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- Immensely talented and instantly recognizable, Peter Jeffrey was one of a great generation of British actors who were comfortable in everything from classical theatre to television comedy. He was born in Bristol, England in 1929 and went on to be educated at Harrow school. He studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge and embarked on a career as an actor. During his distinguished and diverse stage career, he worked with all of the great British theatre companies and performed with the likes of Peggy Ashcroft, Marius Goring, Paul Scofield, Eric Porter and Peter O'Toole.
His opportunities in television and film always seemed to come in the form of supporting roles but his rare talent always brightened the screen. Peter Jeffrey was still acting in the final years of his life, including a wonderful BBC adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper (1996). He was greatly respected in the industry for his quiet professionalism and the empathy he had for other actors and the support he gave to less experienced colleagues. His death from cancer at the age of 70 in 1999 robbed British acting of one of its finest and most reliable performers. - Writer
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William Shakespeare's birthdate is assumed from his baptism on April 25. His father John was the son of a farmer who became a successful tradesman; his mother Mary Arden was gentry. He studied Latin works at Stratford Grammar School, leaving at about age 15. About this time his father suffered an unknown financial setback, though the family home remained in his possession. An affair with Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior and a nearby farmer's daughter, led to pregnancy and a hasty marriage late in 1582. Susanna was born in May of 1583, twins Hamnet and Judith in January of 1585. By 1592 he was an established actor and playwright in London though his "career path" afterward (fugitive? butcher? soldier? actor?) is highly debated. When plague closed the London theatres for two years he apparently toured; he also wrote two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece". He may have spent this time at the estate of the Earl of Southampton. By December 1594 he was back in London as a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company he stayed with the rest of his life. In 1596 he seems to have purchased a coat of arms for his father; the same year Hamnet died at age 11. The following year he purchased the grand Stratford mansion New Place. A 1598 edition of "Love's Labors" was the first to bear his name, though he was already regarded as England's greatest playwright. He is believed to have written his "Sonnets" during the 1590s. In 1599 he became a partner in the new Globe Theatre, the company of which joined the royal household on the accession of James in 1603. That is the last year in which he appeared in a cast list. He seems to have retired to Stratford in 1612, where he continued to be active in real estate investment. The cause of his death is unknown.- Actor
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Born in 1949, Antony Sher was raised in South Africa before going to London to study at the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art between 1969 and 1971. After performing for the Gay Sweatshop theatrical group in "Thinking Straight" (1975), "The Fork" (1976), and "Stone" (1976), he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982. Three years later, his performance in the title role of "Richard III" won him a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and, in 1997, he won another Laurence Olivier Award for "Stanley".
Although he spent more time onstage, Sher appeared in a number of films and TV series, including The History Man (1981), Shadey (1985), The Young Poisoner's Handbook (1995) and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (1996). He gave a charming performance as Benjamin Disraeli in Mrs. Brown (1997), and played "Dr. Moth" in Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Sher was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000.- As an amateur actor as a dare he auditioned for the RSC and was not only accepted, but he stayed for 6 years. Best known as Sgt Bulman in XYY Man (77) he then made several series of Strangers (79 -82). His films include Star Wars, Callan, The Prince and the Pauper and The Big Sleep.
- His father, a wine importer loved the theatre and encouraged his acting ambitions and got him his first job at 16 touring with a Shakespearean company painting scenery and doing walk on parts. His mother disapproved thinking it wasn't a job for a respectable middle class young man. By 1939 he'd graduated to leading roles but then the war came. He joined the army and rose through the ranks to become a major. Within four days of leaving the service he was back in the theatre in a play 'Fifty Fifty' and the 'Seagulls Over Sorento' which ran five years.
- Peter Butterworth's promising career in the British Navy Fleet Air Arm ended when the plane which he was flying was shot down by the Germans in WW II and he was placed in a POW camp. There he became close friends with Talbot Rothwell (later a writer on the "Carry On" series, on which Butterworth often worked) and the two began writing and performing sketches for camp shows to entertain the prisoners (and to cover up the noise of other prisoners digging escape tunnels). Never having performed in public he was petrified but gamely sang a duet with Talbot. This sparked his enthusiasm to enter show business after the war and Talbot helped and encouraged him and he soon became a familiar character actor in both films and television. He specialized in playing gentle, well-meaning but somewhat eccentric characters (which, by most accounts, is what he was in real life). He was married to impressionist Janet Brown, who he met while doing a Summer show at Scarborough and their son, Tyler Butterworth, also became an actor. Butterworth died suddenly in 1979, as he was waiting in the wings to go onstage in a pantomime show.
