Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Read online

  Kenny Baker

  Born September 30, 1912

  Died August 10, 1985

  Boyish singer. Kenneth Laurence Baker was born in Monrovia, California, and came to prominence as the singer on Jack Benny’s radio shows in the Thirties. When he left in 1939 to concentrate on films, he was replaced by Dennis Day. Baker appeared in College Rhythm (1934), George White’s 1935 Scandals (1935), Metropolitan (1935), King Of Burlesque (1935) as Arthur, The King And The Chorus Girl (1937) as the Folies Bergère soloist, A Day At The Races (1937), Mr Dodd Takes The Air (1937) as Claude Dodd, 52nd Street (1937) as Benjamin Zamarelli, The Goldwyn Follies (1938) as Danny Beecher, The Mikado (1939) as Nanki-Poo, At The Circus (1939) as Jeff Wilson, Hit Parade Of 1941 (1940) as David Farraday, Silver Skates (1943) as Danny, Doughboys In Ireland (1943) as Danny O’Keefe, The Harvey Girls (1946) as Terry O’Halloran and Calendar Girl (1947) as Byron Jones. He starred with Mary Martin in the original Broadway production of Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s One Touch Of Venus before retiring in the Fifties to become a Christian Science practitioner.

  CAUSE: He died in Solvang, California of a heart attack.

