Davoo

He was a wonderful actor & child actor, I liked him in the 1938 Will Hay classic 'Convict 99', he made quite a few British films before going to Hollywood.

donna

I believe he and Liz Taylor were lifelong friends.

donna

Modeling

At age 5 Roddy McDowall did advertisements for breakfast cereals, Rice Krispies;
English laundry soap, Persil; and toothpaste, Colgate.

philips

My memory may be off but I seem to recall hearing after his death that he had told people that he would never write an autobiography and that he would take his secrets to the grave. Apparently he knew a lot about the Hollywood gay community in which he was an, uh, active participant, and people would confide in him because they knew he would never betray their confidences.

rbrooks2008

The funniest moment I remember him in was in a Will Hay film where he was only a child, (Kathleen Harrison was the mother IIRC). Will Hay comes home from work, holding out a paper bag and says "Hey kids, guess what I've got?" and Roddy quips something to the effect of "About seven years?"

D Cairns

Just wrote a bit about him on my blog, but I should warn those of a sensitive disposition that the comments section gets a bit x-rated...
Ten Bad Dates With Roddy McDowall SHADOWPLAY

bhowells

Great movie saw it on a double bill with the Jungle Book when I in 1968.

Tony Hancock started work on the Bullwhip Griffin film but he was fired due to his drinking problems.

Windthrop

Officially it was the 'heat' that caused TH to collapse.

That's the joke that killed the Music Hall

Steve Crook

Maybe it was the heat that made him need to drink so much

Steve

silverwhistle

Roddy was in the original stage version of Camelot as Mordred. On the cast album, he sings The Seven Deadly Virtues.

"Trust me, I'm a doctor...!"

Windthrop

Curiously the Disney executives had no problem employing Robert Newton some years before.

That's the joke that killed the Music Hall

batman

And that Jiminy Cricket was known to knock back a few!

Bat-Quiz 13 is up and running in the competition thread - 24/8/8.

penfold

Nevertheless, great to see Denis Gifford's Pictorial History of Horror Movies get such a good discussion...looking back, it was that book that eventually got me so heavily into Silents. BTW, there is a tangential reference to it in the first series of The League of Gentlemen....in the commentary, Gatiss and co., talking about the pose struck Edward Tattsyrup strikes at the road construction site, namecheck the Charles Ogle Frankenstein (Edison, ca 1910). The only possible source for that image at the time had to be Denis' book, didn't it??

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

torinfan

I've always liked Roddy's films, very talented actor. I wish he had written an autobiography too. I have read somewhere on the Internet that he was really great with his public.

I have a note in my files somewheres stating he was in the 1958 production of The Firstborn, where he plays Rameses, the son of Seti 2 (Torin Thatcher, who else?) I have a photo of Torin and Katherine Cornell in that play but none of Roddy, otherwise I'd share it.

torinfan

Forgot to mention another great film he was in, The Legend of Hell House. When I first saw that, it was on tv, back in the 1970's, it scared me to death. I have it on DVD now but I still wouldn't watch it alone at night.