TV
News
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Sir
Geoffrey Johnson Smith, TV reporter and
politician has died aged 86 (13 August
2010)
Sir Geoffrey was a charismatic television
reporter who switched to politics and enjoyed a
41-year career in the Commons. He joined the BBCs
current affairs unit as a producer, and in 1954
went in front of the camera, quickly establishing
himself as an accomplished and personable
interviewer, appearing five times weekly in the
Highlight magazine programme.
Highlight earned him a reputation for breaking
controversial stories, and this followed him when
he moved to the flagship Tonight programme, where
his interviews became increasingly political,
though never partisan.
Shortly before the 1959 general election, Cliff
Michelmore, Tonights presenter, had a
hernia operation and Johnson Smith was promoted
to co-host the show for six weeks. His profile
was thus at its highest when the election was
called, and on October 8 1959 he ousted the
Labour member for Holborn and St Pancras South,
Lena Jeger, by 656 votes.
Arriving at Westminster as a media star, Johnson
Smith worked his passage as a backbencher,
concentrating his fire on St Pancrass
Red Labour council. He successfully
promoted a Bill authorising councils to operate a
meals-on-wheels service for the elderly.
His inexperience did sometimes show, as when he
dismissed settlers in East Africa as clods
. But he was on the fast track, within six months
becoming PPS to ministers at the Board of Trade;
in 1962 he moved to the Ministry of Pensions and
National Insurance.
His parliamentary career was interrupted in
October 1964 when Lena Jeger, as Labour came to
power, had her revenge by 2,756 votes. He briefly
returned to television, freelancing for the BBC
and Rediffusions religious programmes.
The following February he was back for the safe
seat of East Grinstead, the local association
preferring him to the past and future Cabinet
minister Geoffrey Rippon. He took the seat by
more than 10,000 votes ; he would represent the
constituency redrawn in 1983 as Sussex
Wealden until 2001. more.... |
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Sunday
Night at The London Palladium conductor, Jack
Parnell has died aged 87 (9 August
2010)
Jack Parnell provided the music for shows such as
Sunday Night At The London Palladium and wrote
the theme tunes to programmes including The
Golden Shot during his long spell as musical
director at ATV where his Uncle Val was the
Managing Director.
Parnell led his own band and from 1951 left Ted
Heath to lead a 12-piece and then a 16-piece
band.
With the advent of rock and roll, the fortunes of
the big bands declined. Parnell accepted the job
of musical director at ATV in 1956, a post he was
to hold for 26 years. The companys flagship
show, Sunday Night At The London Palladium, was
broadcast live for most of its run, with
rehearsals during the day. The tension as
transmission time approached was enormous, but
Parnell always maintained that shows produced
under these stressful conditions came over better
than the later, pre-recorded ones.
Disasters were sometimes only narrowly avoided,
as when the orchestra, accompanying Placido
Domingo in a rehearsal of excerpts from
Pagliacci, turned the page and found itself
playing a soft-shoe shuffle. The library had sent
along Harry Secombes music by mistake.
During his decades at the broadcaster, he worked
with legends such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis
Jr, Lena Horne and Nat King Cole.
He also made series with Tom Jones and Engelbert
Humperdinck, acted as a panellist on TV talent
show New Faces and was musical director for
programmes such as The Benny Hill Show and a
lavish production of Peter Pan starring Mia
Farrow, Sir John Gielgud and Danny Kaye. He also
composed signature tunes for programmes such as
Family Fortunes.
In the late 1970s he began his association with
The Muppet Show, for which he conducted the
orchestra and frequently appeared on screen. He
was instrumental in getting the jazz great Buddy
Rich on the show.
Parnell retired from ATV in 1982, when it became
Central Television, moving to Southwold but
continuing to perform with the all-star veterans
group Best Of British Jazz with trumpeter Kenny
Baker and trombonist Don Lusher. He also played
with his small group for weekly shows at the
Green Man in Rackheath, Norfolk. more.... |
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Roy
Rogers horse fetches $266,500 (17 July
2010)
Trigger, the stuffed horse belonging to cowboy
actor and singer Roy Rogers, has fetched $266,500
(£174,000) at auction.
Christie's auction house, which ran the sale
along with Western auctioneer High Noon
Americana, said the collection of items related
to Rogers' and wife Dale Evan's roles on
television and in the movies brought in $2.9
million.
Trigger, the palomino horse which Rogers had
stuffed after it died in 1965, was bought by
rural US cable television station RFD-TV for
$266,500, while his saddle fetched $386,500
(£252,000) from a private buyer.
Other top sellers included Roy Rogers' 1963
Pontiac Bonneville and the Nellybelle jeep, an
iconic emblem on the Roy Rogers Show, which ran
on television in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum, which was
based in Branson, Missouri was closed in 2009.
Roy Rogers died in 1998 at age 86.
The more than 300 items included in the sale ran
from Roy's sunglasses to a sterling belt buckle
to a Roy Rogers directors chair. |
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Avis
Scott, BBC television continuity announcer and
actress, has died aged 92 (18 June
2010)
In March 1954 Avis Scott became a BBC TV
in-vision announcer, replacing Noelle Middleton
and was immensely popular with viewers. However,
her good looks and charm were to be her downfall
as in January 1955 she was sacked for being
"too glamourous and sexy."
She also starred in several movies in the early
50's including Waterfront with Richard Burton and
in the West End she was featured in Noel Coward's
Present Laughter 1947-1948 as well as Dear
Murderer and Lady from Edinburgh, both in 1946.
She moved to Hollywood and worked in television
until her retirement in the early eighties. |
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Joan
Rhodes, music hall artiste who tore up telephone
directories, has died aged 89 (3 June
2010)
During the mid-1950s, she appeared on television
and in variety, tearing up phone books, lifting a
steel table in her teeth, bending and breaking
iron bars and nails and throwing obese men over
her shoulder. Billed as "The Mighty
Mannequin", she showed no outward sign of
her considerable muscle power: with her 22in
waist, she described herself as "an iron
girl in a velvet glove", dressing like a
showgirl and interspersing her feats with a
slightly fey rhyming patter about the drawbacks
of being so strong.
In 1949 she gained national attention when she
appeared in a freak show entitled Would You
Believe It? which toured the country.
Considerable success in the London music halls
and tours of America followed, and she appeared
in a number of British summer shows.
At Christmas 1958 she performed before the Royal
Family at Windsor Castle, where she snapped a
10in nail which the Duke of Edinburgh had been
able only to dent. On her way to the Pier
Theatre, Shanklin, in 1960, she was stopped by a
policeman on the Isle of Wight ferry and asked to
explain the presence of several hundred telephone
directories in the back of her car.
At the height of her fame Joan Rhodes was viewed
by the British public with a kind of stupefied
fascination. She became the object of music hall
jokes and cartoons in Punch.
more.... |
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Carol
Marsh, actress, has died aged 83 (1 June
2010)
Carol Marsh earned her big screen break when she
was chosen from more than 3,000 applicants to
play Rose, the mousy, wide-eyed waitress in the
film noir classic Brighton Rock (1947).
After Brighton Rock she dyed her hair platinum
for the title role in Alice in Wonderland (1949).
In the same year she was in three comedies: Marry
Me, Helter Skelter, and The Romantic Age, in
which she appeared with Mai Zetterling and Petula
Clark.
She was the fragile, delicate yet ghoulishly
determined Lucy, Christopher Lee's ill-fated
victim, in the 1958 Hammer production of Dracula,
the first colour version of Bram Stoker's
classic. In the 1951 film of Scrooge, with
Alistair Sim in the title role, Carol Marsh
played the old skinflint's sister Fan, who dies
giving birth to his nephew, Fred.
Her career continued into the 1960s with films
such as Man Accused and parts in television
dramas, among them The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
and Dixon of Dock Green. In the 1970s she
appeared in the record-breaking West End play The
Mousetrap.
She had made her television debut in 1950 in The
Lady's Not For Burning, starring Richard Burton
and Alec Clunes. She was Miranda in a children's
version of The Tempest, and Alexandra in Little
Foxes (both 1951). She featured in the 1959
Trollope serial The Eustace Diamonds, playing
Augusta Fawn, and was Mrs Blacklow in the Arnold
Bennett serial Lord Raingo of 1966.
She was busier on radio, and was a member of the
BBC Drama Rep at intervals between 1966 and 1979.
more.... |

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Dennis
Hopper, iconoclastic actor and director whose
film Easy Rider defined the counterculture of the
1960s, has died aged 74 (31 May
2010)
Put under contract by Warner Brothers after being
spotted on television while still a teenager, he
made his film debut in Rebel Without a Cause
alongside James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.
He played opposite Dean again in Giant (1956) and
was strongly influenced by Deans brooding
style. He always regarded Dean as the most
talented and original actor he worked with. They
became close friends and Deans death in a
car crash in 1955 at the age of 24 affected him
deeply.
Much of his subsequent work was in westerns, from
Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) to The Sons of
Katie Elder (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967) Hang
em High (1968) and True Grit (1969).
Dennis Hopper was triumphantly to capture the
spirit of the youth revolution of the '60s in the
film that became iconic of the spirit of Sixties
counter-culture, Easy Rider (1969). As
scriptwriter (with Peter Fonda and Terry
Southern) actor (with Peter Fonda) and director,
of Easy Rider, Hopper was the controlling genius
of a film that could so easily have degenerated
into chaos as it pursued him and Fonda as a
couple of drop-outs on Harley-Davidson
motorcycles on a ragged odyssey across America
(on the way giving Jack Nicholson his first big
screen break). more.... |
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Ray Alan,
ventriloquist, has died aged 79 (24 May
2010)
Ray Alan was a technically brilliant
voice-thrower who, alongside his superbly
snobbish, drink-soaked creation Lord Charles,
became the most famous ventriloquist in Britain
during the Sixties and Seventies.
Alan was inspired to create Lord Charles (family
motto: Semper Inebriate) in 1960, while watching
a drunken aristocrat in the audience at the
Satire Club off Jermyn Street. "I saw this
chap sitting at a ringside table," Alan
recalled, "dinner suit on, delightful young
lady with him, and there he was patting her knee
and pouring her champagne and saying: 'By Jove,
you lovely thing, oh you lovely little thing.'
And I thought what a wonderful character.
Lord Charles made his first television appearance
in 1961 on the BBC pastiche music hall show The
Good Old Days.
Such was Alan's success with Lord Charles that
they appeared together on the programme more
frequently than any other act. With his frequent
rejoinder "Silly ass", Lord Charles
would introduce viewers into the cosy,
Wodehouseian world of the peerage.
Alan's natural ability quickly helped him take
over as the nation's favourite ventriloquist from
Peter Brough, whose radio show, Educating Archie,
had been a big success in the Fifties. Alan was
technically a much better "vent" than
Brough, who was well suited to radio in that his
lips moved when he did his act which
proved fatal when he attempted to transfer to
television.
in 1958 he made his television debut on Toytown,
alongside the hero of which, Larry The Lamb, Alan
introduced a new character reflecting the dawning
space age: Mikki the Martian. Though Lord Charles
was his star turn throughout the Sixties, Alan
also performed in that period with his two
best-known characters for children (of which he
was particularly proud), a small boy and his pet
duck known as Tich and Quackers. more.... |
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Roland
Fox, BBC Parliamentary correspondent throughout
the 1950s, has died aged 97 (16 May
2010)
Roland Fox was a BBC Parliamentary correspondent
and only the second to hold the post; he covered
the last years of Churchill's premiership and the
heated Suez debates, the first televised State
Opening of Parliament, and accompanied Harold
Macmillan on his "Wind of Change" tour
of Africa.
There was no guidance, no training and no
autocue; he often read straight from his notes on
to the air, anticipating the next morning's press
by many hours. When Winston Churchill resigned in
1955, there was a newspaper strike, so the story
was broken by the BBC's Parliamentary staff.
When regular television news bulletins began in
July 1954, it often meant a long taxi journey to
Alexandra Palace in north London, allowing Fox
some time to learn his lines by heart on the way.
Later the Westminster studio was adapted for
television.
On one occasion the studio lights suddenly failed
in the middle of Fox's piece. He knew what he
wanted to say and gamely continued in total
darkness to the end of his live report. He never
had any editorial supervision; all that was
required, he said, was that he come out on time.
more.... |
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Lena
Horne, singer, actress, civil rights activist
and, eventually, a showbusiness phenomenon has
died aged 92 (16 May 2010)
Although she did not regard herself as a jazz
singer, she had a formidable sense of rhythm and
an easy-going style which went well in a jazz
context. As a film actress she had notable
success in Stormy Weather (in which she sang the
title song) and Cabin In The Sky. Her refusal to
play demeaning roles, or to allow her light
complexion to be darkened with make-up, made
enemies in Hollywood but in the long run brought
her great public respect.
Lena Horne starred on Broadway in Jamaica in
1957. She toured internationally, appearing
several times at the London Palladium and the
London Casino. She also recorded many albums,
ranging from jazz and blues to Rodgers and Hart
songs such as The Lady is a Tramp. Altogether she
appeared in some 15 films, among them I Dood It
(1943) and Ziegfeld Follies (1946). The last,
Death of a Gunfighter, came out in 1969, after
which she retired to Los Angeles to grow cacti. more.... |
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Dorothy
Provine, actress and singer, has died aged 75 (6 May
2010)
In 1958, Provine played a female gangster in The
Bonnie Parker Story: this was essentially a
B-movie and had none of the quality of Bonnie And
Clyde (1967), but Provine shone in her role. This
was followed by inconsequential parts in Alfred
Hitchcock Presents, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer
and Wagon Train, but she played opposite Lou
Costello in the comedy, The 30 Foot Bride Of
Candy Rock (1959): Provine played the 30 foot
bride. Roger Moore and Provine co-starred in a TV
series about prospectors, The Alaskans (1959-60).
Provine's big break came with another TV series,
The Roaring 20s, in which she played the flapper,
Pinky Pinkham. This light-hearted escapism about
cops, gangsters and showgirls in Chicago in the
1920s was very successful and co-starred Donald
May and Gary Vinson.
Provine appeared in the comedy extravaganza It's
A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), as Jack
Lemmon's wife in Good Neighbour Sam (1964), with
Hayley Mills in That Darn Cat! (1965) and she was
back to being a flapper in Blake Edwards' The
Great Race (1965). Provine was to play the film
star, Jean Harlow in Harlow (1965), but, at the
last minute, the director Alex Segal decided that
Carol Lynley had a greater dramatic range. more.... |
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Tom
Fleming, actor and television presenter on
important state occasions, has died aged 82 (20 April
2010)
For 44 yearsTom Fleming gave a very definite
Scottish identity to the BBC's coverage of the
Edinburgh Tattoo. His musical voice brought a
feeling of home-grown passion to the events on
the Esplanade. That voice captured the excitement
and solemnity of many occasions, starting with
the Queen's Coronation in 1953, when Fleming was
outside Westminster Abbey. He also provided the
television commentary for the funerals of Diana,
Princess of Wales and the Queen Mother and
numerous other state occasions. Another annual
duty was the Ceremony of Remembrance at the
Cenotaph in London. Fleming was able to find the
correct intonation for any event and make it suit
the occasion.
Fleming was a renowned actor and did prestigious
seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company and
was closely connected with the epic drama The
Three Estates, which he first performed at the
Edinburgh Festival in Tyrone Guthrie's celebrated
production in 1953.
In 1953, he joined the BBC to commentate on the
Coronation and proved a natural: unflappable and
always ready with some information when things
were delayed.
In 1956 he gave a sympathetic reading of the
title role of Jesus of Nazareth: particularly
challenging as it was the first time the face of
Christ had been acted on television. The 12-part
series, shown over Easter, displayed Fleming's
acting skills to excellent effect.
One of his more unusual assignments was to front
the BBC's coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest
from Edinburgh in 1972.
Fleming's contribution to outside broadcasts for
the BBC was immense. He commentated on two royal
weddings and ten funerals, and the enthronement
of two Popes and three Archbishops. One of his
last broadcasts was on Radio 4 in 2007, when he
was in a dramatisation of Walter Scott's Heart of
Midlothian.
more.... |
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Kenneth
McKellar, among the most popular of Scotland's
singers, has died aged 82 (11 April
2010)
He became familiar to English television viewers
courtesy of the BBC and The White Heather Club, a
hugely popular Scottish country dance and music
show which ran from 1958 to 1968 and, at its
peak, drew an audience of 10 million.
The White Heather Club featured stars such as
Andy Stewart, swathed in lace and tartan, singing
Donald Where's Your Troosers? and Kenneth
McKellar with poignant renderings of Song of the
Clyde, Bonnie lass o' Ballochmyle and other
stirring numbers.
In between, dainty girls in white blouses and
laced pumps, and young men with kilts and fixed
smiles, would whisk and whoop each other through
the Dashing White Sergeant or the Eightsome Reel
to the strains of Jimmy Shand and his Band.
After abandoning the operatic stage, in 1954
McKellar signed with the Decca record company.
Over a period of 25 years he recorded some 45
LPs, ranging from oratorio to Burns songs,
achieving massive sales all over the world.
During the 1950s McKellar became well-known in
Scotland through radio, singing Scottish songs,
light opera and popular songs on his own series,
A Song For Everyone, for the BBC. At the same
time, he began trying his hand as a songwriter
and was responsible for such ballads as The
Tartan, which has been covered by some 40
artistes and The Royal Mile, which was heard by
more than four million people during the
televised opening of the 1986 Commonwealth Games
in Edinburgh.
In 1966 McKellar was chosen to represent Britain
in the Eurovision Song Contest, singing A Man
Without Love. It was not a happy experience.
Despite widespread predictions that he would win,
he was placed ninth, a result he attributed to
the fact that the Scandinavian nations had
"made a mockery of the whole contest"
by voting for each other. more.... |
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Sir Alec
Bedser, the Surrey and England cricketer, has
died aged 91 (5 April 2010)
His supreme triumph came in 1953, when his 39
wickets at 17.48 apiece in five Tests enabled
England to reclaim the Ashes for the first time
since the Bodyline series of 1932-33. The other
nine bowlers used by England that summer managed
only 52 wickets between them.
In the first Test in 1953, at Trent Bridge, on a
pitch that was far from vicious, Bedser returned
figures of seven for 55 and seven for 45, in the
process overhauling Sydney Barness record
of 189 Test wickets for England, which had stood
since 1914. Later that summer, in which he
celebrated his 35th birthday, he established a
world record for Test bowling when he surpassed
Clarrie Grimmetts total of 216 Test wickets
for Australia. He also became the first England
bowler since Barnes to take 100 wickets against
Australia.
Alec Bedser continued to play for Surrey until
1960, frequently captaining the side in Peter
Mays absence. He played a vital part in
Surreys run of seven consecutive
championships from 1952 to 1958, particularly in
1957, when he temporarily recovered full fitness.
He served on the England board of selectors from
1961 to 1985, and as chairman from 1968 to 1981. more.... |
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Martin
Benson, actor, has died aged 91 (30 March
2010)
Benson made his greatest mark during a busy
acting career as Kralahome, the Grand Vizier in
The King and I, whom he played in the
long-running London stage production and then in
the 1956 Hollywood film with Yul Brynner and
Deborah Kerr.
But on starting out in films it was his hard
face, elegantly tailored figure and mastery of
foreign accents that earned him a natural place
on the wrong side of the law; it was said he was
first choice for a role if Herbert Lom was
unavailable.