  Sir Stanley Baker

  Born February 28, 1928

  Died June 28, 1976

  He-man hero. Born at 32 Albany Street in Ferndale, a village in the Rhondda, South Wales, William Stanley Baker was the third of three children of John Henry Baker and Elizabeth Louisa Lock. John Baker had lost a leg in a mining accident in 1917, and found it hard to gain full-time employment so the family lived in poverty. Baker greatly resented the charity that was given to his family. Like his contemporary and life-long friend Richard Burton, Baker was taken under the wing of a paternal schoolmaster, Glynne Morse. Teaching at Ferndale secondary school, English master Morse wrote plays for his pupils. It was said that Morse was struck by Baker’s “satanic” stage presence and accompanied the boy to Cardiff where he auditioned at the age of thirteen for the film producer Sir Michael Balcon. Baker made his film début aged 14 in Balcon’s Ealing war drama Under Cover (1942) playing the patriot Peter. Baker began his professional stage career by understudying Richard Burton in Emlyn Williams’ play The Druid’s Rest (1943). In 1944 Morse took Baker to audition for Sir Barry Jackson at the Birmingham Repertory where he stayed for two years before being called up for the army (1946–1948). Among his roles at Birmingham was that of Hector Malone in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Man And Superman (1945) directed by a young Peter Brook, in which a then unknown Paul Scofield played John Tanner. It seemed that Baker was destined to appear as the villain in any number of Fifties melodramas, such was his demeanour. He appeared in All Over The Town (1949) as Barnes, Obsession (1949), Your Witness (1950) as Sergeant Bannoch, Lilli Marlene (1950) as Evans, The Rossiter Case (1951) as Joe, a reporter in Whispering Smith Hits London (1951), Home To Danger (1951) as Willie Dougan and the milkman in Cloudburst (1951). In Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), which starred Gregory Peck, Baker played Mr Harrison, the testy bosun and showed that he could act as well as look menacing. In Charles Frend’s The Cruel Sea (1953), an epic war film also made at Ealing Studios in the summer and autumn of 1952, he was cast as Bennett, the bullying first lieutenant. Lockhart, the character played by Donald Sinden, represented Nicholas Montserrat, the author of the autobiographical novel on which the film was based. The Cruel Sea was produced by Leslie Norman, father of former BBC film critic Barry Norman and written by Eric Ambler. It was the first of several major action movies in which Baker played a hard-bitten hero or a determined villain. These included: The Red Beret (1953) as Breton, The Tell-Tale Heart (1953) as Edgar Allan Poe, The Good Die Young (1954) as Mike Morgan, Knights Of The Round Table (1953) as the villainous Sir Modred, Hell Below Zero (1954) as Erik Bland, Beautiful Stranger as Louis Galt, Richard III as Henry, Earl of Richmond, Helen Of Troy (1956) as the wily Achilles, Alexander The Great (1956) as Attalus, A Hill In Korea (1956) as Corporal Ryker, Child In The House as Stephen Lorimer, Checkpoint as O’Donovan, Hell Drivers as Tom Yately, Campbell’s Kingdom (1957) as Owen Morgan, Violent Playground (1958) as Sergeant Truman, Sea Fury (1958) as Abel Hewson, The Angry Hills (1959) as Conrad Heisler, Yesterday’s Enemy (1959) as Captain Langford, Jet Storm (1959) as Captain Bardow and Hell Is A City (1960) as Inspector Martineau. In 1961 he co-starred with Gregory Peck in what became the most successful war film up to that time – J. Lee Thompson’s The Guns Of Navarone. The film was shot between March and November of 1960 on location on the island of Rhodes and at Shepperton Studios. Baker played Private ‘Butcher’ Brown in an all-star cast that included David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Richard Harris and James Robertson-Justice. Two years earlier, Baker had made Blind Date (1959) as Inspector Morgan. It was his first collaboration with the American film director Joseph Losey, who, after being blacklisted in Hollywood by Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, had come to live in Britain. Their next film together was The Criminal (1960) in