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The son of a struggling businessman, Cy Endfield--born Cyril Raker Endfield--worked hard to be admitted to Yale University in 1933. While completing his education he became enamored with progressive theatre and appeared in a New Haven production of a minor Russian play in 1934. He was also profoundly influenced by such friends as writer Paul Jarrico, who was in Hollywood and who advocated liberal and leftist views. For several years Endfield worked as a director and choreographer with avant-garde theatre companies in and around New York and Montreal. He led his own repertory company of amateur players in performances of musicals and satirical revue at resorts in the Catskills.
Endfield had another string to his bow, having established a not inconsiderable reputation as master of the art of micro magic, particularly card tricks. In a circuitous way this brought him to Hollywood in 1940. There have been conflicting stories as to how he came to the attention of Orson Welles, who was known to have a long-standing fascination with magic. Endfield first met Welles in a magic shop, but it was his producer and business manager Jack Moss, himself a magician, who hired Endfield for the Mercury Theatre as a "general factotum". Moss wanted to enhance his own skills in order to confound Welles, who had engaged him in the first place as a tutor for performing magic on stage. In return for his expertise, Endfield was permitted to sit in on the making of Journey Into Fear (1943) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), learning valuable lessons in the process. By 1942 he was ready with his first film, a 15-minute-long documentary about the danger of rampant capitalism, entitled Inflation (1943). The witty little piece was a subtle attack on corporate greed and corruption and featured well-known actor Edward Arnold as a devil in businessman garb. An outspoken social critic, who had flirted briefly with the Young Communist League back in his days at Yale, Endfield was from the outset on a collision course with the establishment. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce banned his film as "excessively anti-capitalist" and kept it from public view for half a century.
Following wartime service, Endfield wrote several scripts for radio and television. He directed a number of short documentaries for MGM in 1946, and followed this with his motion picture debut, Gentleman Joe Palooka (1946), based on a popular comic strip character, shot in eight days at "Poverty Row" studio Monogram Pictures. He also directed a B-mystery, The Argyle Secrets (1948), from his own earlier radio play, followed by one of the better entries in the "Tarzan" series, Tarzan's Savage Fury (1952). Unfortunately, the picture did poorly at the box office. The reason for this, producer, Sol Lesser suggested later, was because Lex Barker (as "Tarzan") had been given too many lines to speak and "nearly talked himself to death". It was not until Endfield's harrowing indictment of mob rule, The Sound of Fury (1950), that he "arrived" as a director of note. That same year he helmed another independently produced minor masterpiece (on a budget of $500,000), the stylish and moody film noir The Underworld Story (1950). In this scathing attack on unscrupulous journalism, with the lead character being inherently unsympathetic, Endfield elicited one of the finest performances of his career from Dan Duryea.
The ideas and sentiments expressed in these films were ill-timed, in that they drew the attention of HUAC--The House Un-American Activities Committee, which was tasked with rooting out Communists and other "subversives" in the entertainment industry--which particularly denounced "Sound of Fury" as being un-American. Though never a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, Endfield found himself "named" as a sympathizer. Preferring to leave the country rather than inform on others to the FBI, he settled his affairs and left for a new career in Britain in December 1951. To avoid problems with distribution in the US, for the first few years he worked under pseudonyms (such as "Hugh Raker") and on two occasions allowed a friend of his, director Charles de la Tour, to act as a 'front'. He used his own name again for the offbeat action film Hell Drivers (1957). This uncompromisingly tough working-class melodrama featured Stanley Baker, with whom Endfield formed a production company in the 1960s. Baker eventually starred in six of Endfield's films, including the routinely scripted drama Sea Fury (1958) about tugboat sailors and the rather over-the-top Sands of the Kalahari (1965). From the late 1950's, Endfield became also increasingly involved in turning out television commercials. He also worked in the theatre again, directing Neil Simon's play "Come Blow Your Horn" at the West End.
