losey, Luchino Visconti and Alain Resnais - Dirk Bogarde . . . was probably the finest, most complete, actor on the screen."
Clive Fisher's obituary in "The Independent" on May 10, 1999, praised Bogarde as "a major figure because, wherever they were made, his finest films are all somehow about him. He was a great self-portraitist and the screen persona he fashioned, a stylization of his private being, not only dominated its surroundings but spoke subliminally and powerfully to British audiences about the tensions of the time, about connivances and cruel respectabilities of England in the Fifties and Sixties."
The secret of Dirk Bogarde's success as a great cinema actor was his intimate relationship with the camera. Bogarde believed that the key to acting on film was the eyes, specifically, the "look" of the actor. Like Alan Ladd, it didn't matter if an actor was good with line readings if they had mastery over the "look." For many critics and movie-goers at the end of the 20th century, Dirk Bogarde's face epitomized the "look" of Britain in the tumultuous decades after the Second World War.
David Tindle's portrait of Bogarde is part of the collection of London's National Portrait Gallery, London. In 1999, the portrait, on temporary loan, was displayed at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's official residence, with other modern works of art. Officially, Dirk Bogarde had become the look of Britain.- Writer
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James Matthew "J. M." Barrie was a Scottish novelist and playwright. He had a distinguished career, but is primarily remembered for creating Peter Pan and his supporting characters. He used the character of Pan in the novel "The Little White Bird" (1902), the stage play "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up" (1904). the novel "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" (1906), the play "When Wendy Grew Up - An Afterthought" (1908), and the novel "Peter and Wendy" (1911).
In 1860,. Barrie was born in the burgh of Kirriemuir, in the county of Forfarshire. The county has since been renamed to "Angus". In the 19th century, Kirriemuir was center for the weaving industry, Barrie's father was David Barrie, a moderately prosperous weaver. Barrie's primary caregiver was his mother Margaret Ogilvy, who introduced him to English-language literature at an early age. Barrie was the 9th child born to the couple, out of ten children.
In 1866, Barrie's older brother David Barrie was killed in an ice-skating accident. David was Margaret's favorite son, and she was devastated by his death. Barrie started imitating his dead brother, in an effort to serve as a replacement for him. Barrie's mother reportedly found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her.
In 1868, Barrie started attending the Glasgow Academy, an independent day school located in Glasgow. At the time, two of his older siblings were among the school's teachers. In 1870, Barrie was transferred to the Forfar Academy. It was a comprehensive school located in Forfar, and it was closer to his parents' house. In 1874, Barrie was enrolled at the Dumfries Academy, a grammar school located in Dumfries.
As a teenager, Barrie was a bibliophile. He enjoyed reading penny dreadfuls, serial literature sold at a cheap price. He also enjoyed reading the juvenile fiction of Robert Michael Ballantyne ( 1825 - 1894), and the historical novels of James Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851). Barrie was part of a group which liked to re-enact the adventures of pirates. He was also part of a drama club at Dumfries. While a teenager, he wrote and produced his first play: "Bandelero the Bandit". The play was denounced by a local clergyman for its supposed immorality.
Barrie aspired to become a professional writer, but his family insisted that he must attend university first. Barrie enrolled at the University of Edinburgh. While a college student, he started working at the newspaper "Edinburgh Evening Courant" as their drama reviewer. He graduated from university in 1882.
Following graduation, Barrie worked as a staff journalist for the newspaper "Nottingham Journal". Meanwhile he started working on short stories based on the life story of his grandfather. He eventually reworked this story into a trilogy of novels: "Auld Licht Idylls" (1888), "A Window in Thrums" (1890), and "The Little Minister "(1891). The stories depicted life within the "Auld Lichts", a religious sect which his grandfather had joined. These novels were popular at the time, though largely based on the industrialized Scotland's nostalgia for a bygone era.
In the 1890s, Barrie started working on theatrical works. An early success for him was "Ibsen's Ghost, or Toole Up-to-Date" (1891), a parody of the plays of Henrik Ibsen (1828 -1906). The play was largely based on two of Ibsen's plays, "Ghosts" (1881) and "Hedda Gabler" (1891) .
While working as a playwright, Barrie met and courted the actress Mary Ansell (1861 -1950). The two of them were married in 1894, though they reputedly never consummated their marriage. The marriage lasted until 1909, ending in a divorce. Barrie resented Ansell's extramarital affair with a younger man, the novelist Gilbert Cannan (1884 -1955). Following a second failed marriage of Ansell, Barrie voluntarily started financially supporting her. Until his death in 1937, Barrie gave her an annual allowance.
In 1901, Barrie published one of his most successful plays, "Quality Street". The protagonist Phoebe Throssel was a respectable school mistress, who started pretending to be a younger woman in older to reclaim the heart of her former suitor. The initial run of the play in London lasted for 459 performances. The play was frequently revived until the 1940s.
In 1902, Barrie had another hit with the survival-themed play "The Admirable Crichton". The play depicts an aristocratic family and their servants as shipwreck survivors. While living in a desert island, the butler Crichton turns out to be a far more effective leader than his employer. This satire on class relationships had an initial run of 828 performances.
In 1902, Barrie introduced the character of Peter Pan, which became his most popular creation. He liked contrasting the typical middle class life of the Edwardian era, with the adventurous life and ambivalent morality of the fictional Neverland. While most of the Pan stories were written for a child audience, their social commentary also attracted adults. Barrie was praised by fellow writer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) for these stories.
In 1909, Barrie was part of a campaign by several playwrights to challenge the United Kingdom's strict censorship laws. In 1911, Barrie was part of the anti-censorship's campaign second wave. In 1910, he commented on marital relations with the play "The Twelve Pound Look". In the play, a married woman seeks a divorce. She has gained financial independence and no longer needs her husband. The play was considered controversial at the time.
In 1917, Barrie explored the concept of the alternate reality in the play "Dear Brutus". In the play, a group of adult characters feel that they have taken wrong turns in their lives. A magic users offers them glimpses into the lives of their alternate reality counterparts, which took different life decisions. Some of them are enlightened by the experience, others learn nothing of value. The play was a hit, running for 363 performances in its initial run. It was revived in 1922.
In 1920, Barrie wrote the mystery play "Mary Rose". It was the last notable hit in his career. The play's protagonist mysteriously vanishes twice. She first disappears as a child. She re-appears 21 days later, but she has no recollection of where she was. As an adult, Mary Rose vanishes again. She leaves a husband and a son behind. She re-appears decades later, with no recollection of where she was again. But she has not aged a single day, and she is now physically younger than her own son. The play offers no definite answers to its mystery. It has experienced several revivals.
In 1929, Barrie gave the copyright right to Peter Pan (and any royalties gained from it) to the children's hospital Great Ormond Street Hospital. The royalties have continued to financially support the hospital ever since. The copyright was extended indefinitely by a special provision in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Barrie continued producing new works into the 1930s, though none were particularly groundbreaking. His last play was the Bible-themed story "The Boy David" (1936). It concerned the relationship between the aging Saul, King of Israel and his youthful son-in-law and prospective heir David. The play was based on the "Books of Samuel". A play which Barrie wrote but never produced was "The Reconstruction of the Crime", published posthumously in 2017.
By 1937, had moved into a nursing home in London. In June 1937, he died there due to pneumonia. He was 77-years-old at the time of his death. He was buried in his native Kirriemuir, in the family grave previously used by his parents and some of his siblings. His will left provision for his ex-wife Mary Ansell and a number of Barrie's surrogate children from the Llewelyn Davies family. Barrie left the majority of his estate to his longtime secretary Lady Cynthia Asquith ( 1887 -1960). Barrie had no known descendants.
Several of Barrie's works have remained popular into the 21st century. Peter Pan has frequently been adapted into various media, and has inspired a number of unofficial sequels. Tourists continue visiting locations in Kirriemuir which are associated with him. Barrie's long-lasting fame has not faded.- Writer
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Malcolm Bradbury was born on 7 September 1932 in Sheffield, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The Gravy Train (1990), Cold Comfort Farm (1995) and The Gravy Train Goes East (1991). He was married to Elizabeth Salt. He died on 28 November 2000 in Norwich, England, UK.- Composer
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Richard Rodney Bennett was an eclectic composer of serious orchestral works, jazz songs and music for stage and screen. Of the former, his most famous compositions include a First Symphony, a piano concerto and four string quartets. Among the latter are scores for operas, such as the dramatic "The Mines of Sulphur" and the more light-hearted and satirical "A Penny for a Song". Born into an artistic family (his mother was a pianist and composer, his father a writer of children's books), Bennett wrote a cantata, "Put Away the Flutes", while still in his early teens. He enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1953, graduating three years later. He subsequently continued his studies under the avant garde French composer/conductor Pierre Boulez in Paris, eventually becoming adept at fusing jazz and serial techniques, in addition to mastering jazz piano.
Comfortable in varied genres, some of his best film music is strongly jazz tinged, notably The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967). Other well-known scores include the romantic, melodic themes for Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), the latter two garnering both Oscar and Grammy Award nominations ("Orient Express" also winning a BAFTA). From 1979, Bennett was based in New York, where his Second Symphony had been commissioned by Leonard Bernstein eleven years earlier (Bernstein eventually became one of his referees for a green card, Stephen Sondheim, another). Bennett's predilection for jazz was given free reign in the 1990's, when he began to play jazz piano in cabaret, including at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London and a season at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, invariably accompanied by vocalists Claire Martin or Marian Montgomery. He had also held the international chair of composition at the Royal Academy of Music from 1994 to 2000.- Actor
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Robert Murray Helpmann was born in Mount Gambier, Australia, as the eldest of three children born to stock and station agent James Murray Helpman and Mary Gardiner.
After the family moved to Adelaide in 1914, Helpmann was educated at Prince Alfred's College, but he soon left school at the age of 14 to focus on dance, specifically ballet. He was taught ballet by Nora Stewart. Helpmann first danced solo at the Theatre Royal in Adelaide in "The Ugly Duckling" in 1922. In 1926, he was trained by Alexis Dolinoff, the leading male dancer for Anna Pavlova, whom Helpmann soon became an apprentice for. The next year, in 1927, he joined J. C. Williamson Ltd. as their star dancer.
Helpmann went on to become the principal dancer at Sadlers Wells Ballet from 1933 to 1950. World renowned as a dancer and choreographer, amongst his other achievements he was the director of the Australian Ballet Company. He directed the world tour of Margot Fonteyn in 1963.