which Baker played the unscrupulous gangster Johnny Bannion. In the early Sixties, Baker went into partnership with the Canadian director Cy Endfield, another refugee from Hollywood, to co-produce the film Zulu (1964), the true-life story of the defence of Rorke’s Drift on January 22, 1879 by the South Wales Borderers. The film was shot on location in Natal from May to July 1963. Four thousand real Zulus were used as extras but they were mystified by what they had to do until Baker showed them an old Gene Autry film. Baker played the tough commanding officer of the besieged garrison, Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard (b. Boxhill, near Plymouth, Devon, December 21, 1847, d. Hatch Beauchamp, Somerset, November 1, 1897 of cancer of the tongue). Michael Caine was his cavalier second-in-command, Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead (b. Versailles, France, August 29, 1845, d. Camp Dabhaura, Allahabad, India, February 9, 1891 of enteric fever). Both Chard and Bromhead were gazetted VCs on May 2, 1879 for their bravery at Rorke’s Drift. Nine other VCs were awarded that day. In 1972 Baker bought Chard’s VC and campaign medal at auction for £2,700. Zulu grossed more than $12 million through its sales worldwide, eight times its original investment and Baker became a wealthy and successful film producer overnight with his own company, Diamond Films. However, other films that he produced, including Sands Of The Kalahari (1965) in which Baker played the reluctant hero Mike Bain, were not so successful. In Eva (1962) and Accident (1967) Losey cast Baker against type as a bogus writer and a university don with startling success. In 1968 Baker and Richard Burton were invited to become directors of the newly formed independent television company Harlech Television (HTV). Baker returned to playing villainous roles as the gangster Paul Clifton in Robbery (1967) and the corrupt thief-taker Jonathan Wild in Where’s Jack? (1969), both of which he also produced. Baker also played television roles, appearing in The Taming Of The Shrew (1952) as Petruchio, The Creature (1955) as Tom Friend, Jane Eyre (from February 24, 1956) as Mr Rochester, A Fear Of Strangers (1964) as Chief Inspector Tom Dyke, Who Has Seen The Wind? (1965) as Janos, The Tormentors (1966) as John Ellis, Code Name: Heraclitus (1967) as Frank G. Wheatley, The Changeling (1974) as De Flores, Who Killed Lamb? (1974), Robinson Crusoe (1974) as Robinson Crusoe, Graceless Go I (1974) as the drunken psychiatrist and How Green Was My Valley (from December 29, 1975) as Gwilym Morgan, a part he based on his father. His other films included: Eva (1962) as Tyvian Jones, Sodom And Gomorrah (1962) as Astaroth, A Prize Of Arms (1962) as Turpin, The Man Who Finally Died (1962) as Joe Newman, In The French Style (1963) as Walter Beddoes, Dingaka (1965) as Tom Davis, La Ragazza Con La Pistola (1968) as Dr Osborne, The Italian Job (1969) which he also produced, The Last Grenade (1970) as Major Harry Grigsby, The Games (1970) as Bill Oliver, Perfect Friday (1970) as Mr Graham opposite a topless Ursula Andress, Una Lucertola Con La Pelle Di Donna (1971) as Inspector Corvin, Popsy Pop (1971) as Inspector Silva, Innocent Bystanders (1972) as John Craig, Zorro (1975) as Colonel Huerta and Pepita Jiménez (1975) as Pedro de Vargas. Baker also produced The Other People (1968) and Colosseum And Juicy Lucy (1970). During the Fifties Bak
er became one of Britain’s highest-paid actors but, unlike Richard Burton, Baker spurned the international jet set. He remained insular and quick to lose his temper. Humourless, stubborn and old-fashioned, Baker was not a typical actor. He wore his toupeed hair short and nearly always dressed in a conservative suit. A socialist, he accepted a knighthood from his friend Harold Wilson shortly before his death but Baker’s socialism was more of the Bollinger Bolshevik variety. On October 21, 1950, he married the actress Ellen Rose Martin who had been introduced to him by Richard Burton. The Bakers had four children, Glyn, Sally, Martin, and Adam. He owned and lived, while in London, in Alembic House, 93 Albert Embankment, London SE 1, where the disgraced peer Jeffrey Archer has a flat.

