dylan

Gregory Peck made a few films over here in the early 50s. He was hardly washed up and this probably had more to do with Hollywood assets tied up in the UK.

D.

Briant

Fifty years ago Rhonda made a film called 'Home before dark.' Today Neil Diamond has the number one album here and in the USA with a new song called 'Home before dark.'

penfold

The first could be Florence Turner in 1914, but she was far from washed up....there was also John Bunny in 1913, as Pickwick for Vitagraph, but those were US productions filmed here to use the real exterior locations around Rochester.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

TimR

Perhaps - but it may have been an opportunity for an actor or actress to try something new that was not possible in Holloywood.

Constance Cummings was not that successful in Hollywood, but she did make a few films. It was only in Britain that she became a success and found her niche. She was very young and not "on the skids". Her style of acting fit in better in Britain in films like Seven Sinners(a good, under-rated mystery) and Blithe Spirit.

Irene Worth was an outstanding actress and made her career in Britain. I didn't realize she was American until I had seen in her in many different roles - although her accent was impossibe to place, for me at least.

Yes, I liked that one - just saw it recently.

Dana Andrews was always a favorite of mine: solid, likeable and not self-absorbed. But Night of the Demon allowed him to play a role he would likely not have played in the US.

From my recollection, he was always cast as the tough, reserved "ordinary guy", as in The Best Years of Our Lives and Laura. He fit well with the film noir mysteries, but also in westerns like The Ox Bow Incident and war films. But he rarely played professional men.

In Night of the Demon, he played a research psychiatrist and I thought he did a convincing job. So Britain gave him a chance that Hollywood did not.

yankfilmbuff

I've always wondered how Glenn Ford ended up in TERROR ON A TRAIN (1953). True, he wasn't yet a big star, but it seems odd that he'd end up starring in a little low-budget film which appears to have been made for the domestic British market rather than export. When released over here, it was strickly the bottom half of a double-feature. Not that it's a bad little film, for what it is, I do enjoy watching it now and then, but I'd love to know the story behind it.

wadsy

Kerwin Mathews in Hammer,s Maniac (1963). co-starring The Beautiful

Nadia Gray!!

Windthrop

He was a big star by then - Gilda/The Big Heat - and several years later was the most bankable actor in Hollywood. I think a more likely explanation might be MGM wanting to use their Boreham Wood Studios and money they had stuck in this country and dispatched Ford with an available script. They may later have decided to relegate the film to second feature status. It does occasionally happen to stars at their peak - John Mills in between The Colditz Story and Ice Cold turns up in The Vicious Circle which is a second feature.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

howard 65

THE BIG HEAT was after TERROR ON A TRAIN, which is actually the American title of TIME BOMB.

Windthrop

It was released after it certainly

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

Joe Fraguela

Just a few more:-

Lee Remick (Loot, A Severed Head, The Omen)
Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, Danger Route)
Alex Nicol (Face The Music, a Stranger in Town, The Gilded Cage)
Tony Randall (The Alphabet Murders, Our Man In Marrakesh)

Reeldigger

No one hit the skids harder than blonde bombshell Barbara Payton, who went from playing opposite the likes of Jimmy Cagney and Gary Cooper in the early 50s to becoming a Los Angeles streetwalker a decade or so later. In between she appeared in at least one British film, an early Hammer science fiction picture titled THE FOUR-SIDED TRIANGLE. Before her early death, she recorded her lifestory titled along the lines of "I Am Not Ashamed". Another biography came out on her last year via a small American publishing house.

batman

Poor old Barbara was embroiled in a 'love triangle' with Tom Neal and Franchot Tone. After Neal almost killed Tone in a brawl the pair were ostracised from Hollywood with Barbara eventually ending up in Britain. On her return to the States she got little work and descended into a hell of drink, drugs and prostitution before her very early death. Tom neal ended up in jail after shooting his wife dead. He died shortly after his release in the early 70s.

Jingle bells Batman smells ... I heard that at school Daddy.

BAT QUIZ 16 HAS JUST BEEN POSTED IN THE COMPETITION THREAD - 06/01/09

charliekane

Some of these were quite respectable movies - Tyrone in Witness for the Prosecution, Robert Taylor in A Yank at Oxford. Poor Marilyn, though - what a dull picture The Prince and the Showgirl is. What was Gable in ?

charliekane

... Is this a best or worst (?)

Mark O

I believe Jayne Mansfield came to Britain fairly regularly to open Motorways, etc; I think her only Britmovie is 'Too hot to handle' about a Soho Stripjoint, Barbara Windsor's in it too, though I don't ever recall it being shown on UK TV

Mark