Towards the end of his life, Helpmann was living in Balmoral, a suburb of Mosman, in Sydney, Australia. On September 28, 1986, Helpmann died in the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, at the age of 77, from emphysema, having been a lifelong smoker.- Actor
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Anton Dolin was born on 27 July 1904 in Sussex, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Chu Chin Chow (1934), Never Let Me Go (1953) and Giselle (1952). He died on 25 November 1983 in Paris, France.- Actor
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Anthony Dowell was born on 16 February 1943 in London, England, UK. He is an actor, known for Romeo and Juliet (1966), Great Performances (1971) and Valentino (1977).- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton was born on 25 May 1803 in London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The Last Days of Pompeii (1959), In the Name of Love (1925) and The Last Days of Pompeii (1913). He was married to Rosina Doyle Wheeler. He died on 18 January 1873 in Torquay, Devon, England, UK.
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Alastair Burnet joined ITN in 1963, becoming Political Editor. In 1967, he switched to newscasting full-time, persuading ITV and ITN bosses to make Britian's first regular daily 30-minute news bulletin, News At Ten. [Before 1967 news bulletins lasted roughly 15 minutes.] He presented the first bulletin on 3rd July 1967 with the late Andrew Gardner. Alastair became the main anchor out of a regular rota of anchors News At Ten had for 25 years [1967-1992]. He fast became ITV's voice of politics. He became the best of friends with the-then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. During his stay at ITN, he reported on the 40th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the 1969 moon landing, the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher, the rise of the IRA, the Falkands War, the Vietnam war amongst others. Also in the 1980s, he became a member of ITN's Executive Board, and controversially, made the decision that ITV does not own ITN outright and so other companies could own ITN at one time. Examples of this is Reuters [20%], ITV [40%] and United Business Media [40%].
He announced his resignation as ITN Executive in February 1990, after a disagreement over the future of ITN and continued on until 27 August 1991, when he presented his last bulletin, after announcing his retirement at the age of 63.- Actor
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Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was perhaps the only actor of his generation to have starred in so many films and cult saga. Although most notable for personifying bloodsucking vampire, Dracula, on screen, he portrayed other varied characters on screen, most of which were villains, whether it be Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), or Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), or as the title monster in the Hammer Horror film, The Mummy (1959).
Lee was born in 1922 in London, England, where he and his older sister Xandra were raised by their parents, Contessa Estelle Marie (Carandini di Sarzano) and Geoffrey Trollope Lee, a professional soldier, until their divorce in 1926. Later, while Lee was still a child, his mother married (and later divorced) Harcourt George St.-Croix (nicknamed Ingle), who was a banker. Lee's maternal great-grandfather was an Italian political refugee, while Lee's great-grandmother was English opera singer Marie (Burgess) Carandini.
After attending Wellington College from age 14 to 17, Lee worked as an office clerk in a couple of London shipping companies until 1941 when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Following his release from military service, Lee joined the Rank Organisation in 1947, training as an actor in their "Charm School" and playing a number of bit parts in such films as Corridor of Mirrors (1948). He made a brief appearance in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in which his future partner-in-horror Peter Cushing also appeared. Both actors also appeared later in Moulin Rouge (1952) but did not meet until their horror films together.
Lee had numerous parts in film and television throughout the 1950s. He struggled initially in his new career because he was discriminated as being taller than the leading male actors of his time and being too foreign-looking. However, playing the monster in the Hammer film The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) proved to be a blessing in disguise, since the was successful, leading to him being signed on for future roles in Hammer Film Productions.
Lee's association with Hammer Film Productions brought him into contact with Peter Cushing, and they became good friends. Lee and Cushing often than not played contrasting roles in Hammer films, where Cushing was the protagonist and Lee the villain, whether it be Van Helsing and Dracula respectively in Horror of Dracula (1958), or John Banning and Kharis the Mummy respectively in The Mummy (1959).
Lee continued his role as "Dracula" in a number of Hammer sequels throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s. During this time, he co-starred in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), and made numerous appearances as Fu Manchu, most notably in the first of the series The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), and also appeared in a number of films in Europe. With his own production company, Charlemagne Productions, Ltd., Lee made Nothing But the Night (1973) and To the Devil a Daughter (1976).
By the mid-1970s, Lee was tiring of his horror image and tried to widen his appeal by participating in several mainstream films, such as The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), The Three Musketeers (1973), The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974), and the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).
The success of these films prompted him in the late 1970s to move to Hollywood, where he remained a busy actor but made mostly unremarkable film and television appearances, and eventually moved back to England. The beginning of the new millennium relaunched his career to some degree, during which he has played Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and as Saruman the White in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lee played Count Dooku again in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005), and portrayed the father of Willy Wonka, played by Johnny Depp, in the Tim Burton film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).
On 16 June 2001, he was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to drama. He was created a Knight Bachelor on 13 June 2009 in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama and charity. In addition he was made a Commander of the Order of St John on 16 January 1997.
Lee died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on 7 June 2015 at 8:30 am after being admitted for respiratory problems and heart failure, shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday there. His wife delayed the public announcement until 11 June, in order to break the news to their family.- Writer
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Arthur C. Clarke was born in the seaside town of Minehead, Somerset, England in December 16, 1917. In 1936 he moved to London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society. There he started to experiment with astronautic material in the BIS, write the BIS Bulletin and science fiction. During World War II, as a RAF officer, he was in charge of the first radar talk-down equipment, the Ground Controlled Approach, during its experimental trials. His only non-science-fiction novel, Glide Path, is based on this work. After the war, he returned to London and to the BIS, which he presided in 46-47 and 50-53. In 1945 he published the technical paper "Extra-terrestrial Relays" laying down the principles of the satellite com- communication with satellites in geostationary orbits - a speculation realized 25 years later. His invention has brought him numerous honors, such as the 1982 Marconi International Fellowship, a gold medal of the Franklin Institute, the Vikram Sarabhai Professorship of the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, the Lindbergh Award and a Fellowship of King's College, London. Today, the geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometers is named The Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union. The first story Clarke sold professionally was "Rescue Party", written in March 1945 and appearing in Astounding Science in May 1946. He obtained first class honors in Physics and Mathematics at the King's College, London, in 1948.
In 1953 he met an American named Marilyn Torgenson, and married her less than three weeks later. They split in December 1953. As Clarke says, "The marriage was incompatible from the beginning. It was sufficient proof that I wasn't the marrying type, although I think everybody should marry once". Clarke first visited Colombo, Sri Lanka (at the time called Ceylon) in December 1954. In 1954 Clarke wrote to Dr Harry Wexler, then chief of the Scientific Services Division, U.S. Weather Bureau, about satellite applications for weather forecasting. Of these communications, a new branch of meteorology was born, and Dr. Wexler became the driving force in using rockets and satellites for meteorological research and operations. In 1954 Clarke started to give up space for the sea. About the reasons, he said: "I now realise that it was my interest in astronautics that led me to the ocean. Both involve exploration, of course - but that's not the only reason. When the first skin-diving equipment started to appear in the late 1940s, I suddenly realized that here was a cheap and simple way of imitating one of the most magical aspects of spaceflight - weightessness." In the book Profiles of the Future (1962) he looks at the probable shape of tomorrow's world. In this book he states his three Laws: 1."When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." 2."The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." 3."Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In 1964, he started to work with Stanley Kubrick in a SF (Science Fiction) movie script. After 4 years, he shared an Oscar Academy Award nomination with him for the film version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He co-broadcasted the Apollo 11 , 12 and 15 missions with Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra for CBS. In 1985, He published a sequel to 2001 : 2010: Odyssey Two. He worked with Peter Hyams in the movie version of 2010. They work was done using a Kaypro computer and a modem, for Arthur was in Sri Lanka and Peter Hyams in Los Angeles. Their communications turned into the book The Odyssey File - The Making of 2010. His thirteen-part TV series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World in 1981 and Arthur C. Clarke's World of strange Powers in 1984 has now been screened in many countries. He made part of other TV series about the space, as Walter Cronkite's Universe series in 1981. He has lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka since 1956 and has been doing underwater exploration along that coast and the Great Barrier Reef. So far it has been to over 70 books, almost as many non-fiction, as science fiction. In March 1998, his latest, and probably last, novel: 3001: The Final Odyssey was released.- Director
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Carol Reed was the second son of stage actor, dramatics teacher and impresario founder of the Royal School of Dramatic Art Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Reed was one of Tree's six illegitimate children with Beatrice Mae Pinney, who Tree established in a second household apart from his married life. There were no social scars here; Reed grew up in a well-mannered, middle-class atmosphere. His public school days were at King's School, Canterbury, and he was only too glad to push on with the idea of following his father and becoming an actor. His mother wanted no such thing and shipped him off to Massachusetts in 1922, where his older brother resided on--of all things--a chicken ranch.
It was a wasted six months before Reed was back in England and joined a stage company of Dame Sybil Thorndike, making his stage debut in 1924. He forthwith met British writer Edgar Wallace, who cashed in on his constant output of thrillers by establishing a road troupe to do stage adaptations of them. Reed was in three of these, also working as an assistant stage manager. Wallace became chairman of the newly formed British Lion Film Corp. in 1927, and Reed followed to become his personal assistant. As such he began learning the film trade by assisting in supervising the filmed adaptations of Wallace's works. This was essentially his day job. At night he continued stage acting and managing. It was something of a relief when Wallace passed on in 1932; Reed decided to drop the stage for film and joined historic Ealing Studios as dialog director for Associated Talking Pictures under Basil Dean.
Reed rose from dialog director to second-unit director and assistant director in record time, his first solo directorship being the adventure Midshipman Easy (1935). This and his subsequent effort, Laburnum Grove (1936), attracted high praise from a future collaborator, novelist/critic Graham Greene, who said that once Reed "gets the right script, [he] will prove far more than efficient." However, Reed would endure the sort of staid, boilerplate filmmaking that characterized British "B" movies until he left this behind with The Stars Look Down (1940), his second film with Michael Redgrave, and his openly Hitchcockian Night Train to Munich (1940), a comedy-thriller with Rex Harrison. It has often been seen as a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) with the same screenwriters and comedy relief--Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, who would just about make careers as the cricket zealots Charters and Caldicott, from "Vanishes".
The British liked these films and, significantly, so did America, where Hollywood still wondered whether their patronage of the British film industry was worth the gamble of a payoff via the US public. Dean was just one of several powerhouse producers rising in Britain in the 1930s. Other names are more familiar: Alexander Korda and J. Arthur Rank stand out. For Reed, who would wisely decide to start producing his own films in order to have more control over them, finding his niche was still a challenge into the 1940s. He was only too well aware that the film director led a team effort--his was partly a coordinator's task, harmonizing the talents of the creative team. The modest Reed would admit to his success being this partnership time and again. So he gravitated toward the same scriptwriters, art directors and cinematographers as his movie list spread out.
