CAUSE: He died aged 95 in Beverly Hills, California, from pneumonia.
FURTHER READING: Billy Wilder In Hollywood – Maurice Zolotow (London: W.H. Allen, 1977); The Pocket Essential Billy Wilder – Glenn Hopp (Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2001).
Michael Wilding
Born July 23, 1912
Died July 8, 1979
The Second Mr Elizabeth Taylor. Born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, the son of an attaché to the Russian army, Michael Charles Gauntlet Wilding was to become one of the leading cinematic idols of post-war British cinema. He was a talented actor but his undoubted good looks did him no harm. Although a matinée favourite, Wilding once admitted his ambition was “to be rich and not have to work too hard”. He might have added that access to willing young ladies was also important to him. He married Kay Young in 1938, but that marriage floundered during the war because he couldn’t keep his trousers up. He met Elizabeth Taylor in 1949 but their romance didn’t begin until she was filming Ivanhoe (1952). At the time, Wilding was in the middle of an affair with Marlene Dietrich that began when they co-starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stagefright (1950) in which he was Inspector Wilfred Smith. However, Taylor won him over (she proposed and even bought her own engagement ring) and on February 21, 1952 they were married in Westminster’s Caxton Hall. She commented: “He enjoys sitting at home, smoking his pipe, reading, painting, and that’s what I intend doing … This is, for me, the beginning of a happy end.” Their honeymoon, taken in the French Alps, lasted eight days and ended when Wilding returned to begin filming Derby Day (1952) in which he was cast as David Scott opposite Anna Neagle, their sixth film together. He was then released from his contract by Herbert Wilcox so he could become a star in America. Wilding was an easygoing man but he was exasperated by Taylor’s tardiness (it hadn’t improved by 2000 when she turned up very late for a dinner to commemorate her damehood) and her untidiness. He painted several portraits of his wife and took hundreds of photographs of her, many of which found their way onto the walls of their home. They had two children: Michael Howard (b. Santa Monica, California, January 6, 1953) and Christopher Edward (b. February 27, 1955) but by the time of the younger boy’s first birthday the marriage was in serious trouble. They divorced in Acapulco, Mexico, on January 31, 1957. On February 12, 1958, Wilding married socialite Susan Nell in Nevada but they divorced on July 23, 1962. His fourth and final marriage was to actress Margaret Leighton on July 15, 1964. That ended with her death 12 years later. His films included: Tilly Of Bloomsbury (1940) as Percy Welwyn, Spring Meeting (1940) as Tony Fox-Collier, Convoy (1940) as Dot, Secret Mission (1942) as Private Nobby Clark, In Which We Serve (1942) as Flags, Dear Octopus (1943) as Nicholas Randolph, English Without Tears (1944) as Tom Gilbey, Carnival (1946) as Maurice Avery, The Courtneys Of Curzon Street (1947) as Sir Edward Courtney, An Ideal Husband (1947) as Viscount Goring, Spring In Park Lane as Richard, Under Capricorn as Charles Adare, Maytime In Mayfair (1949) as Michael Gore-Brown, Into The Blue (1950) as Nicholas Foster, The Lady With A Lamp as Sidney Herbert, Trent’s Last Case (1952) as Philip Trent, Derby Day as David Scott, Torch Song as Tye Graham, Zarak (1956) as Major Ingram, Danger Within (1959) as Major Charles Marquand, The World Of Suzie Wong (1960) as Ben Marlowe, A Girl Named Tamiko (1962) as Nigel Costairs, Waterloo (1970) as Sir William Ponsonby, and Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) as Lord Holland.
CAUSE: Wilding died, aged 66, following a fall at his home in Chichester, Sussex. He left £147,392.
FURTHER READING: Apple Sauce: The Story Of My Life – Michael Wilding As Told To Pamela Wilcox (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982).
