Dora May Bryan OBE was an English actress of stage, film and television. Born Dora May Broadbent, her career began in pantomime as a child actor. In World War II she joined the ENSA in Italy to entertain British troops.
After having established herself as a versatile stage actress, covering everything from drama and comedy to musicals, she started to appear in film in the late 1940s, and in 1968 she even had her own TV series, "According to Dora". At one point in her career she was Britain's highest-paid star.
She was active on stage until the mid 1990s and continued to work in film and television until 2005, when she finally had to give up the acting profession as she could no longer remember her lines.
Her autobiography According To Dora was published in 1987. In 1996, she was awarded an OBE in recognition of her services to acting and the same year she was also awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for her role in the West End production of the Harold Pinter play "The Birthday Party".
She was married to British cricket player Bill Lawton from 1954 to his death in 2008. She lived in a nursing home in Hove, outside Brighton, until her death in 2014.
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Harry H. Corbett OBE (28 February 1925 – 21 March 1982) was an English actor.
Corbett was best known for his starring role in the popular and long-running BBC Television sitcom Steptoe and Son in the 1960s and 70s. Early in his career he was dubbed "the English Marlon Brando" by some sections of the British press.
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Bernard Cribbins (29 December 1928 - 27 July 2022) was an English character actor, voice-over artist and musical comedian with a career spanning over half a century who came to prominence in films in the 1960s, had been in work consistently since his professional debut in the mid 1950s, and as of 2010 had still been an active performer.
He was particularly known to British audiences as the story-telling voice in The Wombles, a children's programme running which ran for 40 episodes between 1973 and 1975. He also recorded several hit novelty records in the early 1960s and was a regular and prolific performer on Jackanory on BBC TV between 1966 and 1991. Cribbins' most recent prominent role had been as Wilfred Mott, companion of the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who.
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Diana Dors (born Diana Mary Fluck; October 23, 1931 – May 4, 1984) was an English film actress, singer, and pin-up model. Best known for her figure and sex appeal, she was often compared to American blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. She appeared in many British sex comedies and noirs of the 1950s and 1960s, some Hollywood films, and television later in life.
Ian Hendry (13 January 1931 – 24 December 1984) was an English film and television actor. He is best known for his work on several British TV series of the early 1960s such as The Avengers, and for his roles in 1970s films such as Get Carter (1971).
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Stanley Augustus Holloway, OBE (1 October 1890 – 30 January 1982) was an English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles on stage and screen, especially that of Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady. He was also renowned for his recordings of comic monologues and songs, which he performed throughout most of his 70-year career.
Born in London, in his early years Holloway pursued a career as a clerk. He made early stage appearances before infantry service in the First World War. After the war he joined a concert party, "The Co-Optimists", and his career began to flourish. At first he was chiefly employed as a singer, but his skills as an actor and reciter of comic monologues were soon recognised. Characters from his monologues such as Sam Small, invented by Holloway, and Albert Ramsbottom, created for him by Marriott Edgar, were absorbed into popular British culture. By the 1930s, he was in demand to star in music hall, pantomime and musical comedy.
In the 1940s and early 1950s, Holloway moved from the musical stage to acting in plays and films. He made well-received stage and film appearances in Shakespeare, and in a series of films for Ealing Studios. In 1956 he was cast as the irresponsible Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady, a role that he played on Broadway, in the West End and later on film, which brought him international fame. In his later years, Holloway appeared in television series in the U.S. and the UK, toured in revue, appeared in stage plays in Britain, Canada, Australia and the U.S., and continued to make films into his eighties.
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Wilfrid Hyde-White (12 May 1903 – 6 May 1991) was a British character actor of stage, film and television. He achieved international recognition for his role as Colonel Pickering in the film version of the musical My Fair Lady (1964).
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Ron Moody was born on 8 January 1924 in Tottenham, Middlesex, England, UK. He was an actor and author, known for Oliver! (1968), Twelve Chairs (1970) and The little ones also want to move up (1963). He was married to Therese Blackbourn. He died on 11 June 2015 in London, England, UK.