There were more thrillers and some historical bios: The Remarkable Mr. Kipps (1941) with Redgrave and The Young Mr. Pitt (1942) with Robert Donat. He did service and war effort fare through World War II, but these were more than flag wavers, for Reed dealt with the psychology of transitioning to military life. His Anglo-American documentary of combat (co-directed by Garson Kanin), The True Glory (1945), won the 1946 Oscar for Best Documentary. With that under his belt, Reed was now recognized as Britain's ablest director and could pick and choose his projects. He also had the clout--and the all-important funds--to do what he thought was essential to ensure realism on a location shoot, something missing in British film work prior to Reed.
Odd Man Out (1947) with James Mason as an IRA hit man on the run did just that and was Reed's first real independent effort, and he had gone to Rank to do it. All too soon, however, that organization began subjugating directors' wishes to studio needs, and Reed made perhaps his most important associative decision and joined Korda's London Films. Here was one very important harmony--he and Korda thought along the same lines. Though Anthony Kimmins had scripted four films for Reed, it was time for Korda to introduce the director to Graham Greene. Their association would bring Reed his greatest successes. The Fallen Idol (1948) was based on a Greene short story, with Ralph Richardson as a do-everything head butler in a diplomatic household. Idolized by the lonely, small son of his employer, he becomes caught up in a liaison with a woman on the work staff, who was much younger than his shrewish wife. It may seem slow to an American audience, but with the focus on the boy's wide-eyed view of rather gloomy surroundings, as well as the adult drama around him, it was innovative and a solid success.
What came next was a landmark--the best known of Reed's films. The Third Man (1949) was yet another Greene story, molded into a gem of a screenplay by him, though Reed added some significant elements of his own. The film has been endlessly summarized and analyzed and, whether defined as an international noir or post-war noir or just noir, it was cutting-edge noir and unforgettable. This was Reed in full control--well, almost-- and the money was coming from yet another wide-vision producer, David O. Selznick, along with Korda. Tension did develop in this effort keep a predominantly Anglo effort in this Anglo-American collaboration.
There were complications, though. For one thing, Korda--old friend and somewhat kindred spirit of wunderkind director Orson Welles--had a gentlemen's agreement with the latter for three pictures, but these were not forthcoming. Korda could be as evasive as Welles was known to be, and Welles had come to Europe to further his inevitable film projects after troubles in Hollywood. Always desperate for seed money, Welles was forced to take acting parts in Europe to build up his bank account in order to finance his more personal projects. He thus accepted the role of the larger-than-life American flim-flam man turned criminal, Harry Lime. The extended time spent filming the Vienna sewer scenes on location and at the elaborate set for them at Shepperton Studios in London, entailed the longest of the ten minutes or so of Welles' screen time. Here was a potential source of directorial intimidation if ever there was one. Welles took it upon himself to direct Reed's veteran cinematographer Robert Krasker with his own vision of some sewer sequences in London (after leaving the location shoot in Vienna), using many takes. Supposedly, Reed did not use any of Welles' footage, and in fact whatever there was got conveniently lost. Yet Citizen Kane (1941)'s shadow was so looming that Welles was given credit for a lot of camera work, atmospherics and the chase scenes. He had referred to the movie as "my film" later on and had said he wrote all his dialog. Some of the ferris wheel dialog with its famous famous "cuckoo clock" speech (which Reed and Greene both attributed to him) was probably the essence of Welles' contributions.
Krasker's quirky angles under Reed's direction perfectly framed the ready-made-for-an-art designer bombed-out shadows and stark, isolated street lights of postwar Vienna and its underworld. Unique to cinema history, the whole score (except for some canned incidental café music) was just the brilliant zither playing of Anton Karas, adding his nuances to every dramatic transition. Krasker won an Oscar, and Karas was nominated for one.
Reed's attention to detailed casting also paid off, particularly in casting German-speaking actors and background players. Selznick insisted on Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, the benighted protagonist, and his clipped and sharp voice and subterranean drawl were perfect for the part. Reed had wanted James Stewart--definitely a different perception than Americans of its leading men. Selznick parted ways with Reed on other issues, however; there was a laundry list of reasons for his re-editing and changing some incidentals for the shorter American version, partly based on negative comments from sneak preview responses. Perhaps it was the constant interruptions from the other side of the Atlantic that drove Reed to personally narrate the introduction describing Martins in the British version of the film (given the basic tenets of noir films, the star always played narrator to introduce the story and voice over where appropriate). Selznick showed himself--in this instance, anyway--to have a better directorial sense by substituting Cotten introducing himself in the American cut. It made far more sense and was much more effective. On the other hand, Selznick's editing of the pivotal railway café scenes with Cotten and Alida Valli had continuity problems.
Nonetheless, the film was an international smash, and all the principal players reaped the rewards. Reed did not get an Oscar, but he did win the Cannes Film Grand Prix. Greene was motivated enough to take the story and expand it into a best-selling novel. Even Welles, with his minimum screen time--he was spending most of his time in Europe trying to obtain financing for his newest project, Othello (1956)--milked the movie for all it was worth. He did not deny directorial influences (though in a 1984 interview he did), and even developed a Harry Lime radio show back home.
However, the movie had its detractors. It was called too melodramatic and too cynical. The short scenes of untranslated German dialog were also criticized, yet that lent to the atmosphere of confusion and helplessness of Martins caught in a wary, potentially dangerous environment--something the audience inevitably was able to share. It was all too ironic that Reed, now declared by some as the greatest living director of the time, found his career in decline thereafter. Of his total output, four were based on plays, three on stories and 15 on novels. With less than half of them to go, he was to be disappointed for the most part. His The Man Between (1953) with James Mason was too much of a "Third Man" reprise, and A Kid for Two Farthings (1955) was too sentimental.
By now Reed was being sought by enterprising Hollywood producers. He had--as he usually did--the material for a first-rate movie with two popular American actors, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis for Trapeze (1956). However, it suffered from a slow script, as would the British-produced The Key (1958), despite another international cast. Things finally picked up with his venture into another Greene-scripted film from his novel, with Alec Guinness in the lead in the UK spy spoof Our Man in Havana (1959) with yet another winning international cast.
When Hollywood called again, the chance at such a British piece of history as Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) with a mostly British cast and Marlon Brando seemed bound for success. It was the second version of the movie produced by MGM (the first being the Clark Gable starrer Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)). However, Brando's history of being temperamental was much in evidence on location in Tahiti. Reed shot a small part of the picture but finally left, having more than his fill of the star's ego (and, evidently, being allowed too much artistic control by the studio) and the film was finished by Lewis Milestone. Reed would ultimately be branded as a failure in directing historical movies, but it was an unfair appraisal based on the random aspect of film success and such forces of nature as Brando, not artistic and technical expertise.
The opportunity to make another film came knocking again with Reed and American money forming the production company International Classics to produce Irving Stone's best-selling story of Michelangelo and the painting of the Sistine Chapel, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). Here is perhaps the prime example of Reed being given short shrift for a really valiant effort at an historical, artistically significant and cultural epic because it was a "flop" at the box office. Shot on location in Rome and its environs, the film had a first-rate cast headed by Charlton Heston doing his method best as the temperamental artist with Rex Harrison, an effortless standout as the equally volatile Pope Julius II. Diane Cilento did fine work as the Contessina de Medici, with the always stalwart Harry Andrews as architect rival Donato Bramante. Most of the other roles were filled by Italians dubbed in English, but they all look good.
Reed's attention to historical detail provided perhaps the most accurate depiction of early 16th-century Italy--from costumes and manners to military action and weapons (especially firearms)--ever brought to the screen. The script by Philip Dunne was brisk and always entertaining in the verbal battle between the artist and his pontiff. Yet by the 1960s costume epics were going out of style and bigger flops, such as Cleopatra (1963) (talk about agony) despite the wealth of stars which included Harrison, tended to spread like a disease to those few that came later. Despite a high-powered distribution campaign by Twentieth Century-Fox, Reed's exemplary effort would ultimately be appreciated by art scholars and historians--not the stuff of Hollywood's money mentality.
For Reed the only remaining triumph was, of all things, a musical--his first and only--yet again he was working with children. However, the adaptation of the great Charles Dickens novel "Oliver Twistt" top the screen (as Oliver! (1968)) was a sensation with a lively script and music amid a realistic 19th-century London that was up to Reed's usual standards. The film was nominated for no less than 11 Oscars, wining five and two of the big ones--Best Picture and Best Director. Reed had finally achieved that bit of elusiveness. He could never be so simplistically stamped with an uneven career; Reed had always kept to a precise craftsman's movie-making formula.
Fellow British director Michael Powell had said that Reed "could put a film together like a watchmaker puts together a watch". It was Graham Greene, however, who gave Reed perhaps the more important personal accolade: "The only director I know with that particular warmth of human sympathy, the extraordinary feeling for the right face in the right part, the exactitude of cutting, and not least important the power of sympathizing with an author's worries and an ability to guide him."- Actor
- Soundtrack
Movie roles are sometimes based upon what the audience expects to see. If the role called for the tall stereotypical Englishmen with the stiff upper lip and stern determination, that man would be C. Aubrey Smith, graduate of Cambridge University, a leading Freemason and a test cricketer for England. Smith was 30 by the time he embarked upon a career on the stage. It took another 20 plus years before he entered the flickering images of the movies. By 1915, Smith was over 50 in a medium that demanded young actors and starlets. For the next ten years, he appeared in a rather small number of silent movies, and after that, he faded from the scene. It was in 1930, with the advent of sound, that Smith found his position in the movies and that position would be distinguished roles. He played military officers, successful business men, ministers of the cloth and ministers of government. With the bushy eyebrows and stoic face, he played men who know about honour, tradition, and the correct path. He worked with big stars such as Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Shirley Temple. As for honours, Smith received the Order of the British Empire in 1938 and was knighted in 1944. He continued to work up to the time of his death.- Percy Spender was born on 5 October 1897 in Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was married to Eileen Esdaile, Averil Watkins Trenerry and Jean Maud Henderson. He died on 3 May 1985 in Darling Point, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Sir Cedric Hardwicke, one of the great character actors in the first decades of the talking picture, was born in Lye, England on February 19, 1893. Hardwicke attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his stage debut in 1912. His career was interrupted by military service in World War I, but he returned to the stage in 1922 with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, distinguishing himself as Caesar in George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, which was his ticket to the London stage. For his distinguished work on the stage and in films, he was knighted by King George V in 1934, a time when very few actors received such an honor.