Kenneth Williams
Born February 22, 1926
Died April 15, 1988
Cult comic. Small, camp, bitchy, narcissistic, secretive, solitary, articulate, well read – Kenneth Charles Williams was all this and much more. He was born in Bingfield Street off the Caledonian Road in King’s Cross, north London and moved soon after to Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury, remaining in or very near the area for the rest of his life, living alone for all but a few months. The son of hairdresser Charles George Williams (although the writer Barry Took believed Charlie was not Kenneth’s father. Certainly his elder sister, Pat, was the product of their mother’s prior relationship) and Louisa Alexandra ‘Louie’ Morgan (b. December 20, 1900, d. July 1991), father and son rarely saw eye to eye. Kenneth treated a present of boxing gloves with complete disdain. He showed a precocity as a child lauded in a school play (playing Princess Angelica in Thackeray’s The Rose And The Ring) which did not impress Charlie: “Acting is no good. The women are all trollops and the men are nancies.” (His father was to die in unusual circumstances on October 15, 1962, aged 62, after drinking from a bottle of cleaning fluid.) In 1940, Kenneth began training as a draughtsman before he was called up on April 20, 1944. He was posted to the Royal Engineers before joining Combined Services Entertainment where he gained his first adult experience of show business. Among his contemporaries were playwright Peter Nichols, film director John Schlesinger and comedian Stanley Baxter. On December 4, 1947, he was demobbed and resumed his career as a cartographer but the pull of the theatre was too strong and, in 1948, he became a repertory actor. “The thing to do, in any circumstance, is to appear to know exactly what you are doing,” he once said, “and at the same time convey casual doubts about the abilities of everybody else and undermine their confidence.” He made his film début in Trent’s Last Case (1952) which starred Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton and Orson Welles in the tale of a journalist who was convinced a tycoon’s death was, in fact, homicide. That same year he first appeared on television in The Wonderful Visit. On September 29, 1954 he opened in St Joan at the Arts Theatre and established his reputation with a quite brilliant Dauphin. On November 2, 1954, the first of Hancock’s Half Hour was broadcast bringing him radio fame. In the late-Fifties he regularly appeared in comedy revues such as Share My Lettuce (from August 21, 1957, written by University Challenge chairman Bamber Gascoigne) and Pieces Of Eight (from September 23, 1959). In 1958 he was cast as the intellectually effete Private James Bailey in Carry On Sergeant (1958), the first of the long-running comedy series. He was paid £800 for each of the films until 1962 when his remuneration rose to £5,000. None of the cast received residuals. Over the next 21 years he was to appear in 24 more Carry On movies, creating such memorable characters as nuclear physicist Oliver Reckitt in Carry On Nurse (1959); English master Edwin Milton in Carry On Teacher (1959); rooky policeman PC Stanley Benson in Carry On Constable (1960); “helping hand” Francis Courtenay in Carry On Regardless (1961); first officer Leonard Marjoribanks in Carry On Cruising (1962); Captain Fearless of HMS Venus in Carry On Jack (1963), originally entitled Carry On Sailor; espionage agent Desmond Simkins in Carry On Spying (1964); Julius Caesar in Carry On Cleo (1964) in which he utters the immortal line “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!;” Judge Burke in Carry On Cowboy (1965) in which he does an impression of Hal Roach; mad scientist Dr Orlando Watt in Carry On Screaming (1966); terror of the aristocracy Citizen Camembert – The Big Cheese – in Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head (1966); Foreign Legion chief Commander Burger in Carry On Follow That Camel (1967); Dr Kenneth Tinkle in Carry On Doctor (1967); Randy Lal, the Khazi of Kalabar, in Carry On Up The Khyber (1968); surgeon Dr Frederick Carver in Carry On Again Doctor (1969); citizens advisor Percival Snooper in Carry On Loving (1970); Thomas Cromwell in Carry On Henry (1970); lavatory manufacturer W.C. Boggs in Carry On At Your Convenience (1971); Sir Bernard Cutting in Carry On Matron (1971); holiday rep Stuart Farquhar in Carry On Abroad (1972), Captain Desmond Fancey in Carry On Dick (1974), the last script by Talbot Rothwell; archaeologist Professor Roland Crump in Carry On Behind (1975) and French ambassador to the Court of St James’s, Emile Prevert, in Carry On Emmanuelle (1978). His non Carry On… films were Innocents In Paris (1952) as a London airport window dresser; The Beggar’s Opera (1952) as Jack the pot boy; Valley Of Song (1953) as Lloyd the Haulage; The Seekers (1954) as Peter Wis
hart; Misalliance (1954) as Bentley Summerhayes; Tommy The Toreador (1959) as the Vice-Consul; Make Mine Mink (1960) as Freddie Warrington; Raising The Winds (1961) as Harold Chesney; His And Hers (1961) as a policeman; Henry Halfpenny in Twice Round The Daffodils (1962) and Sir Henry Baskerville in The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1978). He left Hancock’s radio show after Tony Hancock claimed that his characters were “cardboardian stereotypes” and joined the show Beyond Our Ken (July 1, 1958–February 16, 1964) which became Round The Horne (March 7, 1965–June 9, 1968) when the writer Eric Merriman fell out with the BBC and Barry Took and Marty Feldman took over. In RTH he was renowned for his vocal dexterity creating such legendary characters as Sandy (with Hugh Paddick playing Julian), Rambling Syd Rumpo, Chou En Ginsberg, M.A. (Failed) and J. Peasemould Gruntfuttock, the walking slum. In 1968 he joined the cast of the radio show Just A Minute in which contestants have to talk for sixty seconds without hesitation, deviation or repetition. He was a regular until his death. He also hosted International Cabaret on BBC 2 from July 5, 1966 until 1968 and told BBC boss Bill Cotton that his fee was too big. But it is the Carry On… films that the name of Kenneth Williams will always be associated and remembered. To see him at his best view a video or DVD of An Audience With Kenneth Williams (1983). “Ten thou for a night of my old tat,” he said to his friend Gyles Brandreth.
