George Baker RIP

[Wheelieman]

BBC news is reporting that George Baker has died

BBC News - Chief Inspector Wexford star George Baker dies aged 80

[smudge]

I am sorry to hear this news. George was superb as the officious '2nd Number Two' in the opening episode of THE PRISONER; he undoubtedly helped set the style of the show.

Rest in peace, George.

Respect,

Smudge

[Windthrop]

Fine actor and Britmovie favorite George Baker has passed away.

RIP George - you will be missed

BBC News - Chief Inspector Wexford star George Baker dies aged 80

[Euryale]

The actor George Baker has died at 80:

BBC News - Chief Inspector Wexford star George Baker dies aged 80


E.

[mrs_emma_peel]

Actor George Baker, who starred as Chief Inspector Wexford in TV's The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, has died.


The 80-year-old, from West Lavington, Wiltshire, died of pneumonia on Friday having recently suffered a stroke, one of his daughters, Ellie Baker, said.

Although Wexford was probably his most famous role, Baker's repertoire included comedy, drama, soap operas and science fiction over six decades.
He appeared in The Dam Busters and the TV series I, Claudius.
Baker was married three times and leaves five daughters and a number of grandchildren.
Speaking to the BBC, Ellie Baker said of her father: "He absolutely loved Wexford and he loved being Wexford... and he loved the whole thing. It was a joy to him."
His third wife, who died earlier this year, was Louie Ramsey, who played his wife Dora in the Ruth Rendell Mysteries.


As well as acting, Baker was also a talented writer for radio and television and a cookery author. His award-winning play, The Fatal Spring, was shown on BBC Two in 1980.

He was born in Bulgaria in 1931, where his English father was working as a diplomat.

[Maurice]

ceefax

Actor George Baker, who starred as Chief Inspector Wexford in TV's THE RUTH RENDALL MYSTERIES, has died.

The 80-year-old, from West Lavington, Wiltshire, died of pneumonia on Friday having recently suffered a stroke, one of his daughters, Ellie Baker, said.

Although Wexford was probably his most famous role, Baker's repertoire included comedy, drama, soap operas and science fiction over six decades.

He appeared in THE DAM BUSTERS and the TV series I, CLAUDIUS.

[Mr Sloane]

BBC News - Chief Inspector Wexford star George Baker dies aged 80

[NowVoyager]

BBC News - Chief Inspector Wexford star George Baker dies aged 80

Such sad news. A wonderful actor and a multi-talented man. I loved him as Wexford.

[mrs_emma_peel]

Very sad news ... I thought George was brilliant as Sir Hilary Bray, and, for a few scenes,
the voice of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
A very fine actor and writer.
RIP George
Emma

[Merton Park]

I always liked George Baker, another good actor from my youth passes on. He was a lot more than just Wexford. He had a very good range and I particularly first remember him in The Moonraker and Tread Softly Stranger. He will be missed.

RIP

[Chevyman]

Sad to see such a versatile actor pass away.

RIP George and thank you.

[julian_craster]

George Baker obituary
Versatile actor and writer best known as Inspector Wexford in the TV versions of Ruth Rendell's detective stories


Eric Shorter
The Guardian, Saturday 8 October 2011
George Baker obituary | Television & radio | The Guardian



George Baker played Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford on ITV for 13 years


Of all the television detectives of recent years, George Baker's Inspector Wexford, with his mature West Country burr, slight air of fallibility and occasional stubbornness, was the one who seemed to spring from real life rather than an author's fancy. Sometimes ponderous, sometimes wrong, always homely, Baker's Wexford had his affable ex-constable's feet firmly on the ground. The character, eventually a chief inspector, had a solid, believable family life. The actor, also a family man, had a hand in many of the adaptations that went under the title of the Ruth Rendell Mysteries. Whatever the combination of factors, it gave Baker, who has died at the age of 80 of pneumonia, his greatest success.

Not that fame was unfamiliar to the actor whose career had got off to such a promising start back in the 1950s. The British cinema spotted his handsome features almost as soon as they loomed across the West End boards in Frederick Lonsdale's Aren't We All? (1953). Baker had the knack, as a character actor, of furnishing whatever roughly was needed – arrogance or timidity, charm or urbanity, fear or manliness, polish or menace.

It was the same in films like The Dam Busters, The Ship That Died of Shame (both 1955), A Hill In Korea (1956), The Moonraker, Tread Softly Stranger (both 1958), Goodbye Mr Chips and On Her Majesty's Service (both 1969). He was a sympathetic actor because he knew how to seem to listen to the others.

While in the West End he would be off to film at the crack of dawn and back in the evening for a play. Baker did not merely act: he co-scripted films, wrote for television and devised occasional shows for the stage. His BBC2 play The Fatal Spring, about the first world war poets Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, won a United Nations peace award, and Baker was justifiably proud of his skill with dialogue.

To the playgoer, though, it was his Shakespeare which won him most respect, notably with the Old Vic (1959-61, including a tour of the Soviet Union). His Bolingbroke to John Justin's Richard II was rated "forthright, powerful and vindictive". His Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, his Jack Worthing in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and his Earl of Warwick to Barbara Jefford's Saint Joan in Shaw's play were also good.

