Bob M.

Can anybody enlighten me with any info on this fine playwrite / actor. He appeared in many films in the late forties and fifties.Train of events springs to mind. I would love to konw more about him.

"How about dat, a? How about dat?

Bobj

He really was one of those stalwart character actors wasn't he!
I'll always remember him best though as the hearse driver in "Dead of Night" That line he spoke "Just room for one more inside" never fails to make the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up!

Steve Crook

There's an article from an old Picturegoer magazine at the P&P web site.

He was in a few Powell and/or Pressburger films and he was often known for playing respectable characters (like Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)) so Powell got him to play the old gentleman buying naughty pictures in Peeping Tom (1960).

Steve Crook

PaPAS

Mark O

I cant recall the title of the Movie, but theres one where Miles appears seemingly naked!.......can anyone recall which one?

I agree, Miles gives a brief but excellent performance in 'Peeping Tom'

"well, he won't be doing the crossword tonight"!!

Mark

Windthrop

I'm All Right Jack

NappieB

YES!!! In the opening sequence and in the ending sequence of that great movie!

"The future is yet to come" - George W. Bush

Arthur Linden-Jones

My fondest memories ..
The dottering tailor measuring up Guiness as The Man in the White Suit
England's gout-ridden ambassador to Gallardia Carlton Browne of the F.O.
Dennis Price's hangman executioner Kind Hearts and Coronets

I never thought he quite "cut it" as Patricia Roc's inventor in The Perfect Woman.

Moor Larkin

He's all over the place in 1950's theatre magazines. He had a passion for 'Moliere' and would translate them and then produce them in the West End.

Windthrop

He even has good comic scene with John Wayne in Circus World and Hammer used him well in a number comic roles in their early Draculas and the Hound. His eccentric Victorian persona fitted in well in those films without jarring with the dark atmosphere.

Aaryk Noctivagus

'I'm Alright Jack'... its quite startling isn't it!!! What a sport

My personal favourite appearence is the cameo as the Registra who gets his births and deaths mixed up because of the affect marriages have on him in 'The First Men in the Moon'.

steve lyden brown

I can never think of actor's like M.M. without pondering on where he lived !
Perhaps this is because I was brought up in the late 1940's in a house in Hollywood that my Mother shared with Shelley Winters.
There is/was a website that listed information of this type (generally on deceased actors only, and quite right too ! ) but I have forgotten it's name. Does anyone know of it ? There is also an American counterpart listing info. of this nature on US actors.
Unfortunately this pre-occupation of mine has become almost a fixation in the case of dear, old Stanley Holloway. Can anyone contribute any info. re his known residence(s) ?
Cheers,
SLB

smudge

Perhaps this might help -
Search Blue Plaques : Blue Plaques : Research & Conservation : English Heritage

Smudge

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

Wee Sonny MacGregor

William Miles Malleson was born in Croydon on May 25 1888. He was head boy at Brighton College and graduated from (Emmanuel College) Cambridge with a BA. He trained at RADA and made his first appearance on stage at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1911. He had his first play produced in London in 1913. On stage he perfected "a special brand of comic character whose dim-witted amiability contributed something very positive to the humour and humanity of a play. His simpletons with their runaway chins were silly in an earlier sense of the word than ours; they were happy, blessed almost holy in their lack of guile or mistrust." He had a long career on stage and also wrote the screenplay and dialogue for Herbert Wilcox's Nell Gwyn and other British historical films. He became chairman of the screenwriters guild and collaborated on a screenplay about R J Mitchell, the inventor of the Spitfire plane, which Leslie Howard filmed in 1942. After the war he joined Olivier and Richardson at the Old Vic and became the foremost adapter of Moliere's plays. He married three times: to Lady Constasnce Annesley, Dr Joan Malleson, a pioneer of family planning, and Tatiana Lieven. He died in March 1969.

Moor Larkin

Apropos of guys like this never getting their due kudos from the modern world and given that anyone dipping in from the internet might sniff contemplatively and move on........ plus I like to make some use of my Pitman qualification...... I thought I'd add some meat to Wee Sonny's bones. These details are from Theatre Who's Who for 1961.

