John Saxon, the actor, who has died aged 83, was probably best-known for his role as the martial artist Roper in Enter the Dragon (1973), Bruce Lee’s final film and the one which made him a star beyond Asia.
By then, Saxon had already tasted stardom himself, and though often still cast for his handsome looks he was leaving behind his years as a leading man to become more of an authority figure character actor. Paradoxically, this ultimately enabled him to show the range of which he was capable in what proved, for a teen idol of the 1950s, a notably long career.
Spotted by a scout coming out of a cinema in Times Square when he should have been in high school, Saxon began as a photographic model. The agent Henry Willson, who promoted good-looking “beefcake” actors such as Rock Hudson, soon noticed a magazine shot of Saxon. Within days, he had a Hollywood contract – though as he was under age his parents signed it for him.
A brief early part was as an usher in the Judy Garland version of A Star is Born (1954). A strong performance as a stalker, of Esther Williams, in The Unguarded Moment (1955) raised his profile, and by the time he was paired with Sandra Dee in The Restless Years (1957) he was receiving 3,000 fan letters a week.
The following year, he shared the Golden Globe award for New Star with James Garner, and appeared with Dee and Rex Harrison in The Reluctant Debutante, and opposite Debbie Reynolds in This Happy Feeling, directed by Blake Edwards.
Saxon – a stage name – was of Italian descent, and his looks allowed him in the Hollywood of the day to be cast as many races, notably as a Mexican outlaw in The Appaloosa (1966), with Marlon Brando, for which Saxon was nominated for a Golden Globe. He was also teamed with Clint Eastwood in Joe Kidd (1972).
This Happy Feeling, poster, US poster art, from left: Debbie Reynolds, John Saxon, Curd Jurgens, 1958. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)HyperFocal: 0
The following year came Enter the Dragon, in which Saxon – who had studied some judo and karate – had top billing as a gambler forced by debt to take part in a deadly martial arts tournament on a mysterious island.
Saxon’s standing was such that the script was changed to accommodate his wish that his character, rather than Jim Kelly’s black karate champion, survives the film. Yet while it was Lee’s charisma and skills which made the picture a colossal hit, Saxon was able to display some of the charm and self-deprecating wit that in other circumstances might have made him a bigger star.
The eldest of three children, he was born Carmine Oricco in Brooklyn on August 5 1936. His father was a painter and decorator, and as a boy Saxon worked on the fairground stalls at Coney Island.
From the 1970s onwards, he appeared mainly on television, for instance as a recurring character in The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. He also had spells in Falcon Crest and Dynasty, and guest-starred in shows such as Starsky & Hutch and The A-Team.
On the big screen in that era, he was perhaps best remembered as the father of Freddy Krueger’s adversary Heather in the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. Saxon had been seen over the years in several Italian horror films, or gialli, working with directors such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento, and it became one of his favourite genres. He also featured, with Dennis Hopper, in Roger Corman’s Queen of Blood (1966).
His final roles included From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), which was co-written by Quentin Tarantino, and an episode of CSI directed by him.
John Saxon is survived by his third wife, Gloria, and by two sons.
David Brian was born in 1914 in New York City. He was signed to a contract by Warner Brothers in 1949 and starred opposite Joan Crawford in “The Damned Don’t Cry. His other films include “The High and the Mighty” in 1954 with John Wayne and “The Rare Breed” with James Stewart and Maureen O’Hara. He was married to Adrian Booth. David Brian died in 1993 at the age of 78.
IMDB entry:
New Yorker, who, after schooling at City College, found work as a doorman, before entering show business with a song-and-dance routine in vaudeville and in night clubs. He did a wartime stint with the Coast Guard and returned to acting on the New York stage after the war. Persuaded by Joan Crawford to try his hand at film acting, he joined her in Hollywood and, in 1949, signed a contract with Warner Brothers. In his feature debut, Flamingo Road (1949), he played a political boss infatuated with Crawford’s carnival girl. Brian’s most critically acclaimed performance was as the fair-minded, resourceful Southern lawyer defending condemned, but innocent Juano Hernandez from a vicious, bigoted lynch mob, in Intruder in the Dust (1949). For this role, he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actor.
Brian portrayed a powerful gang leader in The Damned Don’t Cry (1950), again opposite Crawford. In spite of his commanding presence in the film, his performance was somewhat compromised by a cliche-laden script. In This Woman Is Dangerous (1952), it was Crawford who played the criminal, and Brian the role of her insanely jealous paramour. For the remainder of the decade and into the 1960’s, Brian played an assortment of western heavies on the big screen notably raider leader Austin McCool in Springfield Rifle (1952) and saloon owner Dick Braden in Dawn at Socorro (1954) – and did the same with equal verve on television, in Gunsmoke (1955). An incisive actor with sardonic looks and a hard-edge to his voice, Brian was more often than not typecast as ruthless or manipulating types. Somewhat against character, he essayed a weakling in the ground-breaking airborne drama The High and the Mighty (1954).