Certainly the most visually impressive and successful of Endfield's films is Zulu (1964), the epic story of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879 between a small contingent of British troops and a vastly superior force of Zulu tribesmen. The original story was penned by military writer John Prebble and Endfield had written the screenplay as early as 1959. After several abortive attempts, he was able to parlay his way into the offices of producer Joseph E. Levine in Rome and was finally given the go-ahead. Enhanced by John Barry's rousing score, "Zulu" is a supremely well-choreographed "battle ballet"--the battle scenes constitute well over half the screen time), with numerous lateral tracking shots of the main protagonists, which effectively draw the audience into the heart of the action. The social element is concerned with British imperialism and class structure, as two officers from different backgrounds are forced to pull together in order to stay alive. As the supercilious upper-crust Lt. Bromhead, Michael Caine, then relatively unknown, began on his path to fame with an excellent performance, alongside Stanley Baker. Historical incongruities apart, "Zulu" succeeded as pure spectacle, much in the same way as the big-budget Hollywood epics of the same period.
Endfield lost interest in filmmaking after shooting the anti-war movie Universal Soldier (1971). This was in part due to the fact that most of his films had failed to make much money. After the death of his friend Stanley Baker in 1976, Endfield devoted himself to his "technical period". He manufactured a gold-and-silver chess set as commemoration for a famous match between grand masters Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972 (only 100 were ever produced). In 1980 he invented the first pocket word processing system, the "MicroWriter", which had re-chargeable batteries and a 14-character LCD display.
In 1955 Endfield had co-authored a very successful book, "Cy Endfield's Entertaining Card Magic" (with Lewis Ganson), which had been well-received by amateur and professional magicians alike. In fact, one of his admirers, and occasional collaborators, was the famous micro magician Dai Vernon. Many of the sleight-of-hand routines in the book were developed by Endfield himself and related to the reader in a manner befitting a consummate storyteller. Endfield's passion for performing magic remained with him to the end. The multi-talented polymath resided in Britain until his death in April 1995.- Richard Pasco was born on 18 July 1926 in Barnes, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Mrs. Brown (1997), The Watcher in the Woods (1980) and The Man Who Finally Died (1959). He was married to Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Greta Watson. He died on 12 November 2014 in Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Earl Cameron did not set out to be an actor. Bermudian by birth, Cameron joined the British Merchant Navy in the 1930s for the travel opportunities that it afforded. By the early 1940s, with World War II in full swing, Cameron found himself in London working menial jobs to survive. After seeing a West End revival of the musical comedy Chu Chin Chow, he got the acting bug. When an actor didn't show up for a performance, Cameron replaced the actor in the production. This was followed by a series of roles on the London stage.
In 1951, he received a big break when he was cast in Pool of London (1951). The film directed by Basil Dearden in which Cameron played a dockworker who falls in love with a local woman, was significant in that it was one of the first British films to feature a Black man in a non-stereotypical role. He was essentially the UK counterpart to Sidney Poitier, who made his film debut around the same time, although equally talented, he never became a star. Toward the end of the decade, he would work with Dearden again in Sapphire (1959), where he would play a physician who is the brother of the title character, who was murdered while passing for White.
Other significant film film roles in Cameron's career include Thunderball (1965) where he played opposite Sean Connery as Pinder, Bond's Bahamian assistant. Cameron played an ambassador in A Warm December (1973), a film starring and directed by Poitier. In The Interpreter (2005), a film directed by Sydney Pollack , in which he played Edmond Zuwanie, a dictator loosely based on Robert Mugabe.
Cameron continued to work steadily in film and television into his nineties. One of his last appearances was in They've Gotta Have Us (2018), a documentary on Black actors in Hollywood produced by BBC Two.
He died in 2020 at the age of 102. - Actor
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While in the army he appeared in camp shows then when demobbed got a flat in London's West End and worked in morning jobs as a Covent Garden porter, in a bakery and on a railway, slept during the afternoon then in the evening with no actual training he more or less conned his way into doing bits in cabaret clubs. He was in a revue when he was spotted by Mario Zampi who cast him in the film Too Many Crooks. His big break came in 1959 in the 'One to Another ' revue with Beryl Reid.- Actress
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Diana Coupland was born on 5 March 1928 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Dr. No (1962), Bless This House (1972) and The Twelve Chairs (1970). She was married to Marc Miller and Monty Norman. She died on 10 November 2006 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK.- E.M. Forster was born on 1 January 1879 in London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Machine Stops (2009). He died on 7 June 1970 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK.
