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1-50 of 126
- Liz Gebhardt was born on 12 April 1945 in Liverpool, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Please Sir! (1968), Please Sir! (1971) and Z Cars (1962). She was married to Ian Talbot. She died on 10 August 1996 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- In a career spanning 50 years, Isabel Dean demonstrated talent and versatility while never fulfilling the great promise initially indicated. With large eyes and classically chiseled features, she became best known as an exponent of somewhat steely patrician ladies of elegance and breeding. That she was capable of much more was demonstrated by her work on stage in both the classics and contemporary drama, but most of this was done in provincial theatres, partly no doubt because early in her career she offended "Binkie Beaumont", the West End's leading theatrical manager. She was born Isabel Hodgkinson in Aldridge, Staffordshire, in 1918. Her first ambition was to be an art teacher. She studied painting at the Birmingham Art School and in 1937 joined the Cheltenham Repertory Company as a scenic artist. Soon she was taking both acting lessons and small parts with the company. "It was inevitable, with her ravishing looks," commented one of the company later.
After appearing with repertory companies in Brighton and Norwich, she made her London debut on 1 May 1940 as Maggie Buckley in an adaptation of Agatha Christie's thriller Peril at End House, following this with a Shakespearean role, Mariana in Robert Atkins's Regent's Park production of All's Well That Ends Well. A major break came in 1943 when she played Jenny in John Gielgud's celebrated production of Congreve's Love for Love at the Phoenix.
The following year she was asked to join Gielgud's repertory company at the Haymarket, again playing Prue in Love for Love, but also understudying Peggy Ashcroft as Ophelia to Gielgud's Hamlet (the last time the great actor played the role). She played Ophelia several times when Ashcroft was sick and followed this with a performance as Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream which, according to Harold Hobson, was "as pretty and sharply defined as it was lovely".
When Beaumont asked her to go with Gielgud's company to tour India, but only to play the role of the maid in Coward's Blithe Spirit and again to under-study Ophelia, she refused and Beaumont made it clear he considered her ungrateful. She never worked for his management again and made few more West End appearances. Instead she played leading roles in Oxford, Brighton and the Boltons Theatre, including a luminous Juliet.
She returned to the West End in 1956 to play Mary Dallas in the thriller The Night of the Fourth at the Westminster, and three years later played Miss Frost, the Catholic lodger seduced by a young student, in the hit production of J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man at the Fortune.
She had meanwhile become a familiar face on television. She had the principal female role in Nigel Kneale's enormously popular blend of science-fiction and horror The Quatermass Experiment (1953), six 30-minute episodes which went out live, with filmed inserts. Dean played the scientist whose astronaut husband returns from a mission with an alien infection that causes him to mutate into a vegetable-like creature.
When A Life of Bliss, a successful radio comedy series, was transferred to television with its original star, George Cole, as the bumbling bachelor hero, Dean was cast as his forthright sister Anne.
Other television roles included Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, David Mercer's The Parachute (as mother to John Osborne), Julian Bond's 13-part series A Man of Our Times and a high-toned soap-opera, 199 Park Avenue, sat in a luxury apartment block where the stories of the inhabitants are linked by a gossip columnist searching for stories. Created and written by Dean's husband, William Fairchild, it went out twice weekly, but lasted only nine weeks. (Dean's 1953 marriage to Fairchild, who wrote such screenplays as Morning Departure, The Malta Story and Star!, was dissolved in the early Seventies.)
In the theatre, she had successes in several contemporary plays, including the Royal Court production of John Osborne's A Hotel in Amsterdam (1968), which moved into the West End, and in provincial productions of Orton's What the Butler Saw and John Bowen's chilling Robin Redbreast. She had a particularly notable triumph as Hester in Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea (at Guildford in 1971 and Nottingham in 1972), once more following in the footsteps of Peggy Ashcroft. Her wrenching portrayal of the clergyman's daughter, married to a High Court judge, who leaves her husband to pursue a hopeless and obsessive affair with a young air force pilot, clearly demonstrated that Dean's gifts had not always been appropriately exploited.