On the right side of the law, he starred as crusading D.A. Paul Garrett in his own courtroom drama series, Mr. District Attorney (1954), reprising his earlier role on radio. In 1968, he also made a contribution to Star Trek (1966), as John Gill, a Federation cultural observer on the planet Ekos, whose experiment in creating a government based on National Socialist principles goes disastrously wrong.
In private life, Brian was a noted fundraiser for the Volunteers of America, a well-known non-profit charitable organisation.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Anthony Franciosa obituary in “The Guardian” in 2006.
Anthony Franciosa was born in 1928 in New York. In 1948 he joined the Cherry Lane Theatre Group. He won wide acclaim for his stage perfomance on Broadway in “A Hatful of Rain” and he recreated the film version in 1957. His other films include “The Long Hot Summer”, “A Face in the Crowd”, “Career” and “The Naked Maja” with Ava Gardner. Anthony Franciosa died in 2006 aged 77.
Tom Vallance’s obituary of Anthony Franciosa in “The Independent”
A powerful actor, with dark and moody looks, Anthony Franciosa entered films in 1957 after several years on the stage. He went on to play leading man to such stars as Jean Simmons, Anna Magnani and Ava Gardner, but his intensity did not always translate well to the screen, although he won an Oscar nomination for his role as a drug addict’s brother in A Hatful of Rain (1957). It was his performance in the same role on stage, opposite his wife at the time, Shelley Winters, that had first attracted the attention of Hollywood. Later he was to have a long career in television.
He was born Anthony Papaleo in the Little Italy district of New York in 1928. His parents, a construction worker and a seamstress, separated when he was only a year old and he was raised by his mother and aunt. He later recalled going every week to his father’s apartment to pick up an $8 cheque for child support, and he said of his upbringing in the city slums, “Getting in the first blow was something I learned in my childhood.”
After leaving high school, he worked as a welder, ship steward and cook; then, at the age of 18, he attended an audition for a YMCA production of The Seagull, and the small role he was given stimulated his interest in the theatre. He played several small roles in off-Broadway plays, adopting his mother’s maiden name of Franciosa, and between acting jobs worked as a CBS mail boy, getting to know television producers, who gave him work in live television. He also studied at the Actors’ Studio and the New School for Social Research.
In 1950 he had a featured role in a San Francisco production of Detective Story, and three years later he made his Broadway début in End as a Man, Calder Willingham’s study of life at a military school, starring Ben Gazarra as a student who wields sadistic power over younger cadets. The following year, he starred opposite Lee Grant in Theodore Reeves’s Wedding Breakfast. It was seen by Shelley Winters, who was impressed by both the play and the young actor. Though both were married at the time, they began an affair that was to lead to marriage and a relationship described by Winters as “fun and fights and grand passion and low comedy”.
In 1954 Winters starred with Gazzara and Franciosa in the Actors’ Studio production of Michael V. Gazzo’s A Hatful of Rain, reputed to be the first Broadway show to deal openly with drug addiction. Gazzara played Johnny, a young man who becomes an addict while in a military hospital, Winters was his pregnant wife and Franciosa his brother Polo, who tries to help Johnny by giving him money, which he spends on heroin.
Franciosa was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance, and the director Elia Kazan offered him a major role as a cynically manipulative personal manager of a TV star in his film version of Budd Schulberg’s A Face In the Crowd (1957). He then recreated his role of Polo in Fred Zinnemann’s transcription of A Hatful of Rain (1957), with Don Murray as Johnny and Eva Marie Saint as the wife. Franciosa received an Oscar nomination for his persuasive portrayal of the well-meaning brother.
Playing opposite Jean Simmons in Robert Wise’s likeable romantic comedy This Could Be the Night (1957), he displayed a charmingly light touch as a New York gangster bemused by the fact that school-teacher Simmons should want to moonlight with a job in his nightclub. Franciosa’s fourth prestigious movie of 1957 (and the first to have his name above the title) was George Cukor’s Wild is the Wind, in which he was a lusty ranch-hand to whom Anna Magnani turns when neglected by her husband (Anthony Quinn).
Rumours of an affair between Franciosa and Magnani prompted Shelley Winters to fly from California to the film’s Nevada location, and she and Franciosa were married later that year. Their tempestuous marriage lasted three years. Winters wrote in her autobiography, “If sex were an event at the Olympics, Tony Franciosa would have been captain of the team.”
Franciosa was part of a distinguished cast in Martin Ritt’s The Long Hot Summer (1958), but his career began to falter after the failure of The Naked Maja (1959), in which he played the painter Francisco Goya, with Ava Gardner as the Duchess of Alba. Franciosa gave one of his finest performances as a struggling actor in Career (1959), but The Story on Page One (1959), with Rita Hayworth, and Go Naked in the World (1960), with Gina Lollobrigida, were disappointments.