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Faulds was born in Africa into a missionary family. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1948, but it was as a radio actor that he first became widely known, playing Jet Morgan in Charles Chilton's "Journey into Space" on the BBC. In 1959, he and his wife were among those providing hospitality for the black-listed Paul Robeson during the latter's season at Stratford. It was Robeson who, recognising his friend's deep anti-racist convictions, persuaded him to go into politics, thus starting Faulds' second career. Labour MP for Smethwick from 1966-1974, and for Warley East from 1974-1997, he would no doubt have attained ministerial office if his outspoken support for the Palestinian cause had not been mis-construed as anti-Jewishness.- Actor
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David Auker was born in March 1949 in Wood Green, Middlesex, England, UK. He was an actor, known for A Bridge Too Far (1977), Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) and Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971). He died in August 2022 in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, UK.- Peggy Thorpe-Bates was born on 11 August 1914 in London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Rumpole of the Bailey (1978), The Franchise Affair (1962) and BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950). She was married to Brian Oulton. She died on 26 December 1989 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Actress
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Wendy Williams was born on 7 November 1934 in Cheam, Surrey, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Jack the Ripper (1973), Doctor Who (1963) and Knight Errant Limited (1959). She was married to Michael Winser and Hugh David. She died on 17 October 2019 in Warwickshire, England, UK.- Born William White in 1923 to unmarried parents, Grayson was adopted into a coal mining family in Nuneaton.
By the age of 14, he was working under the name of Billy Breen as a supporting drag act on the comedy club circuit, and over the next thirty years he toured the UK not only in male revues and drag shows, but also in variety shows.
After touring and presenting further variety shows in the 70s, including his own TV series 'Shut That Door', his catchphrase, he took over presenting 'The Generation Game' from Bruce Forsyth.
He retired from television in 1981, but continued to perform in the theatre, particularly in pantomime. He died in 1995, aged 71. - Actor
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Peter Geddis was born in 1937 in Lambeth, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Accident (1978), Shoulder to Shoulder (1974) and Casualty (1986). He was married to Rebecca Oswin and Edna Spencer. He died in 2018 in Warwickshire, England, UK.- Writer
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John Boynton Priestley is one of England's greatest writers--he was a member of the last generation of freethinking British "sages" who contemplated both science and philosophy in their literary output. His books have never been out of print and his name is known to every educated Englishman, rightly so for one of the deepest thinkers and most influential essayists and playwrights of the 20th century. In his long life he became world famous as an essayist, playwright, novelist, social critic and historian, but he also made contributions in the form of an opera libretto ("The Olympians"), a teleplay, a volume of poetry, many amateur paintings, several short stories and even went as far as to take the lead in one of his own plays (without rehearsal) when the one of the actors took sick suddenly.
John Boynton Priestley was born at 34 Mannheim Road, off Toller Lane in the town of Bradford in Yorkshire, England, in September of 1894. His father was a successful schoolmaster and his mother died when he was still an infant. Priestley studied at Belle Vue Grammar School, but left his studies at the age of 16 and worked for four years (1910-1914) as a junior clerk at Helm & Co., a wool firm in Swan Arcade. During these years he started writing at night and began to publish articles in local and London papers. He was a regular unpaid contributor to the Bradford Pioneer, a Labour Party paper. Priestley served in World War I in Flanders, Belgium, with the Duke of Wellington's and Devon regiments and survived front-line combat, although he was seriously injured once. He became one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century and was made a Freeman of Bradford. The J.B. Priestley Library at the University of Bradford was named after his as a token of his hometown's affection.
