CAUSE: Olivier developed cancer and was told to cut down on booze. When his daughter, Julie-Kate, refused him a whisky top-up, he cursed her, “I can’t believe a sperm from my testicle ever created such a cunt.” On July 1, 1989, Olivier’s kidneys began to fail. He died ten days later at his home, the Malthouse, Ashurst, Sussex, aged 82. He left £1,352,383.
FURTHER READING: Love Scene – Jesse Lasky, Jr. & Pat Silver (London: Sphere, 1980); Olivier: The Life Of Laurence Olivier – Thomas Kiernan (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1981); Confessions Of An Actor – Laurence Olivier (London: Coronet, 1984); Olivier – Anthony Holden (London: Sphere, 1989); Laurence Olivier: A Biography – Donald Spoto (London: HarperCollins, 1991); The Real Life Of Laurence Olivier – Roger Lewis (London: Century, 1996).
Gary Olsen
Born November 3, 1957
Died September 12, 2000
Big likeable lad. Born in London, Olsen’s parents died before he was 11 and he and a sister were raised by an aunt and uncle. When he reached the age of 15, he attended workshops at an arts centre in south London, and soon afterwards left home to pursue an acting career. For most of the Seventies Olsen was a jobbing actor who made his film début in Birth Of The Beatles (1979) playing Rory Storm, the troubled individual who led The Hurricanes, the first beat group to play at Liverpool’s Cavern club, the first to back Cilla Black and whose life ended in tragedy with an overdose in 1972. He was also in Outland (1981), The Sender (1982), The Wall (1982, as a Pink Floyd roadie), Party, Party (1983), Winter Flight (1984), Underworld (1985) and Spangler in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). His first big break was playing Pc Dave Litton in the first series of the cop show The Bill (1984–1985). It was not until years later that Olsen achieved real recognition as Ben Porter in the BBC sitcom 2point4 Children (from September 3, 1991 until 1999). The show’s creator Andrew Marshall remembered, “I still have the cast list I compiled years earlier, when we were starting, in which not only is his name the sole one on the list beneath the character of Ben, but it is ringed three times, just in case there should be any doubt in anyone’s mind. I was surprised to find when he arrived to chat with us that he was in fact physically smaller than the character I [had seen] on the stage. This, I think, seems to summarise his essential quality as an actor; bursting with energy and somehow occupying more space than his actual body through sheer exuberance of performance.” Playing Bill to Olsen’s Ben was Belinda Lang (b. London, December 23, 1955), the daughter of Jeremy Hawk whose death is noticed in this book. Olsen was married twice. In 1985 he married the actress Candy Davis (b. Essex, January 2, 1962 as Clare Damaris Bastin) who won Miss Nude UK 1982 and later became a stripper to support them when his acting work dried up. She was best known as Miss Belfridge, Mr Rumbold’s sexy secretary in Are You Being Served?. The marriage did not survive. Olsen married, secondly, Australian-born Jane Anthony and by her had a son and a daughter.
CAUSE: Olsen died of cancer in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, where he had gone to spend his last months with his in-laws following his diagnosis in December 1999.
Orry-Kelly
(JOHN KELLY)
Born December 31, 1897
Died February 27, 1964
Costumier par excellence. Born in Kiama, New South Wales, Australia, Kelly studied at art college in Sydney before going to London and then New York where, after an unsuccessful attempt at becoming an actor, he settled down to design costumes for Broadway plays and films. Short, effeminate, stocky and with large blue eyes, he lived with Cary Grant, with whom he ran a speakeasy, in 1921, before both were successful. In 1931 he joined Warner Bros and stayed there until 1946, working on costumes for all their big films, including Ingrid Bergman’s gowns in Casablanca (1942) and Bette Davis’ in Jezebel (1938). He designed for, among others, the following films: Tiger Shark (1932), They Call It Sin (1932), I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932), 20,000 Years In Sing Sing (1932), Voltaire (1933), Frisco Jenny (1933), Female (1933), 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers Of 1933 (1933), Midnight Alibi (1934), Mandalay (1934), Dames (1934), I Found Stella Parish (1935), The Irish In Us (1935), Gold Diggers Of 1935 (1935), Cain And Mabel (1936), Kid Galahad (1937), That Certain Woman (1937), Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), Dark Victory (1939), The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940), Million Dollar Baby (1941), The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Kings Row (1942), Now, Voyager (1942), Mr Skeffington (1944), Arsenic And Old Lace (1944), Mother Wore Tights (1947), An American In Paris (1951) for which he won his first Oscar, Oklahoma! (1955), Les Girls (1957) for which he won a second Oscar, Some Like It Hot (1959) for which he won his third and final Oscar, Gypsy (1962), Irma La Douce (1963) and many, many more.