He had the chance to display his comic flair again in Period of Adjustment (1962), with Jane Fonda, but film roles were becoming fewer, partly due to the actor’s own temperament. In 1957 he spent 10 days in jail for hitting a press photographer, in 1959 he served 30 days at an open-prison farm for possession of marijuana, and tales of his battles with directors and other actors were rife. In a 1966 interview he confessed that Hollywood stardom had come a little too early: “It was an incredible amount of attention, and I wasn’t quite mature enough psychologically or emotionally for it.”
Franciosa’s first television series was the short-lived Valentine’s Day (1964-65), but The Name of the Game (1968-71), was a hit in which he alternated with Gene Barry and Robert Stack as publishing executives, though he was ultimately sacked for “erratic behaviour”. Shelley Winters wrote regretfully in 1989,
There were performances of A Hatful of Rain where audiences stood and yelled “Bravo” at his brilliant acting. Nowadays he seems content to do television series. Like Winters, Franciosa was also an avid civil rights supporter, joining Marlon Brando and Paul Newman at a desegregation drive in Atlanta in 1963, and The Rev Jesse Jackson was one of his close friends.
His acting was possibly most appreciated by his peers – Newman said, “Tony was as good as it gets – smart, probing, explosive, and he had it all at his fingertips.” The actress Janet Waldo recalled him as “a bit temperamental, but people understood that and indulged him . . . he was self-critical because he was such a perfectionist.” She recalled the producer Hal Kanter once telling him, “Tony, you can’t be Hamlet every week.”
Tom Vallance
The above “Independent” obituary can be accessed online here.
Andrew Prine was born in 1936 in Florida. He appeared in the 1959 Broadway production of Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward Angel”. In 1962 he starred on television with Earl Holliman in the series “The Wide Country”. His films include “Texas Across the River” in 1966, “The Devil’s Brigade”and “Chisum” in 1970 with John Wayne. He has starred and guest starred on most of the major television series over the past 40 years.
Appearing on Broadway, Andrew Prine soared to recognition in the leading role of the Pulitzer Prize winning play, Look Homeward Angel, and in his film role in the Academy award winner, The Miracle Worker (1962). He has worked with Hollywood legends such as John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, William Holden, Glenn Ford, Dean Martin, Ben Johnson, Carl Reiner, Raquel Welch, and Anne Bancroft. When Westerns were king on television, he was the frequent guest star almost every week on the all the shows.
His appearance in Western theatrical feature films include Chisum (1970), Bandolero! (1968), Texas Across the River (1966), and Gettysburg (1993). Not only appearing on television in war dramas, Prine had to learn to ski while filming The Devil’s Brigade (1968), shot in Italy with an all star cast that included William Holden, Cliff Robertson, Richard Jaeckel and Claude Atkins. Andrew starred in several television series, beginning with Earl Holiman in the series,Wide Country (1962), and joined forces with Barry Sullivan in, The Road West(1966), and in W.E.B. (1978), he portrayed the network executive, Dan Costello.
Adept at comedy, he co-starred in the series, Room For Two (1992), and was featured in the cast of, Weird Science (1994). A member of the prestigious Actor’s Studio, Andrew’s work in theatre includes Long Day’s Journey Into Night with Charlton Heston and Deborah Kerr, The Caine Mutiny directed by Henry Fonda, and Sam Shepard’s Buried Child where he received his second Dramalogue Critics Award for Best Actor the leading role. Displaying his acting range by portraying a variety of characters in his long career, Andrew Prine has delighted fans of many genres; Westerns, Military, Science Fictions and Horror, and is considered one of Hollywood’s consummate actors.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Author: Deborah Miller
The above IMDB entry cn also be accessed online here.
Andrew Prine died while on vacation in Paris at the age of 86.
Daily Star Trek News obituary in 2022:
NOVEMBER 7, 2022 – He was a self-described “working actor,” who made over 180 film and television appearances and “never met a film role [he] didn’t like.” Andrew Prine died of natural causes last Monday in Paris at the age of 86, according to The Hollywood Reprter.
Star Trek fans will remember Prine for his roles as the Tilonian military officer, Suna, in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s season six episode, “Frame of Mind” and as the Cardassian, Legate Turrel, in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s season three episode, “Life Support.”
Prine started out on Broadway, taking over for Anthony Perkins in Look Homeward Angel, about which he said, “Fortunately, I did Look Homeward for two years, and what I did while playing the lead and being paid was learn how to act. The stage manager came backstage every night with copious notes, and his job was to keep me on target. I learned how to act, really, on Broadway.”
He soon made his way to Hollywood after being scouted for a role in Wide Country, with Earl Holliman. He appeared in many westerns, both in film and on television, and received a Golden Boot Award in 2001. The Golden Boots were sponsored and presented by the Motion Picture & Television Fund from 1983 – 2007 to honor actors, actresses, and crew members who made significant contributions to the genre of Westerns in television and film.
Prine also made many appearances outside the western genre, ranging from Doctor Kildare and Gene Roddenberry’s The Lieutenant to the Weird Science TV series and Boston Legal.
