James Booth Rip

[Malcolm]

JAMES BOOTH RIP

OBITUARY FROM THE INDEPENDENT

David Geeves (James Booth), actor: born Croydon, Surrey 19 December 1927; married 1960 Paula Delaney (two sons, two daughters); died Hadleigh, Essex 11 August 2005.

James Booth was a major figure in the British film and theatre world in the 1960s, specialising in playing cheerful cockneys with a touch of larceny. The trade magazine Variety once described him as "a punchy blend of toughness, potential evil and irresistible charm."

The tall, broad-shouldered actor was particularly associated with two icons of the period, Joan Littlewood and Lionel Bart. He starred in Littlewood's screen version of Sparrows Can't Sing, and on stage he had leading roles in the Bart musicals Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be and Twang! His best remembered screen role was as the heroic soldier in Zulu, but his career stalled in the 1970s due to his reputation as a drinker and hell-raiser. "I've always been hot-tempered," he confessed, "over-egotistical and in some ways violent." Settling in the United States, he became a successful character actor, appearing in David Lynch's cult television series Twin Peaks, and he also became a writer of note, scripting mainly action movies.

Born David Geeves in Croydon, Surrey, in 1927, he was the son of a probation officer. He attended Southend Grammar School, but left at 17 to join the Army, attaining the rank of Captain. He was working in the offices of a mining company when, at the age of 24, he began to take part in amateur dramatics and was persuaded to apply for a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He trained there from 1954 to 1956 in the same class as Albert Finney, Peter O'Toole, Alan Bates and Richard Harris.

While there he met the producer Irving Allen, who later gave him a film contract, and the stage manager Paula Delaney, whom he married in 1960. He was to say later, "I don't know what kind of mess my life would be in today if it hadn't been for Paula and Irving. I'm a very insecure person. I've always needed someone to give me security. And they both did".

He made his stage début, as James Booth, with a season at the Old Vic, "spear-carrying" in eight Shakespeare plays. In 1959 he joined the British People's Theatre Workshop, Joan Littlewood's company, which had its home at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. He played an IRA officer in her production of The Hostage, then was given a starring role in Lionel Bart's musical about East End life Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, which featured Miriam Karlin, Barbara Windsor, Yootha Joyce and Toni Palmer among its other players. In her autobiography, Windsor confesses that she found him "gorgeous" and that they had "a little affair".

The show had started life as a set of pages of dialogue written by Frank Norman, an ex-prisoner, and offered to Littlewood, who saw the potential for a musical and enlisted Bart to write a score, which he did in two weeks. The semi-improvised show about work-shy "Teddy Boys", small-time crooks, soft-hearted prostitutes and "bent" policemen opened in 1959 in Stratford and ran for six sell-out weeks. Later in the year Littlewood re-staged it with some major revisions, and in February 1960 it transferred to the Garrick Theatre, in the West End, where it was a great success, running for two years.

As the pimp, Tosher, Booth had one of the show-stopping numbers, "The Student Ponce" ("He'll end up earning a fortune, but only by using his bonce"). Littlewood later said of him, "At all hours you'd find him propping up the bar, a cynical, witty, impossible character, lanky and agile, with his own peculiar way of tackling life, and acting."

In 1962 Booth spent a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company, his performances including a memorable Edmund to Paul Scofield's King Lear in Peter Brook's production of the play. The same year, Booth played Mick in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, at the Oxford Playhouse.

Booth made his screen début in 1959, with the role of the gangster Spider Kelly in Jazzboat, starring Anthony Newley, a role he reprised in the sequel, In the Nick (1960). He gave a fine performance as blackmailing Alfred Wood in The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) and a broadly comic one in In the Doghouse (1961), with Leslie Phillips. He had a starring role opposite Barbara Windsor in Joan Littlewood's only film as director, Sparrows Can't Sing (1962). Although its title was more refined than the original stage version's - Sparrers Can't Sing - the film still had to be sub-titled in much of America because of the cockney dialect. A mild comedy, it is notable today for its great cast of character performers who were Littlewood alumni, including Booth, Windsor, Yootha Joyce, Roy Kinnear, Victor Spinetti, Avis Bunnage, Brian Murphy and Murray Melvin.