CAUSE: He died in Hollywood, California, aged 66, of natural causes.
P
Hugh Paddick
Born August 22, 1915
Died November 9, 2000
‘Straight actor gone wrong’. Hugh Paddick was born at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, the son of a farmer. Destined for a career in the law, Paddick failed his bar exams and decided to move into acting, much to the dismay of his family. He joined the Liverpool repertory company and played mainly leading roles. In January 1954 he was cast in the part of Percival Brown in Sandy Wilson’s Twenties musical pastiche The Boy Friend. The show was to run for five years although Paddick left to appear in other plays and revues. On July 1, 1958, he appeared in the first edition of “a sort of radio show” entitled Beyond Our Ken. Written by Eric Merriman and the often uncredited Barry Took, it starred Kenneth Horne with a supporting cast of Kenneth Williams, Betty Marsden, Ron Moody, Stanley Unwin and Patricia Lancaster. The show was lucky to air at all. After making a pilot Horne suffered a stroke that left his speech impaired. Thankfully, he made a fullish recovery. The second series saw the departure of Moody and Unwin and the arrival of Bill Pertwee. Beyond Our Ken ran for six years and 122 episodes until February 16, 1964. It introduced several notable characters such as the effeminate duo Rodney and Charles (Paddick and Williams), teenage pop idol Ricky Livid (Paddick), comedian Hankie Flowered (Pertwee), TV cook Fanny Haddock (Marsden), roving reporter Cecil Snaith (Paddick), old coots Ambrose and Felicity (Williams and Marsden), pompous Cockney Arthur Figley (Williams), sibilant Stanley Birkenshaw (Paddick) and Somerset farmer Arthur Fallowfield (Williams) for whom “the answer lies in the soil”. In 1959 Paddick played Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady at Drury Lane. He made his film début in School For Scoundrels (1960) playing an instructor. From November 9, 1963 until August 22, 1964, he played Osbert Rigby-Soames in the television series The Larkins which starred Peggy Mount and David Kossoff. He played Connell in We Shall See (1964). It was in the replacement for Beyond Our Ken, Round The Horne (from March 7, 1965), that Paddick shone despite the stridency of Kenneth Williams. They played the camp chorus boys Julian and Sandy (named after Julian Slade and Sandy Wilson) to perfection. In his posthumously published diaries Williams was often scathing about his colleagues but for Paddick he has only unqualified praise. The characters created for the show also included Rambling Syd Rumpo (Williams), J. Peasmould Gruntfuttock (Williams), Colonel Brown-Horrocks of MI5 (Paddick), Chou-en Ginsberg, MA (Failed) (Williams), Lotus Blossom the geisha girl (Paddick), Daphne Whitethigh (Marsden), Madame Osiris Gnomeclencher (Paddick), Seamus Android (Pertwee), and Dame Celia Molestrangler and aging juvenile Binkie Huckaback (Marsden and Paddick). The show ran until June 9, 1968 and ended completely in February 1969 when Horne died of a massive heart attack at the BAFTA Awards. Paddick did not let the success of Round The Horne stop him from working in other media. In June 1966, he appeared on stage with Fenella Fielding in Let’s Get A Divorce at the Mermaid Theatre. He was a tourist in the film San Ferry Ann (1966) and took various parts in the television series Beryl Reid Says Good Evening (March 4–April 8, 1968), and was Sydney Jelliot, the lead role in the sitcom Wink To Me Only (Comedy Playhouse, May 3, 1968; series June 11–July 16, 1969). His other films included: The Killing Of Sister
George (1968) as Freddie, Up The Chastity Belt (1971) as Robin Hood, a priest in Up Pompeii! (1971) and a window dresser in That’s Your Funeral (1972). He was also Mr Pettigrew in Can We Get On Now, Please? (June 2-July 7, 1980) (TV Series) and an anarchist in Blackadder The Third (1987). Paddick was an unassuming man who was embarrassed to be recognised in public, unlike his friend Kenneth Williams. Paddick recalled dining with Williams and the latter demanding a table away from the other patrons. Later, when Williams realised he was not being recognised his voice became louder until people turned round. He declared the “intrusion” intolerable and demanded that he and Paddick left, their meal unfinished. Paddick lived with his boyfriend, Francis, from the late Sixties until his death.
CAUSE: Hugh Paddick died aged 85 of natural causes.