CAUSE: Williams was never the most physically vigorous of men, forever in and out of hospital with various complaints, many to do with his rectum. He had considered suicide a number of times before he took an overdose of sleeping pills at his London home: 8, Marlborough House, Osnaburgh Street, London NW 1. He was 62, the same age as the father he detested. Although towards the end of his life Williams worried that work was drying up and that he would run short of money, he nevertheless left £538,379 in his will. The coroner, Dr Christopher Pease, returned an open verdict but left no doubt as to his belief that Williams had indeed committed suicide. The final entry in Williams’ diary certainly left a clue: “I felt so weak I wanted to flake out. The pain got worse and worse … oh, I’m so tired these days! No energy at all. Pain came back with a vengeance! Nothing seems to allay it now … Even if the op. don’t work, I can’t be worse than I am at the moment … By 6.30 pain in the back was pulsating as it’s never done before … so this, plus the stomach trouble continues to torture me – oh – what’s the bloody point?”
FuRTHER READING: Just Williams: An Autobiography – Kenneth Williams (London: Dent, 1985); Kenneth Williams: A Biography – Michael Freedland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990); The Kenneth Williams Diaries – Russell Davies (London: HarperCollins, 1993); The Kenneth Williams Letters – Russell Davies (London: HarperCollins, 1994).
Beverly Wills
Born August 6, 1933
Died October 24, 1963
Wisecracker. The daughter of rubber-face comedienne Joan Davis (b. St Paul, Minnesota, June 29, 1907, d. Palm Springs, California, May 23, 1961, of a heart attack), Beverly Wills made her film début in Anaesthesia (1938) playing a small girl before landing a role on her mother’s series I Married Joan, playing Beverly Grossman. Like her mother, she had natural comic timing and it seemed as if she was a star in the making. She appeared in Small Town Girl (1953) as Deidre, Some Like It Hot (1959) as Dolores and The Ladies’ Man (1961).
CAUSE: Having just completed Son Of Flubber (1963) she lay in bed smoking when she fell asleep, causing a blaze that also killed her grandmother and two young sons. It was the same house her mother had died in two years earlier.