Anne Veronica Maria Quayle (6 October 1932 – 16 August 2019) was educated at the Convent of Jesus and Mary High School, Harlesden. She has appeared on film, on stage and on television. Her film appearances include Smashing Time (1967), a short but memorable scene that she shares with John Lennon in A Hard Day's Night (1964), the German expressionist sequence of Casino Royale (1967) and in the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) as Baroness Bomburst. In 1963, Quayle appeared on Broadway in the original production of Stop the World - I Want to Get Off opposite Anthony Newley, for which she won a Tony Award for Best Supporting Musical Actress. Other television work includes the comedy drama Mapp and Lucia, the children's science fiction series The Georgian House and Grange Hill where she played the role of Mrs Monroe from 1990–94. In 1973, she appeared as a regular panellist on the popular BBC2 panel game show What's My Line?
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Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom, OBE (4 February 1915 – 4 October 2010) was an English actor, comedian and singer-songwriter best known for a series of comedy films produced between 1953 and 1966 featuring his hapless onscreen character Norman Pitkin. These films initially made more money than the James Bond film series, and secured Wisdom a celebrity status in lands as far apart as South America, Iran and many Eastern Bloc countries, particularly in Albania where his films were permitted by Enver Hoxha – Wisdom was the only Western actor to enjoy this privilege. Charlie Chaplin famously referred to Wisdom as his "favourite clown".
Wisdom later forged a career on Broadway and as a television actor, winning critical acclaim for his dramatic role of a dying cancer patient in the television play Going Gently in 1981. It was broadcast on 5 June that year. He toured Australia and South Africa. After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a hospice was named in his honour. In 1995 he was given the Freedom of the City of London and of Tirana. The same year he received an OBE. Wisdom was knighted in 2000 and spent much of his later life on the Isle of Man. Some of his later appearances included roles in Last of the Summer Wine and Coronation Street, and he retired from acting at the age of 90 after his health declined.
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Suzy Kendall (born Frieda Harrison 1 January 1937) is a British actress best known for her film roles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her blonde attractive looks got her leading roles in some fairly prestigious productions. She later appeared in increasingly lower-profile films, including several giallo thrillers made in Italy and several TV series in the 1970s before retiring to spend more time with her family.
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John Le Mesurier (born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley, 5 April 1912 – 15 November 1983) was a BAFTA Award-winning English actor. He is most famous for his role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the popular 1970s BBC comedy Dad's Army.
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Warren Mitchell (born Warren Misell; 14 January 1926 – 14 November 2015) was an English actor. He was a BAFTA TV Award winner and a two-time winner of the Laurence Olivier Award. His most fondly remembered role is that of the Johnny Speight comic creation of Alf Garnett which he played on and off from 1965 to 1992 with the sitcoms Til Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and in Health.
Burt Kwouk OBE, born Herbert Kwouk, was an English-born actor of Chinese descent, known for many television appearances and for his role as Cato in the Pink Panther films.
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The accomplished character actress Marianne Stone had the distinction of being the most prolific actress in the UK, appearing in over 200 films, an achievement that earned her a place in the latest Guinness Book of World Records as "the actress with the most screen credits". She has also been hailed in the book English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema for her contribution to the horror movies that flourished in the Sixties, but most of her screen roles were as working-class characters. In two of her earliest films she was respectively a shop assistant in When the Bough Breaks (1947), and a sluggish waitress in Brighton Rock (1947).