In 1977 she played with Gielgud, for the first time since she had been his Ophelia, in Julian Mitchell's Half Life at the National Theatre.
Dean's film career began in 1943 with a tiny role in The Man in Grey. Later films included Lean's The Passionate Friends (1948), and Sidney Gilliatt's The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1953), in which she was the epitome of droll elegance as wife to Robert Morley's Gilbert. "How does it feel to be married to a transcendent genius?" asks her husband as he puts the finishing touches to The Mikado. "I suppose I've always taken it for granted, dear," is her reply.
In Alexander Mackendrick's A High Wind in Jamaica, she presented a beautiful and touching picture of Victorian motherhood in the film's early sequences. Her last appearance on the West End stage was as the tragic mother of Alan Turing (Derek Jacobi) in Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code (1986).
A few years earlier the critic Harold Hobson had written: "Our own stage is rich in actresses of whom the chief jewel is Peggy Ashcroft - and the most undervalued is Isabel Dean."
Dean died aged 79 in 1997. - Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Cardew Robinson was born on 14 August 1917 in Goodmayes, Essex [now in Redbridge, London], England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Carry on Up the Khyber (1968), The Avengers (1961) and The Two Ronnies (1971). He was married to Ellen Kay. He died on 27 December 1992 in Roehampton, Wandsworth, London, England, UK.- Robert Raglan was born on 7 April 1909 in Reigate, Surrey, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Patrol Car (1954), Handcuffs, London (1955) and Fabian of the Yard (1954). He died on 18 July 1985 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Patrick Barr, born into a judicial family in British India in 1908, was active for more than half a century on the stage, screen and, later, very successfully on television.
Tall and distinguished, the son of a judge and (in retirement) theatrical manager, Barr was educated at Radley and Trinity College, Oxford, winning a "blue" in the 1929 University Boat Race.
Having first worked as an engineer, he made the move to acting at the comparatively late age of twenty-five. His West End stage debut, followed in 1936 in a production of "The Country Wife" at the Old Vic. The following year, he made his debut on the New York stage.
During the Second World War, he was a conscientious objector serving with a Free French ambulance unit in North Africa. For his bravery, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
On his return to the United Kingdom, he resumed his acting career in a revival of Noël Coward's "Private Lives" at the Apollo Theatre. For the next fifteen years, he appeared almost non-stop on the West End Stage, the longest-running being "Like a Dove", in which he played "Lord Dungavel" for over two years. By the mid 1950s, the popularity of television was growing dramatically and Barr became more widely-known as a result, twice becoming "Television Actor of the Year".
In 1970, he made a strong return to the stage, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company for the season at Stratford. He played the ghost in "Hamlet", "Alonso" in "The Tempest" and "Escalus" in "Measure for Measure".
His first film, The Merry Men of Sherwood (1932) was the first of numerous character parts and, while never attaining first billing as he had on the stage and television, his talents were always in demand.