Booth's flair for comedy was particularly displayed in the first feature film directed by Ken Russell, French Dressing (1963), and the following year he had a memorable screen role as Private Henry "Hookie" Hook, the unlikely hero of Zulu, the rousing account of the famous battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Also in 1964 he starred at the Comedy Theatre as the non-confirmist hero of Herb Gardner's play A Thousand Clowns. He then starred as a cockney Robin Hood in Lionel Bart's disastrously ill-fated musical Twang! (1965), which cost the composer all his savings.

Booth then had prominent screen roles in the films The Secret of My Success (1965), as a naïve policeman, The Bliss of Mrs Blossom (1968), as Shirley MacLaine's secret lover who adopts a multitude of disguises, and Robbery (1967), as a Scotland Yard inspector who nails all but one of a bunch of train robbers.

He headed a distinguished comedy cast in the patchy Rentadick (1972), written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman, and played the father of would-be rock star (David Essex) in That'll Be the Day (1973). But he had a surprisingly small part supporting John Wayne in Brannigan (1975), and a role the same year in the "sexploitation" film I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight was indicative of the downward path of his career at the time.

In 1975 he appeared on Broadway as James Joyce in Tom Stoppard's play Travesties and accepted an offer to work as a writer in Los Angeles. He took minor roles in American movies, including Airport 77 (1977) and The Jazz Singer (1980), and appeared in such television shows as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible and Charlie's Angels, while writing scripts for both film and TV. He co-wrote the screenplay for the comedy starring Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Sunburn (1979), and he acted in several action movies that he also wrote, including Pray for Death (1985, a superior kung fu thriller), Avenging Force (1987) and American Ninja 4 (1991). He found his greatest international fame playing the cowardly ex-convict Ernie Miles in Twin Peaks (1990).

Returning to the UK, he had television roles as charming con-men in Minder and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, and he was still acting this year, with a role in the forthcoming film Keeping Mum, starring Rowan Atkinson.

Tom Vallance

[samkydd]

I'm very sad indeed, I liked him as an actor since I was a kid. Something effortless and understated in his style of acting.

[smudge]

My goodness - there's another era over. James Booth always had great prescence, character and charm. Another who shall be greatly missed.

R I P

SMUDGE

Originally posted by smudge@Aug 13 2005, 03:06 PM My goodness - there's another era over. James Booth always had great prescence, character and charm. Another who shall be greatly missed. R I P SMUDGE <div align="right">Quoted post</div>

Oh no..... this just cannot happen.

One of my favourite actors. I thought someone like him could never pass on. Always to be remembered for sterling support in even the most mediocre of of British films. JB, thanks for being one of our finest character actors.

Anyone know the cause of his sad death?

[Steve Crook]

Originally posted by Malcolm@Aug 13 2005, 09:17 AM JAMES BOOTH RIP OBITUARY FROM THE INDEPENDENT [snip] ... and the following year he had a memorable screen role as Private Henry "Hookie" Hook, the unlikely hero of Zulu, the rousing account of the famous battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.... [snip] Tom Vallance <div align="right">Quoted post</div>

It was a great role, very well performed. But a travesty of historical accuracy.
The real Henry Hook was a well respected career soldier, a family man, and teetotal.

But I don't blame James Booth for that. He did a great job with the character he was given.

Steve

[aaron]

A great loss - a true character actor, a fast - vanishing breed

[Bobj]

Deeply saddened by the loss of James Booth.
I started a thread back in September last year comparing his career with that of his contemporary Michael Caine. I have always believed that technically Booth was the better actor of the two and its sad that the to the general public his work goes largely unappreciated compared to that of Caine. At least we who have a love of British film can remember him fondly.
For those interested there is a wonderful website set up as a tribute to the great man. www.jamesbooth.org

[Marky B]

I've been "off air" for a few days and I have just read this sad news - a stalwart of the British film industry and favourite of many a Zulu. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/clapping.gif[/img]
James Booth RIP
Ta Ta
Marky B [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[jacobean]

The BBC have only just got news of his death.
I saw him in the Bill a couple of years back looking the same but with white hair. Great actor. Also surprised at how old he was. His birth year was always given as 1933.

Originally posted by jacobean@Aug 16 2005, 08:03 PM The BBC have only just got news of his death. I saw him in the Bill a couple of years back looking the same but with white hair. Great actor. Also surprised at how old he was. His birth year was always given as 1933. <div align="right">Quoted post</div>

Yes, strange about JB's birth date. I have already found three different years. 1927, 1930, and 1933. I too, find it difficult to believe he was pushing 78 years of age.

