I hope there will be an uplifting climax next week. Olivia Colman is also superlative of course, again playing Adam's wife who now has a busy career of her own and in fact we see less of her this time around .... It was good to see Liam and Tom together again - they were the original Oscar and Bosie in that play THE JUDAS KISS which was a successful revival last year, with Rupert Everett, as per my posts at the time - theatre label. Joseph Fiennes (right) too is effective in REV as the bishop. [I have been corrected, thanks Mark - its of course Ralph Fiennes!].
I am of the opinion that most fortunate actors who come along at the right time get "ten good years" (that delicious song Nancy Wilson sang in her live cabaret act), certainly the likes of Stephen Boyd and Laurence Harvey did - mid-'50s to mid-'60s, or Michael York (mid-'60s to mid-70s), York being one of the fortunate ones who was able to continue in lesser supporting roles, whereas Harvey's and Boyd's careers had died before they did. Fortunate indeed are the likes of Dirk Bogarde or Alain Delon or Jean Sorel who can go on for decades, whereas in the theatre actors like Jeremy Brett or John Stride can transcend their good looks as they get older. Is there the curse of the very good looking actor who starts out well but then fizzles out ? (Whatever did happen to Jeremy Spenser, Leonard Whiting, Graham Faulkner, Martin Potter et al...?). Left: the kind of period movie actors must like appearing in: Michael Redgrave, Richard Warwick, Martin Potter, Tom Baker in NICHOLAS & ALEXANDRA, 1971. 
but in 1966 he is an un-named "communications aide" repeating commands in FANTASTIC VOYAGE - an amusing watch last week. He was also Carroll Baker's boyfriend in the 1959 comedy BUT NOT FOR ME with Clark Gable and Lilli Palmer. Coe went into television in shows like GENERAL HOSPITAL and continued acting to 1978. Other tv actors like George Maharis or Gardner McKay fared less well in the movies.  |
| Barry, centre, in FANTASTIC VOYAGE |
Brett Halsey (left) was another of the Fox pretty boys (RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING etc) as was future producer/tycoon Robert Evans (one of the cads in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING), though Robert Wagner and Jeff Hunter were the main Fox contract players, Joanne Woodward and Stuart Whitman too of course. Ditto Fabian - see HOUND DOG MAN post below.A Fox film like NO DOWN PAYMENT (Jeff Hunter label) is stuffed with their contract players. Jeff Hunter unfortunately died too young too, in 1969, but found his imperishable role as Martin Pawley in THE SEARCHERS, which is always on view somewhere (as it was here yesterday). Robert Wagner was the most successful of all, with some good movies in Europe (THE PINK PANTHER) and successful in television. The Universal-International pretty boys like Rock and Tony Curtis worked hard through supporting parts to build careers and achieve A-list movie status, as before them did Guy Madison and Jeff Chandler and ...while Warners had those blondes Troy and Tab, and Tony Perkins (Tab and Tony tried singing too with some success - see labels), and Kerwin Matthews over at Columbia ...
Heavyweight stuff coming up: Finney in Huston's UNDER THE VOLCANO, Frears' PRETTY DIRTY THINGS with this year's best actor nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, LOVE IS THE DEVIL with Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon and Daniel Craig as his criminal lover .... more impersonations with the Liberace film BEHIND THE CANDELABRA and Helena Bonham-Carter a surprisingly effective Elizabeth Taylor in BURTON AND TAYLOR .... Left: Jeffrey Hunter / right: Jean Sorel.
Ralph not Joseph ;) But I have to say how much I love Rev. and how this more sombre series has broke my heart each Monday evening, albeit it in a deliciously bittersweet and thought provoking way. Alison Graham at the Radio Times has written a very snooty review of this 3rd series in which she decrees in utterly self important terms that she as a 'Rev devotee' knows how the characters would or would not act, as opposed to the cast and writers.
ReplyDeleteOuch! How silly of me .... Ralph is marvellous in REV and other recent items like PAGE 8. Joseph was terrific in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE but was one actor who did not seem to want to be a movie star.
ReplyDeleteYes I saw the feature in "Radio Times", REV though seems to be taking a downbeat turn with the closure of the church, unless it all comes together for the final episode .....
First - may I take the opportunity to thank you for your wondrous blog, which I pore over ecstatically - I suspect we may entered the world at roughly the same time (early 1950s)? Because of my Dad's work we had passes to every cinema in my hometown (Southend) which in those days boasted at least NINE movie theatres within a couple of square miles; my mum adored 'the pictures' so even as a toddler I went with her to at least three films a week, school nights be damned - then on weekends we would take the short train ride to London and see a play or a big, roadshow, first-run movie like one of the Cinerama epics (in Cinerama projection of course, at the cinema on Old Compton Street). I now live in Los Angeles, so you might say everything has, in a way, come full circle, but with palm trees.
ReplyDeleteBeing a little gay boy growing up in darkest Essex meant that I relied a lot on movie magazines from the US, which ranged from Modern Screen to the deathless, glorious Famous Monsters of Filmland. Thus I encountered Barry Coe and fell for him (discreetly), and gazed at his image like a lovelorn teenager, as the cliché has it. But I was about ten years old (I knew I was an, ahem, *unusual* child). I too thought Coe was destined to have a grand career. But y'know a lot of careers were felled by booze and scandal or a sexuality that the actor or actress refused to hide or lie about. Unless, like Graham Faulkner, the problem was an absence of that Something Special a star needs - I saw him in a play at Watford Palace, he was in a really minor role (and offstage he was a very likeable young man)... but I knew the play's director, who told me that they'd signed up Faulkner on the strength of the Zeffirelli movie then too late discovered that he wasn't terribly skilled as a stage actor. Alas.
Hi Iain, just seen your nice comments thanks. Interesting on Graham Faulkner, I was surprised to see him - naked again - in that minor silent role in THE PRIEST OF LOVE as the farmer DH Lawrence (McKellen) goes swimming with every morning. Perhaps Graham was chosen for that to display his ample charms once again.
ReplyDeleteI loved the American movie magazines too, with their endless spreads and colour photos of Troy and Sandra and Connie etc. then I discovered more quality stuff in the English magazines "Films & Filming" ...
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