Prine’s wife, actress-producer Heather Lowe, said of Prine, “He was the sweetest prince
Van Williams was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1934. He is best remembered for his role in the 1960’s television series “The Green Hornet” which also featured Bruce Lee. A prior television series of his was “Surfside Six” in 1960 which also featured Troy Donahue and Lee Patterson, all pictured above. His films include “Tall Story” and “The Caretakers”. He died in 2016 at the age of 82.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
You could shoehorn actor Van Williams right in there between the other tall, dark and drop-jaw gorgeous heartthrobs Tom Tryon and John Gavin of the late 1950s/early 1960s who conveyed a similar bland, heroic image. All three were too often given colorless heroes to play on film and/or TV — roles that played off their charm but seldom tested their talent.
Born on February 27, 1934 as Van Zandt Jarvis Williams, he was the son of a cattle rancher. He majored in animal husbandry and business at Texas Christian University but moved to Hawaii which changed the course of his life. While operating a salvage company and a skin-diving school during the mid-1950s, he was approached by Elizabeth Taylor and husband/producer Mike Todd, who were filming there. Encouraged by Todd to try his luck, Van arrived in Hollywood with no experience. Todd perished in a plane crash before he was able to help Van, but the young hopeful ventured on anyway, taking some acting/voice lessons, and was almost immediately cast in dramatic TV roles.
Warner Brothers had a keen eye for this type of photogenic hunk and smartly signed Van. Fitting in perfectly, he was soon showing just how irresistible he was as a clean-cut private eye on the series Bourbon Street Beat (1959). Although the show lasted only one season, Warners carried his Kenny Madison character into the more popular adventure drama Surfside 6 (1960) opposite fellow pin-up / blond beefcake bookend Troy Donahue. Series-wise, Van tried comedy next opposite Walter Brennan in The Tycoon (1964) . After his contract expired at Warners, 20th Century-Fox handed him his most vividly recalled part, that of the emerald-suited superhero The Green Hornet (1966) with the late Bruce Lee as his agile, Robin-like counterpart Kato. The show, inspired by the huge cult hitBatman (1966) enjoyed a fast start but, like its predecessor, met an equally untimely finish.
Never a strong draw in films, Van revealed quite a bit of himself (literally) in his debut inTall Story (1960) coming out of a shower. He was handed a typically staid second lead inThe Caretakers (1963). Continuing well into the 1970s to guest sporadically on the TV scene in classics like The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Love, American Style (1969),Mission: Impossible (1966), The Big Valley (1965)”, Nanny and the Professor (1970),Barnaby Jones (1973), and The Rockford Files (1974). Another starring series attempt with Westwind (1975) failed to make the grade and he soon let his career go. Van went on quite successfully in business with telecommunications, real estate and law enforcement supplies among his ventures. With his glossy, pretty-boy years far behind him, he has not felt the need to look back except for an occasional autograph convention.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Suzanne Pleshette obituary in “The Guardian” in 2008.
Her Guardian obituary by Ronald Bergan:
There are two distinct memories of Suzanne Pleshette, who has died from lung cancer aged 70: the sensual, dark-haired beauty of 1960s movie melodramas, and the more mature and light-hearted but still sexy wife in The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78) on television.
In the former part of her career, Pleshette, elegantly tailored, would often play rich, young and independent girls. For example, in her second feature, Rome Adventure (1962), she is a librarian, dismissed for stocking a “risqué” book, who takes off for a touristy Rome to find romance. Among the ruins, she finally opts for the American art student Troy Donahue over the Latin charms of Rossano Brazzi.
In 1964, Pleshette married blond, blue-eyed teen idol Donahue, though the union only lasted a year. During that time, the couple co-starred in Raoul Walsh’s western, A Distant Trumpet (1964). In it, Donahue is an expressionless lieutenant defending a fort who falls in love with Pleshette, the wife of his commanding officer, both stars being rather too 1960s in looks to be convincing characters of the Old West.
While the career of Donahue, who had made his reputation in “generation gap” dramas of the early 60s, went on the slide, Pleshette’s career bloomed. Apart from A Distant Trumpet, she appeared in two other films in 1964, Fate is the Hunter, as an air hostess, the sole survivor of a plane crash, and the absurd Youngblood Hawke as a publisher’s editor nurturing the writing talent of a truck driver.
Pleshette was born in New York City: her mother was a dancer, and her father a stage manager. She graduated from Manhattan’s high school of performing arts and then attended Syracuse University, before appearing on Broadway in a small role in Compulsion (1957). She would return to Broadway four more times, most notably in The Miracle Worker (1959), replacing Anne Bancroft in the role of Annie Sullivan, teacher of the blind and deaf Helen Keller. It was her greatest acting achievement.
A Rage to Live (1965) gave Pleshette the chance to pull out all the stops as a “nymphomaniac”, whose promiscuity only leads to loneliness and despair. However, as well as she did, only the likes of Barbara Stanwyck or Susan Hayward would have brought enough flamboyance and passion to rescue the film.