Patrick Barr died aged 77 on August 29 1985.- Hugh Moxey was born on 27 September 1909 in Bristol, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Meet Simon Cherry (1949), White Hunter (1957) and The Avengers (1961). He died on 9 March 1991 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Jack Lambert was born on 29 December 1899 in Ardrossan, Ayrshire, Scotland, UK. He was an actor, known for Eureka Stockade (1949), Nine Men (1943) and The Great Game (1953). He was married to Julia Wolfe. He died on 13 March 1976 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Geoffrey Russell was born on 13 August 1925 in Hackney, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Avengers (1961), The Flockton Flyer (1977) and Echo Four Two (1961). He died on 1 June 2004 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.- Actor
- Writer
Harry Tate born Ronald Hutchison in Scotland in 1872. Tate worked for Harry Tate & Sons, Sugar Refiners before going on the theatre, and took his stage name from them. British comedian, made his stage debut at the Oxford Music Hall in 1895, becoming a highly well-known impressionist of popular music hall stars such as Dan Leno, Eugene Stratton, George Robey and R.G. Knowles and also was highly successful with his comedy sketches, most notably 'Motoring' which he later starred in the movie version made by the Inter-Cine Film Co in 1927, his other comedy sketches include 'Running an Office' and 'Billiards and Fishing'. He first starred in films impersonating music hall stars for the Warwick Trading Film Co in 1899. Appeared mostly in character and support in talkies from 1932 until his last screen appearance in Sam Small Leaves Town (1937) starring Stanley Holloway. He used his bristling moustache to express all kinds of emotions by twitching it. Died shortly after suffering a stroke in 1940 age 67. Father of actor Harry Tate Jr..- Peter Forbes-Robertson was born on 16 January 1927 in Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales, UK. He was an actor, known for Island of Terror (1966), Nicholas Nickleby (1977) and Doctor Who (1963). He died on 7 December 1995 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Producer
- Cinematographer
- Director
Robert Paul was an English scientific instrument maker, pioneer of film, and foremost pioneer of the British film industry in its formative years. He was born in Liverpool Road, Highbury, North London and was educated at the City & Guilds Technical College, Finsbury. He began his career working in the electrical instrument shop of Elliott Brothers, where he obtained a practical knowledge of instrument making. In 1891, he established the Robert W. Paul Instrument Company, and established a workshop at 44 Hatton Garden, London, which later became his office. His involvement with cinematography came about by chance. In 1894, he was approached by two Greek businessmen, Georgiades and Tragides, who wanted him to make copies of an Edison Kinetoscope that they had purchased. He initially refused until learning that Thomas A. Edison had not patented the invention in Britain. Having agreed to manufacture the machines for his clients, he decided to make others for himself. The only films available were controlled by the Edison company and so in order for Paul's Kinetoscope business to succeed, it was essential that he make his own films. As Edison had patented his camera, Paul resolved to solve this bottleneck by creating his own camera. Via a mutual friend, Henry Short, Paul was introduced to Birt Acres, a photographic expert, and with his assistance designed and manufactured a cinematograph camera, now known as the Paul-Acres Camera. It was the first camera made in England, capable of shooting film in Edison's 35mm format. By 29 March 1895, the first successful English film had been shot - Clovelly Cottage, Barnet (1895), and Acres went on to shoot more films. Paul obtained a concession to operate a kinetoscope parlour at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, and the success of this venture inspired him to attempt surpassing Edison by projecting moving images onto a screen. While Paul and Birt Acres shared innovator status for creating Britain's first 35mm camera, they quickly dissolved the partnership to operate as competitors in the film camera and projector markets. Paul presented his Theatrograph on 20 February 1896 at Finsbury Park College. This was the first commercially produced 35 mm film projector to be produced in Great Britain. He also pioneered a system of projecting motion pictures onto a screen using a double Maltese cross system (modern-type sprockets that prevented wear on the film). The projection of films in London by Paul, Acres and the Lumieres happened around the same time. After some demonstrations before scientific groups, he was asked to supply a projector and staff to the Alhambra Music Hall in Leicester Square, and he presented his first theatrical programme on 25 March 1896. The use of his Theatrograph in music halls across England helped popularize cinema among the British population. To support the many showmen interested in making films of local interest, Paul established a separate manufacturing department focused on cameras, projectors, and cinema equipment with a dedicated office and showroom. Continuing his innovations with portable cameras, he built the 'Cinematograph Camera No. 1' in April 1896, the first camera to feature reverse-cranking. This mechanism allowed for the same film footage to be exposed several times. Paul was one of the first English producers to realise the possibilities of cinema as a means of presenting short comic and dramatic stories and to this end he built the first studio in England in 1989, with an adjacent laboratory capable of processing up to 8,000 feet of film per day. By the turn of the century his film projectors were being exported to the Continent, as well as to Australia and other British Dependencies. He entirely dominated the home market and earned the title 'Father of the British Film Industry'. Paul continued to make his own films that pioneered techniques such as close-up framing and cut transitions, selling them either directly or through newer new distribution companies. While Paul exited the film industry by early 1910, his importance was recognized among contemporaries through the moniker 'Daddy Paul'.