Later, with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1975, at The Other Place, Stratford-on-Avon, continuing in 1976 at the Round House, north London, he was Claudius in Buzz Goodbody's revival of Hamlet with Ben Kingsley in the title part. Baker made everyone sit up. In a business suit he might have been a company director at a shareholders' meeting until he turned on a poisonous smile and, in the play-scene, staggered to his feet with a sickly leer as if to vomit.

In between came the chance to run a regional repertory company, when, in 1965, Baker re-opened the fine Regency 300-seat Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmund's, Suffolk, from which he sent out the Candida Plays company on tours as artistic director. Weary of hopping from one West End part to another, he tasted the joys of taking to people what he believed was good theatre. It was rash, but it was also fun, and he did it for six years.

The main signs of his continuing existence to be seen in the West End came from a transfer to the St Martin's theatre from Bury of Terence Rattigan's The Sleeping Prince (1968), with Baker in the Laurence Olivier role of the Regent; and his tour of Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning (1971), led by Derek Jacobi, which reached the Old Vic.

To have been out of the theatrical mainstream for such a period in mid-career was taking a risk, and in the early 1970s he started a business making training films. He even thought of giving up acting.

But the RSC came to the rescue, and unforgettable, too, was Baker's corrupt Tiberius in I, Claudius (1976), the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves's novels about the Roman emperor Claudius that proved one of its greatest drama successes.

In 1977, Baker played Ngaio Marsh's detective, Roderick Alleyn, in a New Zealand adaptation of four of the novels. The television work continued till, in 1987, he was Chief Inspector Fred Davy, deploying a fruity accent to Joan Hickson's Miss Marple for the BBC's Agatha Christie adaptation At Bertram's Hotel. While it was being edited at Ealing Studios, TVS producer-director John Davies was passing by, and he knew instantly that he wanted Baker for the role that was to be his triumph.

From 1987 to 2000, 23 titles were filmed, in between one and four episodes each, with Baker supported by Christopher Ravenscroft as Inspector Mike Burden, and by Louie Ramsay as his wife, Dora. After it, there were still cameo roles in popular series – Coronation Street, Midsomer Murders, Spooks, Heartbeat and, in 2007, New Tricks. That year he was appointed MBE for his youth club fundraising activities.

Baker's idea of giving up acting had been short-lived. It was, after all, something he had dreamed of since being born and brought up in Varna, Bulgaria. His father was a diplomat there until the family fled back to Britain before the second world war, and George went to Lancing college, West Sussex, before starting to act in repertory.

Food and wine were always great interests: he presented 100 recipes in the collection A Cook for All Seasons (1992). He was one of the few actors to taste wine for the Garrick Club. Casting his powerfully subversive, silent gaze round the table as a wine master held forth, Baker seemed determined to get his fellow members to "corpse": he had no time whatever for oenological waffle.

Nor did he for the theatrical avant garde. The nearest he came to anything like that was as Peggy Ashcroft's gangling son in Marguerite Duras's Days in the Trees at the Aldwych (1966), as he was embarking on his dream of theatre in East Anglia.

Baker married three times: to the costume designer Julia Squires, to Sally Home, and to the actor Louie Ramsay, the on-screen Mrs Wexford. All three predeceased him. He is survived by four daughters from his first marriage and one from his second.

• George Baker, actor, writer and director, born 1 April 1 1931; died 7 October 2011

[jch]

A very good actor who will be greatly missed. Very sad. R.I.P.

[Timmy_Lea]

RIP Mr Baker

[flynn]

another good one goes.R.I.P.

[Elaine]

How sad to hear this news. George Baker came across as a very nice man. One who seemed to make the acting proffesion better for his presence. As someone who knows abouts strokes, I hope he didn't suffer. It is such a cruel condition to have to endure. Rip George, you have given me many hours of enjoyment on the box and at the cinema. GeorgeBaker2-1.jpg

[didi-5]

One of my favourites - thanks for all the great performances and RIP x

[billy farmer]

Very sad news indeed.

R.I.P. George Baker.

George Baker has been one of my favourite Actors for a long time, he was great as Chief Inspector Reg Wexford (my all time favourite George Baker role) in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (one of my all time favourite TV programmes), nobody else could have played the role of Reg Wexford like George Baker did.

George Baker also appeared in many other TV programmes including three of my all time favourites - Gideon's Way, Minder and Doctor Who.

George Baker also appeared in the very first episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (in which he was driven to despair by Frank Spencer).

George Baker also appeared in one of my favourite 1950's films - The Moonraker, George Baker also had a small part in the classic 1950's War film The Dambusters.

Like Elaine said in post 16, George Baker is an Actor who has given me many hours of enjoyment on TV and he will continue to give me many more hours of enjoyment on TV, George Baker is another great Actor who will never be forgotten, i started a Thread for George Baker on Brit Movie.

A screencap of George Baker as Earl Anthony (Lord Dawlish) in The Moonraker (1958)

[Timmy_Lea]

With Sean Connery in The Square Ring, an ITV Play of the Week.

[batman]

Thanks for all your work ... RIP sir.