  CAUSE: In the mid-Seventies Baker began to make plans for a sequel to Zulu. In January 1976 Baker threw a party and showed a guest his hand. Baker pointed out that his fingers had become suddenly stubby. The guest told him that meant he had cancer or a heart problem. The following month Baker underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumour from his lung. The procedure appeared to have resolved the problem and Baker underwent an intense course of chemotherapy. Unfortunately, the cancer had not cleared up and Baker moved to his home in Marbella, Spain for the good weather. However, the bright sun meant that he had to wear a vest and long johns all the time because he was susceptible to skin cancers. Baker spent his time dining out when he could summon the strength and moaning at his wife. By early June the cancer had spread to his hip and he returned to London for treatment. Returning to Spain, he suffered a relapse and he was so weak he could not untie his pyjama cord. An oncology specialist travelled to Spain and told Baker that he must return to London where the facilities were much better. Before arrangements could be made for the trip Baker died aged 48 in Residencia Sanitaria Carlos Haya, a hospital in Malaga, close to his second home. He was worth £421,823 at death. His ashes were scattered in Ferndale.

  Sir Michael Balcon

  Born May 19, 1896

  Died October 17, 1977

  Ealing’s inventor. Michael Elias Balcon was born at 116 Summer Lane, Edgbaston, Birmingham, the youngest son and fourth of five children of Louis Balcon (c.1858–1946), a Jewish-Lithuanian salesman and Laura Greenberg (c.1863–1934). Balcon described his childhood as “respectable but impoverished”. In 1907 he won a scholarship to George Dixon Grammar School in Birmingham. He left school in 1913 because of family hardships and went to work as a jeweller’s apprentice. Balcon was turned down for military service in 1914 because of a problem with his left eye. Instead, in 1915 he joined the Dunlop Rubber Company’s plant at Aston Cross and eventually became personal assistant to the managing director. At the end of hostilities he formed a film company with Victor Savile, Victory Motion Pictures. Their backer was Oscar Deutsch, a rich scrap-metal dealer who later founded the Odeon cinema chain. It was a modest success and in 1923 they produced their first film Woman To Woman starring Betty Compson and directed by Graham Cutts. Balcon and Cutts went on to form Gainsborough Pictures in Poole Street, Islington, London N1, the former home of Famous Players–Lasky (later to become Paramount). One of the earliest films was The Pleasure Garden (1925) directed by a newcomer called Alfred Hitchcock. Early Gainsborough pictures often featured Ivor Novello including The Rat (1925), directed by Graham Cutts, and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1926). In 1928 Gainsborough was relaunched as a public company. In 1931 Balcon took charge at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, Gaumont’s Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd’s Bush. Later that year he suffered a nervous breakdown. Balcon presided over a number of worthy films over the next five years including The Good Companions (1932), The Constant Nymph (1933), The Ghoul (1933) starring Boris Karloff, Evergreen (1934) starring Jessie Matthews, Hitchcock’s The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and Rhodes Of Africa (1936). He also found a home for many Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution in Germany. He even made a film Jew Süss (1934) subtly criticising the anti-Semitism. Conrad Veidt escaped through Balcon’s direct intervention. Though Gaumont and Gainsborough productions generally did well in Britain, they rarely found much favour in the USA. In November 1936 he moved to MGM-British at Denham but his experience was an unhappy one and he produced just one film, A Yank At Oxford (1938) starring Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh. After 18 months he replaced Basil Dean at Ealing Studios, a company whose name he was to make internationally known. He made many George Formby movies which were popular with the public but Balcon himself liked neither the films nor their star. During the Second World War he produced a number of military films. The Next Of Kin (1942) was a vivid dramatisation of the slogan “Careless talk costs lives” and infuriated Churchill, but was released at the insistence of the War Office. Other similar films included The Foreman Went To France (1942), Went The Day Well? (1942), Nine Men (1943), and San Demetrio London (1944). In 1944 Balcon arranged a deal with the Rank Organisation to distribute Ealing films. In the aftermath of the war he made a number of comedies that have stood the test of time including Hue And Cry (1947), Whisky Galore (1948), Kind Hearts And Coronets (1949), Passport To Pimlico (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man In The White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955). He also excelled in drama with Dead Of Night (1945), Nicholas Nickleby (1947), Scott Of The Antarctic (1948), Saraband For Dead Lovers (1949), Where No Vultures Fly (1951) and Mandy (1952). He was responsible for bringing Pc George Dixon (later to find fame in Dock Green) to the big screen in The Blue Lamp (1949) (although Dixon is killed 21 minutes into the film). In 1948 Balcon became Sir Michael. Balcon presided over the studios like a benevolent despot, bestowing his favours on promising young men (rarely women). Monja Danischewsky, Ealing’s press officer, referred to Ealing as “Mr Balcon’s Academy for Young Gentlemen”. At meetings if he was overruled, he quipped, “Well, if you fellows feel so strongly, on my head be it.” Balcon’s politics were left of centre although he lived a moderate but comfortable life. He said, “I have never owned a yacht, a racehorse or even a swimming pool. Neither do I smoke cigars.” When J. Arthur Rank stepped down from the day-to-day running of his company Balcon found himself dealing with John Davis, the managing director. Davis was not a fan of Balcon’s films. In 1955 Ealing Studios was sold to the BBC and Balcon and his team, now Ealing Films, moved to Borehamwood. Four years later, the last Ealing film was made and he formed Bryanston Films. The studio produced Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1960) and Tom Jones (1963) and Balcon became a director of Border Television. In 1964 he became chairman of British Lion. Two years later, he resigned and became chairman of the British Film Institute production board, funding low-budget experimental work. On April 10, 1924 he married Aileen Freda Leatherman, MBE (b. Middlesex, 1905, d. February 1988) and fathered a son, Jonathan (b. 1931), and a daughter, Jill Angela Henriette (b. 1924). She became the second wife of poet Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972) on April 27, 1951 at Kensington Register Office, and their son is actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

  CAUSE: He died of natural causes at his home, Upper Parrock, Hartfield, East Sussex, aged 81. He left £272,880. He was cremated and his ashes were buried at Upper Parrock.