Aubrey Morris (June 1, 1926 - July 15, 2015) was a British actor was a British actor known for his appearances in the films A Clockwork Orange and The Wicker Man. His many memorable performances include: the Freud-fixated writer Mr. Mybug in Cold Comfort Farm (1968); the sleazy probation officer Mr. Deltoid in A Clockwork Orange (1971); a sinister gravedigger in The Wicker Man (1973); the oily manservant Grosvenor, asking Michael Palin for the use of the 'naughty books', in "The Curse of the Claw" episode of Ripping Yarns (1976); the jolly captain of the 'B-Ark' (filled with such folk as telephone sanitizers), spending years luxuriating in his bubble-bath in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981); and last, but not least, the ancient thespian Chesterton, shuffling off this mortal coil while being read quotes from King Lear in HBO's Deadwood (2004).
Residing in the U.S. since the mid-1980s, Aubrey Morris continued to ply his trade right up until his death at the venerable age of 89.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. David Buck (October 17, 1936—January 27, 1989) was an English actor. His most famous role was in the 1978 animated The Lord of the Rings movie, for which he provided the voice of Gimli. However, he had a memorable role as Royal Air Force Squadron Leader David "Scotty" Scott in the 1969 film Mosquito Squadron opposite David McCallum when his character was shot down during a low-level bombing raid over northern France in 1944 and assumed killed.
Buck died of cancer in 1989. At the time of his death, he was married to the actress Madeline Smith of Up Pompeii and James Bond fame.
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Alfred Bass was an English actor. He was born in Bethnal Green, London, the youngest in a Jewish family with ten children; their parents had fled persecution in Russia. He appeared in a variety of stage, film, television and radio productions throughout his career.
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Earl Cameron was born on August 8, 1917 in Pembroke, Bermuda. He was an actor, known for Thunderball (1965), Inception (2010) and The Interpreter (2005). He was married to Barbara Cameron and Audrey J. P. Godowski. He died on July 3, 2020 in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England.
Peter Geoffrey Francis Jones (12 June 1920 - 10 April 2000) was a distinguished British actor and radio personality known for his distinctive voice and narration. He gained recognition for his role as The Book in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," providing the voice of the eponymous guidebook in both the radio series and subsequent adaptations. Jones's soothing and authoritative voice lent a unique charm to the character, guiding audiences through the whimsical and absurd universe created by Douglas Adams. His contributions to the series as the voice of The Book became iconic and memorable for fans of the series.
Robert Lang was a British an actor of stage and screen, best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and the 1977-1978 BBC TV series 1990. He was married to the actress Ann Bell.
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David William Frederick Lodge (19 August 1921 in Rochester, Kent - 18 October 2003 in Northwood, Middlesex) was a British character actor.
Before turning to acting he worked as a circus clown. He also appeared in Gang Shows and variety before making his screen debut in The Cockleshell Heroes and going on to feature in many British films usually portraying military types, and often comedic roles. He was a close friend of Peter Sellers and appeared as part of Spike Milligan's team on his Q programmes.
Amazingly, in 1958 he appeared in ten films, possibly a record.
He appeared in a 1969 episode of Randall and Hopkirk Deceased ("Who Killed Cock Robin?"), and continuing with his military-type roles, appeared alongside Windsor Davies as Company Sergeant-Major Sharp in an episode of It Ain't Half Hot Mum in 1976. He appeared as a policeman in the opening episode of the legal drama The Main Chance.
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Frank received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations for his performance as William Shakespeare’s Iago in Stuart Burge’s 1965 film of Laurence Olivier’s staging of Othello. He also won the Best Actor Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.
He later essayed the definitive screen portrayal of Alexandre Dumas’ musketeer Porthos in three movies for director Richard Lester: The Three Musketeers (1974), The Four Musketeers (1975) and The Return of the Musketeers (1989). Frank’s many other films include The Longest Day; Tony Richardson’s The Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner; Martin Ritt’s The Molly Maguires; Bob Clark’s Murder by Decree; Alan Bridges’ The Return of the Soldier (for which he recieved a BAFTA Award nomination); Franco Zeffrelli’s Sparrow; and Eric Styles’ Dreaming of Joseph Lees; and most recently Roman Polanski’s multi-award winning The Pianist and Norma Jewison’s The Statement.