Priestley's first book was actually a volume of poetry called "The Chapman of Rhymes", written during his teens; he finally published (at his own expense)in 1918 while serving in World War I, thinking that he should "leave something behind" in the event that he, like so many of his comrades, should not survive. In the 1920s he set himself up as an essayist after taking his degree at Trinity Hall in Cambridge University. He studied literature, history and political science, receiving his B.A. after two years there in 1921. From 1922 he worked as a journalist in London, starting his career as an essayist and critic at various newspapers and periodicals, including the New Statesman. His first book published by a professional publisher, "Brief Diversions", was a collection of essays that appeared in 1922, and was the result of his nightly writing efforts. He turned out approximately one essay per week during this period until turning to novels in the latter part of the decade. When he began to write fiction, he would often produce as many as three books in a year. One of the reasons for his early productivity was that, unlike many other writers of the 20th century, Priestley always depended on writing for his livelihood. Much of this work, as might be expected, was of somewhat inferior quality, but it also gave him the opportunity of trying out differing approaches and helped to hone his writing skills.
Priestley's early essays were in the Georgian style, which has since gone out of favor, but it was important to remember that to be able to get his work published, Priestley had to conform some of his writing to meet popular tastes of his day. The chief faults of these "familiar" essays is that they really weren't usually about anything in particular--they tended to be filled with rambling overgeneralisations and personal opinion and lacked direction. There was seldom any subtlety in this manner of writing and the whole style seemed a bit overblown and artificial. The results were that, at a certain point, he began to sense that he had exhausted the medium that he had chosen, which ultimately prompted his turn to fiction. The theory behind the writing of such essays was also very nearly the opposite of what we typically consider good essay writing today. Priestley held that essays were primarily to be used as vehicles for the author's personality to show through, and do not necessarily have to be about any particular subject; fortunately, he didn't always follow this paradigm. Later in his life Priestley would return to the essay, but these always seemed to have a sense of purpose and had greater depth than these early inconsequential essays. Nevertheless, the time that he spent writing these essays to please the public in his youth left its mark upon him, and he was to struggle for the rest of his life to throw off the "bad influence" of this early writing style, in much the same way that H.P. Lovecraft had to battle with hack writing infiltrating his style.
Since it was so difficult for a young playwright to get any plays produced, Priestley decided to create his own opportunity by founding his own production company, English Plays, Ltd., for his plays, and in 1938-39 he was director of the Mask Theatre in London. Priestley was married three times, the first time in 1919 with Emily Tempest, who died young in 1925, then Mary ('Jane') Wyndham Lewis, the former wife of the biographer and satirist 'D.B. Wyndham Lewis'. In 1953 he married archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes, with whom he lived in Warwickshire in Kissing Tree House, situated near Stratford-upon-Avon, near William Shakespeare's house.
During his long and productive career Priestley published over 120 books, usually light and optimistic in their tone. His prolific output continued over 60 years. From the age of 70 to 84 Priestley published 21 books. As an essayist he wrote for the "middle brow" audience, always making a special effort to ensure that his work was accessible to the common people and had relevance to them and their lives, many of the professional academics--he scornfully referred to them as "professors"--who delighted in abstract arguments that most people either could not understand or did not care to know, while being thoughtful enough to always be considered "real" literature. The topics and themes are numerous. In his pamphlet 'Letter To A Returning Serviceman" (1945) Priestley shared the common sentiment that Britain was obliged to rebuild after the war along socialist lines, and in "The Nuclear Bombs" (1957) he argued for the moral superiority that unilateral nuclear disarmament would bring. In "Disturbing" (1967) he criticized contemporary playwrights for creating works that sought to "disturb" a reading public already disturbed by their own problems, and in "Particular Pleasures" (1975) he stated that works of art should meet some need, and not be evaluated on programmatic grounds. Priestley was a publisher's dream come true and it can be truly said that William Heinemann, his primary British publisher, really struck a gold mine when he took a chance on Priestley, as no one could match him in his diversity and willingness to take on any sort of job--film scripts, essays, plays, opera librettos, verse, editing, introductions, commentaries, radio broadcasts, pamphlets, etc.; Priestley willingly (and successfully) did it all.