Anna May Wong
(WONG LIU TSONG)
Born January 3, 1907
Died February 3, 1961
The first Oriental star. Born the daughter of a laundry man in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles, her real name means ‘Frosted Yellow Willow’. She made her film début as an extra in The Red Lantern (1919) but it was two years before she again graced the sound stage with small parts in The First Born (1921) and Dinty (1921) and then larger roles in Bits Of Life (1921) and Shame (1921). At the age of 13 she worked as a photographer’s model. In 1922 she appeared in the first full-length Technicolor film, The Toll Of The Sea. It was her portrayal of a Mongol slave girl opposite Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief Of Bagdad (1924) that made her a star. In public she always dressed in traditional Oriental clothes but in private she preferred jeans and jumpers. Wong had the looks and talent to be a major star but was hampered by the racism that was prevalent in Twenties and Thirties America, when Orientals and blacks were consigned to minor roles while the major ethnic parts were played by made-up Caucasians. A case in point is The Crimson City (1928) in which Wong had a supporting role while the lead part, that of a Chinese girl, was played by Myrna Loy. She still excelled in films about China and the Far East, appearing in Mr Wu (1927), Old San Francisco (1927), The Chinese Parrott (1927), Chinatown Charlie (1928) and Across To Singapore (1928). Eventually, Wong became so fed up with her lack of success in her native land that she travelled to Germany where she was accepted, appearing in Song (1928). She became so fluent in German that her voice did not have to be dubbed by another actress. She also worked in England, playing opposite Laurence Olivier in the play The Circle Of Chalk in March 1929. In 1930 she appeared in Elstree Calling and the English, French and German versions of The Flame Of Love. That same year she worked in Austria before returning to America to appear in the Broadway play On The Spot, which opened on October 29, 1930. In 1931 she was signed to Paramount and starred in Daughter Of The Dragon (1931) which was based on Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu tales. She then appeared in Shanghai Express (1931) as Hui Fei, A Study In Scarlet (1933), Tiger Bay (1933), Chu Chin Chow (1934), Java Head (1934), Limelight Blues (1934), Daughter Of Shanghai (1937), Dangerous To Know (1938), King Of Chinatown (1939), Island Of Lost Men (1939), Ellery Queen’s Penthouse Mystery (1941), Bombs Over Burma (1942) and Lady From Chunkging (1942). Following World War II she found film work difficult to come by, appearing in only Impact (1949) and Portrait In Black (1960). She worked on the television series Gallery Of Mme Lui-Tsong playing Mme Lui-Tsong in 1951. She never married.
CAUSE: She died of a heart attack exactly a month after her 54th birthday in Santa Monica, California. She was buried in section 5 of Rosedale Cemetery, 1831 West Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90007.
Ed Wood, Jr
Born October 10, 1924
Died December 10, 1978
The world’s worst film director. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of a post office worker, Edward D. Wood, Jr’s name until recently was known only to hardcore film buffs and the cognoscenti of truly awful films, the best example of which is his execrable Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), which later became a stage show. Tim Burton’s film Ed Wood (1994) starring Johnny Depp changed all that and brought Wood’s work to a greater audience able to ‘appreciate’ his abilities. Raised around Niagara Falls, Wood joined the US Marines in 1942 and served with distinction until being injured and shipped home where he joined a carnival. Like many more worthy directors, Wood set out to make great movies but only succeeded in producing dross. His first film was Glen Or Glenda (1953) in which Bela Lugosi narrates the story of a man Glen (played by Wood but billed as Daniel Davis) who cannot understand why his fiancée is upset by his need to wear her clothes. In Bride Of The Monster (1953) Lugosi plays mad scientist Dr Eric Vornoff who tells one girl not to be scared of his large assistant played by Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, “Don’t be afraid of Lobo,” intones Lugosi, “he’s as harmless as kitchen.” The original script said that he was “as harmless as a kitten ” but the drug-addicted Lugosi blew the line and refused to do a retake. In another scene a girl picks up a phone that didn’t ring and begins what therefore seemed to the audience to be an imaginary conversation. In fact, the sound of the phone trilling was supposed to have been dubbed in post-production but Wood simply forgot. The original peroration of the film is unintentionally hysterical. Lugosi is supposed to be crushed to death by a giant octopus and Wood decided to
film a real life cephalopod and then cut that with Lugosi’s terrified face. However, filming the creature through the glass of its aquarium didn’t produce realistic footage, so Wood borrowed a dummy octopus from Columbia. That still didn’t solve the problem, because no one knew how to work the engine to set the creature’s tentacles flailing. Ever resourceful, Wood had a crew member throw Lugosi onto the octopus. The star then did his best to create the spectre of a fearful human battling with a fearsome sea creature. This he did by screaming a lot and pulling the octopus’ lifeless tentacles about him. Then Wood ran into another problem. His financier wanted another end – a nuclear explosion. So, the film ends with Lugosi’s life and death struggle, then a large mushroom cloud from the film stock library. Following the disaster that was Plan 9 From Outer Space (the feature had not been helped by Wood’s star dropping dead during filming), he made Night Of The Ghouls (1960) which went unreleased for 23 years because of financial problems. Thereafter, perhaps not surprisingly, Wood found directorial jobs difficult to come by so he turned his hand to writing pornographic books, often about transvestites, his own particular fetish. Wood had the habit of turning up for work fetchingly clad in women’s suits, tights, high heels and Angora jumpers. Oh, and he had a beard, a very deep voice and smoked cigarettes. He claimed he wore a bra and knickers under his marines uniform. His last film was the hardcore Necromancy (1972). He left a widow, Kathy.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 181