His similarly extensive television projects have earned him two BAFTA Awards, for his performances in The Death of Adolf Hitler (starring as Hitler, with Rex Firkin directing); The Adventures of Don Quixote (as Sancho Panza, opposite Rex Harrison, for director Alvin Rakoff); the ground breaking Bouquet of Barbed Wire and Another Bouquet; 84 Charing Cross Road; and recently the critically acclaimed series The Sins. Born in Farnworth, Lancashire, Finlay had already begun performing on stage when he earned the Sir James Knott Scholarship at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Since then he has led theatre companies in London and on Broadway.
He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1984 New Year’s Honours List, and was presented with his CBE by the Queen in February1984.
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Frederick Arthur Round "Fred" Emney (12 February 1900 – 25 December 1980) was an English character actor and comedian.
Emney was born in Prescot, Lancashire, the son of Blanche (née Round) and Fred Emney, a music hall entertainer. His great-uncle was the actor Arthur Williams. Emney junior grew up in London and was educated at Cranleigh School.
He made his film debut in 1935, having previously worked in music hall. He became a familiar figure to screen audiences, usually playing the "posh fat bloke", usually gruff and invariably wearing a monocle. During the 1950s, he had his own television show which featured sketches and deft piano pieces often composed by him. Some were released on record. He had a short spell as straight man to puppets Pinky and Perky.
His sister Joan Emney was an actress who sometimes appeared with him in the same stage productions.
Fred Emney died in Bognor Regis, Sussex on Christmas Day 1980.
Born in Kuala Lumpur, British Malaya, to a Swiss-French mother and an American father, Peter Arne was an actor and an antique dealer who was murdered in 1983. In the late 1940s, Arne and his partner Jack Corke befriended acclaimed novelist Mary Renault and her partner, Julie Mullard, on the SS Cairo, a steamer bound from Britain to South Africa and convinced them to go into business building homes for immigrants to the country. Renault financed using her £25,000 MGM award, employing labourers and craftsmen to begin construction of several houses, but Arne and Corke squandered the money, racking up debts before stealing Renault's car and returning to the UK to avoid charges of embezzlement. On 1st August 1983, Arne attended a costume fitting for a role in Doctor Who. On his return home, neighbours reported sounds of an argument to the police who subsequently found Arne's body inside his Knightsbridge flat. He had been bludgeoned to death with a stool and log from his fireplace. The prime suspect in Arne's murder was Giuseppe Perusi, a schoolteacher from Italy who had been living rough in a local park, and for whom Arne had been providing food. Four days later, a body matching Perusi's description was found in the River Thames at Wandsworth, having drowned in an apparent suicide. At the subsequent inquest in October 1983, Police concluded that Perusi had beaten the actor to death then killed himself.
Roger Delgado (1 March 1918 - 18 June 1973), full name Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto, was a British actor, who will forever be known for being the first actor to play The Master in Doctor Who. Born in Whitechapel, within the sound of Bow Bells, to a Belgian mother and a Spanish father, Delgado was brought up in Bedford Park and attended the LSE before WWII was declared. His war service saw him rise to the rank of a major, serving with both the Leicestershire Regiment and the Royal Signals, despite his dislike of guns. He made his TV debut in 1948 and starred in several TV and film productions before his untimely death at the age of 55 in a car accident whilst filming the Franco/German TV production La Cloche tibétaine in Turkey. He had married twice, firstly to Olga Anthonisz and then, following his divorce. to Kismet Shahani who survived him.
John Francis Junkin (29 January 1930 – 7 March 2006) was an English actor and scriptwriter who had a long career in radio, television and film, specialising in comedy. In 1960, Junkin joined Joan Littlewood's Stratford East Theatre Workshop and played the lead in the original production of Sparrers Can't Sing. A few years later, he joined the Royal Court Theatre company, and was the foil to Tony Hancock in some of Hancock's last work for British television. In 2006, he passed away from lung cancer in Aylesbury.