Hardwicke first performed on the American stage in 1936 and emigrated to the United States permanently after spending the 1948 season with the Old Vic. Hardwicke's success on stage and in films and television was abetted by his resonant voice and aristocratic bearing. Among the major films he appeared in were Les Misérables (1935), Stanley and Livingstone (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Suspicion (1941), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956).
His last film was The Pumpkin Eater (1964) in 1964. Cedric Hardwicke died on August 6, 1964 in New York City, New York.- Director
- Additional Crew
- Actor
Hall directed his first play while he was still a student. He soon achieved prominence as a stage director. He began his occasional film work in 1968, with Work Is a Four Letter Word (1968).
He was the Artistic Director of The Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon from 1960-68. He took over direction of the National Theatre from Lord Laurence Olivier in 1973, shortly after leaving the RSC. He was knighted and later known as Sir Peter Hall.- Music Artist
- Composer
- Producer
Michael Philip Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent on 26th July 1943. When he was 4 he met Keith Richards until they went into secondary schools and lost touch. But one day in 1960 they accidentally met on the Dartford train line and both realized that they had an interest in rock n roll combined with blues. Between 1960 and 1962 The Rolling Stones formed. It was comprised of Mick on lead vocal and harmonica, Keith Richards on guitar, Bill Wyman on bass, Charlie Watts on drums and Brian Jones on guitar.
In 1964 they released their first album "The Rolling Stones". Eventually in 1965 they had their first number 1 hit in the UK with "The Last Time" which was followed by "I can't get no Satisfaction". Throughout 1966-1969 they toured the world with many great hits like "Let's Spend the night together" (1967) and "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968). But in 1969 Brian Jones committed suicide and Mick and Keith Richards were blamed for his death. But this fusion blew over and they got another guitarist to replace Brian in Mick Taylor. They released the album "Let it Bleed" (1969) with the track "Honky Tonk Woman". After they completed a North American tour Jagger finally went to star in Performance (1970) as the retired rock star Turner. The film was released in August 1970 with Mick starring opposite James Fox and Mick even had his first solo hit which was the soundtrack to the film "Memo from Turner".
In 1971 The Rolling Stones came back with the album "Sticky Fingers" which would be the most popular album they ever made. From this album there were songs like "Wild Horses" and "Brown Sugar" and were major hits all over the world. While this was happening Bianca Jagger gave birth to Jaggers daughter Jade Jagger. Throughout the 70s The Rolling Stones made thousands of live performances and achieved endless record sales with hits like "Angie" (1973), "It's Only Rock and Roll" (1974), "Hot Stuff" (1976) and "Respectable" (1978). In 1974 Ronnie Wood had replaced Mick Taylor on guitar and Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood both played lead guitar. In 1980 Jagger divorced Bianca Jagger and went on to record and release "Emotional Rescue" with The Rolling Stones and it was a platinum album. In 1981 "Tattoo You" was released and the group went on a major world tour, their first in three years, which filled stadiums in the US and arenas in Europe. After the tour ended in 1982 Jagger was starting to like other music. In 1983 The Rolling Stones recorded the album "Undercover" at the Compass Point in Nassau. But recording sessions didn't go well as during this time Mick and Keith Richard were having arguments about the kind of music the group should be playing. Even though the album was a success it seemed like The Rolling Stones were now going over the edge.
In May 1984 Mick recorded "State of Shock" with The Jacksons which led Mick wanting to try out a solo career. So in September he recorded his first solo album with guests like Pete Townshend and Jeff Beck. Shortly before the album was released The Rolling Stones decided to record their first album under a new Sony records contract. Keith Richards didn't approve of the solo efforts - he wanted Mick to stick to The Rolling Stones. In July 1985 Jagger made his first solo live appearance at the Live Aid benefit concert in Philadelphia. The Rolling Stones were going to perform but decided not to as things weren't going well for them at the time. During 1986 Mick worked on his second solo album "Primitive Cool" which he hoped would be a success but this was not to be. However, his 1988 tour proved to be a success, selling out in Japan.
But Mick accepted the fact that the only way to carry on with success was to get back with The Rolling Stones so in January 1989 he and Keith Richards reformed and they wrote songs for what was to be the "Steel Wheels" album. After the album was released The Rolling Stones went on a major worldwide tour with special concerts at London's Wembley Stadium. Sadly though in 1992 bassist of The Rolling Stones Bill Wyman announced his departure from the group which was to be the following year. Even though The Rolling Stones were upset to see him leave they accepted the fact that he'd been in there too long and they had to let go. Jagger released some more solo material during this time but it wasn't such a success. In 1994 The Rolling Stones released the album "Voodoo Lounge" and they went back on tour. The first The Rolling Stones project without Bill Wyman. The tour was the biggest tour in rock history raising over 300 million. As this tour was a success they returned yet again in 1997 with the "Bridges to Babylon" album and tour which lasted for two years which was combined with the "No Security" live album and tour. After the tour was finished Jagger's marriage was on the line as he had another child from a secret love affair. Soon after this was found out the marriage between him and Jerry Hall had ended. Since then Jagger's been a film producer and a solo artist. He has produced the film Enigma (2001) and has recorded his 2001 album "Goddess in the Doorway" - another commercial flop. But never fear because just recently the Stones announced a 40th Anniversary tour and that it will start in September, 2002.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Music Department
Cliff Richard burst onto the rock'n'roll world in 1958 with his hit single 'Move It'. He was then known as Britain's answer to Elvis Presley. His first film was Serious Charge (1959) followed by Expresso Bongo (1959), Wonderful to Be Young! (1961) and Summer Holiday (1963).
The latter two films were both massive hits for Cliff in Britain and overseas where Cliff was now a major pop star. His next film, Swingers' Paradise (1964) was not as successful as his other films. His later films were Finders Keepers (1966), Two a Penny (1967) and Take Me High (1973). Cliff has retained his popularity in most parts of the world (except the US) and has had nearly 150 hit singles in the UK charts.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
David Jason was born in Edmonton, London, in 1940. He has become one of Britain's most famous, versatile and respected actors, who is most famous for his role in Only Fools and Horses (1981) as Del Boy. He made his debut in the series in 1981 and was still playing the same role up to the Christmas special in 2002. His big break came in the 1967 children's comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967) starring alongside members of the Monty Python team: Terry Jones; Eric Idle, and Michael Palin.
Sadly, in 1990, he spent time away from work to nurse Myfanwy Talog, the Welsh actress who was his long time partner, before she died of cancer at the age of 49. He has come a long way from his days as an electrician and has won numerous awards for his work. He has managed to combine the comedy aspect of his career with rather more serious roles, such as that of Jack Frost in the highly-rated detective series A Touch of Frost (1992) and has proved that he is a man of many talents. In the mid 1970s, he performed as Blanco, an elderly prisoner, in episodes of Porridge (1974) with Ronnie Barker. He has also done voice work in children's TV.
He has not really concentrated on films, although he was very impressive in the TV film All the King's Men (1999), playing Frank Beck, the Commander of the Sandringham Company who mysteriously disappeared whilst in action in The Great War campaign in Gallipoli in 1915.
He lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife, Gill Hinchcliffe and their daughter, Sophie Mae, who was born in 2001. His hobbies are a little DIY and gardening. He was knighted in 2005, becoming Sir David Jason.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Preeminent British classical actor of the first post-Olivier generation, Derek Jacobi was knighted in 1994 for his services to the theatre, and, in fact, is only the second to enjoy the honor of holding TWO knighthoods, Danish and English (Olivier was the other). Modest and unassuming in nature, Jacobi's firm place in theatre history centers around his fearless display of his characters' more unappealing aspects, their great flaws, eccentricities and, more often than not, their primal torment.
Jacobi was born in Leytonstone, London, England, the only child of Alfred George Jacobi, a department store manager, and Daisy Gertrude (Masters) Jacobi, a secretary. His paternal great-grandfather was German (from Hoxter, Germany). His interest in drama began while quite young. He made his debut at age six in the local library drama group production of "The Prince and the Swineherd" in which he appeared as both the title characters. In his teens he attended Leyton County High School and eventually joined the school's drama club ("The Players of Leyton").
Derek portrayed Hamlet at the English National Youth Theatre prior to receiving his high school diploma, and earned a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, where he initially studied history before focusing completely on the stage. A standout role as Edward II at Cambridge led to an invite by the Birmingham Repertory in 1960 following college graduation. He made an immediate impression wherein his Henry VIII (both in 1960) just happened to catch the interest of Olivier himself, who took him the talented actor under his wing. Derek became one of the eight founding members of Olivier's National Theatre Company and gradually rose in stature with performances in "The Royal Hunt of the Sun," "Othello" (as Cassio) and in "Hay Fever", among others. He also made appearances at the Chichester Festival and the Old Vic.
It was Olivier who provided Derek his film debut, recreating his stage role of Cassio in Olivier's acclaimed cinematic version of Othello (1965). Olivier subsequently cast Derek in his own filmed presentation of Chekhov's Three Sisters (1970). On TV Derek was in celebrated company playing Don John in Much Ado About Nothing (1967) alongside Maggie Smith and then-husband Robert Stephens; Derek had played the role earlier at the Chichester Festival in 1965. After eight eventful years at the National Theatre, which included such sterling roles as Touchstone in "As You Like It", Jacobi left the company in 1971 in order to attract other mediums. He continued his dominance on stage as Ivanov, Richard III, Pericles and Orestes (in "Electra"), but his huge breakthrough would occur on TV. Coming into his own with quality support work in Man of Straw (1972), The Strauss Family (1972) and especially the series The Pallisers (1974) in which he played the ineffectual Lord Fawn, Derek's magnificence was presented front and center in the epic BBC series I, Claudius (1976). His stammering, weak-minded Emperor Claudius was considered a work of genius and won, among other honors, the BAFTA award.
Although he was accomplished in The Day of the Jackal (1973) and The Odessa File (1974), films would place a distant third throughout his career. Stage and TV, however, would continue to illustrate his classical icon status. Derek took his Hamlet on a successful world tour throughout England, Egypt, Sweden, Australia, Japan and China; in some of the afore-mentioned countries he was the first actor to perform the role in English. TV audiences relished his performances as Richard II (1978) and, of course Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1980).
