Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
Only includes names with the selected topics
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
1-18 of 18
- In the heyday of plays on the wireless, Preston Lockwood's tones were inimitable. Today they would be labelled fruity, but to the playgoer brought up in the dark days of the Second World War by the BBC Repertory Company, Lockwood's voice was a comforting presence. At once confiding and authoritative, warm and reverberative, it took the listener, so to speak, by the lapel and led him wherever the dramatist's imagination chanced to rove. Friendly or menacing, thoughtful or whimsical, it was above all what we used to call "received" English. That is to say, we listeners took it for granted.
It was how all Lockwood's generation of actors, famous or obscure, Cockney-born or Lancashire-bred, spoke. They all (or nearly all) aspired to sound - well, like Preston Lockwood. But in films, television or the theatre? They were another world; and the only one of them to win Lockwood's constant respect was the repertory theatre.
The son of a London Transport driving instructor, Preston Lockwood grew up between the wars when every town or city suburb had two or three theatres - one to receive tours of shows on their way to or from London, one a weekly rep and the third, a variety hall. So there was plenty of work for an aspiring performer. In those days weekly rep was a better training ground than anything available now, and Lockwood treasured it, learning one play in the morning, rehearsing another in the afternoon and performing a third at night.
Were productions a trifle "rough"? They made an actor ready, at any rate. They were exciting days. So was acting for the wireless then.
Before everything was pre-recorded, plays went out "live". Just as actors today will reminisce about the tension of playing in television in the post-war era when every mistake was obvious because there was no recording, Lockwood used to look back with affection to his years with the BBC Repertory Company when everything had to be right first time or somehow covered up.
He would vividly recall the days of Saturday Night Theatre when the cast fled to the basement of Broadcasting House during a Nazi air-raid on London and had to gather round a microphone to continue their performance. Where today's technician governs what is now known as the "input" of the various voices in a broadcast drama, the players then had to judge for themselves as a team.
It was the teamwork of such broadcasts and of weekly rep which Lockwood loved and missed in later years when everything seemed to him to be taken so much more seriously than in his youth. Yet he never gave up. In his late sixties he would still act in those remaining out-of-London reps at, say, Amersham or Maidenhead or Henley. And the plays? Well, East Lynne was among the melodramas.
Like the rest of his breed, Lockwood was ready to tour; and had a minor success for example as the elderly Geoffrey in a national tour of Ronald Harwood's The Dresser, the play about the last days of an old touring Shakespearean.
Lockwood's only recorded Shakespearean performance happened to be his first appearance (as Reginald Lockwood) on the West End stage. He played Margarelon in Michael MacOwan's modern- dress revival of Troilus and Cressida (Westminster Theatre) in 1938.
He had three lines. Encountering the curious and forthright Thersites (Stephen Murray) on the battlefield, Margarelon yells, "Turn, slave, and fight." Thersites: "What art thou?" He answers: "A bastard son of Priam's." When Thersites argues that one bastard should not fight with another, and promptly disappears, Margarelon mutters: "The devil take thee, coward!"
Whether Lockwood spoke his three lines well or ill goes unrecorded but he was soon drawn to the wireless, ever his favourite medium after the repertory theatres.
Apart from his years in broadcast drama, his performance as Dennis the Dachshund in Toytown made him particular popular with young listeners to Children's Hour in the 1950s; and he would pop up now and then on television as, say, a doctor in the Tenko series, the Lord Chancellor in Rumpole, the vicar before Dawn French appeared in The Vicar of Dibley (1994), a butler in a chocolate advertisement or a ghost clutching his severed head in order to "puff" cheap cigars. In his eighties another kind of fame came Lockwood's way, in a Cutting Edge programme as an old golfer at Northwood, Middlesex, describing his attitude to the game, his club and the rights of women players.
He was also seen by the sharp-eyed viewer in Miss Marple, The Power Game, Doctor Who, Keeping Up Appearances (1990) and Inspector Morse. Among his film credits were Julius Caesar, Time Bandits, Great Expectations, The Pirates of Penzance, Dangerous Love, and Lady Caroline Lamb, in which he played a publisher.