After the war Benson decided against returning to
a 10s-a-week job in pharmacy and quickly found
work in The Adventures of PC 49 (1949); I'll Get
You for This (1951); Wide Boy (1952); Escape by
Night (1953); Soho Incident (1957); and Assassin
For Hire (1958).
He stayed on in Hollywood after The King and I
but was unimpressed at being cast in 23 Paces to
Baker Street, which placed Sherlock Holmes's
house on the edge of the Thames, and returned
home to appear in Interpol, The Flesh is Weak,
Istanbul and many more in the burgeoning world of
British television. From 1958 he spent an
enjoyable two years in Sword of Freedom as the
murderous Duke de Medici, opposite the dashing
Edmund Purdom as a painter and swordsman in
15th-century Florence. He was an impressive
resident defence counsel in The Verdict is Yours.
He also could be regularly spotted in episodes of
The Saint, The Troubleshooters, The Champions,
The Bill and Last of the Summer Wine. more.... |
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Harry
Carpenter, sports journalist and boxing
commentator, has died aged 84 (22 March
2010)
For millions of television viewers, Harry
Carpenter's boxing match commentary was an
essential ringside ingredient.
After wartime service in the Royal Navy as a
Morse code operator, he worked on several
newspapers before joining the Daily Mail as
boxing columnist.
In 1949, Carpenter offered his services to the
BBC as a boxing commentator, but because there
was no relevant footage to hand at his audition,
he had to provide a commentary for a football
match instead.
He heard nothing for months, until the head of
outside broadcasts, Peter Dimmock, phoned him to
ask whether he could fill in as commentator for
an amateur boxing night.
Harry Carpenter proved himself adept at
commentating on a host of other sporting events,
but it was always boxing with which he was most
closely associated.
His first fight commentary for the BBC was in
1949 and in the next decade, he was responsible
for the first live commentary from behind the
Iron Curtain in 1957 and the first via satellite
from the United States.
For much of the 1970s and 80s, Carpenter
co-hosted the Sports Personality of the Year
programme, having first contributed in 1958. He
was "flattered and pleased" that he was
asked to pay tribute to the Sports Personality of
the Century, Muhammad Ali. more.... |
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Davy
Crockett actor, Fess Parker, has died aged 85 (19 March
2010)
Fess Parker, the Texas-born actor, became a star
of early television playing American frontier
folk hero Davy Crockett and later portrayed
Daniel Boone. His role as Crockett made him a
household name in the mid-1950s and inspired a
generation of young American baby boomers to don
his trademark coonskin cap.
His life changed at the age of 29, in 1954, when
Walt Disney hired him to star in a three-episode
miniseries about Crockett, the "King of the
Wild Frontier" whose life became an American
folk legend.
The three episodes were enormously popular with
viewers, catching the Walt Disney Co by surprise
and spawning one of TV's first pop culture
frenzies inspiring the sale of coonskin
caps, buckskin clothes, toy rifles, books and
other memorabilia.
The show's theme song, "The Ballad of Davy
Crockett," which recounted that the hero
"kilt him a bear when he was only
three," went to the top of the pop charts
and stayed there for 13 weeks.
Although the series was meant to end with
Crockett's death at the Alamo, its unexpected
success prompted Disney to crank out two more
episodes and a feature film.
Parker returned to the frontier in 1964 as the
star of "Daniel Boone", a hit NBC
series about another early American folk hero and
adventurer that ran until 1970. more.... |
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Peter
Graves, actor, has died aged 83 (16 March
2010)
Peter Graves appeared in a multitude of films and
television shows during a career which spanned
nearly 60 years, but will be remembered
principally for his roles as a spymaster in the
TV series Mission: Impossible and as a pilot in
the spoof disaster movie Airplane!
Peter's elder brother was James Arness, who found
fame as Matt Dillon in the television series
Gunsmoke; and when Peter followed him to
Hollywood he decided to call himself Graves
the surname of his maternal grandfather
to avoid any confusion.
He first came to public attention in the 1950s
television series Fury, about the adventures of a
boy and his horse, and in 1953 won plaudits for
his portrayal of a Nazi spy in Billy Wilder's
prisoner-of-war drama Stalag 17.
In 1955 he appeared in John Ford's The Long Gray
Line; Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter;
and Otto Preminger's The Court-Martial of Billy
Mitchell.
Graves's television appearances included Alfred
Hitchcock Presents, the miniseries The Winds of
War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988), and
Fantasy Island (1978-83). He also presented a
number of programmes about science and, for the
Arts and Entertainment Network's Biography
series, was narrator on programmes about the
lives of famous figures such as Winston Churchill
and Sophia Loren. more.... |
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Paddie
O'Neil, comedy actress and singer, has died aged
83 (11 March 2010)
Paddie O'Neil was a supremely versatile comedy
actress and singer with a career spanning five
decades; she often appeared in shows that
featured her husband, the theatrical all-rounder
Alfred Marks.
In the late 1940s she met Marks, an up-and-coming
comedian, when they both appeared in a summer
show in Brighton. In 1950 the BBC, which was
trying to find a successful comedy format for its
fledgling television service, starred them in a
sketch series, Don't Look Now, with a young Ian
Carmichael.
The following year, Paddie O'Neil made her first
movie, 'Penny Points to Paradise', a low-budget
comedy that was one of Peter Sellers's earliest
films. By now Marks and she had fallen in love
and they were married in the West London
synagogue.
They scored their first major television success
with Alfred Marks Time (1956-59). Each week,
Paddie O'Neil sang a duet with Ray Ellington, who
had become well-known for his appearances on BBC
Radio's The Goon Show.
Marks and O'Neil were again teamed for Val
Parnell's spectacular London Palladium pantomime
Humpty Dumpty (1959-60), with Harry Secombe in
the title role. They played the King and Queen of
Hearts.
Paddie O'Neil appeared in her second feature film
in 1965: The Early Bird, starring Norman Wisdom.
Other movies followed: The Adding Machine (1969);
Fanny Hill (1983); and The Little Match Girl
(1987). more.... |
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Malcolm
Vaughan, singer who fell foul of the BBC but sold
half a million records as a result has died aged
81 (25 February 2010)
In October 1956, Malcolm Vaughan was due to
appear on BBC TV's Off The Record to promote his
new release, "St. Therese Of The
Roses". The invitation was withdrawn a few
days later after a BBC committee had determined
that the record was unsuitable for broadcast
because "the lyric is contrary both to Roman
Catholic doctrine and to Protestant
sentiment." The resulting controversy helped
to sell records, and with airplay on Radio
Luxembourg the sugary wedding song climbed to No
3, stayed on the charts for five months and sold
half a million copies.
Early in his career Vaughan appeared, using his
real name Malcolm Thomas, as the voice of Dennis
the Dachshund in a television production of Larry
The Lamb.
Vaughan had many hits in the 1950s with "To
Be Loved", "More Than Ever (Come
Prima)" and "Wait For Me", and
sang the theme song from the Kenneth More film
about the sinking of the Titanic, A Night To
Remember (1958). Strangely, Vaughan did not make
an album until Hello in September 1959.
Vaughan worked as a double act with Kenneth Earle
throughout the 1960s but they never realised
their ambition of making comedy films like
Morecambe and Wise. It would have been better for
Vaughan's career if he had continued making
records and capturing the same market as Matt
Monro. The duo split up in 1972 with Earle
becoming an agent and Vaughan touring in
productions of The Good Old Days. more.... |
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Lionel
Jeffries, character actor, screenwriter and
director, has died aged 83 (20
February 2010)
As an actor, the bald, bewhiskered Jeffries
showed a facial mobility and excellent comic
delivery that turned him into one of the
best-known bumbling figures in British cinema;
and however brief his appearances, he was always
an asset in films that ranged from The Colditz
Story and The Quatermass Xperiment to Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang and The Trials of Oscar Wilde.
Jeffries won his first West End engagement, as
Major ATM Broke-Smith in Dorothy and Campbell
Christie's Carrington VC (1953), with Alec Clunes
in the title role. The following season saw him
on the London stage as The Father in Peter Hall's
production of Lorca's Blood Wedding and The
Doctor in Jean Giraudoux's The Enchanted, both at
the Arts Theatre.
Jeffries was soon attracted to the cinema,
starting his film career in Alfred Hitchcock's
Stage Fright (1949). But he made his first real
impression as one of the prisoners-of-war in Guy
Hamilton's The Colditz Story (1954).
In one year alone he acted in nine different
films. In 1955 he was a great success in
Windfall, and there followed a plethora of
successful cameo roles in which he proved capable
of summoning up both dry comedy and menace. Among
them were an inquisitive reporter in the
Quatermass Xperiment (1955); Gelignite Joe, a
diamond robber whose schoolgirl niece contrived
for him to impersonate a new headmistress in Blue
Murder at St Trinian's (1957); and a sailor
charged with trying to prevent the ship's captain
from knowing about all the livestock being
carried on board in Up the Creek (1958).
Other parts included Major Proudfoot in Law and
Disorder (1958); an army adjutant trying to
impose regulations on Anthony Newley's
conscripted pop singer in Idol on Parade (1959);
and a prison officer attempting to discipline
Peter Sellers and Bernard Cribbins in Two-Way
Stretch (1960).
Jeffries continued in this vein for another two
decades, samples being The Hellions (1961); The
Wrong Arm of the Law (1963); First Men in the
Moon (1964); You Must be Joking! (1965); Rocket
to the Moon (1967); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
(1968), in which he played Grandpa Potts; and The
Prisoner of Zenda (1978). In all he appeared in
70 films between 1949 and 1988.
But it was as the director of The Railway
Children, one of the most enchanting films ever
made for young people, that Jeffries left his
mark on the history of cinema.
Jeffries's script and direction, along with the
acting of Bernard Cribbins, Dinah Sheridan and
Jenny Agutter and the homely tone of the whole
enterprise, earned the film its place as a minor
classic.
With this success behind him, Jeffries was
inspired him to make more films in the genre,
coming up with The Amazing Mr Blunden (set in
1918, it has a widow and her two children living
in a country house haunted by the friendly Mr
Blunden); Wombling Free (1977) and The Water
Babies (1978). None of these, though, rivalled
the warmth, simplicity, charm, and eye for period
detail that distinguished The Railway Children. more.... |
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Kathryn
Grayson, soprano and familiar star of MGM
musicals, has died aged 88 (20
February 2010)
She appeared in 20 films, all but three for MGM
but only one, the 1952 remake of Show
Boat, was a big hit.
Cast opposite Gene Kelly in Thousands Cheer
(1943) and Anchors Aweigh (1945), she displayed a
winsome charm.
Early co-stars were June Allyson in Two Sisters
from Boston (1946) and Frank Sinatra in Anchors
Aweigh, It Happened in Brooklyn (1947) and The
Kissing Bandit (1948), a pseudo-Mexican
extravaganza that failed at the box office.
MGM then cast her opposite Mario Lanza, a podgy
and then unknown tenor of whom some hopes were
entertained. They made two films together
That Midnight Kiss (1948) and The Toast of New
Orleans (1950).
Kathryn Grayson's career benefited in tandem with
Mario Lanza's; hence Grounds for Marriage (1951),
a comedy with Van Johnson about a prima donna who
makes a play for her ex-husband. This afforded a
rare on-screen chance to show her operatic form,
though she was vocally and dramatically miscast
in excerpts from Carmen and the film was released
only as the second half of a double-bill.
Shrewdly typecast in Showboat as the pretty but
simpering "belle of the Cotton
Blossom", she was backed by outstanding
production values and strong performances from
Howard Keel and Ava Gardner. Her last three films
for MGM, all with Howard Keel, contained her best
work. Show Boat, Lovely to Look At (a 1952 remake
of Roberta, with music by Jerome Kern) and Kiss
Me Kate, the 1953 3-D version of the Cole Porter
musical based on The Taming of the Shrew, were
well within her vocal range. In the last, in
particular, as Shakespeare's shrewish Kate, she
demonstrated the long-awaited germs of an acting
talent. more.... |
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Cy Grant,
the Guyanese actor, singer and writer who was the
first black person to be seen regularly on
British TV, has died at the age of 90 (16
February 2010)
Cy Grant served in the Royal Air Force during
World War II and qualified as a barrister before
turning to acting.
He became best known for his role singing
'Topical Calypsos' on the BBC's daily topical
programme, Tonight. It made him a household name
but he left after two and a half years to avoid
being typecast.
He went on to star in the award-winning TV drama
Home of the Brave in 1957 and played the lead in
Othello at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester in
1965 at a time when white actors were routinely
"blacked up" for the part.
He returned to the Bar briefly in 1972 but left
after six months.
Two years later, he helped create the Drum Arts
Centre in London - which was considered to be
hugely important in the development of black
theatre. He went on to set up multi-cultural
festivals across England in the 1980s.
Alongside his acting and activism work, he
recorded five albums, having performed Caribbean
folk songs and calypso across the world. Two of
his best known singles are King Cricket and The
Constantine Calypso, in celebration of Garfield
Sobers and Learie Constantine, two of the West
Indies' most famous cricketers.
He also recorded many shows for radio and wrote
several books including a collection of poems.
more.... |
 |
Margaret
Dale, ballet choreographer and TV producer, has
died aged 87 (9
February 2010)
Margaret Dale was a Sadler's Wells Ballet dancer
who became Britain's most distinguished producer
of ballet for television, making more than 60
programmes in an era that is often considered
ballet's golden age.
The invitation to create six little ballets for
children's television led, in 1954, to her
decision to train as a BBC producer. There she
invited Kenneth MacMillan to create a half-hour
ballet for television. This was 'Turned Out
Proud', for the weekly 'Music at Ten' slot, and
she and MacMillan sifted through the
corporation's record collection to create a
musical score.
Although the BBC's music controller was
"bewildered" by the result, and the
Musicians' Union protested at the use of recorded
material, Margaret Dale used these concerns to
ask for, and be granted, permission to use live
music for MacMillan's much darker and more
ambitious Sadler's Wells ballet, 'House of
Birds', transmitted live in 1956.
She also set up a studio session with the Bolshoi
Ballet in the lakeside act of 'Swan Lake' during
their famous 1956 debut tour to London. This
attracted 12 million viewers, and was the first
of several television films she made during
visits to London by the Bolshoi and the Kirov.
Margaret Dale also adapted many classic ballets
for television, starting in 1957 with 'Coppelia',
starring Nadia Nerina. Others included Giselle,
Ashton's 'La fille mal gardée' and John Cranko's
'Onegin', whose 37-minute abridgement in 1966 was
thought by some to be better than the stage
version.
more.... |
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Sir John
Dankworth, pioneer of modern jazz has died aged
82 (7 February 2010)
Johnny Dankworth, was a leading composer of film
music, a tireless champion of musical education,
regardless of genre, and a superb instrumentalist
in his own right.
In 1950 Dankworth formed his first band, the
Johnny Dankworth Seven, containing some of
Britain's leading young soloists. The style was
neatly arranged bebop, inspired by Miles Davis's
band of the time. Although this enterprise almost
collapsed in its early days, a modest growth in
the audience for modern jazz allowed it to gain a
foothold. Within a year, the Seven, and Dankworth
himself, figured among the winners in the annual
polls conducted by the music press.
In 1951, the Seven appeared in one of the two
inaugural jazz concerts at the Royal Festival
Hall. In the same year the Seven recruited a
young and totally inexperienced singer, Cleo
Laine.
Dankworth broke up the Seven in 1953 and launched
his first big band, consisting of eight brass,
five saxophones, rhythm section and three
vocalists.
In the mid-1950s the orchestra had a long-running
radio series in which Dankworth made a point of
introducing guests from other musical genres.
These were mainly classical virtuosi, such as the
clarinettist Jack Brymer and violinist Kenneth
Essex.
In 1960 Dankworth gave up full-time bandleading
in order to concentrate on composition. He
composed and conducted the music for Saturday
Night And Sunday Morning (Reisz, 1960) and The
Criminal (Joseph Losey, 1960). So successful were
these, and so distinctive the music, that the
Dankworth sound became inseparably linked with
the new wave of British cinema in the 1960s.
Among the best known are The Servant (Losey,
1963), Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965), Modesty
Blaise (Losey 1966) and Morgan, A Suitable Case
For Treatment (Reisz, 1966). To these were added
television themes such as The Avengers (1961) and
Tomorrow's World (1966), as well as an endless
stream of advertising commercials.
John Dankworth and Cleo Laine were married in
1958 and their careers were intertwined
thereafter.
more.... |
 |
Ian
Carmichael, the actor, has died aged 89 (7
February 2010)
Ian Carmichael personified the affable,
archetypal silly ass Englishman in scores of
revues, light comedies, films and television
programmes.
To his wide-eyed boyish grin, bemused courtesy
and trusting manner, Carmichael brought an
invaluably comic air of innocence to bear on his
thousand and one misfortunes. His old-world
manners were his technical lifeline, and the
lightness of his touch on stage and screen
ensured the effect of often-thin material.
In sometimes brilliant London stage shows in the
early Fifties which satirised the fashions and
foibles of the day, Carmichaels timing and
gravely expressive features enriched scores of
sketches as a polite and easily embarrassed
Englishman, trying to change his clothes
discreetly, for example, or to assemble a
recalcitrant deck chair.
It was the film version of his first straight
stage success, Simon and Laura (1955) which
established Carmichael on the screen. The
following year his portrayal of an artful
conscripted dodger in the Boultings comedy
Privates Progress endeared him to everyone
who had ever been called up. Few comedians knew
how to look more comically, humanly afraid. His
apprehensive subaltern - standing rigidly to
attention on the parade ground as an offstage
sergeant barked a string of commands which he
knew he would never be able, as expected, to
repeat to his platoon - was a model of silent,
facial panic. The character returned, fleetingly,
in Im All Right, Jack (1959). In this
picture he had just been demobilised and, in
looking for work, became caught in a wrangle
between capitalists and trades unionists from
which he emerged, inadvertently, triumphant.
But it is probably his portrayals on television
of PG Wodehouse's dithering Bertie Wooster and
Dorothy L Sayers's elegant Lord Peter Wimsey
which underlined his gifts as an exponent of the
light English comedy of manners to greatest
effect.
Carmichael also directed several light
entertainment television series such as Mr
Pastrys Progress, Its A Small World
and We Beg To Differ. more.... |
 |
Pernell
Roberts, actor who starred as Adam Cartwright in
Bonanza, has died aged 81 (27
January 2010)
Pernell Roberts was the last of the original
stars from Bonanza, the US television series that
took the western to a huge mainstream
international audience of all ages and both
sexes, with its focus on family values and moral
dilemmas.
One of the most successful television series
ever, it originally ran from 1959 to 1973 in the
US, opened in the UK on ITV in 1960.
Roberts played Adam Cartwright, the
introspective, eldest son of a rancher, Ben
Cartwright (Lorne Greene). Ben had been married
and widowed three times, which explained why he
had produced three such different sons. The
others were big, awkward, loveable Hoss (Dan
Blocker) and the handsome, young ladies man
Little Joe (Michael Landon).
But Roberts grew dissatisfied with the series. He
had been an acclaimed Shakespearean stage actor
and found the production line of television
"banal". The stories did indeed get
repetitive. Characters were repeatedly victims of
prejudice and were accused of things they did not
do. The Cartwrights were against violence, but
killed dozens, possibly hundreds of villains,
against their will.