In Nevada Smith (1966), opposite Steve McQueen, Pleshette, as a backwoods girl whose beauty is still apparent behind the grime of a swamp, has a good death scene after being bitten by a snake. Among her more cheerful roles were those in three innocuous Walt Disney productions: The Ugly Dachshund (1966), though she is upstaged by dogs; The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967), in which, as a singer in a saloon, she is the nearest thing one can get to sexy in a Disney movie; and the love interest in Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968).
Parallel to her feature film work, which began in the Jerry Lewis movie The Geisha Boy (1958), Pleshette was active on television from 1957, with roles in Have Gun – Will Travel, Naked City, Route 66, Ben Casey and a 1960 episode (directed by Paul Henreid) in Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This led to Hitchcock casting her in The Birds (1963), in which she is significantly contrasted with the “cool blonde” Tippi Hedren. As a warm, garden-loving schoolteacher, she is one of the first fatal victims of the murderous birds, dying while protecting a child.
· Suzanne Pleshette, actor, born January 31 1937; died January 19 2008
Her Guardian obituary can be accessed on-line here.
Nine years later, Pleshette played a very different schoolteacher in The Bob Newhart Show. After having made several scintillating appearances on Johnny Carson’s talk show, in which she made ample use of her celebrated contralto speaking voice, Pleshette was offered the role of Emily Hartley, the smart, funny, attractive “career woman” wife of psychologist Bob (deadpan comedian Bob Newhart), the stable centre of the crazy happenings in the Hartley household. Unusually for American sitcoms of the period, the couple had no children (like Pleshette herself), and they shared a double bed in which they discussed (and solved) the problems of the day.
After the show ended, Pleshette continued to be active on television, her last appearances being in three episodes of Will and Grace (2002-04), playing the estranged mother of Megan Mullally’s character Karen Walker.
In 2006, Pleshette underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer, subsequently catching pneumonia and dying of respiratory failure. Pleshette’s second marriage was to Texas oilman Tim Gallagher, from 1968 until his death in 2000, and then to actor Tom Poston, with whom she had appeared in the Broadway comedy The Golden Fleecing over 40 years previously. He died last year.
Michel Ray was born in 1944 in England to an English mother and a Brazilian father. He made his film debut in “The Divided Heart” in 1954. In 1956 he went to America to make “The Brave One” and “The Tin Star” amongst others. In 1962 he was featured in “Lawrence of Arabia”. He ceased acting in 1964 and became a stockbroker.
His IMDB entry:
He was born into a wealthy family having an English mother and a Brazilian father. He was educated in Switzerland where he learnt to ski. His parents were friends of producerMichael Balcon who was looking for a boy who could ski for his 1954 film The Divided Heart (1954). Young Michel fitted the part perfectly and started a film career which culminated in the role of Faraj in Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
This project took eighteen months and caused Michel to look at the affect film work was having on his education. He decided to quit acting. He subsequently attended Harvard where he read business studies. After university he joined White Weld & Co moving on to NM Rothschild and Credit Suisse First Boston. In his London city career in investment banking he made his first millions.
In 1995 he joined Nikko Securities and in 1998 became the first non-Japanese member of the main board. Meantime he had continued his passion for winter sports and was a member of the British Olympic ski team at the 1968 Winter games in Grenoble, France.
The Divided Heart, poster, US poster, from top: Armin Dahlen, Yvonne Mitchell, Michel Ray, 1954. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
He was in the team again in ’72 and ’76 competing on these occasions in the luge. He had also married a childhood friend Charlene, daughter of Alfred “Freddie” Heineken. Her mother was Lucille Cummins daughter of a Kentucky Bourbon maker.
Her father Freddie died in January 2002 and left his controlling interest, 50.05%, in the Heineken brewing empire to the couple. It is estimated at three billion pounds sterling or four point two billion dollars. Michel’s life story is more glamorous than many a Hollywood fiction.
As a teenager, Michel de Carvalho was living every boy’s fantasy. While his friends sat in school, 17-year-old Michel was a movie star, with a coveted role in Sir David Lean’s epic, Lawrence Of Arabia.
Between breaks in filming, he caroused through the fleshpots of Beirut with Hollywood stars Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif, pursued by hordes of adoring females. The film won seven Oscars and would go down in cinema history. Michel, using the stage name Michel Ray, seemed destined for fame.
Many child actors would let the experience go to their heads and veer off the rails, eventually disappearing from view. But Buckinghamshire-born Michel has continued to thrive and enjoy life to the full.
Now aged 68, he is still living out a male fantasy – as a financier with a £5.5 billion fortune and limitless supplies of beer. He did it by deciding to abandon acting on the set of the classic film so that he could enrol at Harvard University.
He also went on to compete in two Winter Olympics as a skier and tobogganer. And he married the love of his life, Charlene Heineken, now 58, the daughter of the late brewery magnate Freddie Heineken. In 2002, the couple inherited the £4 billion controlling stake in the Heineken empire.