There were several subjects that the pipe-smoking Priestley felt drawn to repeatedly throughout his long career. Among these were the nature of the British character, the theatre and the nature of time. The metaphysical nature of time crops up in nearly all of Priestley's work, from the light-hearted No School Report to his magnum opus, Man and Time, and nearly all of his plays involve various hypothetical situations that involve unusual perspectives on time. In "Man and Time" and "Over the Long, High Wall", Priestley builds upon the theories of the engineer (not to be confused with 17th-century poet) John W. Dunne, the author of "An Experiment With Time", "The Serial Universe" and "Nothing Dies", among others. Priestley hypothesizes that time is somewhat more complicated than we have previously thought and that there is more than one dimension of time--just as there is more than a single dimension of space--which results in humans experiencing a different quality of time, and that we can experience each type of time at different parts in our lives. This led him to an investigation of Dunne's theories of precognitive dreams ("memories of the future"), which Priestley had began experiencing some years back. In "The Magicians", Priestley uses the time-recurrence theory of Ouspensky to hypothesize that although our time is all we have, we have it for an eternity and that we are capable of altering the outcome of our lives by learning and improving on our choices throughout each gyre (the cycle-of-time idea seems to suggest William Butler Yeats' influence as well as Ouspensky's).
The paradoxical nature of the British character also intrigued Priestley. The British people have unarguably the strongest literary tradition in the world--in the mass of the output as well as the quality of the material produced. Throughout the world, however, the British people have a tendency to be looked upon as dull, stuffy, unimaginative, unromantic and, in general, incredibly boring and uninteresting people. If this is a true estimation of the British, though, where did such wonderful literature and poetry come from? Priestley studied this inconsistency and eventually came up with a theory that he thought would explain this discrepancy. By the time the World War II came around, Priestly had become acutely aware of the way in which Britain was changing. He was saddened to realize that the world that he knew and cherished was rapidly vanishing. It was something more than an aging man's nostalgia for the "good old days", however. He noticed that the British were losing their essential "Englishness" slowly but surely, and they were losing their creativity as well--no one can deny that the centuries-old fount of poetic and literary creativity has been drying up since World War II. Priestley gained considerable fame as "the voice of the common people", as he was often called, a patriotic radio broadcaster, second in popularity only to Winston Churchill. It must be said that Priestley's patriotism was never at any time mere nationalism, but sprung from a genuine love of his homeland and not political power brokerage, like so many social commentators do today.
At the early stage of the Cold War he become known during for his support for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and in 1946-47 he was a UK delegate to UNESCO conferences. In the late 1930s he turned his attention to the theatre; his fascination with the theatre in his professional life paralleled his personal interest in dreams. He seems to have regarded the atmosphere of the theatre as very similar in nature to that of dreams; he was to use this similarity to great effect in most of his plays. The most famous of his plays took advantage of the dream-like atmosphere to present his theories about time. The most famous of these was "Johnson Over Jordan", a play that used Ouspensky's idea about temporal recurrence with variations. In "A Dangerous Corner"--a play that he referred to as "a box of tricks"--Priestley uses the idea of a "split" in time; the action of the play occurs once but at a critical moment in the plays development, the play begins again without the random comment that causes the conflict of the drama to take place, allowing us to consider the alternatives to every present state that depend on random choices. "Time and the Conways" uses the idea that time is not merely a series of "nows", but that the it is actually an illusion in the way that we perceive reality--that there are other types of time rather than the sequential time with which we are more familiar, which he refers to as "Consensus-Time", which seems to parallel mathematician Rudy Rucker's views as described in his "Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension". This interest in the metaphysics of time would last for the rest of Priestley's life. As he got older he became more seriously interested in social and political problems in England, and he turned his attention to these. At this stage his writing had fully matured, and whenever he penned anything, everyone could easily recognize him as a man with something to say and who said it well enough to command the attention of even a notoriously complacent populous. As a consequence, when Priestley wrote anything in his later years, it seemed as though he had the ability to see much deeper than most of his contemporaries and by this time, he had developed into a "sage", a man who seemed to possess a wisdom and clarity of insight which has made his work timeless, although currently out of fashion among the sensation-seeking consumers and producers of modern "literature". He was offered a knighthood and a peerage as a token of his homeland's esteem for his work, both of which he refused, but he did accept the Order of Merit in 1977.