After making his Broadway bow in "The Suicide" in 1980, Derek suffered from an alarming two-year spell of stage fright. He returned, however, and toured as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company (1982-1985) with award-winning results. During this period he collected Broadway's Tony Award for his Benedick in "Much Ado about Nothing"; earned the coveted Olivier, Drama League and Helen Hayes awards for his Cyrano de Bergerac; and earned equal acclaim for his Prospero in "The Tempest" and Peer Gynt. In 1986, he finally made his West End debut in "Breaking the Code" for which he won another Helen Hayes trophy; the play was then brought to Broadway.
For the rest of the 80s and 90s, he laid stage claim to such historical figures as Lord Byron, Edmund Kean and Thomas Becket. On TV he found resounding success (and an Emmy nomination) as Adolf Hitler in Inside the Third Reich (1982), and finally took home the coveted Emmy opposite Anthony Hopkins in the WWII drama The Tenth Man (1988). He won a second Emmy in an unlikely fashion by spoofing his classical prowess on an episode of "Frasier" (his first guest performance on American TV), in which he played the unsubtle and resoundingly bad Shakespearean actor Jackson Hedley.
Kenneth Branagh was greatly influenced by mentor Jacobi and their own association would include Branagh's films Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), and Hamlet (1996), the latter playing Claudius to Branagh's Great Dane. Derek also directed Branagh in the actor's Renaissance Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". In the 1990s Derek returned to the Chichester Festival, this time as artistic director, and made a fine showing in the title role of Uncle Vanya (1996).
More heralded work of late include profound portrayals of the anguished titular painter in Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), the role of Gracchus in the popular, Oscar-winning film Gladiator (2000), and sterling performances in such films as Two Men Went to War (2002), Bye Bye Blackbird (2005), The Riddle (2007), Endgame (2009), The King's Speech (2010), Jail Caesar (2012), and as the King in Cinderella (2015). Continuing to mesmerize on the stage, he has turned in superb performances in "Uncle Vanya" (2000), Friedrich Schiller's "Don Carlos" (2005), _A Voyage 'Round My Father (2006), "Twelfth Night" (2009) and the title role in "King Lear" (2010). On the British TV series front, he has commanded more recent attention in the title role of a crusading monk in the mystery series Mystery!: Cadfael (1994), as Lord Pirrie in Titanic: Blood and Steel (2012), as Alan in Last Tango in Halifax (2012), and as Stuart Bixby in Vicious (2013).
He and his life-time companion of three decades, Richard Clifford, filed as domestic partners in England in 2006. Clifford, a fine classical actor and producer in his own right, has shared movie time with Jacobi in Little Dorrit (1987), Henry V (1989), and the TV version of Cyrano de Bergerac (1985).- Director
- Writer
- Editor
An important British filmmaker, David Lean was born in Croydon on March 25, 1908 and brought up in a strict Quaker family (ironically, as a child he wasn't allowed to go to the movies). During the 1920s, he briefly considered the possibility of becoming an accountant like his father before finding a job at Gaumont British Studios in 1927. He worked as tea boy, clapper boy, messenger, then cutting room assistant. By 1935, he had become chief editor of Gaumont British News until in 1939 when he began to edit feature films, notably for Anthony Asquith, Paul Czinner and Michael Powell. Amongst films he worked on were Pygmalion (1938), Major Barbara (1941) and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942).
By the end of the 1930s, Lean's reputation as an editor was very well established. In 1942, Noël Coward gave Lean the chance to co-direct with him the war film In Which We Serve (1942). Shortly after, with the encouragement of Coward, Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame and producer 'Anthony Havelock-Allan' launched a production company called Cineguild. For that firm Lean first directed adaptations of three plays by Coward: the chronicle This Happy Breed (1944), the humorous ghost story Blithe Spirit (1945) and, most notably, the sentimental drama Brief Encounter (1945). Originally a box-office failure in England, "Brief Encounter" was presented at the very first Cannes film festival (1946), where it won almost unanimous praises as well as a Grand Prize.
From Coward, Lean switched to Charles Dickens, directing two well-regarded adaptations: Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). The latter, starring Alec Guinness in his first major movie role, was criticized by some, however, for potential anti-Semitic inflections. The last two films made under the Cineguild banner were The Passionate Friends (1949), a romance from a novel by H.G. Wells, and the true crime story Madeleine (1950). Neither had a significant impact on critics or audiences.
The Cineguild partnership came to an end after a dispute between Lean and Neame. Lean's first post-Cineguild production was the aviation drama The Sound Barrier (1952), a great box-office success in England and his most spectacular movie so far. He followed with two sophisticated comedies based on theatrical plays: Hobson's Choice (1954) and the Anglo-American co-production Summertime (1955). Both were well received and "Hobson's Choice" won the Golden Bear at the 1954 Berlin film festival.
Lean's next movie was pivotal in his career, as it was the first of those grand-scale epics he would become renowned for. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was produced by Sam Spiegel from a novel by 'Pierre Boulle', adapted by blacklisted writers Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman. Shot in Ceylon under extremely difficult conditions, the film was an international success and triumphed at the Oscars, winning seven awards, most notably best film and director.
Lean and Spiegel followed with an even more ambitious film, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), based on "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", the autobiography of T.E. Lawrence. Starring relative newcomer Peter O'Toole, this film was the first collaboration between Lean and writer Robert Bolt, cinematographer Freddie Young and composer Maurice Jarre. The shooting itself took place in Spain, Morocco and Jordan over a period of 20 months. Initial reviews were mixed and the film was trimmed down shortly after its world première and cut even more during a 1971 re-release. Like its predecessor, it won seven Oscars, once again including best film and director.
The same team of Lean, Bolt, Young and Jarre next worked on an adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel "Dr. Zhivago" for producer Carlo Ponti. Doctor Zhivago (1965) was shot in Spain and Finland, standing in for revolutionary Russia and, despite divided critics, was hugely successful, as was Jarre's musical score. The film won five Oscars out of ten nominations, but the statuettes for film and director went to The Sound of Music (1965).
Lean's next movie, the sentimental drama Ryan's Daughter (1970), did not reach the same heights. The original screenplay by Robert Bolt was produced by old associate Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Lean once again secured the collaboration of Freddie Young and Maurice Jarre. The shooting in Ireland lasted about a year, much longer than expected. The film won two Oscars; but, for the most part, critical reaction was tepid, sometimes downright derisive, and the general public didn't really respond to the movie.
This relative lack of success seems to have inhibited Lean's creativity for a while. But towards the end of the 1970s, he started to work again with Robert Bolt on an ambitious two-part movie about the Bounty mutiny. The project fell apart and was eventually recuperated by Dino De Laurentiis. Lean was then approached by producers John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin to adapt E.M. Forster's novel "A Passage to India", a book Lean had been interested in for more than 20 years. For the first time in his career; Lean wrote the adaptation alone, basing himself partly on Santha Rama Rau's stage version of the book. Lean also acted as his own editor. A Passage to India (1984) opened to mostly favourable reviews and performed quite well at the box-office. It was a strong Oscar contender, scoring 11 nominations. It settled for two wins, losing the trophy battle to Milos Forman's Amadeus (1984).
Lean spent the last few years of his life preparing an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's meditative adventure novel "Nostromo". He also participated briefly in Richard Harris' restoration of "Lawrence of Arabia" in 1988. In 1990, Lean received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement award. He died of cancer on April 16, 1991 at age 83, shortly before the shooting of "Nostromo" was about to begin.
Lean was known on sets for his extreme perfectionism and autocratic behavior, an attitude that sometimes alienated his cast or crew. Though his cinematic approach, classic and refined, clearly belongs to a bygone era, his films have aged rather well and his influence can still be found in movies like The English Patient (1996) and Titanic (1997). In 1999, the British Film Institute compiled a list of the 100 favorite British films of the 20th century. Five by David Lean appeared in the top 30, three of them in the top five.- Composer
- Soundtrack
Arnold Bax was born on 8 November 1883 in London, England, UK. He was a composer, known for Oliver Twist (1948), Malta G.C. (1942) and Journey Into History (1951). He was married to Elsa Luisa Sobrino. He died on 3 October 1953 in Cork, Ireland.- Producer
- Music Department
- Executive
David Puttnam was born on 25 February 1941 in London, England, UK. He is a producer and executive, known for The Mission (1986), Chariots of Fire (1981) and The Killing Fields (1984). He has been married to Patricia Mary Jones since 1961. They have two children.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
The son of a country chemist, the British actor Donald Sinden intended to pursue a career in architecture but was spotted in an amateur theatrical production and asked to join a company that entertained the troops during World War II (Sinden was rejected for naval service because of asthma). Following a brief training at drama school, he established himself in theater, particularly as a Shakespearean actor. Having made his film debut in The Cruel Sea (1953), Sinden became a leading man in British films during the 1950s and then moved onto character roles later in his career. While his film appearances became less frequent, he worked steadily in theater (with the Royal Shakespeare Company, primarily) and in television, notably as the unperturbable butler in Two's Company (1975) and as a miserable in-law in Never the Twain (1981).- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
One of the great British stage actors of his era Donald Wolfit was noted for his magnificent portrayals of King Lear and Tamburlaine. Yet no actor of his generation was surrounded by more controversy. He was temperamental and difficult to deal with, enraged by criticism and tyrannical with the companies he led.
Although his talent was never in any doubt, critics often condemned his companies' poor supporting players and tasteless costumes. Even in death he had his critics.
Wolfit appeared in numerous theatre seasons at the Old Vic and Stratford-upon-Avon but preferred the life of a touring player and as the star of a vagabond troupe. He also appeared in many films and television plays. One of his most barnstorming performances was in the title role of the film Svengali (1954) in which, with his hypnotic real-life stare, he puts Hildegard Knef into a permanent trance.
The money from his film work helped to finance many of his stage productions. Wolfit is best remembered today as the inspiration for the film The Dresser (1983), in which Albert Finney plays a barnstorming actor-manager.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Attended the Royal Academy of Music beginning at the age of 17. His first American professional appearance occurred at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 3, 1959. He founded the London Symphony Orchestra's Pops Program and served as the orchestra's Pops Musical Director.- Robin Day was born on 24 October 1923 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Sykes and a Big Big Show (1971), ITN News (1955) and Midweek (1972). He was married to Kathryn Ainslie. He died on 6 August 2000 in London, England, UK.