Roberts quit in 1965, but failed to build on the
success of Bonanza before effectively re-emerging
as the star of the MASH spin-off Trapper John MD
(1979-86).
more.... |
 |
British
actress Jean Simmons dies aged 80 (23 January
2010)
Simmons, who was born in London, made her film
debut in the 1944 British production Give Us the
Moon after being spotted by Val Guest, the
director.
Several minor films followed before David Lean,
the British director, gave the actress her
breakthrough role of Estella, companion to the
reclusive Miss Havisham in the 1946 Great
Expectations.
That was followed by the Black Narcissus and
Oliviers Oscar-winning Hamlet in 1948, for
which Simmons was nominated as best supporting
actress.
Simmons left Britain for Hollywood in 1950,
accompanied by the actor Stewart Granger, her
future husband.
She then starred in Young Bess, where she played
the young Queen Elizabeth I, The Robe, The
Actress, The Egyptian and Desiree in which, in
1954, she played the title role opposite
Brandos Napoleon. The pair teamed again in
1955 for Guys and Dolls.
Her other notable films included Elmer Gantry,
with Burt Lancaster; Until They Sail, with Paul
Newman; The Big Country with co-star Gregory
Peck; Spartacus, also starring Kirk Douglas; This
Earth Is Mine with Rock Hudson; All the Way Home
with Robert Preston; Mister Buddwing, alongside
James Garner; and Rough Night in Jericho with
Dean Martin.
During the '80s she won an Emmy Award for her
role in the miniseries, The Thorn Birds and then
she also appeared on television shows including
Murder, She Wrote, In the Heat of the Night and
Xena: Warrior Princess. more....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1878829.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7000653.ece |
 |
Bill
McLaren, Rugby union broadcaster, has died aged
86 (20 January 2010)
Bill McLaren spent 50 years commentating on rugby
union matches for BBC radio and television.
In this role his powerful Scottish tones,
memorable turns of phrase, dedication to research
and rigid impartiality proved an awesome
combination, enhancing the broadcast experience
for millions of listeners and viewers throughout
club and international seasons.
In 1948 he was selected for the final trial to
represent the Scottish national team but was
unable to compete, having been given a diagnosis
of tuberculosis. When he recovered he worked for
three years as a reporter on the Hawick Express,
all the while maintaining his strong interest in
rugby. Unbeknown to him, a colleague with BBC
connections wrote to a friend in London
recommending McLarens services as a rugby
commentator.
On the strength of this McLaren was offered a
commentary test. He was characteristically
reluctant to accept the challenge but eventually
agreed, making his debut on the Scottish Home
Service in January 1952 for the South of Scotland
versus South Africa game. This led, in 1953, to
his national radio debut covering the Scotland v
Wales international. In 1962 he switched to
television.
McLarens day job was to supervise sport and
teach PE in Hawicks five primary schools.
He filled this role from the early 1950s until
1987, and was proud to have taught several of
Scotlands future international players in
their youth. more.... |
 |
Donald
Pickering, actor, has died aged 76 (15
January 2010)
Donald Pickering made his stage debut in 1951 in
George Devine's production of Shakespeare's The
Comedy of Errors at the Old Vic School Theatre in
London alongside Prunella Scales, Joan Plowright
and Patrick Wymark. He made his first television
appearance in 1956 in an edition of ITV's
Television Playhouse.
Often cast in the role of a suave authority
figure, government minister or a high-ranking
military officer, Pickering made his debut in Dr
Who in 1964 when he played Eyesen in the story
The Keys of Marinus alongside the first Doctor,
William Hartnell.
Pickering's other television roles includes
appearances in dramas such as The House of
Eliott, All Creatures Great and Small, Rumpole of
the Bailey, The Professionals, Tales of the
Unexpected, Crown Court, The Pallisers and The
Saint. His comedy appearances included roles in
Yes, Prime Minister, Lovejoy and The Brittas
Empire. In 1980 he played Doctor Watson for 23
episodes in Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. more.... |
 |
George
Cowling, the nation's first on-screen weather
man, has died aged 89 (28
December 2009)
George Cowling secured his place in history on
January 11 1954, when he ventured before the BBC
cameras to become the BBC's on-screen weatherman.
From 1949, the BBC had carried weather maps at
the end of the evening's programmes, during which
an off-screen announcer read a script supplied by
the Meteorological Office. The introduction of an
on-screen forecaster was a big step for both
organisations.
Studio facilities and technology available to the
forecasters were extremely primitive and provided
little in comparison to the vast quantities of
instantly-accessible data churned out by today's
hi-tech instruments, many of them in orbit above
the Earth.
In the early-1950s television programmes began at
8pm, and the new weather feature was tacked on to
beginning of the schedule. Part of the brief was
to look back at the previous day's forecast,
assess how accurate it had been, and, if
necessary, to try to explain what had gone wrong.
Thus Cowling and his colleagues began to talk at
7.55pm, and had four-and-a-half minutes to fill
before the continuity announcer took over to
introduce the evening's entertainment. While the
viewer might have considered the slot brief, more
than four minutes represented a real challenge
for an inexperienced broadcaster to fill fluently
without a script. Cowling himself noted later
that to fill the time "unprompted, before
critical millions, could only spell one thing:
unhappiness".
Cowling joined the Met office, then part of the
Ministry of Defence, aged 19, and worked through
the war as a weather forecaster for the RAF,
stationed initially in Yorkshire, and then on the
Continent.
After 15 years with the Met, he was transferred
to the London Weather Centre where he coped
successfully with the exacting requirements of
his new television job before promotion took him,
in February 1957, to RAF Bomber Command.
Subsequent postings included Singapore, Malta,
Bahrain and Germany. He also taught at the Met
Office College and was principal forecaster at
Heathrow. more....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6970848.ece |
 |
Gene
Barry, actor, has died aged 90 (12
December 2009)
In 1951, Gene Barry landed a film contract with
Paramount at 1,000 dollars a week and made his
big-screen debut as a nuclear physicist in The
Atomic City (1952). He was a scientist again in
his best-remembered film role, as Dr Clayton
Forrester, in The War of the Worlds (1953).
But television became the medium in which Barry
made his mark. Following his appearance in an
episode of the suspense series The Clock (1950),
he worked his way up the cast list, via
programmes such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents
(1955), to play the PE teacher Gene Talbot during
the run of the sitcom Our Miss Brooks (1955-6).
Then came the title role of the suave, dapper,
Arizona gambler-lawman, with a black derby,
pinstriped suit, gold vest and a sword disguised
as a gold-tipped cane, in the Western series Bat
Masterson (1958-61). Masterson, "the fastest
cane in the West", who also carried a gun,
was a 19th-century former Dodge City sheriff
and the character established Barry's line
in debonair roles.
As the suave and witty Los Angeles Chief of
Detectives in Burke's Law, Gene Barry brought to
television screens a policeman who turned up to
crime scenes in style, sitting in the comfortably
upholstered rear of a chauffeur-driven
Rolls-Royce.
The millionaire Amos Burke was also seen at home,
in his luxurious mansion, where a string of
beautiful women visited the eligible bachelor.
Burke's Law (1963-65) was the tongue-in-cheek
antithesis of established American crime dramas
such as Dragnet, with its mundane but eminently
watchable police procedurals, and The
Untouchables, which presented a weekly bloodbath
of murders and massacres.
Following Burke's Law, he was cast as the
snappily dressed publishing tycoon Glenn Howard
in The Name of the Game (1968-71), a lavishly
made series that rotated Barry, Tony Franciosa
(as a journalist) and Robert Stack (as a senior
editor) in a three-weekly cycle of stories. When
leading roles dried up, Barry made guest
appearances in programmes such as Fantasy Island
(1978, 1981), The Twilight Zone (1987) and
Murder, She Wrote (1989). more....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6953791.ece |
 |
Richard
Todd, actor, has died aged 90 (5 December
2009)
Todd was one of the first British officers to
land in Normandy in advance of the main D-Day
landings and went on to become Britain's
highest-earning matinee idol of the post-war
years; his most memorable role was that of Wing
Commander Guy Gibson, VC, in The Dam Busters
(1955), a film he carried with the help of
Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis.
Todd made his screen debut in For Them That
Trespass (1948) and triumphing in The Hasty
Heart, Todd travelled to Hollywood to appear as a
bridegroom with a murky past in King Vidor's
Lightning Strikes Twice (1950), then starred as
Marlene Dietrich's former lover and a
murder suspect in Hitchcock's Stage Fright
(1950).
There followed an orgy of swashbuckling heroics
in Disney's The Story of Robin Hood and his
Merrie Men (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953)
and Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue (1954), all of
which served only to prove that Todd was no Errol
Flynn.
His role as Peter Marshall in A Man Called Peter
persuaded Henry Koster to cast Todd in his Virgin
Queen (1955) as a roguish Sir Walter Raleigh,
whose dalliance with lady-in-waiting Joan Collins
angers Elizabeth I (Bette Davis). Koster then
cast him in D-Day, the Sixth of June the
following year.
The Dam Busters (1954) marked the beginning of a
fruitful collaboration with the director Michael
Anderson. Todd went on to appear in Anderson's
Yangtse Incident (1956) as the commander of a
crippled frigate breaking a Chinese blockade, and
in the Hitchcock-style Chase a Crooked Shadow
(1958) he played the mysterious stranger claiming
to be the late brother of the heiress Kimberley
Prescott (Anne Baxter). He returned as a wing
commander (this time named Kendall) for their
last film together, Operation Crossbow (1965).
Todd made his television debut in 1953, as
Heathcliff in a BBC adaptation of Wuthering
Heights. Later, Todd appeared in such series as
Virtual Murder; Silent Witness; Holby City;
Murder, She Wrote; and in the Doctor Who story
Kinda in 1982. He was General Benjamin Cutler in
the television miniseries Jenny's War (1985), and
played Lord Roberts of Kandahar in the miniseries
Sherlock Holmes and the Incident at Victoria
Falls (1992, featuring Christopher Lee as
Sherlock Holmes and Patrick Macnee as Dr Watson).
more....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1834671.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6944417.ece |
 |
Timothy
Bateson, character actor, has died aged 83 (27
November 2009)
Bateson established his reputation as a fine
character actor in 1955 with the single,
incomprehensible speech of the pathetic Lucky in
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
The young actor had learned his craft carrying
spears and having one-line parts at Stratford and
the Old Vic while drawing inspiration, when
appropriate, from the touching comedy of Miles
Malleson. He went with the productions of Antony
and Cleopatra and Caesar and Cleopatra which
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh took to New
York.
Although Bateson preferred the theatre, he
continued to take film work, playing Coker in
Vice Versa (1948); Dr Cook in White Corridors
(1951); and the ostler in Olivier's Richard III.
More work came with the growth of television. He
was Lord Shoreby in The Black Arrow (1958); Guppy
in Bleak House (1959); and Tappertit in Barnaby
Rudge (1960). There were occasional roles in The
Saint; Dr Finlay's Casebook; The Avengers; Doctor
at Large; Please Sir; Last of the Summer Wine;
Hi-De-Hi!; and Midsomer Murders. more.... |
 |
Max
Robertson, writer, broadcaster and sports
commentator, has died aged 94 (20
November 2009)
Max Robertson was the first presenter of
Panorama, of BBC Television's antiques quiz show
Going for a Song, and was a commentator at the
Queen's Coronation in 1953; but he was best known
as the "other voice of Wimbledon",
alongside the television pundit Dan Maskell.
Robertson covered every Wimbledon final for the
BBC from 1946 to 1986 and transformed the art of
tennis broadcasting for radio. He delighted
audiences by being able to describe with riveting
exactness every stroke that was being played,
conjuring up a dynamic mental picture of what was
taking place on court.
Following service during the War, he began doing
outside broadcasts, initially for the BBC
European Service then, from 1949, for Outside
Broadcasts. He was chosen to do the commentary
for the first postwar Grand Prix at Silverstone
in 1948 and covered summer and winter Olympiads.
He also covered the royal tour of Canada in 1951
when the young Princess Elizabeth deputised for
her father who was too ill to travel.
Robertson established a reputation as a
jack-of-all-trades. In addition to his outside
broadcasts for radio, he was in increasing demand
for television, working on children's programmes,
sports broadcasts and conducting interviews.
During the Coronation he was to be seen on the
Victoria Embankment alongside three cameras,
shouting against the full-throated cheering of
thousands of schoolchildren as the Queen passed
by.
He became caught up - briefly - in BBC current
affairs broadcasting when, in 1953, he was
appointed to present the new flagship programme
Panorama. This was, originally, a fortnightly
"magazine" programme with the presenter
holding the fort while roving interviewers made
their contributions. After Malcolm Muggeridge
took over as studio anchor man, Robertson
continued to file items on such varied matters as
myxomatosis in rabbits, horror comics and
rag-and-bone men.
In 1954 he turned freelance. As well as his
tennis commentaries, he covered swimming and
athletics for television and commentated on
summer and winter Olympiads until 1968.
more....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2009/nov/20/max-robertson-obituary
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6928732.ece |
 |
Harry
Alan Towers, prolific radio, television and film
producer and screenwriter, died in August aged 88 (4
November 2009)
In 1944 Towers was head of the RAF's Radio Unit,
making programmes for the Forces Service; there
he introduced Richard Murdoch to Kenneth Horne,
and the outcome was the long-running BBC comedy
series Much-Binding-In-The-Marsh.
In 1956 his company, Towers of London, hired
Marius Goring to impersonate The Scarlet
Pimpernel for a series filmed at Elstree studios.
Between 1957 and 1959 Towers masterminded two
co-productions with a Stateside company, Ziv TV:
Martin Kane, Private Investigator in which
William Gargan played the American gumshoe
seconded to Scotland Yard, and Dial 999, with
Robert Beatty's RCMP detective seconded to the
Yard.
Towers graduated to the cinema in the '60s. Edgar
Wallace's hero Commissioner Sanders was played by
Richard Todd twice, in Death Drums Along The
River (1963) and Coast Of Skeletons (1964), while
Sax Rohmer's fiendish oriental villain Fu Manchu
was splendidly interpreted by Christopher Lee in
five movies between 1965 and 1970.
There followed two comedy adventures, Our Man In
Marrakesh (1966) and Jules Verne's Rocket To
The-Moon (1967), loaded with bankable stars like
Terry-Thomas; and Sumuru, with Shirley Eaton the
eponymous "female Fu Manchu". more.... |
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Sir
Ludovic Kennedy, television presenter, author and
campaigner, has died aged 89 (20 October
2009)
When the Independent Television network was
established in 1955, Kennedy was engaged as a
presenter in a magazine programme called Sunday
Afternoon. The programme was short lived but
launched Kennedy on his television career. A year
later he was called in at short notice by ITN to
stand in for Robin Day, who had been struck down
with flu, and was invited to stay. One critic
described him as reading the news "as though
it were a letter to faraway relative whom he
wished to interest", an attractive and
comfortable style which soon caught the attention
of other television producers. His star rose in
the Sixties and Seventies, when he presented This
Week, then Panorama and later Midweek and
Tonight.
During the 1950s, Kennedy developed political
ambitions and in 1956 he stood as Liberal
candidate in the Rochdale by-election. Though
Labour won the seat, he won the largest Liberal
vote at any election for two decades. He
contested the seat again in the general election
of 1959 and was again narrowly beaten.
From 1961 onwards, Kennedy published a steady
stream of books about crime, the law and
miscarriages of justice. He believed the main
culprit in nearly all these cases to have been
the "extremely childish" British system
of adversarial justice in which "each side
does its best to vanquish the other and truth
falls by the wayside". He campaigned for
many years for the establishment of a Ministry of
Justice and a change to a system more like the
French inquisitorial system in which a juge
d'instruction battles away to find out the truth.
Kennedy combined his laconic, humorous style with
a rage for justice that made him a formidable
investigator. He specialised in ferreting out
truth, pursuing almost-lost causes and bringing
to light what seemed to him to be miscarriages of
justice. Some of his television exposés were
followed up with books, of which the most famous
were to do with the execution of Timothy Evans
(the man hanged in 1951 for murders which, it
later transpired, had been carried out by John
Christie), the framing of Stephen Ward in the
Profumo case and, with The Airman and The
Carpenter (1985), the electrocution in America of
Bruno Hauptmann, the man accused, probably
falsely, of being the kidnapper and murderer of
the Lindbergh baby. More recently, Kennedy
campaigned for the release of the Birmingham Six
and other IRA suspects who, it is now recognised,
had been the victims of serious injustices.
Following his mother's death (in 1977 after many
months of bedridden misery) he became an active
and public supporter of voluntary euthanasia. more....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1805650.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6880951.ece |
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Ian
Wallace, opera singer and 'My Music' panellist on
radio, has died aged 90 (14
October 2009)
He ranged from singer, character actor, comedian,
compère and clown to radio and television
panellist, scriptwriter and pantomime king.
What made Wallace a household name was the
endearing way he had with silly songs about
animals, especially one about an amorous
hippopotamus with a chorus which went: "Mud,
mud, glorious mud". First broadcast on a
Henry Hall Guest Night in 1952, the song
virtually became Wallace's signature tune.
Whether in classical opera, musical comedy,
plays, films, television, radio or on the concert
platform, Wallace's readiness to perform on all
kinds of occasion brought him an exceptional
range of admirers.
Apart from opera, his dramatic credits included
Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream; César in a
West End musical version of Marcel Pagnol's Fanny
(Drury Lane); and the Emperor of China in Cole
Porter's Aladdin (Coliseum).
Wallace was also a regular on the Radio 4 panel
game My Music and other quiz shows on radio and
television in which he would, sitting down,
suddenly break into snatches of opera. With his
unpretentious affability he could always put
audiences at ease.
Wallace made his Italian operatic debut as
Massetto in Don Giovanni at Parma (1950); and was
La Cenerentola at Rome (1955), and Dr Bartolo in
Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Venice (1956). From
1965, his regular appearances for Scottish Opera
included Leporello in Don Giovanni, Pistola in
Falstaff and the Duke of Plaza Toro in The
Gondoliers. For the Welsh National Opera (1967)
he sang Don Pasquale and for Glyndebourne Touring
Opera (1968) Dr Dulcamara in L'Elisir D'Amore. more.... |
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Barry
Letts, actor, director and producer, has died
aged 84 (13 October 2009)
A pioneer of British television, Barry Letts
served the medium for more than half a century.
As an actor, he was rarely off screen in the
embryonic days of television drama. Later, as a
producer and director, his early-evening dramas
commanded large and loyal family audiences. But
it was through his work on Doctor Who that he
secured his place in TV history.
His earliest screen role, as a Welsh seaman, came
in Ealing Studios' San Demetrio, London (1943), a
naval adventure.
After the war he began to appear on stage, TV and
in film, with featured roles in Scott of the
Antarctic (1948), The Cruel Sea (1952) and Reach
for the Sky (1956). His TV debut came in
Gunpowder Guy (1950), a one-off on BBC children's
television. Patrick Troughton starred as Guy
Fawkes, Letts was a fellow conspirator and it was
broadcast live from Lime Grove, west London.
Letts said his understanding of the demands
placed on a producer stemmed from his appearances
in early Sunday evening serials, such as The
Black Arrow (1958) and the second world war drama
The Silver Sword (1957).