He died in August 14, 1984, at the age of 89 and is buried at Hubberholme.- Arthur Whybrow was born on 20 August 1923 in Islington, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Spider (2002), King David (1985) and Bellman and True (1987). He died on 23 April 2009 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Mary Kenton was born in 1923 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Swallows and Amazons (1963), Upstairs, Downstairs (1971) and Romeo and Juliet (1976). She was married to Gerard Heinz. She died on 19 August 2010 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Ivor Salter was born on 22 August 1925 in Taunton, Somerset, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Einer frisst den anderen (1964), The Black Arrow (1958) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1960). He died on 21 June 1991 in Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Rosalind Elliot was born on 28 August 1943 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971), Softly Softly (1966) and Bartleby (1970). She was married to William Edmiston. She died on 10 April 2020 in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, UK.
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Barrington Patterson was born on 25 August 1965 in Coventry, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Red Mosquito (2019), Hoodies vs. Hooligans (2014) and The Marker (2017). He died on 22 March 2022 in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, UK.- Brian Coburn was born on 15 December 1936 in Scotland, UK. He was an actor, known for Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Octopussy (1983) and Lassiter (1984). He was married to Julia Breck. He died on 28 December 1989 in Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Terence Brook was born on 10 February 1924 in Wokingham, Berkshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Doctor Who (1963), Secret Venture (1955) and The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981). He was married to Pamela Craig. He died on 4 October 1990 in Warwick, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Anne Woodward was born on 15 May 1920 in Montevideo, Uruguay. She was an actress, known for Coronation Street (1960), Moonstrike (1963) and Sergeant Cork (1963). She died on 10 March 1972 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- David Barby was born on 23 April 1948 in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, UK. He died on 25 July 2012 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK.
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Nat Jackley (16 July 1909 - 17 September 1988) was an English comic actor starring in variety, film and pantomime from the 1920s to the mid-1980s whose trademark rubber-neck dance, skeletal frame and peculiar speech impediment made him a formidable and funny comedian and pantomime dame. His later years were spent as a character actor in films and television.
A native of Sunderland, Nathaniel Tristram Jackley Hirsch was born into a theatrical family. His father George Jackley (1885-1950) was a comic actor who was the leading comedian for the Melville Brothers at the Lyceum Theatre during the interwar years.
George, himself, was the son of Nathan Jackley who, with his own troupe, The Jackley Wonders, performed in circuses throughout Europe and the United States. His brother David was an actor and his wife, Marianne Lincoln, was scriptwriter and Nat's comedy foil. Nat Jackley was also a member of the Freemasons.- Norman Painting was born on 23 April 1924 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Archers (2007), This Is Your Life (1955) and Arena (1975). He died on 29 October 2009 in Warmington, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Rodney Drake was born on 5 May 1908 in Redhill, Surrey, England, UK. He was married to Mary Lloyd 'Molly' Drake. He died in 1988 in Tanworth-in-Arden, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Marie Corelli was born on 1 May 1855 in London, England, UK. She was a writer, known for Leaves From Satan's Book (1920), The Treasure of Heaven (1916) and Innocent (1921). She died on 21 April 1924 in Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Actor
- Producer
David Coleman was born on 26 April 1926 in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, England, UK. He was an actor and producer, known for Sports Retort (1955), Without Limits (1998) and FA Cup Classics (2009). He was married to Barbara. He died on 21 December 2013 in Warwickshire, England, UK.- Writer
- Actor
- Camera and Electrical Department
Paul Makin was born on 9 August 1953 in Wolverhampton, England, UK. He was a writer and actor, known for Taking the Floor (1991), Goodnight Sweetheart (1993) and Get Back (1992). He died on 4 July 2008 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK.- Joy Ring was born on 31 March 1938 in Maidstone, Kent, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Hunters Walk (1973), Owen, M.D. (1971) and The Body in Question (1978). She died on 21 February 2003 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Mary Lloyd 'Molly' Drake was born on 5 November 1915 in Rangoon, Burma. She was married to Rodney Drake. She died on 4 June 1993 in Tanworth-in-Arden, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