The shares have surged and with the recent acquisition of the Tiger beer brand the group’s value has increased by more than £1 billion.
Now chairman of Citi Private Bank’s business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Michel commutes between London, Washington and Holland. ‘I’ve always believed work hard, play hard,’ he says. ‘Life has never been boring – luckily.’
Approaching their 30th wedding anniversary, the couple undoubtedly lead an enviable life, but their lifestyle has never been ostentatious.
Their wealth eclipses that of Sir Philip Green and his wife Tina, as well as the Bransons and the Rausings, but the couple have never appeared in glossy photo spreads or hosted lavish public parties.’I partied in Beirut with the greatest actors of the age’
Instead, they concentrated on raising their five children in England, away from the glare of publicity. But later this month they may be tempted out for a rare appearance – to celebrate the re-release of the film that could so easily have launched Michel into a Hollywood career 50 years ago.
In the biopic of T. E. Lawrence, Michel played Farraj, one of the First World War hero’s two teenage followers. ‘They offered me the choice of the two roles – one dies in quicksand, the other is blown up,’ Michel recalls, speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday about his extraordinary life.
‘I said, ‘‘Which one lasts longer?’’ And they said the one that gets blown up by a detonator near the railway line. So I took that one, because it paid more.
‘Now whenever I tell anyone I was in Lawrence Of Arabia they say, “Oh, were you the one who went down in the quicksand?” And no one can ever remember the other one.’
Sands of time: As a child actor, Michel de Carvalho played the role of Arab boy Farraj opposite Peter O’Toole in the classic film Lawrence Of Arabia in 1962
In fact, Michel appears in one of the film’s most iconic scenes – as he and Lawrence stride into the officers’ mess in Cairo to announce the audacious capture of Aqaba. ‘We’re thirsty,’ Lawrence announces, dusty and dishevelled. ‘We want two large glasses of lemonade . . . there’s been a lot of killing, one way or another.’
During the 18-month shoot in 1961 and 1962 Michel became acquainted with some of the most talented actors of his age – as well as the countless women who pursued them. ‘The parties happened on rest and relaxation days in Beirut. Quite often I went with Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif – and that was super fun,’ he says.’At school I got so much fan mail’
Camel-riding proved more of a challenge. ‘In the beginning it wasn’t pleasant,’ Michel says. ‘You are sitting mostly side-saddle, with the hump coming up in the middle and you’re not really supposed to grip it. On one occasion I was on a camel which suddenly saw its stable – and it bolted for home, which was terrifying.
‘Years later, friends of mine had a 50th birthday party in Egypt. We went up and down the Nile. On one day they organised a camel race. Needless to say, I won.’
‘We couldn’t possibly discuss the fun in an elegant Sunday newspaper… they were the superstars and I was the bag carrier. But even superstars can only handle so much. And then the bag carrier…’
Looking back, Michel appears incredulous at his teenage decision to give up acting on the set of one of the greatest movies. ‘I said – using a huge swear word – ‘‘What am I doing here in the Arabian desert with all these funny people, superstars, Anthony Quinn, Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Jack Hawkins and the rest?’’ Where are my friends? This is a weird life. And then, almost simultaneously I became self- conscious about acting. And I just couldn’t get over my self-consciousness. It was the worst decision I ever made.
Multi-talented: Michel de Carvalho was part of the British Olympic luge team. Here he is pictured at Heathrow Airport before a flight to Japan, where he took part in the Winter Olympics at Sapporo
‘I never usually talk about Lawrence Of Arabia, but I was discussing it with someone last night and they said it wasn’t the worst decision because where would I be today? Some ageing B actor, looking for TV adverts.
‘But I should have stretched out the acting career a bit – maybe until 30.’ Born to a Brazilian diplomat father and an English mother in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, in 1944, Michel fell into acting at the age of ten. His father had died when he was very young and his mother married again, to a wealthy leather merchant.
The family entertained many illustrious figures to dinner in their London home – one was the famous producer Sir Michael Balcon, who needed a young boy who could ski, to star in his film, The Divided Heart. Initially Michel’s mother, Annie, was opposed to the idea of her son appearing on screen. He recalls: ‘But Sir Michael said it was only three months and who knows what will happen – this door has opened, why would you close it?’
Michel was a hit and film offers flooded in. Using his two Christian names as a stage name, Michel Ray was the Daniel Radcliffe of his day – going on to great acclaim in films such as The Brave One and The Tin Star.
Between films, Michel attended a boarding school in Switzerland, honing a gift for languages and developing his passion for skiing.
Rich lives: Michel de Carvalho with his wife Charlene, the Heineken heiress
Aged 17, his star reached a peak with Lawrence Of Arabia. ‘I had massive attention at school,’ he says. ‘I got so much fan mail. I never get that any more – as a banker, you get hate mail.’
Five years after he walked away from acting, just as he was about to take up a graduate place at Harvard Business School, his life took another twist when he was offered the chance to become a member of the British ski team at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.