Children's TV productions included The Gordon
Honour (1956), which traced two feuding families
down the ages, and The Man from the Moors (1955),
as Charles Dickens.
For older viewers, he played Lewis Carroll in
Nom-de-Plume (1956), a series in which the
identity of each episode's subject was revealed
only at its end, and?Colonel Herncastle?in Wilkie
Collins's The Moonstone (1959), again with
Troughton. The mid-50s saw him telling 15-minute
stories to camera that he had written, and by
1963 he was reading the Epilogue. more....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6889546.ece |
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John
Hart, actor who played television's 'other' Lone
Ranger has died aged 91 (11 October
2009)
Destined to go down in history as television's
"other" Lone Ranger, playing the masked
man riding his trusty white horse Silver for 52
episodes, John Hart stepped into the role in 1952
when Clayton Moore was replaced amid reports that
the original star had walked out in a pay
dispute. However, television viewers were not so
accepting of the "new" Lone Ranger, who
brought them rushing to the small screen with his
shout of "Hi-yo, Silver!" and his
native American companion Tonto (Jay Silverheels)
on horseback by his side. Eventually, in 1954,
American television executives brought back
Moore, who continued in the role until The Lone
Ranger ended in 1957 after an eight-year run,
denying that his departure had been caused by
disagreements over money.
Despite this disappointment, Hart went on to
other starring roles on screen. First, he played
the hero of the title in the 15-part cinema
serial Adventures of Captain Africa, Mighty
Jungle Avenger! (1955). Then, he was seen on
television, also as the title character an
18th-century fur trader in New York's Hudson
Valley during the French and Indian War in
39 episodes of Hawkeye and the Last of the
Mohicans (1957). Again, he had a native American
companion, this time Chingachgook, played by the
horror film star Lon Chaney, Jr. more.... |
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Felix
Bowness, actor and warm-up man, has died aged 87 (7 October
2009)
Felix Bowness died on September 13th. He was best
known as the jockey Fred Quilly in the 1980s
television sitcom Hi-De-Hi!
He worked in radio during the 1950s and began his
radio career, billed as That Irresponsible Young
Man, in 1950 on Variety Bandbox, followed by
Workers' Playtime (1953-59) and Mid-day Music
Hall (1954). For BBC TV, he was in the sitcom
Hugh and I (1964), with Terry Scott and Hugh
Lloyd, and The Benny Hill Show (1965), in Hill's
pre-smut days. Bowness was also in Frankie
Howerd's 1966 BBC series.
He was the BBC's most prolific
"warm-up" man, working on The Morecambe
and Wise Show and some 3,000 editions of Wogan.
He was cast in Jimmy Perry and David Croft's
Hi-De-Hi! in 1980, and went on to appear in their
You Rang, M'Lord, and in Oh, Doctor Beeching! by
Croft and Richard Spendlove. more.... |
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Ray
Barrett, Australian actor, has died aged 82 (11
September 2009)
Aussie actors don't come much tougher than Ray
Barrett. His heavy build, steely eyes and
pockmarked, though handsome, face became well
known to British television viewers in the 1960s,
mainly as Peter Thornton, a hardnosed,
globe-trotting field agent for a multinational
oil company in The Troubleshooters (1965-72).
By 1955, having moved to Sydney, he was getting
roles on radio and became adept at changing his
accent to suit the parts, which later became
handy for voiceover work. But in 1958 he decided
to try his luck in Britain, though it took him
two years to find work as an actor. His career in
Britain began with the lead as a detective
sergeant in an episode of Armchair Mystery
Theatre (1960) and, in the same year, he joined
his fellow Australian Charles Tingwell in several
episodes of the medical soap opera Emergency-Ward
10.
Mainly playing British characters, with only a
smidgen of an Aussie accent, Barrett's often
unsmiling face was seen in series such as The
Avengers, The Saint and Doctor Who, as well as
seven episodes of the espionage drama Ghost Squad
(1963-64).
From 1963 to 1964, he provided the American voice
for the irascible, disabled Commander Sam Shore
in Stingray, the Supermarionation futuristic
sub-aquatic puppet series made by Gerry and
Sylvia Anderson that preceded Thunderbirds. Each
episode began with Barrett announcing:
"Stand by for action! We are about to launch
Stingray! Anything can happen in the next
half hour."
Barrett was then called upon to voice Tracy (and
the villainous The Hood) in Thunderbirds on
television as well as the feature film
Thunderbirds Are GO (1966).
But it was The Troubleshooters that gave him his
highest profile, instantly from the all-action
title sequence with Barrett in a speedboat. more.... |
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Keith
Waterhouse, playwright, novelist and newspaper
columnist has died aged 80 (5
September 2009)
Keith Waterhouse's collaboration with Willis Hall
was one of the most enduring and distinctive
dramatic partnerships in the history of theatre,
films and television.
After two years' National Service in the RAF, he
was hired by the Yorkshire Evening Post in Leeds
before he joined the Mirror, for which he was a
correspondent in the United States and the Soviet
Union. He was also invited to write speeches for
the Labour leaders Hugh Gaitskell and Harold
Wilson.
Meanwhile, he embarked on a career as an author
which would see him produce some 60 books during
his career. In 1956 he produced a history of the
Café Royal, and the following year he published
There Is A Happy Land and in 1959 Waterhouse
published Billy Liar, one of the great comic
novels of the 20th century. The book caught the
public's imagination with its portrait of a
cheeky north country lad trying to bring some fun
into his drab life as an undertaker's assistant
by engaging in fantasies that embarrassed and
dismayed his family.
Waterhouse's collaboration with Willis Hall
produced a rich seam of material. Celebration
(Nottingham Playhouse and Duchess, 1961) evoked
the manners of a proletarian northern family,
first at a wedding reception and then at a
funeral. England Our England (Prince's), with
music by Dudley Moore, was a satirical revue in
the spirit of the mocking television programme
That Was the Week That Was, to which the duo also
contributed.
They followed up with a wryly amusing double
bill, Squat Betty and The Sponge Room (Royal
Court 1962), and then All Things Bright and
Beautiful (Bristol Old Vic), which extracted
slightly indignant fun from a family being moved
from a condemned house to a block of flats. more.... |
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Neville
King, ventriloquist, has died (28 August
2009)
As a ventriloquist, Neville King was a master of
his art, and his dummy "Grandad"
epitomized the mischievious twinkle eyed
pensioner whom we all love, or have loved at some
time in our lives.
Turning professional in 1963, his first summer
season was on the Isle of Man followed by seasons
in Blackpool, Bournemouth, Bridlington,
Scarborough, Torquay, Eastbourne, and Paignton.
In 1964 Neville joined the worlds longest running
Musical, "The Black & White Minstrel
Show", with whom he remained for 11 years, 3
of which were at the Victoria Palace, London. He
also did a season in Malta and a very long,
record breaking, tour of Australia whilst with
the Show.
In 1965 he was chosen to appear before Her
Majesty the Queen & the Duke of Edinburgh in
the Royal Variety Performance at the London
Palladium. In 1967 he again appeared at the
Palladium, this time in front of Princess
Margaret at a Royal Gala.
Neville entertained the troops for Combined
Services Entertainments in Ireland, South
America, Cyprus, Germany, Salalah and Masirah. He
also entertained UN troops in Holland &
Belgium. He did 5 World Tours, including a tour
of Canada, with the London Palladium Show. He
also worked in Salisbury, Johannesburg, Tangier,
Malta, Tasmania and more recently at the famed
"Sporting Club" in Monte Carlo. |
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Scots
variety star Margo Henderson has died aged 80 (28 August
2009)
Margo
Henderson died of a broken heart - just nine days
after her beloved husband in July 2009. Margo
Henderson and Sam Kemp, who worked as a stage
double act during the 1950s and 1960s, were
devoted to each other.
Margo and musician Sam met 61 years ago on the
Glasgow stage circuit, when she was 19 and a
budding solo performer. Musician and singer Sam
was around 10 years older. They married and were
soon working together as Kemp and Henderson.
During their theatre careers, the couple played
dozens of venues throughout Scotland.
Margo also enjoyed success in London, with a
regular bill in the Five Past Eight Show at the
Alhambra Theatre, before being signed for a slot
alongside the Black and White Minstrel Show in
the 1960s. more....
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/obituaries/display.var.2519932.0.an_appreciation_margo_henderson_sam_kemp.php |
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John
Bentley, movie, television and soap opera star
has died aged 92 (17 August 2009)
Handsome, British stage actor John Bentley
entered London's film industry in 1946, where he
was immediately put to work grinding out
inexpensive detective melodramas. He was seen as
radio hero Paul Temple in an entertaining
Boy's-Own-Adventure film series, then starred as
John Creasey's gentleman sleuth "The
Toff" in a brace of second features.
Occasionally, Bentley ventured into
"A"-picture territory, notably the 1956
Errol Flynn vehicle Istanbul (1956). In 1957,
John Bentley starred as Inspector John Derek in
the Kenya-filmed TV detective series African
Patrol.
He went on to play Hugh Mortimer from 1965
through 1977, becoming a favorite of housewives
everywhere in the soap opera
"Crossroads." The soap achieved its
highest ratings ever during the 1975 wedding
episode where Bentley's character married the
Crossroad's Motel matriarch, Meg Richardson
played by soap legend Noele Gordon. 18 million
viewers watched the on-screen wedding and
Bentley's popularity soared. In 1977, in true
soap opera style, Bentley's character was killed
off in a terrorist plot that Bentley himself
described as "ridiculous." more.... |
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Virginia
Carroll, film actress, has died aged 95 (5 August
2009)
Virginia Carroll rode into film history in a
series of Westerns during a career in which she
accumulated more than 85 on-screen credits.
But as in the cases of so many of her film
contemporaries among them Dorothy Revier,
Muriel Evans, Madge Bellamy and Nell O'Day
the female leads in these films often brought
little attention or hopes of further screen work
outside the Western genre.
Throughout the 1940s Virginia Carroll rode the
range with a plethora of Western cowboy leads,
including Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, often cast
as the love interest held captive by cattle
rustlers, an embittered lawman or a band of
"Red Indians".
She had parts in popular television shows such as
The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Roy
Rogers Show, Dragnet and Perry Mason before
retiring in 1959. more.... |
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Dallas
McKennon, actor and character artist has died
aged 89 (29 July 2009)
McKennon was best known for his extensive work
over half a century as a character artist for the
Walt Disney Studios; his distinctive voice can be
heard in such animated classics as The Lady and
the Tramp (1955), One Hundred and One Dalmatians
(1961), Mary Poppins (1964) and Bedknobs and
Broomsticks (1971).
McKennon was also a prolific contributor to
Disneyland Records, appearing on numerous
recordings over many years. Away from Disney, he
voiced many other famous cartoon characters for
Tex Avery and Walter Lantz, as well as appearing
on-screen in a variety of films and television
shows, including Dragnet, Lawman, Gunsmoke and
The Untouchables.
During the 1960s and 1970s, he provided the
original voice of Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's
Frosties ("they're g-r-r-r-r-r-eat!");
Corny the Rooster for Kellogg's Cornflakes; and
Snap, Crackle, and Pop for Kellogg's Rice
Krispies.
McKennon quickly became a fixture at Walter
Lantz's production company which distributed
animated features through Universal Studios; he
was the voice of Buzz Buzzard in Lantz's Woody
Woodpecker shorts between 1951 and 1972.
In Lady and the Tramp he voiced the Hyena,
Toughy, Professor and Pedro. He voiced the Owl in
Sleeping Beauty (1959), and the Fox, Hounds, the
Penguin, the Hunting Horse, the Carousel Guard
and various news reporters in Mary Poppins.
On-screen, McKennon played Cincinnatus, the local
store keeper opposite Fess Parker in Daniel
Boone, which ran for six years. He played
opposite Fred MacMurray in Good Day for a Hanging
(1959); was the projectionist in the Vincent
Price horror film The Tingler (1959). more....
|
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Harry
Towb, actor, has died aged 83 (27 July
2009)
One of the actor's biggest stage roles was in the
National Theatre production of Brighton Beach
Memoirs. He also performed in Little Shop of
Horrors, Barmitzvah Boy, Death of a Salesman and
The Mandate. With the Royal Shakespeare Company
Mr Towb helped bring Sherlock Holmes and
Travesties to Broadway.
And back in his home town he most recently played
Tiresias in Antigone at the Waterfront Hall,
Belfast.
At Dublin's Abbey Theatre his plays included
Philadelphia Here I Come, The Rivals and The
Importance Of Being Earnest. Elsewhere Mr Towb's
numerous television credits include Z Cars, The
Avengers, Home James, Moll Flanders, Heartbeat,
Casualty, and The Bill.
He also took roles in the films The 39 Steps,
Patton, Digby the Biggest Dog in the World, Carry
On at Your Convenience, and The Most Fertile Man
In Ireland.
During the Fifties he had TV parts in 'The
Teckman Biography', Sherlock Holmes, Billy
Bunter, Joan and Leslie, The Army Game, The Vise,
Dial 999 and The Third Man amongst many others. more.... |
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Patrick
Dowling, TV writer, producer and director, has
died aged 89 (25 July 2009)
As a writer, a producer and a director, Patrick
Dowling was responsible for some of BBC
televisions most enchanting output for
young viewers, from the 1960s to the 1980s.
With Vision on (1964-76) and Take Hart (1977-83),
he cemented the reputation of the endearing
artist Tony Hart (obituary, January 18, 2009),
and introduced Peter Lord and David Sproxton
(later to form Aardman Animations and to win an
Oscar) to the screen with their plasticine Morph.
Dowling also created one of televisions
most engaging oddities, The Adventure Game
(1980-86). It was set on the planet Arg, and
audiences and the participating celebrities were
confronted with such oddities as an elderly
retainer who could only hear when wearing his
spectacles, a backwards-talking Australian and an
angry aspidistra plant.
His BBC career began in 1955, as production
assistant and floor manager, initially for the
writer-producer Dorothea Brooking. He also
composed the music for The Balloon and the Baron,
a new fairytale by Brooking, shown on
Boxing Day 1960.
He began directing with The Cabin in the Clearing
(1959), a childrens western serial. Working
with a Computer (1965) was a prophetic,
educational series. In 1968 he made Price to Pay
(1968), a vehicle for Alan Price.
In 1964 he created the pioneering programme for
which he became best known, Vision on, for deaf
children. more.... |
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John
Ryan, the creator of Captain Pugwash has died
aged 88 (24 July 2009)
The cartoonist and animator invented the hapless
pirate in 1950 and the character first appeared
as a strip in the comic The Eagle.
He went on to be the star of two animated
television series which Mr Ryan produced using a
unique live animation technique, moving the
characters and sets by hidden levers.
His other characters included Harris Tweed,
Special Agent, Sir Prancelot and Mary Mungo &
Midge.
John Ryan used his talent for caricatures to
supplement his teaching income and created his
famous pirate and his ship The Black Pig.
Captain Pugwash strips were published in several
magazines and the first Pugwash book came out in
1957. In that year Mr Ryan was commissioned by
the BBC to create the first animated series.
The characters and sets for each scene of the
five-minute episodes were created using cardboard
cut outs and filmed moving in real time, with Mr
Ryan and his wife Priscilla pulling the levers.
The voice-over by the actor Peter Hawkins was
recorded at the same time as the animation.
The series was revived in 1974 for a colour
edition, still keeping its distinctive look.
Other programmes by John Ryan Studios filmed
using the same animation technique were Mary
Mungo & Midge (1969) and The Adventures of
Sir Prancelot (1971-72) and he also made Ark
Stories for ITV in 1981.
He drew for numerous newspapers and magazines and
in later years toured the countrys schools,
libraries and book fairs giving talks about his
artwork. more.... |
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Karl
Malden, Method actor whose distinctive but homely
features effectively consigned him to a lifetime
in supporting roles, has died aged 97 (2 July
2009)
Malden's early film career made little
impression. His first appearance was in They Knew
What They Wanted (1940) and, until the film of A
Streetcar Named Desire, he played only bit parts,
albeit in films of some renown, such as Kazan's
Boomerang (1947), The Gunfighter (1950) by Henry
King, and Lewis Milestone's war epic Halls of
Montezuma (1951). Streetcar put him on the map,
though not always one on which he would like to
be recognised. In King Vidor's Ruby Gentry
(1953), he played the first of several betrayed
husbands - the man whom Jennifer Jones marries to
spite her old flame Charlton Heston. Outrageously
melodramatic, it is now a cult classic - unlike
Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), a tacky 3-D
remake of the Edgar Allan Poe story, with Malden
in the role (originally played by Bela Lugosi) of
a mad psychiatrist, who hypnotises an ape to do
his dirty work.
The detective role in Hitchcock's I Confess
(1953) was also thankless, as Malden played
second fiddle to Montgomery Clift's Catholic
priest, who is suspected of murder but bound by
the confessional not to reveal the killer's
identity.
The mid-1950s were Malden's best years, embracing
not only On the Waterfront and Baby Doll, but
Fear Strikes Out (1957), a harrowing biopic of
the baseball player Jim Piersall (Anthony
Perkins), whose confidence was sapped by his
father's driving ambition.
At this time, Malden also ventured into
direction. He made one film - the 1957 Korean War
courtroom drama Time Limit, starring Richard
Widmark and Richard Basehart - although Malden
did not appear in it himself. It was politely
received. He also handled some scenes,
uncredited, for a western, The Hanging Tree
(1959), in which he played the villain, when the
director Delmer Daves fell sick. more.... |
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Gale
Storm, has died aged 87. She was one of the
biggest stars on American television in the
1950s, famous for her wholesome appearance and
chirpy personality (30 June 2009)
Before landing the starring role in My Little
Margie in 1952, Gale Storm had appeared in
several B-films opposite such stars as Roy
Rogers, Eddie Albert and Jackie Cooper. After her
last television series, The Gale Storm Show,
ended in 1960, she went on to a successful
singing career while continuing to make
occasional television appearances.
She was often cast in westerns as the girl the
cowboy left behind, and appeared in such B-movies
as The Dude Goes West with Albert, The Kid from
Texas with Audie Murphy and The Texas Rangers
with George Montgomery.
With her film roles diminishing in the early
1950s, Gale Storm followed the path of many
fading Hollywood stars of the day and moved to
television. The sitcom My Little Margie debuted
on CBS as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy in
1952. It quickly became an audience favourite and
moved to its own slot that autumn.
The year after My Little Margie ended its
126-episode run in 1955, she moved on to The Gale
Storm Show, which lasted until 1960. In this she
played Susanna Pomeroy, a troublemaking social
director on a luxury liner.
Having taken vocal lessons, she sang on her
second series, and three of her records became
best sellers: I Hear You Knocking, Teenage Prayer
and Dark Moon. She subsequently appeared only
sporadically on television, taking guest roles in
such programmes as Burke's Law, The Love Boat and
Murder, She Wrote. more.... |
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Steve
Race, the musician and broadcaster has died aged
88 (23 June 2009)
Steve Race became a familiar face on television
in the 1950s and went on to host the popular
Radio 4 panel game My Music, which ran from 1967
until 1994; he subsequently set a regular
crossword for The Daily Telegraph.
His first job was as a pianist with Harry
Leader's band, and he went on to play with the
bands of Lew Stone and Cyril Stapleton, and to
arrange for the Ted Heath band and Judy Garland.