John Curry was born on 9 September 1949 in Birmingham, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Broadway on Showtime (1979), The Snow Queen: A Skating Ballet (1982) and ABC's Wide World of Sports (1961). He died on 15 April 1994 in Binton, Warwickshire, England, UK.- Celia Ryder was born on 14 September 1928 in Hackney, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for ITV Sunday Night Drama (1959), Z Cars (1962) and The Castiglioni Brothers (1958). She was married to Clifford Rose. She died on 16 December 2012 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
Mike Frift was born on 14 September 1941 in Bedfont, Middlesex, England, UK. He was a cinematographer, known for Lifeforce (1985), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and Runaway Train (1985). He was married to Catherine Amey. He died on 26 June 2019 in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England, UK.- Martin Cosgrif was born on 28 February 1948 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Marvin's Song (2011) and Juliet Bravo (1980). He died on 12 April 2020 in Warwick, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Special Effects
- Visual Effects
- Art Department
Arthur Hayward was born in 1889 in Southport, Lancashire, England, UK. He is known for The Lost Continent (1968). He died in 1971 in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, UK.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Fred Evans was born in 1889 in London, England, UK. He was an actor and director, known for Mrs. Raffles Née Pimple (1915), Pimple's Topical Gazette (1920) and Pimple's Three Musketeers (1922). He was married to Chistiana Albrighton. He died on 28 December 1951 in Warwickshire, England, UK.- Actor
- Director
Randle Ayrton born in Chester in 1869. Educated at Geneva University. became a highly well-known performer in classical theatre, making his acting debut at the Old Avenue Theatre in London in 1890, and has been successful in London's West End and in America until the late 1930's. sophisticated gentleman in English silent and sound films. first starred under the direction of A.V. Bramble as Jenkins in 'Profit and the Loss' for the London Film Company in 1917, perhaps he will be best remembered as Charles II in 'Nell Gwynne' co-starring Dorothy Gish in 1926 and as Caesar Cregeen in Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Manxman' in 1929 and also later as King Louis XIV in 'Me and Marlborough' starring Cicely Courtneidge in 1935. Founder of the College of drama in Stratford-on-Avon in 1937.- Actor
- Director
William Avenell was born on 6 April 1910 in Harrismith, South Africa. He was an actor and director, known for Yellow Sands (1954), Crossroads (1964) and The Case of Private Hamp (1959). He was married to Mary Edwards. He died on 11 October 1976 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.- Actress
- Music Department
Delia Wicks was born on 21 July 1938 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Harpers West One (1961), The Black and White Minstrel Show (1958) and BBC Show of the Week (1965). She died on 3 April 2010 in Warwick, Warwickshire, England, UK.- David Turner was born on 18 March 1927 in Birmingham, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The Roads to Freedom (1970), Swizzlewick (1964) and Prometheus: The Life of Balzac (1975). He died on 11 December 1990 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Randy Turpin was the British and European Middleweight Champion and England's shining boxing star when he scored the upset of the century in 1951 by winning a 15-round decision over the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson to capture the world's 160-pound boxing title. Robinson had a record of 128-1-3 and had won 93 straight fights. Turpin, 23 and with a record of 41-2-1, seemed destined for greatness. However, his reign as World Champion lasted only 64 days; when Robinson stopped him in the 10th round of their rematch to regain the title. Even though Turpin went on to win the Empire Middleweight title as well as the British and Empire Light-heavyweight titles, he never again wore the world's championship crown. Knockout defeats to Tiberio Mitri in one round, Gordon Wallace in four and Yolande Pompey in two ended his days as a contender, and he retired in 1958. His private life was filled with emotional and financial problems, and he made a comeback in an unlicensed bout on March 18, 1963 at Wisbech, England, knocking out Eddie Marcano in six rounds. His final bout was in Malta, on August 22, 1964 when he knocked out Charles Seguna in two rounds. Turpin also took up professional wrestling and worked in a scrapyard as his financial difficulties deteriorated further. On May 17, 1966, the 37-year-old former champion shot and killed himself in the café he and his wife, Gwyneth, ran in his hometown of Leamington in Warwickshire, England.
- Actor
- Art Department
Robert Lister was an actor, known for Dempsey and Makepeace (1985), The Casebook of Eddie Brewer (2012) and Blood Money (1981). He was married to Patricia. He died on 21 July 2023 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.- Lionel Rubin died on 12 January 2021 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Gerry Tobin was born in 1972 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He died on 12 August 2007 in Warwickshire, England, UK.