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Walter Summers was born on 2 September 1896 in Barnstaple, Devon, England, UK. He was a writer and director, known for Raise the Roof (1930), Hell's Cargo (1935) and Timbuctoo (1933). He died in April 1973 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.- Janet Hargreaves was born on 31 May 1937 in Reigate, Surrey, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Avengers (1961), New Year's Eve (2002) and Secret Agent (1964). She was married to Martin Kirby. She died on 4 August 2018 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Kevin Laffan was born on 24 May 1922 in Reading, Berkshire, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Emmerdale Farm (1972), Emmerdale Family Trees (2020) and Castle Haven (1969). He was married to Jeanne Thompson. He died on 11 March 2003 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Anny Tobin was born on 30 March 1945 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland. She was an actress, known for Shadow of the Noose (1989), Grafters (1998) and Monk Dawson (1998). She was married to Peter Harding. She died on 10 July 2013 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Alastair Hunter was born on 20 March 1913 in Saltcoats, North Ayrshire, Scotland, UK. He was an actor, known for The Italian Job (1969), Whisky Galore! (1949) and Kidnapped (1952). He died in 1996 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Peter Croft was born on 10 February 1917 in Bednall, Staffordshire, England, UK. He was a director and producer, known for The Black Arrow (1972), The Six Proud Walkers (1954) and Here and Now (1955). He was married to Nicolette Roeg and Sally Stewart. He died on 30 June 1988 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.- Paul Toothill was born on 19 March 1951 in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Blake's 7 (1978), Carry on England (1976) and Keeping Up Appearances (1990). He died on 23 August 1994 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
John Ketteringham was born on 5 July 1931 in Brentford, Middlesex, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Link (1986), Jools's Hootenanny (1993) and Gulliver's Travels (1996). He died on 9 July 2008 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.- Trudi Cavanagh was born on 11 October 1917 in Islington, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Wish You Were Here (1987). She was married to Peter Cavanagh. She died in 2005 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Mary Quinn was born on 22 March 1924 in Fylde, Lancashire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Thursday Theatre (1964), Jack the Ripper (1973) and Duty Bound (1958). She was married to Robert Hollyman. She died on 13 July 2003 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Henry MacLeod Robertson was born in Elgin, Scotland on 19 November 1932. His professional music career began in 1957 as composer and conductor for TV shows such as Six-Five Special and Oh Boy! Applying for membership of the Performing Right Society the following year, he registered the pseudonyms Henry MacLeod, Harry Robertson and Harry Robinson, the last-named of which became his usual credit. He also worked for record labels EMI and Decca, and was musical director for artists such as Craig Douglas. Robinson's own hit record Hoots Mon performed by Lord Rockingham's XI (actually Robinson and the studio band) topped the charts for three weeks in 1958. For the West End stage Robinson arranged and conducted the Lionel Bart musicals Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'be (1960) and Maggie May (1964), and he did television spectaculars for Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli and The Beatles. His film music career began in 1966 with a series of features and serials for the Children's Film Foundation, but he is chiefly remembered for Hammer horror scores such as The Vampire Lovers (1970), Countess Dracula (1971) and Twins of Evil (1971). Confusingly for filmgoers, Robinson occasionally reverted to his alternate pseudonym Harry Robertson, notably for Hawk the Slayer (1980). He also scored commercials such as Barclaycard. Robinson's untimely death at 63 occurred in Wandsworth, London, on 17 January 1996, and the death was registered under his real name Henry MacLeod Robertson.- John Scott was born on 25 September 1913 in Shoreditch, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Avengers (1961), Theatre Night (1957) and Probation Officer (1959). He was married to Neena Harvey. He died on 14 June 1991 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.
- Script and Continuity Department
- Actor
- Writer
Edward Rhodes was born on 9 May 1934 in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for The Avengers (1961), Hamlet (1961) and One by One (1984). He died on 16 December 2003 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.- Terence Living was born on 4 July 1935 in West Ham, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Saturday Playhouse (1958), Compact (1962) and Dixon of Dock Green (1955). He was married to Wendy Terry. He died on 15 April 1969 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.