Forget Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee! There was one actor who truly epitomised classic Hammer horror, and that was the irreplaceable Michael Ripper. With a whopping 23 films to his name, he was to Hammer what Desmond Llewellyn was to James Bond.
Michael Ripper was born in Portsmouth on 27 January 1913. His father Harold was a civil servant who ran a local amateur dramatic company and taught elocution and speech therapy, his mother Edith worked as a teacher. Ripper had a very unhappy Victorian childhood; his dominant father was very much a stern disciplinarian.
A pupil of Portsmouth Grammar School, which he hated, Ripper was more or less pushed into acting by his father, who entered him in various poetry competitions. A close family friend and regular visitor to their Southsea home was the brilliant comic actor Alastair Sim.
Though he initially Ripper never wanted to be an actor, Ripper was eventually...
Michael Ripper was born in Portsmouth on 27 January 1913. His father Harold was a civil servant who ran a local amateur dramatic company and taught elocution and speech therapy, his mother Edith worked as a teacher. Ripper had a very unhappy Victorian childhood; his dominant father was very much a stern disciplinarian.
A pupil of Portsmouth Grammar School, which he hated, Ripper was more or less pushed into acting by his father, who entered him in various poetry competitions. A close family friend and regular visitor to their Southsea home was the brilliant comic actor Alastair Sim.
Though he initially Ripper never wanted to be an actor, Ripper was eventually...
- 2/2/2011
- Shadowlocked
A renowned Scottish actor and director, he regularly commentated on state occasions for BBC television
Tom Fleming, who has died of cancer aged 82, was an outstanding figure in the Scottish theatre of the second half of the 20th century, the first television "face" of Jesus of Nazareth in a 1953 mini-series, and well known as a BBC television and radio commentator at many royal and ceremonial occasions since he first broadcast, for the BBC, during the Queen's coronation in 1953.
He was a Baptist lay preacher, a deeply private man of great moral integrity and stature. This much was clear not only on stage but also as he spoke in his flawless, rich and velvety baritone voice at the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the Queen Mother. So assiduous was he in his properly felt sense of duty that he declined the invitation to appear in a play by Mikhail Bulgakov...
Tom Fleming, who has died of cancer aged 82, was an outstanding figure in the Scottish theatre of the second half of the 20th century, the first television "face" of Jesus of Nazareth in a 1953 mini-series, and well known as a BBC television and radio commentator at many royal and ceremonial occasions since he first broadcast, for the BBC, during the Queen's coronation in 1953.
He was a Baptist lay preacher, a deeply private man of great moral integrity and stature. This much was clear not only on stage but also as he spoke in his flawless, rich and velvety baritone voice at the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the Queen Mother. So assiduous was he in his properly felt sense of duty that he declined the invitation to appear in a play by Mikhail Bulgakov...
- 4/20/2010
- by Michael Coveney, Carole Woddis, Brian Wilson
- The Guardian - Film News
Simon Pegg's full-frontal assault on Hollywood looks set to continue, with the news from horror maestros Dread Central that he'll be heading up a new version of the gruesome Burke and Hare legend, directed by John Landis.William Burke and William Hare, to refresh your memory, were the nineteenth-century murderers with the resourceful motive of selling their victims to the Edinburgh Medical College for dissection by the students. They were caught in 1828, whereupon Hare was given immunity from prosecution for telling on Burke, who was promptly hung and publicly dismembered in the name of medical science.The story has made the screen several times before: not least as The Flesh and the Fiends with Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasance, The Anatomist with Alistair Sim, and The Doctor and the Devils with Timothy Dalton.But a new version is completely welcome if it means the return of John Landis, who,...
- 8/24/2009
- EmpireOnline
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