Is it perhaps a fact that actors who spend most of their early years before a microphone look a bit resourceless on the stage, because they are not used to acting, so to speak, full-length? Or was the tall, handsome and physically impressive Lockwood simply one of those solid workaday players who loved the work wherever it led him? At all events, he was seldom out of it. - Steve Alder was born on 28 January 1950 in Leyton, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Professionals (1977), Spender (1991) and Worlds Beyond (1986). He died in March 1997.
- Gary Rice was born in 1962 in Leyton, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for She-Wolf of London (1990), Take a Girl Like You (2000) and Dramarama (1983). He died on 23 December 2016 in Leyton, London, England, UK.
- George Scott was born on 22 June 1925 in Leyton, Essex, England, UK. He died on 2 November 1988 in Wandsworth, Surrey, England, UK.
- British actor Charles Ashton became an actor not long after receiving a medical discharge from the army due to injuries he received at the Battle of Ypres in World War I. He made his film debut in Pillars of Society (1920). He appeared in a string of films for such well-known directors as Maurice Elvey and Victor Saville. Ashton was one of the many silent-era actors whose career ended with the advent of sound, and he made his last film in 1929. However. he did begin another career as a successful novelist in the 1930s and 1940s, mostly of crime thrillers.
- Fred Hugh was something of a Summer season staple at the Bohemia Theatre, Broadstairs in the late 1950s to early '60s. He tended to play the straight man to Sonny Farrar in sketches and, on occasion, the two of them would virtually put on the whole show.
- Actor
- Writer
- Music Department
John Hewer was born on 13 January 1922 in Leyton, Essex, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Assassin for Hire (1951), Nicholas Nickleby (1977) and Fredric March Presents Tales from Dickens (1959). He died on 16 March 2008 in Twickenham, London, England, UK.- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
Bernard Butler was born on 1 May 1970 in Leyton, London, England, UK. He is an actor and composer, known for The World's End (2013), An Education (2009) and So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993).- Freddie Mirfield was born on 20 April 1908 in Leyton, London, England, UK. He died in 1974 in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, UK.
- Frances Waring was born on 19 May 1876 in Leyton, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Affairs of a Rogue (1948), Dear Mr. Prohack (1949) and The Old Lady Shows Her Medals (1937). She died on 21 May 1957 in Lewisham, London, England, UK.
- Zoe Hart Dyke was born on 6 February 1896 in Leyton, London, England. She was previously married to Oliver Hart Dyke.
- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Harry Hughes was born in Leyton, Essex, England, UK. He is known for Their Night Out (1933), Glamour (1931) and Mountains O'Mourne (1938).- April Harmon was born on 1 February 1903 in Leyton, Essex, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Film Pie, No. 10 (1920), Film Pie, No. 1 (1920) and Film Pie, No. 2 (1920). She died in 1983 in Chertsey, Surrey, England, UK.
- Actor
- Director
Arthur Holmes-Gore was born on 19 January 1871 in Leyton, Essex, England, UK. He was an actor and director, known for His Reformation (1914), Nan Good-for-Nothing (1914) and Turtle Doves (1914). He died on 12 August 1915 in Gallipoli, Turkey.- Additional Crew
- Writer
Firth Shephard was born on 27 April 1890 in Leyton, London, England, UK. Firth was a writer, known for Oh, Daddy! (1935), A Warm Corner (1930) and Lady Luck (1948). Firth died on 3 January 1949 in Westminster, London, England, UK.- Russ Sainty was born in April 1936 in Leyton, London, England, UK.
- Editor
- Producer
- Director
Derek York was born on 22 June 1927 in Leyton, London, England, UK. He was an editor and producer, known for Smith, Our Friend (1946), The Invincible Six (1970) and Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964). He died on 23 December 1994 in Poole, Dorset, England, UK.- Staff Sergeant Geoff Barkway of the Royal Engineers was one of the six glider pilots who landed British commandos at the Pegasus Bridge on 6 June 1944; their job was to capture the bridge, which had been scheduled for demolition by the Germans, in order to hamper the Allied invasion of Normandy. The British were successful in securing this bridge, as well as another bridge, thus assuring the success of the invasion, but Barkway was severely wounded in his right arm; gangrene set in and the arm was subsequently amputated. After the war, he became a divisional engineer for London Transport and served as a consultant in underground transport systems in Singapore and New York City.