Race first came to notice on BBC children's
television in 1953, in the magazine programme
Whirligig, a miscellany of items that introduced
a generation of postwar children to puppet
favourites such as Hank the cowboy and Mr Turnip.
In 1955 Race became light music adviser to
Associated Rediffusion, remaining in the post
until 1960, when he went on to conduct for many
television series, including the Tony Hancock and
Peter Sellers shows.
Race enjoyed nine weeks of chart fame in 1963
with his catchy rendition of Pied Piper (The
Beeje), which reached number 29. In 1962 and 1963
Race won awards for his commercial jingles for
ITV. The most lucrative was the one for Birds Eye
frozen peas: "Sweet as the moment when the
pod went pop". He also won an Ivor Novello
Award for his composition Nicola (named after his
daughter).
In 1965, aged 44, he suffered a heart attack, but
it did little to halt his prodigious work rate.
Immaculately dressed and sporting a distinguished
white beard, Race - although a somewhat shy man -
was always confident and assured in front of a
microphone or a camera. 'My Music', while
pioneered on radio, made a successful transfer to
television bringing out the best (and worst, when
it came to puns) from the comic writers Denis
Norden and Frank Muir, and their
fellow-panellists John Amis and Ian Wallace.
Neither Race nor Wallace missed a single episode
of more than 520 that were broadcast. more....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1715941.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6564110.ece |
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Tenniel
Evans, Taffy Goldstein in 'The Navy Lark', has
died aged 82 (17 June
2009)
On screen, Tenniel Evans was one of those
character actors with a face recognisable in
dozens of television programmes but whose name
was less familiar. He played doctors, police
officers, judges and vicars, and even went on to
be become a priest himself.
But it was out of vision, acting a look-out in
the long-running BBC radio comedy The Navy Lark
(1959-77), that Evans could claim to be
"recognised". As Taffy Goldstein,
alongside Ronnie Barker as Johnson, he was one of
the two Able Seamen among an inept crew aboard
HMS Troutbridge, a frigate refitted to house
undesirable elements of the Royal Navy.
He made his television début as a policeman in
an episode of No Hiding Place (1960), before
acting Jonathan Kail, alongside Geraldine McEwan
and Jeremy Brett, in an ITV adaptation of Tess
(1960, based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the
D'Urbervilles).
For 45 years, Evans worked solidly in character
parts on television, flitting from one popular
programme to another - and even playing Hitler in
The Roads to Freedom (1970). Occasionally, the
actor found regular roles, such as John, one of
the solicitor siblings, in the legal drama The
Sullavan Brothers (1964-65), Sergeant Bluett in
the sitcom My Brother's Keeper (1975-76), Geoff
Barratt in the final series of the post-war
comedy-drama Shine on Harvey Moon (1985), Teddy
Haslam in the zoo vet drama One by One (1987) and
Sir Edward Parkinson-Lewis in September Song
(1994). He also took over from the late Patrick
Troughton the role of Perce, grandfather of
Ashley (Nicholas Lyndhurst), in the sitcom The
Two of Us (1987-90). more.... |
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Terence
Alexander, actor, has died aged aged 86 (3 June
2009)
Terence Alexander played gentlemen and rogues,
combining the two in his most famous role,
Charlie Hungerford in the television detective
series Bergerac.
He began his successful television career in the
1950s and subsequently appeared in many series,
including The Forsyte Saga, the Les Dawson and
Dick Emery shows, Terry and June, and The New
Statesman. His radio work included several plays
as well as the series Law and Disorder and The
Toff. Alexanders numerous films included
the comedies The Square Peg (1958), with Norman
Wisdom, and Carry On Regardless (1961). He also
appeared in the epic Waterloo (1970) and the
thriller The Day Of The Jackal (1974). But
probably his best film role was as an ex-officer
turned bank robber in the comedy adventure The
League Of Gentlemen (1960).
He performed in many West End comedies and
farces, including Fringe Benefits (Whitehall,
1976) and Alan Bennetts Habeas Corpus
(Nottingham Playhouse, 1980).
With John Nettles in the title role, Alexander
brought humour and suavity to Bergerac as the
detectives millionaire ex-father-in-law.
His lightness of touch was perfect for the slim,
silver-haired Charlie, constantly puffing a cigar
and often in a flap. more.... |
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Vivian
Cox, film producer and schoolmaster, has died
aged 93 (2 June 2009)
Viv Coxs career in films began after
demobilisation in 1946. After working with
Sydney, Muriel and Betty Box at Shepherds
Bush Studios, he became associate producer to
Betty Box and then producer at Pinewood Studios.
Among his early films were So Long at the Fair
(with Jean Simmons and Dirk Bogarde, 1950),
Father Brown (with Alec Guinness, 1954) and
Bachelor of Hearts (with Hardy Kruger and Sylvia
Syms, scripted by Coxs friends Leslie
Bricusse and Frederic Raphael, 1958).
From 1959 to 1967 Cox worked as an independent
producer and screenwriter for Rank Studios,
producing such titles as Watch Your Stern (with
Spike Milligan, Leslie Phillips, Hattie Jacques
and Kenneth Connor, 1960) and We Joined the Navy
(with Kenneth More, 1962). Between 1960 and 1976
Cox produced all the stage shows for the annual
Royal Command Film Performance and hosted the
royal party.
In 1967 Cox returned to his first profession and
his alma mater, teaching English, French and
Drama at Cranleigh School. A gifted and inspiring
teacher, he taught for eight years, during which
he also directed several plays, including Hassan
with Juliet Stephenson.
From 1975 until his retirement in 1982 he worked
with Sir Bernard Miles as administrator at
Londons Mermaid Theatre. more.... |
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Australian
actor Charles 'Bud' Tingwell has died aged 86 (15 May
2009)
Outside of Australia he was probably best known
for his role as a high court lawyer in the cult
1997 comedy The Castle, but locally he was the
face of many roles spanning a 50-year career,
from television to the stage and the silver
screen.
Tingwell acted in his first movie in 1946 and
appeared in over 100 films during his long
career, which included a 17-year stint working in
Britain. He moved to England in 1956 where he
carved out a career as a 'London Aussie',
appearing as an Australian surgeon in Emergency
Ward 10, and as Inspector Craddock in four
of the Miss Marple films alongside Dame Margaret
Rutherford. He also voiced the character of Mr
Bennet in Catweazle as well as characters in The
Thunderbirds.
After returning to Australia with his wife and
two children in 1973, Tingwell settled in
Melbourne and began his long foray in the local
entertainment industry.
He had a long-standing role on the police TV
drama Homicide and also appeared in the cult TV
show Prisoner: Cell Block H, and later enjoyed a
recurring role on Neighbours. Tingwell played
many small roles in scores of Australian films
including Breaker Morant, Puberty Blues and the
mini-series All The Rivers Run. more.... |
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Laurence
Payne, actor, has died aged 89 (4 May
2009)
The screen and stage actor Laurence Payne made
his biggest impression as the titular detective
in Sexton Blake, a childrens television
series which is fondly recalled by a generation
of now middle-aged viewers. The series, which ran
from 1967 to 1971, went out in a tea-time slot.
Payne made his television debut in the Adrian
Brunel play Till Tomorrow (1948). He played
Captain Bluntschli in an adaptation of George
Bernard Shaws Arms and the Man (1952) and
Troilus in The Face of Love (1954), a modern and
comic version of Shakespeares Troilus and
Cressida. His first film was the Ealing Studios
drama Train of Events (1949), directed by Charles
Crichton, but apart from an appearance as
Joseph in the opening scenes of the biblical epic
Ben-Hur (1959) most of his screen work was
on television.
Payne played DArtagnan in a BBCs The
Three Musketeers (1954); Gratiano in The Merchant
of Venice (1955); Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet
(1955); Philip Truscott in the sci-fi serial The
Trollenberg Terror (1956-57, before reprising the
role in the 1958 film); King Magnus in The Apple
Cart (1962); Colonel Andrev in the Balkans-set
political thriller The Midnight Men (1964);
Lieutenant Rinaldi in A Farewell to Arms (1966);
Capulet in Romeo and Juliet (1976); and Weaver in
Psy-Warriors (a 1981 Play for Today
written by David Leland and directed by Alan
Clarke).
Payne also had three roles in Doctor Who over the
years: Johnny Ringo in the wild west story
The Gunfighters (1966); Morix in
The Leisure Hive (1980) and Dastari
in The Two Doctors (1985).
Payne also wrote crime novels, including The Nose
on My Face (1961), Birds in the Belfry (1966) and
Spy for Sale (1969). more.... |
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Ken
Annakin, film director whose hits included the
Huggetts saga, has died aged 94 (25 April
2009)
The director Ken Annakin was one of the British
cinemas most stalwart craftsmen. Able to
turn his hand equally to domestic comedies, war
epics, family fare for Walt Disney and big-budget
spectaculars, he was a reliable purveyor of
screen entertainment as he once put it:
I make films for audiences.
He had his biggest commercial success in the
1960s with Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying
Machines, a rumbustious comedy built around the
1910 London-to-Paris air race.
In 1946 he joined Gainsborough Studios under
Sydney Box and the following year made his first
feature, Holiday Camp, a comedy-drama notable for
launching the Huggetts, a warm-hearted
working-class family headed by Kathleen Harrison
and Jack Warner. Annakins sympathetic and
unpatronising treatment of ordinary people was
rare in the British cinema of those days.
With the teenage Petula Clark joining the cast as
their youngest daughter, the Huggetts appeared in
three further films, all directed by Annakin,
Here Come the Huggetts, Vote for Huggett and The
Huggetts Abroad. They were conceived as a series
and in many ways the Huggett saga anticipated
television soap opera, albeit on a cosier level.
By the early 1950s Annakin had emerged as an
efficient all-rounder, tackling anything from the
Malayan emergency in The Planters Wife to
Jerome K. Jeromes Three Men in a Boat and
another Greene story, Loser Takes All. He also
began an association with the Disney studio that
yielded four films, from Robin Hood and His
Merrie Men (1952) to the childrens classic
Swiss Family Robinson (1960), which starred John
Mills. more.... |
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Peter
Rogers, 'Carry On' producer, has died aged 95 (16 April
2009)
Peter Rogers dreamt up the Carry On comedies and
went on to produce the entire Carry On oeuvre,
from Carry On Sergeant (1958) to Carry on
Emmanuelle (1978).
Some time after Rogers had established himself as
a producer, working with the director Gerald
Thomas, he obtained an RF Delderfield script, The
Bull Boys a serious piece about the effect
of army conscription on a pair of ballet dancers.
To avoid any audience irreverence he had it
rewritten by Norman Hudis as a comedy: Carry On
Sergeant.
The film, which starred William Hartnell and a
youthful Bob Monkhouse, with Kenneth Williams,
Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Connor as three
hapless army privates, was shot quickly on a
budget of under £75,000. The critical response
was lukewarm. The Monthly Film Bulletin called it
"a conventional farce, in which all the
characters come from stock". Yet Carry On
Sergeant became an unlikely success - hitting No
3 in the UK box-office charts for 1958, behind
Dunkirk and Bridge On the River Kwai, so Rogers
decided to make another.
Carry On Nurse, also starring Williams, Hawtree
and Connors, topped the box office charts in
1959. Over the next 20 years the formula was
applied to many institutions hospital,
police, school and to locations as exotic
as the Wild West, the Khyber Pass and Ancient
Egypt. The routine was simple enough. Rogers
would think up the title in his bathtub, then
summon the scriptwriter.
In the mid-1950s, working with Gerald Thomas,
Rogers went on to produce children's films in
which he was able to indulge his love of animals.
These included The Gay Dog (1954), Circus Friends
(1956) and The Dog and the Diamonds (1953), which
won the Venice Film Festival Award in the same
year. He also wrote and produced the thriller
Time Lock (1957).
During the Carry On years, Rogers continued to
produce other comedies, such as the spicily
titled Please Turn Over and Watch Your Stern and
also produced the television series Ivanhoe, with
Roger Moore, and the film version of the Sid
James sitcom Bless This House. more.... |
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Edward
Judd, versatile character actor, has died aged 76 (14 April
2009)
Stardom came to the actor Edward Judd in cult
sci-fi films of the 1960s, sandwiched between his
roles in soap operas and other character parts on
the small screen.
By the time he found himself catapulted to
international fame, he had already appeared as a
regular in Britain's first daily television
serial, Sixpenny Corner (1955), playing Denis
Boyes, one of the community living around a
garage run by the newly-wed Nortons in the
fictional rural town of Springwood. The soap was
written by Hazel Adair, who was later to create
the longer-running Crossroads.
His first starring role in a film, as a
hard-drinking newspaper reporter redeeming
himself in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, was not
so far removed from the everyday life of soaps,
where the ordinary encounters the extraordinary.
In the 1961 black-and-white feature - directed by
Val Guest, following his earlier Quatermass
pictures - Judd is seen as the fictional Daily
Express journalist Peter Stenning, who stumbles
on the revelation that American and Soviet
nuclear tests have knocked the Earth off its
axis, sending it heading for the sun and causing
floods and fires.
Judd gained repertory theatre experience in
Windsor and Nottingham, before his brooding good
looks led him to further screen roles as an
adult. On television, he took 11 different
bit-parts in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
(1957) and appeared in other swashbucklers such
as Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Robin Hood and
William Tell (all 1958). Later came roles as
Gavin Grant in the espionage drama series
Intrigue (1966) and the crippled Uncle Russell in
Alan Plater's adaptation of Flambards (1979).
He also started low down the cast list in films,
in pictures that included Carry on Sergeant
(1958), I Was Monty's Double (1958) and Sink the
Bismarck! (1960). But after his sci-fi successes,
Judd was cast in supporting roles, such as Oswald
in O Lucky Man! (1973), the director Lindsay
Anderson's anti-capitalist, surrealist musical. more.... |
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Huw
Thomas, ITN news presenter, has died aged 81 (3 April
2009)
When ITN News started in September 1955, an
exciting new format was created with two people
for the Six OClock News who were referred
to as newscasters rather than
newsreaders. The implication was that
they had a very definite input into the news
coverage.
Huw Thomas fitted well into this bright,
professional line-up: he had a touch of Welsh
panache, he was articulate, handsome, invariably
polite but with a dogged questioning manner that
ensured that questions were answered and not
skated around.
In 1956 Thomas answered an advertisement for the
new Independent Televisions news programme
which was to be produced through Independent
Television News (ITN). The less formal style of
ITN made an immediate impact and was considered
more colourful and viewer friendly
than the BBCs more traditional
presentation. Thomas and his colleagues
questioned correspondents and politicians live,
and this added to the up-to-the-minute feel of
the news coverage.
The newscasters were encouraged to create an
on-screen personality, and this suited the
eloquent Thomas. He had a debonair and gracious
on-screen personality, with a fine voice and
black swept-back hair. At one stage he was
receiving sacks of fan letters and became
something of a cult figure. He responded to the
challenge of altered schedules and hastily
organised live interviews with relish. The value
of his legal training was apparent in his
questioning, which was always sound, courteous
and to the point. more.... |
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Derek
Benfield, actor and the author of more than 30
plays, has died aged 82 (31 March
2009)
In recent years he was most familiar to
television viewers in the role of Patricia
Routledge's long-suffering husband in the BBC
detective series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates,
in which she stars as a fussing, somewhat
self-righteous private eye in Yorkshire.
Benfield also had a long-running part in one of
the most popular television series of the 1970s.
The Brothers concerned a warring family, the
Hammonds, which owned a haulage firm, and
Benfield played the company's foreman, Bill
Riley.
Benfield's first television appearance was in the
BBC serial Return to the Lost Planet, after which
he had roles in popular programmes such as
Emergency Ward Ten, Z Cars, and Dixon of Dock
Green (for which he also wrote four scripts).
There were parts in dramas such as Great
Expectations and The Knowledge before he became a
regular in the cult children's science fiction
drama Timeslip, broadcast in 1970-71.
As a writer, Benfield specialised in farce, and
plays such as The Post Horn Gallop and Wild Goose
Chase (which chart the exploits of the eccentric
Lord and Lady Elrood) have proved popular with
amateur dramatic societies. His play Beyond a
Joke was staged with Arthur Lowe in the leading
role, and Bedside Manners starred John Inman and
later Tim Brooke-Taylor. Touch and Go was
translated into French by Marc Camoletti and ran
for a year in his theatre in Paris; last
Christmas it had a successful run at the Mill at
Sonning. more.... |
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Tim
Brinton, ITN newscaster who became a robustly
right-wing Conservative MP, has died aged 79 (30 March
2009)
Tim Brinton joined the BBC in 1951 as a radio
announcer, mainly on overseas programmes. From
1957 he was head of English programmes at Radio
Hong Kong.
He switched to ITN's high-profile team of
presenters in 1959. His greatest moment came the
following February when he broke into Right of
Reply to announce Princess Margaret's engagement.
Brinton, a professionally-trained actor who had
left ITN to go freelance in 1962, became almost
as well known playing a newsreader as he had been
as the genuine article. His film credits included
Information Received (1961), Allez France (1964),
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), Man at the Top
(1973) and Carry On Emmanuelle (1978). Among
television dramas in which he appeared were Dixon
of Dock Green, Knocker, The Power Game and The
Avengers.
In 1971 Brinton took over as anchor of Southern
Television's Scene South-East.
he was a committed Tory who had campaigned for
the former Home Secretary Henry Brooke in
Hampstead. He was elected to Kent County Council
in 1974, and prior to the 1979 election was
selected to fight the Labour-held marginal of
Gravesend; he captured it with the handsome
majority of 9,346, and in 1983 was re-elected for
the redrawn constituency of Gravesham.
At Westminster Brinton became a founder-member of
the education select committee, defending
independent schools and complaining that children
were swapping school meal vouchers for Mars bars
and chips. He was also vice-chairman of the
Conservative backbench media committee. more....
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Edmund
Hockridge, singer and actor, has died aged 89 (17 March
2009)
With his rugged looks and strong baritone voice
the Canadian-born singer Edmund Hockridge was one
of the West Ends biggest stars in the
1950s.
He played leading roles in a string of popular
musicals including Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Can
Can and The Pajama Game and had recording hits
with songs such as Young and Foolish, No Other
Love, The Fountains of Rome and More than Ever. A
song from The Pajama Game, Hey There, gave him
his biggest record hit and became his signature
tune.
Immensely popular with British audiences,
Hockridge eventually made his home in the UK and
for more than 40 years topped bills around the
country in musicals, variety, radio and TV shows.
He often worked with the Glen Miller Band and the
Canadian band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces
led by Robert Farnon. He sang and produced more
than 400 shows with the BBC Forces Network and as
the war ended he sang with big bands such as
Geraldos.
Throughout the 1950s he recorded a host of show
tune LPs and was a frequent guest star on
television. He appeared in early editions of The
Benny Hill Show as well as Sunday Night at the
London Palladium and he starred in a six-month,
sell-out variety season again at the Palladium.
In 1953 he was in the Royal Variety Show along
with stars such as Max Bygraves and Tommy Cooper
and the same year he was Canadas
representative in the Westminster Abbey choir at
the Coronation.
