Cecil Parker (3 September 1897 – 20 April 1971) was an English character and comedy actor with a distinctive husky voice, who usually played supporting roles in his 91 films made between 1928 and 1969.
Born Cecil Schwabe in Hastings, Sussex, he began his theatrical career in London in 1922 after serving in World War I. He made his first film appearance in 1928 and subsequently became a familiar face in British, and occasionally American films, until his death. He appeared less often on television, but many of his films have remained popular and are often shown.
He acted in two adaptations of A. J. Cronin's novels, The Citadel (1938) and The Stars Look Down (1940), in addition to appearing in The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Under Capricorn (1949), both of the later films were directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Other roles were in 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956), Dangerous Moonlight (1941), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), and I Was Monty's Double (1958), as well as the comedies A French Mistress (1960), The Ladykillers (1955), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Court Jester (1955), Indiscreet (1958) and I Believe in You (1952). Parker was also the original Charles Condomine in the West End production of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, a role subsequently played on Broadway by Clifton Webb and in the 1945 film by Rex Harrison.
He often played a touchy senior officer or British upper-class character, and his last two films were true to form: The Magnificent Two (1967) with the British comedy double act Morecambe and Wise and Richard Attenborough's version of Oh! What A Lovely War (1969).
He played an evil, scheming butler on one episode of The Avengers ("The £50,000 Breakfast").
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Donald Esme Clayton Calthrop (11 April 1888 – 15 July 1940) was an English stage and film actor.
Calthrop made his first stage appearance at eighteen years of age. His first film was The Gay Lord Quex released in 1917. He starred as the title character in the successful musical The Boy in the same year. He then appeared in 63 films between 1916 and 1940, including five films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
He died in Eton, Berkshire from a heart attack while he was filming Major Barbara (1941).
Finlay Jefferson Currie (20 January 1878 – 9 May 1968) was a Scottish actor of stage, screen and television.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Currie's acting career began on the stage. He and his wife Maude Courtney (1884–1959) did a song and dance act in the US in the 1890s. He made his first film (The Old Man) in 1931. He appeared as a priest in the 1943 Ealing World War II movie Undercover. His most famous film role was as the convict Abel Magwitch in David Lean's Great Expectations (1946), based on the novel, 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens. He later began to appear in Hollywood film epics, including the 1951 Quo Vadis (as Saint Peter), the multi-Oscar winning 1959 Ben-Hur, as Balthazar, one of the Three Wise Men, and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) as an aged, wise senator; He appeared in People Will Talk with Cary Grant; and he also portrayed Robert Taylor's embittered father in MGM's Technicolor 1952 version of Ivanhoe. In 1962, he starred in an episode of The DuPont Show of the Week (NBC) entitled The Ordeal of Dr. Shannon, an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel, Shannon's Way. Currie's last role was as Mr. Lundie, the minister, in the 1966 television adaptation of the musical Brigadoon. In one of his very last performances, Currie plays a dying mafioso boss in the two part "Vendetta For The Saint" (1968) starring Roger Moore.
Later in life he became a much respected antiques dealer, specialising in coins and precious metals. He had been a long time collector of the works of Robert Burns.
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