Above: Spectacular full-scale derailment from the 1931 version of The Ghost Train (and also the 1941 version).
Arnold Ridley is fondly remembered in the UK as one of the stars of seventies sitcom Dad’s Army, about an incompetent and mainly superannuated group of volunteer soldiers in the WWII home guard, a show which made Ridley a national star at age 72 (it continued until he was 81). His sweetly doddering persona made a brilliant foil to the petulant Arthur Lowe, the dithering John Le Mesurier and gloomy Scot John Laurie.
One day, shooting on location in a graveyard, one of Ridley’s younger co-stars mused, “Hardly worth your leaving, is it, Arnold?” A rather harsh bit of humor: if you find it too mean, take comfort in the fact that the young thesp predeceased Ridley by some years, owing to liver failure. What larks!
But looong before Dad’s Army, Arnold Ridley found...
Arnold Ridley is fondly remembered in the UK as one of the stars of seventies sitcom Dad’s Army, about an incompetent and mainly superannuated group of volunteer soldiers in the WWII home guard, a show which made Ridley a national star at age 72 (it continued until he was 81). His sweetly doddering persona made a brilliant foil to the petulant Arthur Lowe, the dithering John Le Mesurier and gloomy Scot John Laurie.
One day, shooting on location in a graveyard, one of Ridley’s younger co-stars mused, “Hardly worth your leaving, is it, Arnold?” A rather harsh bit of humor: if you find it too mean, take comfort in the fact that the young thesp predeceased Ridley by some years, owing to liver failure. What larks!
But looong before Dad’s Army, Arnold Ridley found...
- 9/9/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
The autobiography of Pete Postlethwaite, once called 'the best actor in the world' by Steven Spielberg
In the year or so leading up to his death from cancer this year, Pete Postlethwaite had been working on an autobiography, and this has now appeared, sympathetically ghostwritten by Andy Richardson. It is an extrovert, tender, charming and unselfconscious book, with some extraordinary, hell-raising and hair-raising anecdotes. Reading it revived the sadness I had on hearing about his death, particularly the last, remarkable chapter about his final illness, recounted as it was happening, like a sort of liveblog.
I hadn't quite grasped that before he became a screen icon, Postlethwaite was basically the rock'n'roll wild man of 1970s/80s subsidised theatre: a cheerfully uncaged party animal who made Dennis Hopper look like Margaret Rutherford, yet always showed up on time for rehearsals, where a succession of thin-lipped Oxbridgey directors would find every line of their interpretation,...
In the year or so leading up to his death from cancer this year, Pete Postlethwaite had been working on an autobiography, and this has now appeared, sympathetically ghostwritten by Andy Richardson. It is an extrovert, tender, charming and unselfconscious book, with some extraordinary, hell-raising and hair-raising anecdotes. Reading it revived the sadness I had on hearing about his death, particularly the last, remarkable chapter about his final illness, recounted as it was happening, like a sort of liveblog.
I hadn't quite grasped that before he became a screen icon, Postlethwaite was basically the rock'n'roll wild man of 1970s/80s subsidised theatre: a cheerfully uncaged party animal who made Dennis Hopper look like Margaret Rutherford, yet always showed up on time for rehearsals, where a succession of thin-lipped Oxbridgey directors would find every line of their interpretation,...
- 6/23/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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