He made his film debut in 1944 with a brief
appearance in Starlight Serenade but he had more
substantial roles in the 1950s in films such as
For Better, for Worse (1954), the romantic drama
starring Dirk Bogarde, and Kings Rhapsody
(1955), co-starring with Anna Neagle and Errol
Flynn. more.... |
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Ali
Bongo, magician, has died aged 79 (9 March
2009)
Ali Bongo, real name William Wallace, was a
hard-working stage magician with a prodigious
talent for inventing tricks; although he
eventually became the inspiration for the
outlandish magician-detective Adam Klaus in the
BBC's Jonathan Creek, Ali spent most of his
career in television behind the scenes, devising
routines for performers such as David Nixon and
Paul Daniels.
Having played the part of a wizard called Ali
Bongo in a village hall pantomime, he borrowed
the name for his stage act. On stage Bongo always
claimed himself to be of "Pongolian"
descent, but the character he created was no
doubt partly inspired by his Indian upbringing.
He wore brightly-coloured clothing, spoke in a
ringing Asian accent, and tore through his act at
a frantic pace, with a litany of endearingly
absurd catchphrases - "hokus-pokus fishbones
chokus" or "uju buju suck another
juju" - thrown in for good measure.
After National Service, Bongo became a manager at
the magic department of Hamleys in Regent Street.
When eventually he left the store to become a
full-time professional, he came to the attention
of David Nixon, a likeable and witty magician
with his own show at the BBC.
By the 1950s Ali was working as a magician in
variety theatres and clubs throughout the
country. Billed as "The Shriek of
Araby", he wore outrageously colourful
costumes and his act was a combination of
brilliantly mimed, zany comedy with expertly
performed magic tricks. Casseroles of fire turned
into colourful displays of doves and silks,
bouquets of flowers changed colour, ladies were
sawn in half and he involved his audiences with
hilarious mind-reading feats.
Impressed by Bongo's ingenuity and grasp of stage
technique, Nixon employed him as an adviser on
David Nixon's Magic Box until 1971, when Bongo
was given his own slot on the children's
entertainment series Zokko. His reputation grew
and in 1972 he was voted Magic Circle Magician of
the Year. But he continued to be employed as an
adviser on such television shows as Tarot Ace of
Wands, Doctor Who, The Tomorrow People, and later
worked with Nixon's successor at the BBC, Paul
Daniels, with whom he was to remain a close
friend.
In 2008 he was elected president of the Magic
Circle and remained a frequent visitor to its
premises near Euston, helping to run the Young
Magicians' Club where he passed on the tricks of
his trade to the next generation of performers. more.... |
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Joan
Turner, comedienne and popular entertainer, has
died aged 86 (5 March
2009)
At the height of her fame in the 1960s Joan
Turner was widely regarded as one of
Britains most brilliant comediennes. Famed
for her soprano voice and biting wit, she was
billed as "the voice of an angel - the wit
of the Devil" and was regularly seen on
popular television shows, at the London Palladium
and at nightclubs in New York and Las Vegas.
Critics were quick to compare her to Gracie
Fields, and her voice, like that of Fields, did
have an astonishing range. She was set for
international stardom, but, prey to drink and
gambling problems, she proved too erratic and
undisciplined to maintain a successful career,
and her eventual decline was pitiful.
She made her debut at the Finsbury Empire as a
singing comedienne, billed as "The Wacky
Warbler", and later played all the leading
music halls around the country. For four years
she specialised in the title role of Aladdin in
the Lew Grade pantomime and on one memorable
occasion slipped unannounced into the
long-running Crazy Gang show at the Victoria
Palace and stopped the show.
By now a headliner in variety she was quickly
snapped up by television and made regular
appearances as a guest star on shows with Dickie
Henderson and Harry Secombe and in 1954 was
chosen for the Royal Variety Performance, where
she sang with Eric Robinson and his Orchestra.
In the same year she opened with Jimmy Edwards
and Tony Hancock in the revue Talk of the Town
(Adelphi Theatre), which ran for a record 656
performances. At the end of the 1950s she had
written and compiled a one-woman show, An Evening
with Joan Turner, running at two hours and in
which she did more than 20 impressions.
In the early 1970s she surprised her critics by
giving an exceptional performance in the lead
role in The Killing of Sister George which
toured, and she made several comedy recordings,
the best of which was The World of Joan Turner.
It was not enough, however, to support her lavish
lifestyle, and in 1977 she was declared bankrupt.
"I couldnt stop gambling," she
admitted. "The more I lost the more I wanted
to win it all back." more.... |
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Tony
Osborne, composer and arranger, has died aged 86 (3 March
2009)
Osborne's first job was a trumpeter and relief
pianist with Cyril Stapleton, and then with Frank
Weir, Carroll Gibbons and Ambrose. He played in
the BBC Orchestra for the comedy successes, The
Goon Show and Take It From Here.
Soon Osborne was working for the major companies
of the day, notably with EMI, and he formed his
own band, the Brass Hats, for weekly appearances
on the BBC TV teenage show, Six-Five Special.
When that was superseded by Juke Box Jury in
1959, Osborne wrote and recorded the theme song,
"Juke Box Fury", under the name of
Ozzie Warlock and the Wizards. When Osborne fell
out with the show's producer, Russell Turner,
Turner replaced his tune with John Barry's
"Hit And Miss", which began Barry's run
of success.
In 1960, the American star Connie Francis
recorded in England and Osborne wrote and
conducted the arrangement for her million-selling
"Mama", which was sung in Italian.
Among his arrangements were "Sisters"
for the Beverley Sisters, "Out Of Town"
for Max Bygraves, "Love Is" for Alma
Cogan, "Little Donkey" for Nina and
Frederik, and "Say It With Flowers"
with Dorothy Squires and Russ Conway.
Around the late 1950s, Osborne began recording
under his own name, favouring place names for his
instrumental titles the best known are
"The Lights Of Lisbon", "The Man
From Marseilles", "The Windows Of
Paris", which became the theme music for the
BBC drivetime programme, Roundabout and was
recorded by Bing Crosby, with lyrics by Johnny
Mercer, and "The Man From Madrid", a
Top 50 entry in 1961. He also had a chart hit
with "The Shepherd's Song" in 1973. more.... |
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Dilys
Laye, actress known for comic roles in the Carry
On films, has died aged 74 (20
February 2009)
Dilys Laye was one of Britains most
experienced comedy actresses, best known for her
appearances in the Carry On films. But she was
equally adept in straight roles, notably with the
Royal Shakespeare Company, and she was a seasoned
musical star, having appeared in the original
Broadway production of Sandy Wilsons The
Boy Friend, opposite Julie Andrews.
Her gift for comedy was noticed during the early
1950s when she began appearing in a series of
then hugely popular intimate West End revues,
including High Spirits, For Amusement Only and
Intimacy at 8.30 in which she starred alongside
such performers as Ian Carmichael and Cyril
Ritchard.
She made her Broadway debut in 1954 as Dulcie in
The Boy Friend after which she returned to
Britain to play in both West End and provincial
theatre comedies and musicals.
In 1957 she played Mrs Herbert in the film Doctor
at Large, opposite Dirk Bogarde and James
Roberston Justice. In the 1960s she had
established herself as a leading comedy actress
on television, appearing regularly in series such
as the BBCs Comedy Playhouse. In 1967 she
had a small role in Charlie Chaplins
romantic comedy film A Countess from Hong Kong.
For much of her career the theatre remained her
first love and she showed her versatility as an
actress when she joined the RSC in the 1970s
playing roles such as Maria in Twelfth Night and
the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. She frequently
played leading roles in musical comedy and in
recent years had topped the bill in touring
productions of Sweeney Todd, The Pirates of
Penzance, Fiddler on the Roof and 42nd Street.
Trevor Nunn cast her as Mrs Pearce in the 2007
Drury Lane revival of My Fair Lady.
In 1981 she wrote and appeared in the ITV sitcom
Chintz, which also starred Michele Dotrice.
Laye almost never stopped working and had been
seen on television in recent years in Midsomer
Murders, Holby City and EastEnders, in which she
played Maxine Palmer. more.... |
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Shirley
Jean Rickert, 'Our Gang' member, has died aged 82 (20
February 2009)
Shirley Jean Rickert was to a legion of
Depression Era fans the cute girl with the
platinum blonde curls in the Our Gang comedies
filmed during the early 1930s. Shirley was five
when she made her Our Gang debut in Helping
Grandma (1931), appearing with Jackie Cooper,
Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins, Matthew
"Stymie" Beard, Dorothy deBorba, Allen
"Farina" Hoskins and Norman
"Chubby" Chaney.
After a dozen or so Our Gang shorts, Shirley left
the troupe to play Tomboy Taylor in the rival
Mickey McGuire comedy series, with Mickey Rooney
in the title role. Certain that her daughter was
a star in the making, Shirley's mother negotiated
her way out of the series contract after Shirley
had made just five short films in 1934.
Fame eluded her. By the mid-1930s, she was
reduced to playing a series of bit parts. During
the war years she was briefly under contract with
Columbia Pictures, then worked as an uncredited
dancer in a number of film musicals, including
The Pirate (1948) with Gene Kelly; Royal Wedding
(1951), starring Fred Astaire; and Singin' in the
Rain (1952).
When the old Our Gang comedies resurfaced in
television syndication across America in the
mid-1950s as The Little Rascals, Shirley Jean
Rickert found herself a new generation of fans. more.... |
| |
Richard
Coleman, Actor, has died aged 79 (14
February 2009)
Richard Coleman made his big-screen début as a
naval officer in Yangtse Incident: the Story of
HMS Amethyst (1957) and landed similar roles in
Girls at Sea (1958) and The Navy Lark (based on
the BBC radio sitcom, 1958). He also played the
baddie Metellus in the biblical epic Ben-Hur
(1959).
But it was in television that the actor's future
lay. He had regular roles as Nick Allardyce in
The Adventures of Ben Gunn (1958), a six-part
serial by R.F. Delderfield featuring characters
from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island,
the minstrel Alan-a-Dale in episodes of The
Adventures of Robin Hood (1958-60) and Jack
Royston in the soap opera Weavers Green (1966),
set around a Norfolk country vet's practice.
Coleman also took one-off character roles in many
popular television series, including Dixon of
Dock Green (1963, 1964), No Hiding Place (1964,
1965), The Avengers (1966), Z Cars (1973), George
and Mildred (1977) and Surgical Spirit (1991).
In the 1970s, Coleman was one of the best-known
faces on television, starring with Wendy Craig in
two archetypal sitcoms of domestic mayhem.
Coleman joined her in thesitcom ...And Mother
Makes Three, in which Craig played a dithering
young widow, Sally Harrison, trying to hold down
a job while bringing up her two sons, with some
assistance from her Auntie Flo and in the follow
up series ...And Mother Makes Five (1974-6).
Both series were created by the writer Richard
Waring and followed his previous sitcom, Not in
Front of the Children, which starred Wendy Craig
in another family saga. more.... |
| |
Stewart
Morris, BBC light entertainment producer, has
died aged 79 (9 February
2009)
In 1958, the TV producer Jack Good was producing
the very exciting rock n roll show,
Oh Boy! for ITV, and the BBC wanted something
similar. Stewart Morris was recruited to produce
their reply, Drumbeat. Morris favoured a studio
production over a theatre audience, but otherwise
the shows were identical. Many of the performers
were the same but Morris made Adam Faith a star
and established John Barry as the leader of a
rhythm combo, the John Barry Seven. The visiting
Americans were Paul Anka and the Poni-Tails.
Drumbeat made me a star in Scotland,
the singer Vince Eager said, as they
didnt have ITV there and had never seen
anything like it.
Drumbeat only ran for six months, but Morris had
shown his capabilities and he was then entrusted
with Juke Box Jury. This was hardly demanding
work and hardly a TV format four
panellists listening to the latest releases and
commenting on them but it had a popular
host, David Jacobs, and high viewing figures.
In January 1967, Morris produced The Rolf Harris
Show in which Harris sang, joked, painted and
played ethnic Australian instruments. Harris was
born on the same day as Morris and they referred
to each other as twins. During the first season,
Sandie Shaw sang the potential UK entries for the
Eurovision Song Contest, and the public voted for
Puppet On A String, which led to the
UKs first victory in the contest. The
following year, Morris produced the live TV
broadcast of the contest from the Royal Albert
Hall and also produced the Royal Variety
Performance from the London Palladium. In 1976,
he produced the first live broadcast of a Royal
Variety Performance.
When BBC2 started in 1964, Morris was put in
charge of the Saturday afternoon alternative to
sport on BBC1 and ITV. Open House was fronted by
Gay Byrne and featured such American stars as
Gene Pitney, the Supremes and the Beach Boys.
In 1986, Morris produced his biggest spectacle:
the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games
in Edinburgh, which involved over 10,000
sportsmen and musicians.
Morris retired from the BBC in 1992. He then
produced a Royal Gala for the 50th anniversary of
VE Day for Carlton TV in 1995 and four series of
Barrymore with Michael Barrymore for LWT from
1992 to 1995. more.... |
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Ingemar
Johansson, the Swedish heavyweight boxer has died
aged 76 (2 February 2009)
Ingemar
Johansson caused a sensation by destroying Floyd
Patterson inside three rounds to win the world
title in June 1959; the American was floored
seven times before Johansson became the first
European to capture the sport's richest prize
since Italy's Primo Carnera 25 years earlier. An
intelligent fighter blessed with sound boxing
skills, Johansson also possessed a thunderous
punch in his right hand which the press dubbed
"Ingo's Bingo", although the colourful
Swede preferred to call it "Thor's
Hammer". This was the punch that earned him
the Scandinavian and European crowns before his
remarkable win over Patterson.
Yet Johansson's reign proved brief. Patterson
gained his revenge by stopping him in five rounds
in the return bout 12 months later and the Swede
also lost their third and final encounter in
March 1961. Although this trilogy of fights ended
Johansson's days as a world title contender, he
emerged from them £1.5m the richer. more.... |
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Tony
Hart, Artist and TV presenter, has died aged 83 (18 January
2009)
Tony Hart was an iconic and much-loved figure for
millions of budding young artists who tuned into
his BBC art shows for nearly 50 years. He
received two Bafta awards, won a lifetime
achievement award in 1998, gave a TV platform to
Morph - the clay character with the incoherent
babble - and also created the original design for
the Blue Peter badge.
Hart graduated in 1950 and soon became a
freelance artist. His career did not take off
immediately, and he later admitted to drawing
murals on restaurant walls in exchange for meals.
But it would not take long for him to move into
television. He met a BBC children's TV producer
at a party in 1952 and, following an interview,
demonstrated his talents by drawing a fish on a
napkin.
He became resident artist on Saturday Special,
subsequently appearing on Playbox and Titch and
Quackers.
In 1964, he fronted Vision On, which was intended
for deaf children, and by the time Take Hart
arrived in 1978, colour television gave his
programmes added punch.
His kindly, avuncular manner was a key feature of
the programmes, and advances in technology
allowed his remarkable range of ideas to bear
full fruit.
Hartbeat (1985-1994) often attracted 5.4 million
viewers and Hart received between 6,000 and 8,000
drawings and paintings through the post every
week - the best of them would be pinned to the
walls of his studio.
His career continued with his final series, Smart
Hart, where he shared the studio with a young
Kirsten O'Brien, and that kept him in work until
his retirement in 2001. more.... |
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Author
and dramatist Sir John Mortimer has died aged 85 (16 January
2009)
Sir John Mortimer made his radio debut in 1955
when he adapted his own novel, 'Like Men
Betrayed' for the BBC Light Programme. But he
made his debut as a playwright with 'The Dock
Brief', starring Michael Hordern as a hapless
barrister, first broadcast in 1957 on BBC Radio's
Third Programme, later televised with the same
cast and subsequently presented in a double bill
with 'What Shall We Tell Caroline?' at the Lyric
Hammersmith in April 1958, before transferring to
the Garrick Theatre.
His play, 'A Voyage Round My Father', given its
first radio broadcast in 1963, is
autobiographical, recounting his experiences as a
young barrister and his relationship with his
blind father. It was memorably televised by BBC
Television in 1969 with Mark Dignam in the title
role. In a slightly longer version the play later
became a stage success. In 1981 it was remade by
Thames Television with Sir Laurence Olivier as
the father and Alan Bates as young Mortimer.
Mortimer is best remembered for creating a
barrister named Horace Rumpole, whose speciality
was defending those accused of crime in London's
Old Bailey. Mortimer created Rumpole for 'Rumpole
of the Bailey', a 1975 contribution to the BBCs
'Play For Today' anthology series. Played with
gusto by Leo McKern, the character proved
popular, and was developed into a Rumpole of the
Bailey television series for Thames Television
and a series of books (all written by Mortimer). more.... |
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Patrick
McGoohan, actor in the television series The
Prisoner, has died aged 80 (15 January
2009)
After a few minor stage roles in the West End,
McGoohan was signed by Rank at a time when the
British film industry was flourishing. His
clipped, almost metallic delivery in the manner
of Oliviers Richard III, and the persistent
stare, made him an ideal movie actor. Among his
early films were No Life for Ruth, Dr Syn, Three
Lives of Thomasina and All Night Long. Possibly
his most memorable role of the period was a
villain at the wheel in a taut thriller called
Hell Drivers that co-starred the also emerging
Stanley Baker and Herbert Lom.
The TV series Danger Man followed in 1959 after a
troubled Rank failed to renew his contract along
with other players. Ever the prickly
perfectionist, McGoohan quickly found fault with
the early scripts and came close to losing the
part because of his demands. He insisted that
John Drake should never carry a gun, although he
was permitted to wrestle one away from a baddie
occasionally, and all women were to be treated
with strict courtesy.
At different times McGoohan turned down the
chance to play James Bond and also the Saint (he
said they were immoral) because of the sex and
violence content. But he collected his share of
accolades. He won a TV Actor of the Year award
for his performance in The Greatest Man in the
World, and in 1959 the Critics Award for Best
Actor of the Year on stage when he played the
title role in Ibsens verse drama Brand, as
the religious bigot who finally destroys himself.
He moved behind the camera directing several
episodes of his friend Peter Falks
long-running TV detective series Columbo,
although he did appear in several, picking up a
pair of Emmy Awards. He starred in another TV
series, Rafferty, a tailor-made role about a
rebellious, irascible doctor, and he returned to
Britain occasionally for TV appearances. Among
them a remake of Jamaica Inn with Jane Seymour,
and Hugh Whitemores The Best of Friends in
which he played George Bernard Shaw.
But it is for The Prisoner and its infuriating,
fascinating mystery that he will be remembered
most. As he once said in exasperation: Will
I never escape it? I am a prisoner of The
Prisoner. more....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1380371.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5518785.ece |
 |
Edmund
Purdom, British character actor famed for his
roles in The Student Prince and The Egyptian, has
died aged 84 (5 January 2009)
Edmund Purdom made his acting debut in repertory
in 1945, aged 21. Six years later, he appeared
with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh on
Broadway in alternating performances of Caesar
and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra, playing
respectively a Persian and Thyreus. One of his
first film roles was in Joseph Mankiewicz's
Julius Caesar (1953) as Strato, the young servant
of Brutus (James Mason).
It was the sad fate of the actor Edmund Purdom
that the best known of his films, The Student
Prince (1954), is remembered more for the star
who wasn't in it. After the temperamental tenor
Mario Lanza was fired from the film, the
non-singing unknown Purdom replaced him. Luckily
for MGM, Lanza had recorded the songs for the
CinemaScope production before shooting began.