‘It wasn’t so much for my skill as for my ability to pay the plane fare,’ says Michel modestly.
His mother was not keen on the idea. She had been relieved when he gave up acting and wanted him to get serious about making a living. ‘I wish I had kept the telegram she sent,’ he says. ‘Every second word was “bum”. It said, “From film bum to ski bum – if you make this totally stupid decision, you will be completely cut off.” So I made the completely stupid decision.’
He delayed taking up his place at Harvard to compete. ‘I told a huge porkie pie to Harvard – I can’t tell you what it was in case they take away my diploma.’
His mother need not have worried. He duly graduated from Harvard and embarked on a career in banking. But he had just begun his second job, at NM Rothschild, when he was asked to join the 1972 GB Olympic team once again – this time in the luge, the fastest and most dangerous style of tobogganing. Nervously, he asked his new boss for time off to compete in Japan. ‘I was sitting at my desk and the internal phone rang. A voice said, “Will you pop up?’’ It was Eddie Rothschild, the chairman of the bank.
‘I went upstairs and Eddie rummaged in his pockets, pulled out £200 – which was my weekly salary – and said, “Let me remind you, young man, in this bank, England comes first.” ’
Michel competed in the luge with his best friend Jeremy Palmer-Tomkinson – the uncle of socialite Tara Palmer- Tomkinson. ‘In the first week of training, my entire body was dark blue,’ he said. ‘When you are in the double luge you really are just fodder – I was the little guy and Jeremy was the big heavy guy on top. In the Japan Olympics, we were really just clowns.’
In 1983, when he was in his late 30s, Michel married Charlene Heineken. ‘Our families both had houses in St Moritz,’ he says. ‘I was ten years older than her so it wasn’t what you would call love at first sight – certainly not on her side.’I met the girl of my dreams, complete with free beer’
‘I always drank Heineken. But the problem was Heineken was the most expensive beer. So when I met my wife I thought, “This is fantastic, I’ll have free beer.” I didn’t realise then that marriage is not just about free beer.’
The couple honeymooned in the Caribbean but suffered a shock on their return. In November 1983, Charlene’s father was kidnapped in Amsterdam and held for ransom for three weeks.
‘It was a baptism of fire,’ says Michel. ‘I was just not prepared for something like that. My father-in-law had no other family but my mother-in-law, my wife and me. Luckily, it all ended well. The ransom was paid and the kidnappers all went to jail.’
In 2002, Freddie Heineken died and Charlene inherited her father’s stake in the family business – which transformed her and Michel, overnight, into one of Britain’s wealthiest couples. Today, Charlene and Michel still play a key role in the business.
Sitting in the desert with Peter O’Toole, Michel could little have dreamt how his life would turn out. ‘I never planned my life,’ he says. ‘The good lord has been kind. If you have a bit of luck, you can do quite a lot. But looking back, it was probably a mistake quitting acting.
‘ Looking back, someone should have said to me, “No, stay with that.” ’
The 50th Anniversary 4K Restoration of Lawrence Of Arabia is in cinemas across the UK from November 23. The Empire Leicester Square will have special preview screenings from next Saturday.
The above “MailOnline” article can also be accessed online here.
2519488 Mac Coy aux poings d\’or: KILLER McCOY, US poster, from left: Brian Donlevy, Mickey Rooney, Ann Blyth, 1947; (add.info.: Affiche du film Mac Coy aux poings d\’or (KILLER McCOY) de Roy Rowland avec Brian Donlevy, Mickey Rooney, Ann Blyth, 1947 ); Everett Collection.2447171 Behind Prison Gates: BEHIND PRISON GATES, standing l-r: Jacqueline Wells, Brian Donlevy, Richard Fiske on poster art, 1939; (add.info.: Affiche du film BEHIND PRISON GATES de Charles Barton avec standing l-r: Jacqueline Wells, Brian Donlevy, Richard Fiske on poster art, 1939); Everett Collection.EVT5783509 STAND BY FOR ACTION, US poster, Robert Taylor, Charles Laughton, Marilyn Maxwell, Brian Donlevy, 1942; (add.info.: STAND BY FOR ACTION, US poster, Robert Taylor, Charles Laughton, Marilyn Maxwell, Brian Donlevy, 1942); Everett Collection.
Brian Donlevy was born in 1901 in Northern Ireland. His parents moved to the U.S. when he was an infant. His breaththrough film role came in 1935 when he was cast with Edward G. Robinson in “Barbary Coast”. He went on to star in “Beau Geste”, “The Great McGinty”, “An American Romance” and “The Miracle of Morgans Creek”. He died in 1972 at the age of 71.