- Director
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Richard Eyre was born on 28 March 1943 in Barnstaple, Devon, England, UK. He is a director and producer, known for Notes on a Scandal (2006), Iris (2001) and Stage Beauty (2004). He has been married to Sue Birtwistle since 1973.- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Edward Elgar was born on June 2, 1857, in Broadheath, near Worcester, where his father named William Elgar, was a music shop owner and a piano technician. Elgar was the fourth of six children. He was self-taught in all musical instruments, that were at his disposal in his father's shop, and he studied all the sheet music available in the shop.
Unrestricted by rules of "teaching", he remained highly original in developing his unique musical personality, that allowed him to surpass the other leading composers of his time. But having no teachers who would connect him into the entrenched musical establishment, it took all his genius, persistence and determination to advance through the rigid class structure of Victorian society. In 1889 Elgar married his student, Alice Roberts, daughter of the late General Sir Henry Roberts. She married beneath herself in opposition to her relatives. Alice played a vital role in Elgar's career by keeping a dogged faith in his genius.
Elgar was 42 when his "Enigma Variations" (1899) was premiered in London and brought him the first big success outside of his native Worcester. The performance of "The Dream of Gerontius" (1900) at the Rhine Festival in Dusseldorf earned him highest praise from Richard Strauss, who considered Elgar as the first English progressive musician.
The Coronation Ode "Land of Hope and Glory" came from his first "Pomp and Circumstance March" in D major (1901). Elgar prophesied: "I've got a tune that will knock'em-knock'em flat!... a tune like that comes once in a lifetime..." This piece became extremely popular and was later used in more than 30 films. In 1904 an all-Elgar festival was held at Covent Garden. In July of 1904, Elgar was knighted by King Edward VII.
Spending the winter of 1907-08 in Italy, Elgar composed the "Symphony No 1" in A flat. In just one year it had 100 performances all over Europe and in America, Australia and Russia, and was compared to the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven. The "Symphony No 2" in E flat was written during 1909-1911. It was dedicated to the memory of King Edward VII and was considered by many the greatest of Elgar's symphonic works.
Elgar's incidental music for a children's play "The Starlight Express" (1915) and his patriotic "The Spirit of England" (1917) on the war poems by Laurence Binyon preceded his last great masterpiece, the elegiac "Cello Concerto" in E minor (1919). It was used as a main theme in Hilary and Jackie (1998).
The death of Alice Elgar in 1920 took away much of Elgar's inspiration and will to write music. He made a series of studio recordings of his works for HMV. In 1928 he was created Knight Commander of the Victorian Order (K.C.V.O.). In 1933 he recorded his "Violin Concerto" in B minor with then young Yehudi Menuhin and a few weeks later both flew to Paris for performances of this concerto. Elgar died on February 23, 1934 and was laid to rest beside his wife.- The second in a family of ten, his father Henry farmed at Kilkea. His mother Henrietta was descended from the Fitzmaurices, a family which had been in Kerry since the Norman times in the 13th century. In 1880 when Ernest was six his father gave up farming and went to Trinity College Dublin, and qualified to be a doctor. The family lived at 35 Marlborough Road in Dublin and in 1884 they moved to Sydenham in South London where Henry practiced for 30 years.
After attending school at Dulwich College as a day boy Ernest, aged 16, joined the Merchant Navy. After 10 years he gave that up and joined a British Expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott to try and be the first to reach the South Pole. In the summer of 1901 the ship , The Discovery departed for the Antarctic. On 30th December 1902 Scott, Shackleton and Edward Wilson FZS ("Uncle Bill") reached within 400 miles of the South Pole, the furthest South yet achieved by anybody. Shackleton was invalided on the return journey and was sent home early. His experience on this expedition then spurred Shackleton on, to have a go at reaching the South Pole himself. In 1904 after his return he married Emily Dorman, they had three children Raymond, Cecily and Edward.
Next came the Nimrod expedition. In March 1907 Shackleton outlined his own trip, which he organized himself with the minimum of official support. The Expedition was to leave New Zealand in 1908. The ship chosen was a sealing ship which generally worked from Newfoundland. It was brought down and arrived in London in mid-June 1907. The Queen presented Shackleton with a Union Jack to carry on the sledge journey. They ship left for New Zealand on the 7th of August. The Commonwealth Government gave Shackleton £5000 and the New Zealand Government gave him £1000 and agreed to pay for half of the cost of towing the ship down to the Antarctic Circle to save coal for the journey that lay ahead. They entered the Ross Sea on January 16th. On the 28th of January the ship froze in the ice. The next day they lowered the motorcar onto the ice pack, the first automobile on the Antarctic Continent. The team set up the hut they had brought with them and the men crammed in. The weather began to close in and the sun to set. On the 29th of October 1908 Shackleton, Adams, Marshall and Frank Wild headed for the South Pole, a 1700 mile round trip. The other men had set up many depots for the journey using the motorcar for several of them. The team began to run low on rations shot the ponies for food. On the 9th of January 1909 they reached a new furthest south - just 97 miles from the South Pole. They had to turn around due to lack of food.
After the Norwegian Roald Amundsen (December 1911) and Scott (January 1912) had reached the South Pole, Shackleton thought up and attempted to carry out another great plan - to cross the 2000 mile Antarctic continent. This trip was a very successful failure. The team of 28 men and 68 dogs never set foot on the continent. Shackleton's ship the "Endurance" was trapped in the ice in the Weddell Sea for 11 months, from January 1915 until it was squashed and sank in November 1915, leaving 28 men on the ice with 3 small ship's boats. They then spent 5 ( admittedly summer) months on an iceberg floating away from the continent. With great good fortune they landed on Elephant Island on the 15th of April 1916. It is a small godforsaken island of rock and ice with a few penguins and seals for food. So there they were in April 1916, lost to the civilized world, and heading into an Antarctic winter. Losing no time Shackleton's next move was to be one of the greatest small boat journeys ever made. Shackleton and 5 others set off in the 22 foot boat the "James Caird" on an 800 mile journey across one of the roughest seas in the world to island of South Georgia to get help. Tim McCarthy first spotted South Georgia, 15 days after they had left Elephant Island. Their extraordinary journey was not yet over - to reach help, Shackleton, Tom Crean and Frank Worsley then had to cross the mountains, glaciers and snowfields of South Georgia to get to the whaling station at Stromness. Three and a half months later, at the fourth attempt, Shackleton, in a Chilean tug the "Yelcho' rescued the remaining 22 crew on Elephant Island on the 30th August 1916. It was amazing that all the crew had survived. In December Shackleton left New Zealand on the Aurora to rescue the Ross Sea Party from Cape Royds - on the other side of the Antarctic , this party had successfully laid food depots along the Ross Ice Shelf towards the South Pole. Shackleton had intended to use these as he crossed the Continent from the Weddell Sea side.
The 1921 trip on the Quest was his final journey. He died of a heart attack in the early hours of the 5th January 1922 shortly after the start of the expedition, at Grytviken in South Georgia where he was buried. A few months later on their journey home the crew of the Quest erected a cross at King Edward Point, across the bay from the cemetery where their "Boss" lies buried. - Edward Heath was born in 1916 in Broadstairs, Kent. His father was a carpenter, his mother was a maid and his background was very modest. He attended Balliol College at Oxford, where he earned a second-class degree in philosophy, politics and economics. He got active in Conservative Party politics while at Oxford, but opposed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.
He served in the military during World War II, in the Royal Artillery. After the war, he entered the Civil Service in the Ministry of Aviation. In 1950, he was elected Conservative MP for Bexley. He would represent that constituency for more than fifty years. His rise through the ranks was rapid, being appointed a junior whip in 1951 and was promoted to Chief Whip in 1955. He was appointed Minister of Labour in 1959. He was also appointed Lord Privy Seal in 1960 and President of the Board of Trade in 1963.
The Conservative Party lost the 1964 election and its leader, Alec Douglas Home, stepped down shortly thereafter, but not after changing the leadership election rules, which made it easier for the rank and file to win the leadership. Edward Heath was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1965, being the first commoner to lead the party. Edward Heath then went on to unexpectedly win the 1970 General Election for the Conservative Party on the 'Selsdon Platform', calling for more aggressive pro-growth economic policies.
Edward Heath's tenure as Prime Minister was very turbulent. His main accomplishment was to admit Britain into the European Community, which it joined in 1973. That was about his only major accomplishment as Prime Minister. The rest of Heath's time in office was not so happy. His Chancellor of the Exchequer, Iain McLeod, died within a month of winning the election and his successor, Tony Barber, was not nearly as capable. His Minister for Education, Margaret Thatcher, proved extremely capable, but attracted controversy when she abolished free milk in the schools, earning her the name 'Margaret Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher.'
Edward Heath's efforts to tame the power of trade unions did not match the rhetoric. The Industrial Relations Act did not deliver on its promises to curb trade union abuses. Northern Ireland was a source of continuing trouble. British soldiers fired on unarmed civilians in the Londonderry Massacre in 1972. The violence and disorder in Northern Ireland got so bad that Heath was forced to suspend the local government there and impose direct rule from London.
Back in Britain, the government caved before a miner's strike in 1972, after especially violent clashes between striking miners and police at Saltley Coke Depot; the police were withdrawn 'for their own protection' but it was a victory for the Miners' Union and thereafter, they had the power to make or break governments in Britain. Britain, like the rest of the Western World, was badly affected by the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, but Britain was especially hard-hit as the miners struck again. Heath put the country on a three-day workweek to conserve energy, and break the will of striking miners. This backfired and hurt Heath's government more.
In early 1974, Heath called an election on the question of 'Who Governs Britain?' The electorate had lost confidence in Heath and it showed. The election of February 1974 was inconclusive. The Conservative Party lost its majority in Parliament. The Labour Party won the most seats, but not a majority--therefore, it could not really form a government. But Ted Heath was no longer Prime Minister and he handed power over to Harold Wilson in March 1974. Because the result of the February 1974 election was so inconclusive, another election was soon called for October.
Labour won the October 1974 election by a tiny majority. This did not make Heath look good; he had lost three out of four elections. The mood of the Conservative Party was intense rage. Yet none of the Conservative Party establishment dared to cross him. However, Margaret Thatcher, his Minister of Education did challenge Heath for the party leadership in the next party election. On February 4, 1975, she defeated him in the party leadership election. Heath won only 119 votes to Margaret Thatcher's 130, but he had lost his grip on the party. He resigned as Leader of the Conservative Party on February 11, 1975, having handed it over to Margaret Thatcher.