Thus his voice is heard bellowing incongruously
out of the slender frame of Purdom.
Purdom's reputation as a surrogate is underlined
by the fact that he got his first chance of
stardom when he replaced Marlon Brando in The
Egyptian (1954) after Brando wisely cried off,
preferring to play Napoleon in Desirée instead.
By the end of the 1950s, like a number of stars
for whom Hollywood work had dried up, Purdom went
to Italy and into rubbishy costume melodramas
such as Herod the Great (1959), The Cossacks,
Salambo (both 1960), Suleiman the Conqueror and
Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile (both 1961). This
stream of Italian films was interrupted by some
British television work and, in 1964, two films
made in England, The Beauty Jungle, revealing the
seedier side of beauty contests, and The Yellow
Rolls-Royce. more....
|
 |
US singer
Eartha Kitt has died aged 81 (26
December 2008)
American singer, dancer and actress Eartha Kitt
has died at the age 81. She was one of the few
artists to be nominated in the Tony, Grammy and
Emmy award categories and was a stalwart of the
Manhattan cabaret scene.
Her break came at 16 when she got a job as a
dancer with a professional troupe touring Europe.
She later sang in Paris nightclubs and appeared
in several films in the 1950s.
Her lithe, feline movements, the bewitchingly
provocative glances from her wide-set eyes and
her unique vocal style girlishly husky
with an effective use of vibrato were
truly incomparable. Initially her image was that
of a gold-digger, epitomised by such hits as
"Just An Old-Fashioned Girl",
"Santa Baby" and "I Want to Be
Evil", but other best-selling records
testify to her versatility the seductive
"Jonny", her wry "Dinner for One
Please, James", a vitriolic "The
Heel" and, in one of her most persuasive and
touching recordings, the pathos of "The Day
That the Circus Left Town". Besides stage
and cabaret, she also had a film, theatre and
television career, delighting a new generation
when she played Catwoman in the series Batman.
Kitt was blacklisted in the US in the late 1960s
after speaking out against the Vietnam War at a
White House function.
However, she returned triumphantly to New York's
Broadway in a 1978 production, Timbuktu!, and
continued to perform regularly in theatre shows
and concert halls.
From the 1980s onwards she appeared in numerous
films, and her 1984 hit Where Is My Man found her
another generation of night club fans. more.... |
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Jack
Douglas, actor and comedian, has died aged 81 (19
December 2008)
A permanent fixture in the final eight Carry On
comedy films, Jack Douglas is best remembered for
the twitching character he usually portrayed,
complete with flat cap, spectacles and workman's
overalls, and the one-word catchphrase:
"Phwaay!"
The character, known as Alf Ippititimus, was
created on stage two decades earlier and became a
staple of his act.
His break as a performer came while he was
directing Dick Whittington (1948-49) at the
Kingston Empire in Surrey. He was persuaded to
step in after the comedian Joe Baker's straight
man was taken ill. As a result, the pair formed a
double-act and, in addition to their stage
appearances across Britain and in Australia, they
were seen regularly during the first year of the
children's television programme Crackerjack
(1955-56). He made his film début in the RAF
comedy Nearly a Nasty Accident, starring Jimmy
Edwards, in 1961. As well as appearing with the
Carry On team in their forays into television,
Carry On Christmas (1972) and Carry On Laughing
(1975), Douglas performed on the small screen in
many entertainment programmes. Having earned a
reputation as a brilliant stooge, Douglas worked
occasionally with Bruce Forsyth and Benny Hill,
and, for 12 years, with Des OConnor. He and
OConnor topped the bill in numerous summer
seasons: they appeared in more than 50 TV
specials and were the unexpected hit of the Royal
Variety Show in 1969. The following year they
appeared in America on The Ed Sullivan Show. more.... |
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Van
Johnson, actor who rode his luck to become a
major Hollywood star before fading from view, has
died aged 92 (15
December 2008)
After
graduating, he worked for a time in an office,
but his sights were always set on a career in
showbusiness. He took dancing, singing and acting
lessons and managed to land small roles in such
Broadway shows as Entre Nous (1935) and New Faces
(1936).
In the late 1930s, he also appeared in a couple
of Rodgers and Hart shows Too Many Girls
and Pal Joey. In Too Many Girls he had the lead
role, but when it was filmed in 1940, he was
unknown in Hollywood and was given only a
one-line part. Nevertheless, it was his screen
debut.
With war stories dominating Hollywood
productions, he became renowned as the
boy-next-door turned sailor, soldier or airman.
He made his mark in A Guy Named Joe (1943), as a
pilot steered towards grieving Irene Dunne by the
spirit of her dead lover, played by Spencer
Tracy.
A Guy Named Joe was a big hit, so Van Johnson was
co-starred with Irene Dunne again in a schmaltzy
wartime drama The White Cliffs of Dover (1944)
before being cast in a musical, Two Girls and a
Sailor (1944), with June Allyson and Gloria De
Haven.
As a GI (of which he had no personal experience),
he was seen in such films as Thirty Seconds over
Tokyo (1944), Battleground (1949) and Go for
Broke! (1951). When he was not winning the war,
he was the romantic foil for swimmer Esther
Williams in the musicals Thrill of a Romance
(1945), Easy to Wed (1946), The Duchess of Idaho
(1950) and Easy to Love (1953).
None of his later films was distinguished. They
included the romantic melodramas Action of the
Tiger (1958), with Martine Carol, and Subway in
the Sky (1959) with Hildegarde Neff, and the
Resistance thriller, The Enemy General (1960).
For a time, he switched to the theatre, appearing
in Damn Yankees on tour, Bye Bye Birdie in
repertory, The Music Man in London and La Cage
aux Folles, replacing Gene Barry in one of the
lead roles. Subsequently his screen appearances
became increasingly infrequent.
He forsook Hollywood and began appearing in
international co-productions, such as La
Battaglia d'Inghilterra and Il Prezzo del Potere
(both 1969) and a steady stream of television
films. His last Hollywood film was a cameo in
Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). more.... |
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Beverly
Garland, B-movie and television actress, has died
aged 82 (13 December 2008)
Beverly Garland did battle with some of the most
ludicrous monsters in cinematic history as the
star of 1950s B-movies such as 'Swamp Women' and
'It Conquered the World'. She later went on to
play Fred MacMurray's wife in 'My Three Sons',
one of the longest-running situation comedies on
American television.
In 1955 she was nominated for an Emmy for her
performance as a leukaemia patient in the medical
drama 'Medic', and by the mid-1960s she had left
the world of horror and sci-fi to play Bing
Crosby's onscreen wife on the short-lived 'Bing
Crosby Show'. She also appeared in a string of
successful television shows, such as 'Perry
Mason', 'Gunsmoke' and 'Rawhide'. She was best
known, however, for her role as Fred MacMurray's
wife Barbara in the 1960s hit 'My Three Sons'.
In 2001 she faced Anne Robinson on the American
version of The Weakest Link, after which she
observed of the show's inquisitor: "She's
more venomous than Joan Crawford, Faye Dunaway
and Miriam Hopkins combined." more.... |
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Oliver
Postgate, Bagpuss and Ivor Creator, has died aged
83 (9 December
2008)
Oliver Postgate's work was both whimsical and
matter-of-fact, magical and mundane. He went into
partnership with Peter Firmin, forming the
production company Smallfilms. It was just that;
a two-man operation making short animated films
from a makeshift studio in a disused cowshed in
Kent.
They started in 1959 with Ivor the Engine, a
series for ITV about a little Welsh steam engine
who wanted to sing in a choir. Early films like
Ivor the Engine relied on cardboard cut outs.
Ivor was followed in the early 1960s by the sagas
of Noggin the Nog for the BBC. His adventures
were sometimes alarming, sometimes charming, and
eventually ran to five series.
In 1963 they branched out into stop-motion puppet
animation, first with the Pingwings and then with
the Pogles. The arrival of colour television
spurred the team to new heights of invention.
Their work took on a decidedly surreal edge with
the Clangers, pink creatures with pointed noses
who lived on a blue moon with a friendly soup
dragon, and spoke in whistles. Postgate and
another actor did their voices with Swanee
whistles, after Postgate had painstakingly
written out every word of the script. The
Clangers were perhaps Postgate and Firmin's
finest achievement though not, apparently, their
most popular.
From 1974, that honour went to Bagpuss, a pink
and white striped cat, who presided over a shop
dedicated to mending broken articles. In 1998 (by
which time the Bagpuss generation had reached
their 20s and early 30s) the programme was voted
the best children's series ever in a television
poll.
Oliver Postgate made his last film in 1987,
complaining that children's television
commissioners were no longer interested in what
he had to offer. With his story-telling skills,
his love of found objects and mechanical
improvisation, his funny voices and air of
eccentricity, the man himself gave a good
imitation of everyone's favourite uncle.
And his creations live on, at once surreal and
comforting. more....
http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/ |
 |
Reg
Varney, gifted comic actor from the East End, has
died aged 92 (17 November 2008)
In 1950 Varney made his film debut in Miss Robin
Hood. By the late Fifties, with halls closing as
television spread, Varney was working only twenty
weeks a year. Even a praised Touchstone in a
Bernard Miles production of As You Like It at the
Mermaid did not yield better work. He was on the
point of throwing it in, perhaps to run a pub,
when he saw the progress Benny Hill was making on
television. Ronald Chesney, the harmonica player
showed him a script which he had written with
Ronald Wolfe. This was The Rag Trade, a situation
comedy set in the dressmaking workshop of Fenner
Fashions.
The show was taped on Sundays allowing the
producers the pick of actors on the West End
stage, who would not have been available for work
during the week.
The star-studded cast included Miriam Karlin,
Peter Jones, Sheila Hancock and Barbara Windsor.
Varney was aware that he was the only performer
without West End acting experience and worked
hard to make up for it.
At read-throughs of the script his performance
would give the writers cause for concern. But on
the day of recording, he would know his lines and
the comic potential of the episode better than
anyone.
He moved on to his own show, The Valiant Varneys,
which ran for a year from 1964, and the next year
starred in Joey Boy, a comedy feature film about
the Army. He appeared in The Great St Trinian's
Train Robbery in 1966.
Between 1967 and 1969 he played an affluent
fitter in the sitcom Beggar My Neighbour, in
which he co-starred with Pat Coombs, Peter Jones
and June Whitfield.
But it was the television comedy On the Buses,
written by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, that
made Varney a household name. Screened from 1969
until 1973, the series revolved around a bus
driver's capers with his conductor, played by Bob
Grant, their home life, and their efforts to put
one over on the bus depot's lugubrious Inspector
Blakey (Stephen Lewis).
Varney also starred in three On the Buses feature
films, made by Hammer: On the Buses (1971),
Mutiny On the Buses (1972) and Holiday On the
Buses (1973). But when he finally left the role
for good, his career suffered. more.... |
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Pat Moss,
showjumper turned rally driver, has died aged 73 (13
November 2008)
Pat Moss was a leading showjumper who later
caught the automotive bug and went on to become a
trailblazing women's rally driver. She won the
European Ladies' Championship five times, and in
1960 she and her co-driver, Anne Wisdom, won the
daunting Liège-Rome-Liège rally, the first time
a major international rally had been won by an
all-female crew.
As an eight-year-old she won many pony events,
competing against her brother, and both were
presented to King George VI after winning the
Victor Ludorum at the 1945 Windsor Cup horse
trials. In 1950 she was victorious at the Horse
of the Year Show, and three years later she was
presented to the Queen after winning the Queen
Elizabeth Cup at White City. She went on to make
the UK showjumping team.
Moss had her first driving lesson, courtesy of
her brother Stirling, in a Willys jeep when she
was seven, but in 1952, when she was about to
turn 18, Stirling's manager, Ken Gregory, took
her on a small rally. She was his navigator and
they got lost on their way to the start. Despite
this less than propitious beginning to her rally
career, by 1954 she had graduated, via a Morris
Minor convertible, which she admitted she
thrashed, to a Triumph TR2. In March 1955 she was
invited to drive a works MG TF on the RAC Rally
and success there led to rides for MG in a works
Magnette, then with an Austin Westminster in 1956
and a Morris Minor in 1957.
In 1960 she won the Liège-Rome-Liège rally
outright in the Healey.
A tough and fast competitor, Moss blazed a trail
for women competitors and achieved many strong
results, including second on the 1961 RAC, third
on the 1962 East African Safari Rally despite a
collision with an antelope, and victories on the
Tulip Rally and the Rally Deutschland. In the
Dutch event she scored the Mini Cooper's first
international victory. She would also win the
European Ladies' Championship on four more
occasions, adding 1960, 1962, 1964 and 1965 to
that 1958 success.
A switch to Ford for 1963 brought the ladies'
prize on the Tulip and Acropolis rallies and,
following her marriage, she drove Saabs
successfully with Liz Nystrom as her navigator
until a move to Lancia for 1967. In 1968 she took
a Fulvia to victory on the Sestrières Rally and
finished sixth, the highest-placed Lancia, on the
1969 Monte Carlo Rally. more.... |
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Russ
Hamilton, one of the UKs first
international pop stars, has died aged 76 (16 October
2008)
Russ Hamiltion whose real name was Ronnie Hulme
scored Top 10 hits in Britain and the United
States in the late 1950s.
Ronnie was born in Liverpool and became a
Butlins Redcoat at its Clacton camp. His
big break came when he was in a Redcoat troupe
which recorded at Orioles London studio. He
also recorded two of his own songs.
The result was the 1957 single, We Will Make
Love, with the poignant lines: When the sun
takes the place of the moon in the sky, we'll go
on a journey, you and I, to a far distant land,
where our dreams were planned, in the clouds up
above we will make love.
Oriole released it as a single, under the name
Russ Hamilton. It reached number two in the UK
chart, selling a million for a gold disc. The
flip-side, Rainbow, was a US number four. Russ
was in huge demand for a while, appearing
alongside major stars such as Perry Como but the
following single, Wedding Ring, only scraped into
the UK Top 20.
After that the hits dried up, but Russ continued
to record fine songs for a several years and then
settled in a flat in Buckley, North Wales,
occasionally complaining that he had seen very
little of the money he had earned for others. more.... |
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Peter
Copley, versatile theatrical actor, has died aged
93 (14 October
2008)
Having been trained at the the Old Vic Theatre
School, Peter Copley first appeared as the Gaoler
in The Winters Tale at the Old Vic in 1932.
Playing in 16 Old Vic revivals in five years, he
moved to the Edinburgh Festival as the Fencing
Master in the opera Ariadne auf Naxos, he felt
again on home ground. He was an expert at
swordplay. It had been his custom to supervise
fencing at the Old Vic, and he rarely missed a
chance to direct duels in, say, Oliviers
Richard III and Henry IV.
In 1963 he was called to the Bar at Middle
Temple, but nothing could deter him from acting.
He went on to appear in all kinds of drama,
ancient and modern, in the West End and the
provinces, even into old age. With his gleaming
eyes, distinctive voice and irresistible presence
his assumptions as lawyers, schoolmasters,
diplomats, priests and other sticklers for verbal
precision made Copley invaluable.
His television appearances in the '50s and '60s
included parts in 'Fabian of the Yard', Sunday
Night Theatre', 'No Hiding Place', 'Maigret',
'Danger Man' and 'The Saint'. more.... |
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Nadia
Nerina, prima ballerina, has died aged 80 (13
October 2008)
For nearly a quarter of a century Nadia Nerina
was one of the most popular ballerinas of her
time, largely as a leading dancer with the Royal
Ballet but also in guest appearances for many
other companies, and on concert tours.
Her special gifts were immortalised in the role
of Lise which Frederick Ashton created for her in
his production of La Fille mal gardée. He made
such dazzling use of her virtuoso technique, with
its speed and lightness, that when first given in
1960 he was asked whether he thought anyone else
would be able to dance it.
Rudolf Nureyev danced in the Royal Ballets
Giselle and inserted a series of entrechats-six,
which shocked many dancers and fans. In amusing
retaliation, Nerina one night, knowing that
Nureyev was in the audience, substituted 32
entrechats-six (not usually a womans step)
for her featured 32 fouettés in the Black
Swan sequence. Nureyev must have taken it
well because a little later he danced with her in
the Laurencia pas de six which he mounted for
television a medium in which Nerina had
been one of dances pioneers, appearing in
six programmes between 1957 and 1965. more.... |
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Paul
Newman, Oscar-winning Hollywood actor, has died
aged 83 (28 September 2008)
Paul Newman was a Hollywood actor of true star
quality, who remained at the top of his
profession for more than 40 years.
As an actor he had a commanding presence,
dominating the screen by force of personality. It
earned him a stream of Oscar nominations in such
films as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The
Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke
(1967), Absence of Malice (1981) and The Verdict
(1982). He was unsuccessful, however, each time
and it was not until 1986 that he was finally
named best actor at the seventh attempt in The
Color of Money a sequel to The Hustler,
for which many felt that he should have won 25
years earlier.
He made his screen debut in 1954 in The Silver
Chalice a Biblical epic that proved a
commercial disaster. That Warner Bros, to whom he
was under contract at the time, did not ditch him
was probably due to his striking physical
resemblance to Marlon Brando, then at the peak of
his powers.
In the late 1950s, for Warner Bros and on loan to
other studios, Newman made a number of now
largely forgotten melodramas. In Arthur
Penns first film, The Left Handed Gun
(1958), he played Billy the Kid as a precursor of
the crazy, mixed-up kids then being
portrayed by James Dean. Audiences shunned it.
From this period of his career, only Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof (1958) made money, though Tennessee
Williams regarded it as a travesty of his play.
Highlights of the middle section of Newmans
career were the two tongue-in-cheek pictures he
made with Robert Redford under director George
Roy Hill, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
(1969) and the Oscar-winning The Sting (1973).
Both sophisticated entertainments, they were not
among his most demanding work, but were
undeniably crowd-pleasers.
So, too, was The Towering Inferno (1974), in
which he played the architect of a doomed
skyscraper. Sidney Lumets The Verdict
(1982), in which he was an ambulance
chaser a seedy lawyer who latches
onto accident victims as potential clients
was notably intelligent and also a box-office
hit.
After winning an Oscar for The Color of Money in
1986, Newman was able to be more selective about
the scripts that came his way. more.... |
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David
Jones, theatre, television and film director has
died aged 74 (24 September 2008)
David Jones was a theatre, television and
occasional film director who cut his teeth on the
BBCs Monitor programme and had a long
association with the Royal Shakespeare Company
before moving to the United States, where he did
most of his later work.
During National Service he was a second
lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and in 1958 he
joined BBC Television. He had expected to work on
the early-evening magazine Tonight, but was
diverted by Grace Wyndham Goldie, the formidable
talks executive, to help on a little
programme about the arts, though she warned
him it might be short-lived.
In the event Monitor became a television
landmark, taking the arts seriously while making
them accessible to a wide audience. Under the
tough yet avuncular and relentlessly enthusiastic
Huw Wheldon it became an unofficial film school,
nurturing the talents of not only Jones but also
John Schlesinger, Ken Russell and, later, Melvyn
Bragg. Although still in his early twenties when
he joined Monitor, Jones was entrusted with some
of the more important assignments and with his
literary background was a natural choice for
tackling writers.