Here's the Daily Telegraph's obit:-


JAMES BOOTH
(Filed: 16/08/2005)

James Booth, the actor who has died aged 77, came to prominence at the height of the social and political changes in post-war British theatre and cinema; but despite his memorable performance as Henry "Hookie" Hook, VC, in Zulu (1964) and numerous stage roles, Booth's career had dwindled by the late 1970s, only to be revived by a part in the cult television series, Twin Peaks (1990).




With his broad grin, cockney gusto, lugubrious looks and comic instinct, Booth typified a new kind of actor, one fitted to a time when convention, authority and middle-class propriety were being publicly flouted. Unpolished, unlettered and unpretentious, he seemed to revel in the rebellious spirit of the early 1960s.

He was an earthy asset not only to Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford, east London, with its radical approach to acting, but also to Peter Hall's newly-formed Royal Shakespeare Company. Wide-mouthed, with a long face and nasal speech, Booth was at his best making the least likeable villains attractive, especially in shows which exploited the London underworld (Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be; The Caretaker) or as petty crooks, men on the make and other grades of rascal on film.

Booth was born David Geeves at Croydon, Surrey, on December 19 1927, the son of a probation officer. He was educated at Southend Grammar School, which he left at the age of 17 to join the Army, in which he rose to the rank of captain.

A keen amateur actor, in 1954 he won a scholarship to Rada, where he trained alongside Albert Finney, Peter O'Toole, Alan Bates and Richard Harris. It was there also that he met his future wife, Paula Delaney.

After taking the name James Booth, he made his first professional appearance as a member of the Old Vic Company (1956-57) before joining Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in 1958. There he made his mark in Brendan Behan's much-rehearsed, re-written and then re-rehearsed play, The Hostage, in which he ended up playing the IRA officer. He continued in the role when the play transferred to the West End (Wyndham's, 1959).

Other parts with the Theatre Workshop included a splendid Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol, and Tosher, the pimp in a Soho gaming club in the Lionel Bart and Frank Norman musical Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be. The role suited Booth, who also delighted in the backstage carousing. "At all hours," Joan Littlewood recalled, "you'd find him propping up the bar, a cynical, witty, impossible character, lanky and agile, with his own peculiar way of tackling life, and acting."

There followed a spell of new drama, including a role in Max Frisch's The Fire-Raisers (Royal Court Theatre), in which he played one of the arsonists. In 1962 Booth was suitably menacing as Mick in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker.

That same year he joined the RSC at Stratford-on-Avon for Clifford Williams's revival of The Comedy of Errors, which he followed with the role of Edmund to Paul Scofield's King Lear. But Booth's sneering, sleazy interpretation of the part was not to everyone's taste: "James Booth," wrote Kenneth Tynan, "handles verse with the finesse of a gloved pugilist picking up pins."

Returning to the West End, Booth excelled in Herb Gardner's comedy A Thousand Clowns, and flung himself robustly about as Robin Hood in Joan Littlewood's ill-fated staging of Twang! (Shaftesbury, 1965). Other parts included Archie Rice in The Entertainer. A further spell with the RSC followed, and he played the role of Tristan Tzara in the company's Broadway production of Tom Stoppard's Travesties (1975).

Booth's career on the big screen took off in 1959 with the role of the gangster Spider Kelly in Jazzboat. In 1962 he starred opposite Barbara Windsor in Sparrows Can't Sing, Joan Littlewood's only film as a director (the cockney accents in the film had to be subtitled for American audiences). He subsequently appeared in French Dressing (1963) and in Zulu, that classic account of the heroic stand by British soldiers against the Zulu hordes at Rorke's Drift.

After appearing alongside Shirley Maclaine and Richard Attenborough in The Bliss of Mrs Blossom (1968), Booth went on to star in Rentadick (1972), and he played David Essex's father in That'll Be The Day (1973). His favourite roles were, he would say, "those I can relax in".

In the 1980s Booth moved to America. "I wish I'd done it 15 years ago," he said at the time. There he appeared in minor roles in several film and television shows, as well as writing and acting in a number of action pictures. He was back on form as the toadying ex-convict Ernie Niles in Twin Peaks.

Booth had roles on British television in Minder and Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and he had been working on a new film, Keeping Mum, shortly before his death on August 11.

James Booth married Paula Delaney in 1960; they had two sons and two daughters.