IMDB entry:
It seems that Brian Donlevy started out life as colorfully as any character he ever played on the stage or screen. He lied about his age (he was actually 14) in 1916 so he could join the army. When Gen. John J. Pershing sent American troops to invade Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa–Mexican rebels under Villa’s command raided Columbus, NM, and killed 16 American soldiers and civilians–Donlevy served with that expedition and later, in WW I, was a pilot with the Lafayette Escadrille, a unit of the French Air Force comprised of American and Canadian pilots. His schooling was in Cleveland, OH, but in addition he spent two years at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, MD. However, he gave up on a military career for the stage. After having landed several smaller roles, he got a part in “What Price Glory” and established himself as a bona fide actor. Later such roles on stage as “Three for One”, “The Milky Way” and “Life Begins at 8:30” gave him the experience to head off to Hollywood. Donlevy began his Hollywood career with the silent film A Man of Quality (1926) and his first talkie was Gentlemen of the Press (1929) (in which he had a bit part). There was a five- to six-year gap before he reappeared on the film scene in 1935 with three pictures: Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935), Another Face(1935) and Barbary Coast (1935), which was his springboard into film history. Receiving rave reviews as “the tough guy all in black”, acting jobs finally began to roll his way. In 1936 he starred in seven films, including Strike Me Pink (1936), in which he played the tough guy to Eddie Cantor‘s sweet bumpkin Eddie Pink. In all, from 1926 to 1969 Donlevy starred in at least 89 films, reprising one of his Broadway roles as a prizefighter in The Milky Way (1940), and had his own television series (which he also produced), Dangerous Assignment (1952). In 1939 he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the sadistic Sgt. Markoff in Paramount’s Beau Geste (1939), its remake of an earlier silent hit. The Great McGinty (1940), a Preston Sturges comedy about a poor homeless slob who makes it to Governor of a state with the mob’s help, is a brilliant character study of a man and the changes he goes through to please himself, those around him and, eventually, the woman he loves. A line in the film, spoken by Mrs. McGinty, seems a fitting description of the majority of roles Brian Donlevy would play throughout his career: “. . . You’re a tough guy, McGinty, not a wrong guy.” Donlevy’s ability to make the roughest edge of any character have a soft side was his calling card. He perfected it and no one has quite mastered it since. He later, in 1944, reprised that role in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944). By 1935 Donlevy was working for 20th Century-Fox and had just completed filming 36 Hours to Kill (1936) when he became engaged to young singer Marjorie Lane, and they married the next year. The marriage produced one child, Judy, but ended in divorce in 1947. It was 19 years before he remarried. In 1966, Bela Lugosi‘s ex-wife Lillian became Mrs. Brian Donlevy, and they were married until his death in 1972. Donlevy had always derived great pleasure from his two diverse interests, gold mining and writing poetry, so it was fitting that after his last film, Pit Stop (1969), he retired to Palm Springs, CA, where he began to write short stories and had his income well supplemented from a prosperous California tungsten mine he owned. Having gone in for throat surgery in 1971 he re-entered the Motion Picture County Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, on March 10th, 1972. Less than a month later, on April 6, he passed away from cancer.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jane Byron Dean <McGinty@aol.com>
The above IMDB entry cn also be accessed online her
Nils Asther was born in Denmark in 1897. He was brought up in Sweden. He appeared in Swedish and German silent films from 1918 until 1926. In 1927 he went to Hollywood where he made his first U.S. film “Topsy and Eva”. He made films with Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. In 1933 he made “The Bitter Tea of General Yen” with Barbara Stanwyck. Between 1935 and 1940 he made films in the U.K. He then returned to Hollywood and made films there until 1949. In 1958 he returned to Sweden where he died in 1981 at the age of 84.
IMDB entry:
Nils Asther was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1897 and raised in Malmö, Sweden, by his wealthy Swedish parents. After attending the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm, he began his stage career in Copenhagen. His film debut came in 1916 when the director Mauritz Stiller cast him in the lead role (as an aspiring actor, appropriately enough) in the Swedish film Vingarne (1916). After working with Victor Sjöström in Sweden and Michael Curtiz in Germany, Asther moved to Hollywood in 1927, where his exotic looks landed him romantic roles with co-stars such as Greta Garbo, Pola Negri, andJoan Crawford. Although his foreign accent was a hindrance in “talkies”, his Hollywood career continued until 1934 when he was blacklisted for breaking a contract and went to Britain for four years. After his return to Hollywood in 1938, his career declined and by 1949 he was driving a truck. In 1958, he returned to Sweden, where he remained until his death, making occasional appearances in television and on stage.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Lyn Hammond
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
TCM Overview:
Dashing, smooth leading man of late silent films and the first decade of talkies, in the USA from 1927. Tall and often mustachioed, Asther proved a capable and attractive romantic lead opposite Greta Garbo in “The Single Standard” (1929) and Barbara Stanwyck in “The Bitter Tea of General Yen” (1933). He continued playing supporting roles into the 1940s.
2470633 Barbe-bleue: BLUEBEARD, Nils Asther, John Carradine, Ludwig Stossel, Jean Parker (top, left row), 1944; (add.info.: Affiche du film Barbe bleue (BLUEBEARD) de Edgar G.); Everett Collection.