  Betty Balfour

  Born March 27, 1903

  Died November 4, 1977

  ‘Queen of Happiness’. Born in London 5́ 3˝ Betty Balfour made her stage début at the Wood Green Empire Theatre in 1914 and established herself as one of the most popular stars in British films of the Twenties. Her most notable role was as Squibs Hopkins in the Gaumont/Welsh-Pearson series which included Squibs (1921), Squibs Wins The Calcutta Sweep (1922), Squibs MP (1922), Squibs’s Honeymoon (1924) and Squibs (1935, a remake as a talkie). With the advent of talkies, she became a successful supporting player.

  CAUSE: She died in Weybridge, Surrey, aged 74.

  Lucille Ball

  Born August 6, 1911

  Died April 26, 1989

  Ditzy redhead. Born in Jamestown, New York, Lucille Ball spent 20 years appearing on the radio and making movies before finding real fame in television. Attempting to enter show business in th
e Twenties she was told she was too skinny, too shy and had no future. Ball, who had been sacked as a soda jerk because she forgot to put the banana in a banana split, was told by Robert Milton of New York’s prestigious John Murray Anderson/ Robert Milton School Of The Theater And Dance: “Try another profession. Any other.” Undeterred she went to Hollywood anyway and found herself film roles, albeit small ones. In 1934 she appeared in eleven films and at one time she was promoted as “the new Harlow”! Her films included Roman Scandals (1933), Nana (1934), Kid Millions (1934), Top Hat (1935) as a flower shop assistant, Chatterbox (1936), Don’t Tell The Wife (1937), Stagedoor (1937) as Judy Canfield, The Affairs Of Annabel (1938), Annabel Takes A Tour (1938), The Marines Fly High (1940), Too Many Girls (1940), A Girl, A Guy And A Gob (1941), Meet The People (1944), Abbott & Costello In Hollywood (1945), Lover Come Back (1946), Fancy Pants (1950), The Long Long Trailer (1954), Yours Mine And Ours (1968) and Mame (1974). On November 30, 1940, in Greenwich, Connecticut, she married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz (b. Santiago, March 2, 1917, as Desiderio Arnaz y de Acha III, d. Del Mar, California, December 2, 1986). Their daughter, Lucie Desirée, was born on July 17, 1951, but they created television history on January 19, 1953, when Lucy gave birth to their son, Desi Jr, in real life and simultaneously on screen. They founded their own studio, Desilu, which would make many TV series, including Star Trek. The couple divorced in Santa Monica on May 4, 1960, and the following year, on November 19, 1961, Lucy married comedian Gary Morton (b. New York, December 19, 1924, d. Eisenhower Memorial Hospital, 39000 Bob Hope Drive, Palm Springs, California, March 30, 1999 at 2.15pm from respiratory failure and advanced lung cancer) with whom she remained happy to the end. It was her show I Love Lucy (which began on October 15, 1951, and lasted until September 24, 1961) that really endeared her to the American public. During one episode of the show, Ball donned a clown’s outfit complete with bulbous red nose. Co-star William Holden got rather too close with a lighted cigarette and set fire to the proboscis. Ball only saved herself from permanent damage by plunging the smouldering nose in a cup of coffee. Said fellow comedienne Phyllis Diller: “Lucille Ball was a control freak. Had to be in charge of everything. Never saw a woman who took her comedy so seriously.” The Emmy Awards are the prestigious accolades bestowed by the American television industry on itself. On May 19, 1975, 5́ 6˝ Ball stepped to the podium to present the gong for Outstanding Comedy Series. As she picked up the envelope to read the nominations she let out a plaintive cry that she had forgotten to bring her spectacles. The audience tittered, thinking this was part of a gag. It was no joke – TV’s Lucy was virtually blind without them and kept mumbling, “I’m really in trouble” before some kind soul lent her a pair of glasses and she was able to announce that The Mary Tyler Moore Show had triumphed. Her daughter revealed: “One of my mother’s favourite things to do, when a small group of people were involved in some ordinary conversation, was to wait until one of them left the room and as soon as she returned, blurt out convincingly, ‘Here she is now! Why don’tcha tell her to her face?!!’”