From that point on, Heath refused to serve in the Shadow Cabinet or the front benches. Heath never recovered from his defeat, settling for being a glowering presence on the back benches of Parliament. He remained in Parliament for another twenty-five years. In late-1990, he flew to Iraq in an effort to bring about a diplomatic solution to the Invasion of Kuwait and met with Saddam Hussein; he was unable to persuade Saddam Hussein to pull out of Kuwait, though he did return home with a handful of British hostages.
In 1992, Edward Heath became the longest-serving MP in Parliament and thus became Father of the House, a position he held until he retired from Parliament in 2001 at the ripe old age of 85. Edward Heath was a lifelong bachelor. He never married. Politics was his main interest, but he had other hobbies which included sailing yachts and music. His favorite instruments to play were the piano and the organ. Edward Heath died at age 89 in 2005. - Writer
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Born in Blenheim Palace, the residence of his grandfather, the 7th Duke of Marlborough. His father was the Duke's third son, Lord Randolph Churchill. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of an American financier.
After passing through famous English public schools such as Harrow, he went on to fulfill his ambition for a life in the army. He fought in various parts of the British Empire until in 1900 when he won the Conservative seat in Oldham in the general election. From here until 1929 he held various offices in British Parliament.
The 1930s saw fascism grow in strength throughout Europe with dictators such as Italy's Benito Mussolini, Germany's Adolf Hitler and Spain's Francisco Franco. When the UK and France declared war on Germany in 1939, Neville Chamberlain was British Prime Minister. On May 10, 1940 Hitler's forces invaded Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg in order to invade France. Chamberlain was widely blamed for the failed British invasion of Norway, although realistically Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty was largely to blame for the failure of the Norwegian Campaign. Chamberlain recommended the King should ask Churchill to succeed him as Prime Minister. He made a speech on 13 May: "You ask: 'What is our policy?' I will say: 'It is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalog of human crime.' That is our policy. You ask: 'What is our aim?' I can answer in one word: 'Victory! Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.'"
The United States officially entered the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The US's participation was excellent news to Churchill and after success on D-Day and as the Nazi forces were gradually forced back, the war in Europe gradually drew to a close. He lost the 1945 General Election by a landslide, lost again in 1950, but was re-elected as Prime Minister in 1951 despite receiving fewer votes than Labour. Due to deteriorating health he retired in 1955. He died at Hyde Park Gate, London, on January 24, 1965 at the age of 90. He had succeeded in the uniting of thought and deed. He had succeeded in uniting everyone in the common purpose, inspiring them with fortitude and strength to face whatever hardships that would have to be incurred in the process of first surviving and ultimately winning the war. His daughter Mary wrote to him on his death bed: "I owe you what every Englishman, woman, and child owes you - liberty itself."
As one of the most significant British politicians of the 20th century, Churchill remains one of the country's most widely recognized figures. He has been played by an almost incalculable number of actors on screen, but three of the most notable and acclaimed screen portrayals were by Robert Hardy in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) (which covers Churchill's life from 1929 to 1939), Albert Finney in The Gathering Storm (2002) (also set in the 1930s before he became Prime Minister) and Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour (2017) (set in May 1940).
As well as a politician, Churchill was also an author and a prolific artist, who painted over 500 canvases, exhibited at the Royal Academy and at Paris, and sold paintings.- Edward Grey was born on 25 April 1862 in London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The First World War (2003) and Pathé News, No. 37 (1916). He was married to Pamela Tennant and Dorothy Widdington. He died on 7 September 1933 in Fallodon, near Embleton, Northumberland, England, UK.
- Edward Hulse is known for Simple Gifts (1977).
- Edmund Hillary was born on 20 July 1919 in Tuakau, Auckland, New Zealand. He was married to June Mulgrew and Louise Mary Rose. He died on 11 January 2008 in Auckland, New Zealand.
- Frederick Treves was a famous pioneer in abdominal surgery. Today he is mostly remembered as the physician to the Elephant Man. On May 4, 1901, Treves was knighted by King Edward VII on whom he had performed an appendicectomy.
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Patrick Moore was born on 4 March 1923 in Pinner, Middlesex, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Gamesmaster (1992), The Sky at Night (1957) and Doctor Who (2005). He died on 9 December 2012 in Selsey, West Sussex, England, UK.- British character actor Felix Aylmer was educated at Oxford and later studied drama, making his stage debut at the London Coliseum in 1911. During World War I he served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and resumed his stage career after the war ended. He entered films in 1930 and stayed in them for the next 40 years, specializing in elderly, doddering characters (often clerics). Arguably his most memorable film appearance is that of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Laurence Olivier's Henry V (1944). He is also well-known for his portrayal of Father Anselm in the television series Oh Brother! (1968).
- Johnston Forbes-Robertson (1853-1937) was an English actor and theatrical impresario that George Bernard Shaw and other critics considered to be the finest Hamlet (1913) of his generation. Forbes-Robertson had trained to be an artist and was not overly fond of acting, but he took to the boards to make a living. He did his apprenticeship with Samuel Phelps' company and made his theatrical debut in 1874. He played the second lead in the company of Henry Irving, indisputably the greatest actor of his generation and the first actor to be knighted.
Forbes-Robertson did not play Hamlet until he was 44 years old, but excelled at it. He was famed for his magnificent voice. Other Shakespearean roles he was hailed for were Leontes in "The Winter's Tale", Othello and Romeo. Shaw wrote the part of Julius Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) specifically for Forbes-Robertson.
In 1913, at the age of 60, he became the fifth actor since Irving was knighted in 1895 to made a knight bachelor. He retired from the stage the same year but continued to produce plays. He died in Dover in 1937 at the age of 84. - William Golding was born on 19 September 1911 in St Columb Minor, Cornwall, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Lord of the Flies (1990), Lord of the Flies (1963) and Alkitrang dugo (1975). He was married to Ann Brookfield. He died on 19 June 1993 in Perranarworthal, Cornwall, England, UK.
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William Schwenck Gilbert was born in London on November 18, 1836, to William Gilbert, a retired naval surgeon, and his wife Anne. The Gilberts would add three younger girls to the brood: Jane, Maud and Florence. His parents were cold and distant, with prickly characters. Stern and unyielding, they did not show affection for their son, who absorbed their inflexibility and emotional frigidity. His parents' relationship was strained, and they separated in 1876. Gilbert cared more for his father than his mother, but his biographers are mute on his feelings towards his father's death, or indeed, about his relations with his parents at all . Gilbert remained detached from life, regarding its triumphs and defeats with a reserve, a sense of atomization likely inherited from his parents.
Young William spent his formative years touring Europe with his parents before they returned to London in 1847. He was sent to the Great Ealing School and completed his education at King's College, London. He did not go on to Oxford as he was determined to join the Army to fight in Crimea. He failed to obtain a commission, and turned his attention towards making a career as a government clerk and barrister in the years 1857-66.
His interest in the theater seems to have come to him at an early age. Circa 1861, he began making submissions of prose, verse and drawings to the comic magazine "Fun," writing "The Bab Ballads" for the wag rag. He turned to playwriting, and his first legitimate production, "Uncle Baby," debuted at London's Royal Lyceum Theatre ion the October 31, 1863. The play ran seven weeks, but he was not produced again until 1866, when his pantomime "Hush-a-Bye Baby" and his burlesque "Dulcamara" were produced in December. He continued to work in burlesques for the next three years , making a reputation for himself as a tasteful and intelligent writer. Burlesque in the 19th century was akin to vaudeville, with star turns, ballet, and spectacle. Gilbert had no control over his work as in burlesque, as the stars were the thing, a position of powerlessness he resented.
Gilbert married Lucy Agnes Turner on of August 6, 1867. Little is known of her, although most biographers speculated that her personality was soothing and conciliatory, a fitting counterpoint to Gilbert's own abrasive and confrontational personality. She likely dominated her household, and Gilbert even may have been afraid of her anger lest he trespass her in her domestic fiefdom.
Gilbert's last burlesque, "The Pretty Druidess," debuted on June 19, 1869. He had already began writing for the Gallery of Illustration, a small, sophisticated theater that produced his "No Cards" on March 29th, earlier that year. Freed from the interference of stage-managers of the more vulgar, commercial theater, Gilbert was able to develop his personal style while writing for the Gallery. The Gallery presented six Gilbert musicals in which his unique tone of voice began to emerge.
Adopting a more restrained style, he produced "fairy comedies" in blank verse for the Haymarket Theatre. The fairy comedies presented a more tasteful and popular entertainment than the farce and burlesque that dominated the theater. He became a theatrical director in this period, and began directing his own plays so as to exert artistic control over them and fully realize their potential. In 1867, he directed the Liverpool production of "La Vivandiere" and the London production of "Thespis" in 1871, a year that saw six other Gilbert productions on the boards. As a director, he aimed to introduce subtlety into the English theater. "Thespis," though not a hit, is significant in that it is his first collaboration with Arthur Sullivan. Their first hit would come with their second collaboration, four years later, with "Trial by Jury."
His output for the theater included farces, operetta librettos, adaptations of novels such as Dickens' "Great Expectations," and translations of French drama. He even dabbled in writing serious drama, though he was not notably successful in that genre. The strain of so much work led to his leaving "Fun."
Gilbert's reputation was waxing, and he was positioning himself as one of the major forces on the English stage. He collaborated with Gilbert a Beckett on the political satire "The Happy Land" in 1873. The play, which lampooned prime minister Gladstone and two of his ministers, was banned briefly. This was the beginning of Gilbert pushing the parameters of what could be presented on the English stage. While Gilbert did tend to be iconoclastic, he worked in the popular theater and needed success to continue to work. Drama was then the least respected of the literary professions, and in his career, he attempted to make it more respectable, succeeding to the degree that the next generation's leading lights, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, were able to tackle more sensitive subjects while being respected as major authors.
Up until Gilbert decided to publish his oeuvre, plays were published very cheaply, as pamphlets for the use of actors rather than readers. Gilbert wanted his plays published as real books, proofread and attractive so they could find a place in the home libraries of gentlemen. The first volume of Gilbert's plays was published in 1875 by the respectable house Chatto and Windus in a an attractively-bound, well-printed volume that eliminated stage jargon intended for actors. Such a well-published book was unheard of for a new, relatively controversial dramatist like Gilbert, as it typically was the province of older, for long-established dramatists to be published in respectable volumes. Gilbert eventually published three more volumes of his original plays, and his popularity was such that he even made a profit from them.