Lilli Palmer
(MARIA LILLIE PEISER)
Born May 24, 1911
Died January 28, 1986
Teutonic elegance. Born Posen, Germany, the daughter of a surgeon, she began appearing on stage on August 1, 1932, in Berlin. When the Nazis came to power she fled to Paris, arriving in London in 1935 to appear in films. She didn’t make her London stage début until March 24, 1938. Her films included Crime Unlimited (1935), A Girl Must Live (1939), The Rake’s Progress (1945), Anastasia (1956), Mädchen In Uniform (1958), Operation Crossbow (1965), Sebastian (1968), De Sade (1969) and The Boys From Brazil (1978). On January 25, 1943, in London she married Rex Harrison but the marriage came apart because of his affair with Kay Kendall. When Harrison discovered Kendall was seriously ill, Palmer agreed to give him a divorce so he could marry the sick woman on the understanding that when she died she and Harrison would remarry. They divorced in Juarez, Mexico, on February 6, 1957, but a remarriage never occurred and, instead, on September 21, of the same year, Palmer married Argentinean actor Carlos Thompson (b. Buenos Aires, June 7, 1916, as Juan Carlos Mundin Schafter, d. September, 1990, by his own hand). Not everyone liked Palmer. Noël Coward once stated: “The week has been hell, made entirely so by Lilli … I have never – with the possible exception of Claudette Colbert – worked with such a stupid bitch.”
CAUSE: She died at home in Los Angeles, California, aged 74, from a heart attack.
FURTHER READING: Change Lobsters And Dance– Lilli Palmer (London: Star Books, 1977).
Bruce Paltrow
Born November 26, 1943
Died October 2, 2002
Gwynie’s dad. For an accomplished director Bruce William Paltrow will probably be most remembered for the emotionally incontinent speech that his daughter, Gwyneth, made about him when she won an Oscar in 1999. In a performance that really had to be seen to be disbelieved, her voice breaking, seeming to cry but without tears, she told him, “I love you more than anything in the world,” having told the assembled throng that she “understood love of a tremendous magnitude”. 6́ 1˝ Paltrow was born in Brooklyn to a family of rabbis dating back to seventeenth-century Russia. He was educated at Tulane University in New Orleans. He moved back to New York where he began working in the theatre where in 1969 he met and later (1970) married the actress Blythe Katherine Danner (b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 3, 1943). They were to have two children: Gwyneth (b. September 28, 1972) and Jake (b. 1975). Paltrow’s big break came with the television movie Shirts/Skins (1973). He worked for Mary Tyler Moore Productions and later won two Emmy nominations for The White Shadow. His first film with MTMP was A Little Sex (1982) but it was not a success. He then worked on the television series St Elsewhere and Homicide: Life On The Streets. He spent some time working on the film Duets (2000) only for its stars – Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow – to split in 1997, causing the film to lose much of its commercial appeal.
CAUSE: In January 1999 just before he was due to begin filming Duets Paltrow was diagnosed with throat cancer. He underwent radical surgery and radiation treatment and was back on-set in 13 days. In September 2002, he set out to travel Europe with his daughter to celebrate her 30th birthday. He was taken ill in Rome and died aged 58 from complications of pneumonia and throat cancer.
Hermes Pan
(HERMES PANAGIOTOPOULOS)
Born December 10, 1909
Died September 19, 1990
The hoofer’s hoofer. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Hermes Pan became a Hollywood choreographer nonpareil. He worked on over 50 Hollywood movies including 10 with his close friend Fred Astaire. In fact, he and Astaire were so close that Pan was able to double for Astaire in certain films, performing moves that Fred was unable to do himself. Pan had begun his life working in bars, where he was paid 10¢ a dance. On Broadway he met Ginger Rogers and she introduced him to Astaire. His films included: Flying Down To Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935), Follow The Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance? (1937), A Damsel In Distress (1937) for which he won an Oscar for the Fun House number, The Story Of Vernon And Irene Castle (1939), Blood And Sand (1941), Song Of The Islands (1942), My Gal Sal (1942), Coney Island (1943), Diamond Horseshoe (1945), That Lady In Ermine (1948), The Barkleys Of Broadway (1949), Kiss Me Kate (1953), The Student Prince (1954), Silk Stockings (1957), Pal Joey (1957), Can-Can (1960), Flower Drum Song (1961), Cleopatra (1963), My Fair Lady (1964), The Great Race (1965), Finian’s Rainbow (1968), Darling Lili (1970) and Lost Horizon (1973).
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 136