Miles Malleson.
Actor & Dramatic Author
b. Croydon 25 May, 1888
e. Brighton College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
B.A. Hist Tripos and Mus. Bach.
Pupil at RADA
Made professional stage debut at Repertory, Liverpool (after amateur appearances) in Nov. 1911
Professional debut in London, at The Royalty, 15 Sep. 1913 as Amos Thorpe in 'Interlopers'
Nov 1913 - Joseph Somers in 'The Three Wayfarers'
Apr 1914 - Percy Davison MP in 'Account Rendered'
Jul 1914 - in 'Woman Alone'
Mar 1915 - Trotter in 'Fanny's First Play'
Apr 1916 - Mr. Lomax in 'The Mayor of Troy'
Oct 1918 - Sir Andrew Aguecheek in 'Twelfth Night'
Mar 1919 - Sir Benjamin Backbite in 'The School for Scandal'
Jun 1919 - Augustus Smith in 'The Lost Leader'
Oct 1919 - Lancelot Gobbo in 'The Merchant of Venice'
Feb 1920 - Clutie in 'John Ferguson'
Apr 1920 - Lebeau and William in 'As You Like It'
Dec 1920 - Quince in 'Midsummers Night Dream'
Feb 1921 - Trinculo in 'The Tempest'
Sep 1921 - William Shakespeare in 'Now and Then'
Dec 1921 - Diggory in 'She stoops to conquer'
Mar 1922 - Chivy in the opera 'David Garrick'
Oct 1922 - Professor Barlow in 'Angel Face'
Nov 1922 - Harold Bagby in 'The Happy Ending'
Dec 1923 - Prince Bulbo in 'The Rose and the Ring'
Mar 1924 - Lorenzo in 'Conchita'
Apr 1924 - Timothy in 'Our Nell'
Dec 1924 - Snout in 'Midsummer Nights dream'
Mar 1925 - David in 'The Rivals'
Jun 1925 - Filch in 'The Beggars Opera'
Apr 1926 - in 'Riverside Nights'
Nov 1926 - Dancing Master and Mufti in 'The would-be Gentleman'
Jan 1927 - Scrub in 'The Beaux Stratagem'
Jan 1930 - Sydney Quarles in 'This Way to Paradise'
Jun 1930 - Scrub in 'The Beauz Stratagem' [again]
Sep 1931 - Sir Joseph Wittol in 'The Old Bachelor'
Apr 1943 - Foresight in 'Love for Love'
Oct 1944 to Apr 1945 - with John Geilgud repertory Company
May 1946 - went to New York with Geilgud's company
Jul 1948 - Mr Underwood in 'People Like Us'
Nov 1948 - Old Ekdal in 'The Wild Duck'
1949 to 1950 - London Old Vic Company
Oct 1950 - Mr Pitt in 'Top of the Ladder'
Sep 1951 - M. Jourdain in 'The Prodigious Snob'
Apr 1953 - Cyril Poges in 'Purple Dust'
Dec 1953 - Matthew D'Urt in 'No sign of the Dove'
Jun 1954 - Lord Minster in 'Both Ends Meet'
Feb 1959 - Adapted, directed and played Signarelle in Moliere's 'Signarelle'
Jun 1959 - Trinculo in 'The Tempest'
Aug 1959 - Sir Paul Plyant in 'The Double Dealer'
Oct 1959 - Rev Canon Chasuble in 'The Importance of being Earnest'
Apr 1960 - Mr Butterfly in 'Rhinoceros'

Author/Adaptor
1913 - Hide and Seek
1914 - A man of Ideas
1916 - Paddly Pools
1917 - D. Co.
1919 - The Artist (from the Russian)
1925 - Conflict
1926 - Merrileon Wise
1926 - A Night in Montmartre
1926 - The Bargain
1927 - The Fanatics
1927 - Love at Second Sight
1927 - Four People
1933 - The Ace
1933 - Before Sunset
1938 - April Clouds
1938 - Six men of Dorset
1939 - The Mother
1950 - the Miser
1950 - Tartuffe
1951 - The Prodigious Snob
1954 - School For Wives
1959 - Signarelle
The Slave of Truth
The Imaginary invalid
The Little White Thought
Maurice's Own Idea
Black 'Ell
Young Heaven
Youth
The profile mentions that Miles has "also appeared in films".....



Of course, people had nothing better to do before Telly was invented.....


Oh.. and I nearly forgot. His address was given as 135, Harley Street, London.

Moor Larkin