After the success of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury," Richard D'Oyly Carte became the duo's producer. The third Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, "The Sorcerer," was presented in 1877, as was his masterpiece "Engaged," a cynical and ironic work that was very funny. Critics attacked the play as debasing the human spirit. However, critics and audiences eventually would accept Gilbert's cynicism when he wrote in tandem with Sullivan due to the ameliorating affect of the latter's music. The audience also began to get used to Gilbert's cynical voice.
"The Sorcerer" was a success, but their next production, "H.M.S. Pinafore" (1878) was a blockbuster hit that engendered multiple pirate productions in the United States. The next year, they had an equivalent hit with their "The Pirates of Penzance." To stymie the American pirates, D'Oyly Carte presented its own "H.M.S. Pinafore" production in New York City in 1879, then introduced Gilbert and Sullivan's as-yet-unpirated "Pirates of Penzance" to the New York audience.
Gilbert continued to write plays without the participation of Sullivan, but they were not successes. His serious drama "The Ne'er-Do-Weel" (1878) flopped after opening to awful reviews, and the rewritten version, "The Vagabond," also proved a flop. Gilbert's blank-verse tragedy "Gretchen" (1879) lasted but three weeks on the boards, as did his farce "Foggerty's Fairy" (1881). The 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan's satire on Oscar Wilde and his circle, "Patience" was a success. ("Patience" eventually was transferred to the new Savoy Theatre, which Gilbert's personal company also made its home.) Coming after the failure of "Foggerty's Fairy," Gilbert decided to focus his writing to his collaboration with Sullivan. His production slowed down, partly due to his economic success obviating a need to continually turn out new plays like clockwork, but mostly due to the new careful and systematic writing methods he adopted.
In an 1885 interview, he admitted to laboriously developing his plots, in consultation with Sullivan in multiple drafts. He would create a skeleton libretto using the fewest words possible to sketch out the actions of the piece. Songs and dialog would be slowly developed and polished. This new process was time-intensive, and produced but one operetta per year, and while it produced many masterpieces, it took the risk out of Gilbert's work. He started settling into formula, which betrayed his iconoclastic nature.
For the rest of the decade, Gilbert-and-Sullivan produced "Iolanthe" (1882), "Princess Ida" (1884), "The Mikado" (1885), "Ruddigore" (1887) and "The Yeomen of the Guard" (1888). Despite its success, the collaboration became tenuous, and after "Princess Ida," Sullivan refused to write anything more for D'Oyly Carte's theater, The Savoy, and departed for a five-week-long European. When he returned to London, both Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte tried to persuade him to continue the collaboration, but Sullivan was tired of the contrived plots and balked at Gilbert's insistence that the plot of their next work involve a magic pill. Finally, Sullivan relented when Gilbert, aware of the vogue for Japanese culture then current in Europe, developed the plot for what became "The Mikado."
After "The Gondoliers," the Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration broke up permanently. The split-up was triggered by the expenses incurred by the Savoy Theater, which were shared equally by Gilbert, Sullivan and D'Oyly Carte. Gilbert objected when D'Oyly Carte bought a very expensive carpet for the theater. Sullivan tried to remain neutral in the feud between Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte, but when he came down on the side of the latter, Gilbert bolted the partnership, though he remained friends with his collaborator. Neither Gilbert or Sullivan would prove as successful as when they collaborated, and Sir Arthur Sullivan eventually would become a morphine addict due to his attempts to assuage the pain from his declining health. He died on November 22, 1900 in London. D'Oyly Carte joined him in death a few months later.
There were many reasons for the break-up of the collaboration other than the expensive carpet. By the time of the premiere of "The Gondoliers" (1889), Gilbert's creative powers were in decline. His wit, once so concise, was replaced by a verbosity, which became more pronounced with "Utopia, Limited" (1893) and "The Grand Duke" (1896). The audiences demanded that Gilbert hew to the formula that had made him a huge success, but he had grown weary of it. "The Grand Duke" is a tired riff on the old formula, so much so that it is almost a parody.
Gilbert went into semi-retirement at his home in Grim's Dyke Harrow Weald after "The Grand Duke," where he played the country squire. He continued to write and finished four more plays in his lifetime. He turned out the serious melodrama "The Fortune Hunter" (1897) but returned to his lighter style with "The Fairy's Dilemma" (1904). After being knighted in 1907, he rewrote "The Wicked World" as "Fallen Fairies" (1909), with music provided by Edward German. His last produced work was the short piece "The Hooligan" (1911), which hit the boards four months before his death. "The Hooligan" represented a departure for Gilbert into serious drama, and might have been the direction his career would have taken had he lived.
Sir William S. Gilbert died on of May 29, 1911, while teaching two young women how to swim in his lake at Grim's Dyke. One the women, out of her depth, called out for help and Gilbert tried to rescue her. Accounts are conflicting, and he died of heart failure either in the middle of the lake during the attempted rescue or shortly thereafter.
One of his epigrams could serve as his epitaph, tongue-in-cheek: "Did nothing in particular, and did it very well."- Godfrey Seymour Tearle was born in 1884, the son of British actor/manager George (Osmond) Tearle and American actress Marianne Conway (her second marriage). His father and uncle were first-generation acting Tearles, and his mother also came from a family of actors. It seems that Godfrey's destiny was set at birth. The Tearles' family's origins lay rooted in the rural areas of Bedfordshire. His grandfather was a soldier who served in the Crimean War. Godfrey made his stage debut at age nine as young Prince Richard, Duke of York, in his father's production of "Richard III." He subsequently attended Carlisle Grammar School in Carlisle, England, but continued acting in his father's company into his teen years. His older half-brother, Frederick (Levy), was also a successful actor and later billed himself as Conway Tearle and earned distinction as a suave silent-era matinée idol. In 1908 Godfrey made his film debut in a shortened version of Romeo and Juliet (1908), at the Lyceum Theatre, which co-starred then-wife actress Mary Malone. Building up his stage reputation in the classics, he became a Shakespearean player of note with sterling portrayals of "Othello", "Macbeth" and "Henry V", among others. Active service in the Royal Field Artillery in 1915 temporarily interrupted his budding theater career for nearly four years. He returned to the footlights, but also attempted to earn a reputation in silents. Although he was less successful, Godfrey's mellifluous voice proved ideal for sound and he made a mild go of it with occasional movie forays in the 1930s and 1940s. He distinguished himself as patrician gents in both character leads and supports. He made a particular impression in The 39 Steps (1935), Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller, in which he played the professor (aka menacing agent) minus a finger; The Beginning or the End (1947) as President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Crash of Silence (1952), a four-tissue tearjerker, as the grandfather of a deaf child; and the charming comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) as a genial bishop, which was released the year of his death. On the personal front, he and actress Malone were divorced after 20 years of marriage, and Godfrey married much-younger starlet Stella Freeman in 1932. Tragically she died aged 26 in May 1936 from pneumonia, just a few months after the suicide of his actor/brother Malcolm Tearle. A third marriage failed for but he managed to enjoy the last few years of his life in the company of Stratford stage actress Jill Bennett. He was knighted in 1951 and died two years later in London, following a lengthy illness, at age 68.
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Tyrone Guthrie was born on 2 July 1900 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for The Beachcomber (1938), Oedipus Rex (1957) and BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950). He was married to Judith Bretherton. He died on 15 May 1971 in Dublin, Ireland.- Actor
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Sir Ian Holm was one of the world's greatest actors, a Laurence Olivier Award-winning, Tony Award-winning, BAFTA-winning and Academy Award-nominated British star of films and the stage. He was a member of the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company and has played more than 100 roles in films and on television.
He was born Ian Holm Cuthbert on September 12, 1931, in Goodmayes, Essex, to Scottish parents who worked at the Essex mental asylum. His mother, Jean Wilson (née Holm), was a nurse, and his father, Doctor James Harvey Cuthbert, was a psychiatrist. Young Holm was brought up in London. At the age of seven he was inspired by the seeing 'Les Miserables' and became fond of acting. Holm studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, graduating in 1950 to the Royal Shakespeare Company. There he emerged as an actor whose range and effortless style allowed him to play almost entire Shakespeare's repertoire. In 1959 his stage partner Laurence Olivier scored a hit on Ian Holm in a sword fight in a production of 'Coriolanus'. Holm still had a scar on his finger.
In 1965 Holm made his debut on television as Richard III on the BBC's The Wars of the Roses (1965), which was a filmed theatrical production of four of Shakespeare's plays condensed down into a trilogy. In 1969 Holm won his first BAFTA Film Award Best Supporting Actor for The Bofors Gun (1968), then followed a flow of awards and nominations for his numerous works in film and on television. In 1981, he played one of his best known roles, Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire (1981), for which he was nominated for Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In the late 1990s, he gave a highly-acclaimed turn as the lawyer, Mitchell, in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and was subsequently cast in a number of high-profile Hollywood films of the next decade, playing Father Vito Cornelius in The Fifth Element (1997), Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), and Professor Fitz in The Aviator (2004), as well as Zach Braff's character's father Gideon in Garden State (2004). His last non-Hobbit film role was a voice part as Skinner in Ratatouille (2007).
Ian Holm had five children, three daughters and two sons from the first two of his four wives and from an additional relationship. In 1989 Holm was created a Commander of the British Empire (CBE), and in 1998 he was knighted for his services to drama. He died in London in June 2020.- Writer
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Born in Cape Town, Union of South Africa in 1934, Ronald Harwood moved to London in 1951 to pursue a career in the theatre. After attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he joined the Shakespeare Company of Sir Donald Wolfit, one of the last 'actor-manager' of Great-Britain. From 1953 to 1958, Harwood became the personal dresser of Sir Donald. He would later draw from this experience in his play 'The Dresser' and write a biography 'Sir Donald Wolfit CBE: His life and work in the Unfashionable Theatre'.
In 1960, he started a new career as a writer and would prove to be quite prolific, penning plays, novels and non-fiction books. He also worked often as a screenwriter but he seldom wrote original material directly for the screen, rather acting as an adapter sometimes of his own work.
One of the recurring themes in Harwood's work is his fascination for the stage, its artists and artisans as displayed in the aforementioned 'The Dresser', his plays 'After the Lions' (about Sarah Bernard) ,'Another time' (about a gifted piano player), 'Quartet' (about aging opera singers) and his non-fiction book 'All the world's a stage', a general history of theater. Harwood also has a strong interest in the WWII period, as highlighted by the films 'Operation daybreak', 'The Statement', 'The Pianist', and his play turned to film 'Taking sides'. Based on true stories, the two last films feature once again musicians as their main characters.
Made Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1974 and Commander of the British Empire in 1999, Harwood was president of the international PEN Club from 1993 to 1997 after presiding the British section during the four previous years.