In 1958 he went to Cambridge to make a film about
the usually camera-shy E. M. Forster on the
occasion of his 80th birthday. Jones not only
directed the film but also interviewed Forster in
his rooms at Kings College. Among
Joness other subjects were Lawrence
Durrell, Frank OConnor, the Irish writer,
and George Chapman, the Welsh painter. In 1962
Jones succeeded Humphrey Burton as Monitors
editor. more.... |
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Michael
Pate, Australian
actor,
writer and director, has died aged 88 (20
September 2008)
After serving in the Australian Army's
entertainment unit during the Second World War,
during which he served as compere for the touring
performances of Gracie Fields, he began to act in
films, and in 1950 he supported Tommy Trinder and
Chips Rafferty in Bitter Springs. Telling of the
conflict between settlers and Aborigines, it was
the last (and least successful) of the three
films made in Australia by Ealing Studios after
the war.
Pate also acted in a stage version of Charlotte
Hastings' thriller, Bonaventure (1950), and he
made his Hollywood debut when Universal asked him
to repeat his role in Douglas Sirk's enjoyably
melodramatic screen version of the play, retitled
Thunder on the Hill (1951) and starring Claudette
Colbert as a nun turned sleuth, proving the
innocence of convicted murderer Ann Blyth. Pate
remained in the USA for several years, appearing
in more than 200 films and TV shows. He was
Flavius to Marlon Brando's Marc Antony in Julius
Caesar (1953), played a droll Sir Locksley in
Danny Kaye's funniest comedy, The Court Jester
(1955), and was frequently cast as a Native
American in such films as Hondo (1953) and The
Great Sioux Massacre (1965) and countless
television westerns including Maverick, Laramie,
Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke and a
memorable episode of Rawhide in which he saved
the stars, Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood, from
being flogged while tied to tree trunks. more.... |
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Lita
Roza, Sultry interpreter of romantic ballads, has
died aged 82 (15 August
2008)
The public know the Liverpool singer Lita Roza
for one song above all others, the children's
novelty "How Much is That Doggie in the
Window?" However, that doggie was her bête
noire: she was talked into recording the song and
did not consider it representative of her work.
There were few to rival her real talent as a
sultry and sophisticated interpreter of romantic
ballads.
In 1951, Roza recorded "Allentown Jail"
with the Ted Heath band. Although record sales
were not then collated, it was undoubtedly her
first hit, as the song rose high in the
sheet-music charts. After "Allentown
Jail", her A&R man, Dick Rowe, asked her
to sing "How Much is That Doggie in the
Window?" and Roza replied, "I'm not
recording that, it's rubbish." She recalled,
"He said, 'It'll be a big hit, please do it,
Lita.' I said that I would sing it once and once
only and then I would never sing it again, and I
haven't. The only time you'll hear it is on that
record."
Even when the record was No 1, no one could
persuade Lita to perform her hit, but it did lead
to her recording several unsuitable songs. She
was appreciated as much for her stunning looks as
for her voice and she topped the Melody Maker
poll for Favourite Female Vocalist from 1951 to
1955, and a similar one in the New Musical
Express from 1952 to 1955.
In 1954, Roza left the Ted Heath band and started
working as a solo act: "I would be singing
with pit orchestras, who were usually
dreadful," she said. "It was like going
to the knacker's yard although I always carried
my own pianist." In 1955, Lita had hits with
two songs she liked "Hey There"
and "Jimmy Unknown" and then
sang "A Tear Fell" on a charity single
for the Lord's Taverners Association, which made
No 2. She recorded albums of standards, Listening
in the Afterhours (1955) and Love is the Answer
(1956).
She had recorded another fine album, Me On a
Carousel, for Pye in 1958, as well as a stream of
variable singles, the better ones including
"Volare" and "I Could Have Danced
All Night". After leaving Pye in 1960, Roza
recorded only sporadically. more.... |
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Sir Bill
Cotton, TV light entertainment producer, has died
aged 80 (12 August 2008)
William Frederick Cotton, known early in his
career as Bill Cotton Junior, was born on April
23 1928 with showbiz in his blood. He was the
younger son of the bandleader Billy Cotton.
According to Bill, his father's musical talent
was limited to "waving his arms about"
in front of the band (he never learned to read
music). But his extrovert personality and ability
to spot winning performers made him a variety
icon. His famous introductory shout of
"Wakey wakey!" was said to have
originated when he had to rouse the band for
their Sunday morning radio show after a hard week
on the road.
Billy's relationship with his sons was
complicated and ambiguous. He was proud of Bill
junior's success in the BBC but simultaneously
afraid that it might threaten his own standing.
Despite this, he was happy to have Bill junior as
producer of his TV show, while the younger Cotton
freely acknowledged the debt he owed to his
father's career and influence.
Cotton junior joined the BBC as a light
entertainment producer in 1956. After early
successes with Six Five Special and the discovery
of Tommy Steele, he was asked to produce his
father's show. He was extremely reluctant to take
on this task. He knew none better
how difficult Cotton senior could be and dreaded
the almost inevitable public rows. Father and son
reached a working agreement: they might have
their differences backstage, but never in front
of performers or crew.
His name was associated with a string of variety
and comedy successes. Among the many artists who
owed their promotion up the rungs of the TV
ladder to him were Tommy Steele, Russ Conway,
Michael Parkinson, Dave Allen, Bruce Forsyth, Des
O'Connor and Cilla Black.
Cotton's broadcasting philosophy was simple. He
believed his job, both as Head of Light
Entertainment and later as controller of BBC1,
was to maximise the audience for the BBC channels
by providing them with comedy and entertainment
programmes of the highest quality. In this way
the crucial business of maintaining audience
parity with the ITV opposition would be secured,
and the future of the licence fee made safe. more.... |
 |
Jill
Adams, actress billed as 'Britain's Monroe', has
died aged 78 (6 August 2008)
A tall, striking blonde, Jill Adams provided good
humour and a welcome touch of glamour to several
films from the mid-Fifties. At the start of her
film career, she was publicised as
"Britain's Marilyn Monroe". It was
hardly an accurate description, but the former
model Adams made a stunning cover girl, featuring
on the cover of the popular weekly Picturegoer
twice, in 1954 and 1955, and she played in over
20 films in the space of a decade.
In 1953 she began taking bit roles in movies
dancing with Nigel Patrick in Forbidden
Cargo (1953), appearing in the Arthur Askey
comedy The Love Match (1954), and in Doctor at
Sea (1955) with Dirk Bogarde.
The James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli is
credited with having discovered her when she
played a bit part in his production The Black
Knight (1954), and she was soon playing larger
roles, notable among which were her fine comic
performance in the Launder-Gilliat black comedy
The Green Man (1956), with Alastair Sim and
George Cole, and her glamorous depiction of the
"girl upstairs" in the comedy about
barristers, Brothers in Law (1957), her role a
deliberate echo of Monroe's in The Seven Year
Itch.
She had one of her first substantial roles in the
sprightly "B" movie One Jump Ahead
(1955), in a rare villainous portrayal as a
murderess who was once an old flame of a reporter
(Paul Carpenter) who is usually "one jump
ahead" of the police. Adams was one of Rex
Harrison's seven wives in the sophisticated
comedy The Constant Husband (1955).
At the peak of her acting career in 1957, Adams
married Peter Haigh, the debonair presenter of
radio's Movie-Go-Round and the founding
co-presenter (with Derek Bond) of Picture Parade,
a weekly television movie magazine that would
evolve into the show presented for many years by
Barry Norman.
Adams appeared in The Scamp (1957), and was given
star billing in an Australian movie, Dust in the
Sun (1958), but it had limited distribution. In
1960/61 she featured in a television series, The
Flying Doctor, based on the real-life activities
of the Royal Flying Doctor Service serving the
Australian outback. more.... |
 |
Hugh
Lloyd, comedy actor, has died aged 85 (15 July
2008)
Hugh Lloyd began his association with Tony
Hancock when he was offered several
"one-liners" in the radio show
Hancock's Half Hour in 1954. After joining
Hancock on a tour of Cyprus, Malta and Tripoli,
entertaining the troops there, Lloyd and Hancock
became close friends.
On their return to Britain Hancock offered Lloyd
much larger parts in the television version of
Hancock's Half Hour in 1956. Lloyd played
"the patient in the next bed" in one of
Hancock's best-known episodes "The Blood
Donor". He went on to co-star in over 30
sketches including "The Librarian",
"The Lift" and "The Reunion".
Lloyd stopped working with Hancock in the late
1950s, although he did appear as Ted (one half of
a Punch and Judy act) in Hancock's film The Punch
and Judy Man in 1963.
In 1962 Hugh Lloyd starred in his own series
opposite Terry Scott. Lloyd and Scott first met
during the war and worked together in variety
shows in the early 1950s. They reformed their
partnership for the long-running situation comedy
Hugh and I, which both maintained was based on
exaggerated versions of themselves.
Lloyd reprised the type of character he had
played with Hancock; lugubrious, meek and
constantly under attack from the bludgeoning
Scott. In 1969 he returned to situation comedy in
the bizarre BBC series The Gnomes of Dulwich.
Lloyd, again paired with Scott, played a bearded
"fishing gnome". He spent most of each
episode sitting perfectly still in front of a
plastic garden pond. As usual, Scott played the
belligerent, argumentative lead with Lloyd as his
morose, deadpan foil.
Hugh Lloyd was appointed MBE in 2006. more.... |
 |
Veteran
character actor Tony Melody has died aged 85 (9 July
2008)
Tony Melody became a household name in some of
Britain's best loved and longest running comedies
and soaps. He started out as a singer with the
Northern Dance Orchestra and later became a
household name with character and comedy cameos.
His breakthrough came during the heyday of radio
comedy, in The Clitheroe Kid, the long-running
show (1957-72) starring the diminutive,
Lancashire-born, former music-hall performer
Jimmy Clitheroe in the guise of a naughty
schoolboy. Melody played Mr Higginbottom, a 6ft
4in taxi driver and Jimmy's arch-enemy, and he
joined Clitheroe in the television version, Just
Jimmy between 1964 and 1966. Later he moved to play more
television parts such as in Steptoe and Son
(teaching a young Harold Steptoe how to dance),
Coronation Street, Heartbeat (helping Greengrass
steal a train), Casualty, Emmerdale, City
Central, Where the Heart Is and Last of the
Summer Wine.
One of his biggest breaks came when he appeared
in the film Yanks alongside Richard Gere. more.... |
 |
Sir
Charles Wheeler, distinguished BBC foreign
correspondent, has died aged 85 (5 July
2008)
His first job was on the tabloid Daily Sketch,
where his principal task was to rip news-agency
reports from teleprinters and rush them to the
editors' desks. In 1943 he joined the Royal
Marines and, because he spoke fluent German, was
soon recruited by the special intelligence unit
formed by Ian Fleming (later the creator of James
Bond), playing an important role in the
preparations for the D-Day landings.
In the aftermath of the Allied victory he was
assigned to Berlin, where his job was to make
sure that German officers with technical
know-how, such as U-boat commanders, did not end
up in the Soviet zone. In 1947 he joined the BBC
Overseas Service as a sub-editor on the Latin
American desk and after three years he was given
his first reporting assignment, as a
correspondent for the German service in Berlin.
In 1956 he moved to television as a producer on
Panorama, the long-running current affairs
programme. It was the golden age for that old BBC
warhorse, and Wheeler found himself a member of a
classic company which included such figures as
Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day, Ludovic Kennedy and
Woodrow Wyatt. One of his earliest successes on
Panorama was to get a camera into Hungary to
cover the ill-fated anti-Soviet uprising, sending
the film back to London every day through
Austria. His place, of course, at that time was
behind the camera rather than in front of it
and it was probably in part a desire to
reverse that position which led Wheeler in 1958
to apply for a post with BBC News.
His principal work there was for radio
television stories outside Europe at that stage
had to be filmed, placed in a canister and then
flown home. But the BBCs new South Asia
correspondent soon proved himself a master of
words, always taking great pains, quite incapable
of writing a dull script and rather tending to
show up his lazier colleagues on programmes such
as From Our Own Correspondent. more.... |
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Sooty
changes hands (27 June 2008)
Sooty, the silent puppet bear with a penchant for
magic tricks and water pistols, has been sold to
his presenter, who plans to bring the children's
TV character back in a new series.
Richard Cadell, who has presented the TV show
featuring the much loved children's character for
10 years, has teamed up with his brother to buy
the rights to Sooty and his friends Sweep, the
squeaking grey dog, and Soo the panda. The deal
is believed to be worth almost £1m.
Sooty has featured on British TV since the 1950s,
first appearing on the BBC under the watch of
Harry Corbett, who had bought the puppet on
Blackpool pier to amuse his son Matthew. The show
moved to ITV in 1968 and Matthew later succeeded
as presenter more.... |
 |
Cyd
Charisse, one of the leading dancers at MGM in
the heyday of the Hollywood musical, has died
aged 87 (18 June 2008)
She regularly partnered Gene Kelly and Fred
Astaire on screen and was famous for the length
and shapeliness of her legs, which were insured
in her prime for $10 million. They were so long
and lissom that they gave the impression of a
woman over six foot tall, though in fact she was
a surprisingly petite 5ft 6in. Astaire, with whom
she starred in The Band Wagon (1953) and Silk
Stockings (1957), paid her perhaps the ultimate,
if grammatically suspect, compliment: "That
Cyd! When you've danced with her you stay danced
with."
Her classical ballet training distinguished her
from the other MGM danseuses of the 1940s and
1950s. It lent her a touch of class, even when
playing ladies of easy virtue in the ballet
sequences from Singin' in the Rain (1952) and The
Band Wagon. She could not carry a note, however,
and if her films called for even a few vocal
bars, she was generally dubbed. One exception was
an extraordinary number set in a male gymnasium
in It's Always Fair Weather (1955), where her
toneless voice could be heard piping "You've
got me on the ropes."
Nor could she act. Throughout her career with
MGM, the studio made loyal efforts to cast her in
straight acting roles, but the results were
mostly lamentable. Cyd Charisse's on-screen magic
evaporated whenever she opened her mouth. So when
the golden age of the Hollywood musical came to
an end in the late 1960s, she was forced back on
her weakest suit. She continued to make films
until 1980 but few tapped her dancing talents and
most were Euro pot-boilers ecxposing her
rudimentary acting skills. In later years, she
had more success in cabaret with her second
husband, singer Tony Martin. more.... |
| |
80 years
of BBC shows to go online (11 June
2008)
Every TV and
radio programme ever made by the BBC could be
placed online as part of an ambitious project
unveiled today. The scheme will see a webpage
created for nearly every programme broadcast on
BBC radio and TV in the past 80 years. Initially,
pages will contain information, clips and links
about the show, but it is hoped that whole
programmes will eventually be made available as
part of a massive internet archive. This will
either be via the seven-day catch-up service
iPlayer or as a new online archive service.
It is unclear whether the archive service will be
free. The new details were revealed by Jana
Bennett, director of BBC vision, at the Banff
television festival in Canada. However, a number
of episodes from shows including Hancock's Half
Hour, Doctor Who, Steptoe and Son and the Goon
Show have been lost.
During the Seventies many tapes were destroyed or
taped over to make space in the BBC's storage
facilities or because they were considered a fire
risk. Others, such as the Quatermass series, were
broadcast live and not recorded. Ms Bennett said:
"Eventually we will produce pages for
programming stretching back over nearly 80 years
- featuring all the information we have on the
richest TV and radio archive in the world. The
BBC is committed to releasing the public value in
that archive." more.... |
 |
Jonathan
Routh, broadcaster, artist and author has died
aged 80 (6 June 2008)
Jonathan Routh became Britain's first television
prankster in 1960 when he co-starred in Candid
Camera, the hidden camera show that became an ITV
staple for the next seven years; he also wrote
The Good Loo Guide (1968) and later became a
prolific, albeit eccentric, painter.
For two years he presented Candid Microphone on
Radio Luxembourg, and in 1957 Routh set up as a
professional part-time hoaxer with an
advertisement in The Times reading:
"Practical joker with wide experience of
British public's sad gullibility organises,
leads, and guarantees success of large-scale
hoaxes." By then he had already caused
consternation by leaving a pair of shoes daily in
Kensington public library, taking a grand piano
for a ride on the Tube, and sending himself
through the post to Wandsworth covered in two
pounds worth of stamps.
In Candid Camera, Routh's hidden lens recorded
the chaos resulting from carefully-planned comedy
situations for example, his search for
Little Louis, a performing flea accidentally
mislaid in a London taxi. Although Routh had
imported the Candid Camera format from America,
there was something essentially British about it.
At its heart lay practical joking which, although
often cruel, had been a national sport in the
leisured days of the 18th and 19th centuries.
With the comedian Bob Monkhouse as host, Candid
Camera made Routh a cult television figure as the
deadpan agent provocateur with the hangdog
aspect, iron nerve and beetle brows who preyed on
the unsuspecting. Viewers sent in up to 1,000
ideas for hoaxes a week, most taken in good part
by the unfortunate victims. more.... |
 |
Nat
Temple, clarinettist and dance-band leader who
frequently appeared on radio and television has
died aged 94 (5 June
2008)
Nat temple was one of the best-known bandleaders
of the post-war period, particularly celebrated
for his work in radio and television; he was also
an exceptionally gifted clarinettist, whose
talent received far less recognition than it
deserved.
He turned professional at 16, joining the band
led by the singer and comedian Sam Costa. In 1940
Temple joined the Grenadier Guards and played
with service bands for the rest of the war,
including periods in North Africa and Italy.
While still in the Army he contrived to play from
time to time, and even record, with numerous
other bands.
A chance meeting with the Canadian actor and
comedian Bernard Braden led to Temple's becoming
musical director of a new, "oddball"
radio show, Breakfast With Braden. This was
followed by the late-night Bedtime With Braden,
which gained a sizeable cult following. Temple
was cast as the bumbling bandleader, a part he
played so convincingly that he got taken on in
the same role by other shows Michael
Bentine's Round The Bend, Dick Emery's Emery At
Large and Peter Ustinov's In All Directions.
From these, Temple graduated to children's
television, acting as genial music-master for
Jack In The Box, Telebox and, most famously,
Crackerjack, with Eamonn Andrews. more.... |
 |
Bo
Diddley, rocknroll singer and
songwriter, has died aged 79 (3 June
2008)
Bo Diddley's first single Im a Man became a
hit on the R&B chart in 1955. It was not
exactly blues or even R&B although it
owed an allegiance to both but represented
a new kind of guitar-based rocknroll
which was earthy, basic, unrefined, jive-talking
and decidedly funky. A second single,
Diddley Daddy, followed it up the charts and in
November that year he became the first black
artist to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. He had
been asked to perform Sixteen Tons, a song by the
country singer Tennessee Ernie Ford. Once the
cameras were rolling, he instead strummed the
raucous riff from his signature tune, Bo Diddley.
The show went out live and a furious Sullivan
could do nothing. Diddley was banned from
appearing on the show again but he didnt
care. The row had already made his reputation as
a rocknroll pioneer.
Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry aside, arguably
none of the first generation of American
rocknrollers had a greater impact on
the subsequent course of popular music. Along
with Berry, Diddley was also one of the first
black performers to cross over and
enjoy success in the predominantly white pop
chart of the time. Among the classic singles to
his name, all driven by the primitive but
irresistible beat he likened to a freight train,
were Diddy Wah Diddy, Who Do You Love?, Mona, You
Cant Judge a Book by Looking at its Cover,
Road Runner and Say Man more....
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