MATTHEW CONIAM : HAMMER FILMS: MILES MALLESON: THE CHERUBIC KING OF THE HAMMER FILMS TWO MINUTE CAMEO

You know him, even if you think you don’t.........

If you’ve ever watched a British comedy film or a Hammer horror, chances are you’ll have come across this cherubic king of the two-minute cameo. He is never the star, though he appeared in nearly a hundred films. He leaves all the hard work to Peter Cushing or Peter Sellers and then, usually about half an hour in, he comes on, steals the show, and goes again.

Yet he was much more than a mere eccentric old man who wanders on in the middle of horror films. After abandoning his original plan to become a schoolteacher he achieved a considerable reputation as actor, playwright, screenwriter and translator. He worked for Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Michael Winner and Paul Rotha.

Neither was he the cosy pillar of the establishment that his image – and the generally imperialistic nature of his major screenwriting assignments – would suggest. Despite celebrating British history and values in such scripts as Nell Gwyn (1934), Rhodes of Africa (1936), Victoria the Great (1937) and The First of the Few (1942) he was a prominent member of the anti-conscription movement in the First World War, an outspoken pacifist and part of that band of woolly liberal intellectuals that surrounded Bertrand Russell. He sat on the advisory council of the Masses Stage and Film Guild, established by the Labour party in 1929 to bring great cultural works to the working classes.

He even sent his children to Russell’s appalling experimental school, where discipline was outlawed and children not obliged to attend lessons if they didn’t want to: barbarism and savagery soon held sway as the great sage watched placidly from his tower. Russell also, as was invariably his custom with close male friends, struck up a long-standing affair with Malleson’s first wife, actress Colette O’Neil. (The two had only married under pressure: they were both advocates of co-habitation and sexual freedom.

Yes, this is Miles Malleson I’m talking about.

My favourite Malleson anecdote is the one about him coming out of an early performance of Look Back In Anger, the worst play ever written, ruefully shaking his head and mumbling "But bad manners isn't social criticism..." Quite a few chickens came home that night. All of which surely points to a biography screaming to be written, yet for all of his achievements and the variety of his gifts, this is ultimately his greatest talent: when you’re watching a Hammer film and Miles Malleson comes on, you smile.

Malleson was Hammer’s jolly old man: a beaming, sweet natured, white-haired elf. His inimitable style and perfect timing made him an unlikely but definitive component of the studio's formula, and a bit of their magic died when he made his last appearance in 1962. (He retired from acting, due to failing eyesight, in 1965 and died, aged 80, in 1969.)

 

Luckily for us, Malleson was around when it was still felt that audiences needed occasional comic relief from the intense terror generated by the sight of Christopher Lee in a long cloak. His job in Hammer films, then, is to come on at half time like the gatekeeper in Macbeth, and lighten the mood. The early Hammer films are forever stopping off at inns to eavesdrop on the rustic chorus, and the studio kept a rotating pool of actors on its books solely to play this assortment of drunks, innkeepers, layabouts and poachers, men like Harold Goodwin, George Woodbridge, Michael Ripper and such occasional guest yokels as John Laurie and Lionel Jeffries. They were all superb but Malleson was king, and his little cameos of good cheer retain their charm even now when, like the songs in a Marx Brothers film, they no longer serve a necessary dramatic function.

VIDEO CLIP ADDITION MARCH 2016: Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing: The Last Meeting. Cushing and Lee talk about Hammer Films regular, character actor Miles Malleson and their time working with him during the making of Hammer films, 'Dracula' (1958) and 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' (1959)

Malleson was never to be found in disreputable taverns at Hammer, he is usually cast as a professional man, albeit one of considerable eccentricity. (His last Hammer appearance, as the cabbie in The Phantom of the Opera [1962], is as downmarket as he got.) In Dracula (1958) he is a top-hatted undertaker who does drum-rolls on the coffins and laughs as he tells the story of a mourner who slipped on his steps and died. (“He came to pay his last respects and he remained to share them – oh yes, very amusing it was.”) His face, a gift to any cartoonist, never relaxes its vast, contorted smile. When Malleson laughs his eyes disappear and his mouth outgrows his face.

If you’ve seen Dracula with a live audience you’ll have noticed that while much of the horror receives the de rigeur ignorant laughter now expected of sophisticated audiences, and later comic relief involving a blustering toll-gate keeper is met with impatience, when Malleson comes on the change in reaction is unmistakable. The sophistication of his playing leaps the years, and the laughter is warm and genuine.

His best role for Hammer (and his largest) was the befuddled Bishop Frankland in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959). In his first scene (of two) he keeps mentioning sherry until the hint is taken and a glass proffered: he ends up having two. (“Now that you mention sherry, do you know I think I might like a glass.”) The plot would have us believe he is a world authority on spiders and insects, but it is hard to credit the man we see crawling about on a flight of stone steps trying to scoop a spider into his hat with the capacity for scholarly study. Dressed elegantly in a black tail coat and top hat, he audibly creaks when in motion. His second scene is a beautiful duet; he is matched perfectly with Peter Cushing’s Holmes, the one all business and laser focus, the other dancing pirouettes around him, offering sherry and drifting off on vague tangents.

First mistaking Holmes for the workman come to mend his immobile telescope, he is delighted when Holmes does the job himself and couldn’t be happier when the telescope’s sudden fluidity of movement causes him to swing it too forcefully, smashing a window. Unaware that Holmes has left the room while his attention is fixed on the comings and goings of his neighbours, director Terence Fisher cuts to a beautiful long shot as Malleson does a full 360 degree turn, extends both his arms at right angles from his body, pauses, looks at the camera and says “Well! He’s gone!”

One suspects Fisher had a particular fondness for Malleson, just as James Whale did for Una O’Connor. In Brides of Dracula (1960) he comes close to letting him shuffle off with the film’s proper atmosphere. Again paired delightfully with Cushing (here as arch vampire hunter Van Helsing) he is a hypochondriac doctor in a startling blonde toupee who dismisses vampirism as superstitious nonsense but is happy to immerse his head in a bowl of noxiously steaming quack remedies. Straight man Cushing does the seriousness and grim portent while Malleson makes inane suggestions and attributes the vampire’s bite marks to an over-fond pet dog.

His interplay with Cushing is especially amusing for the manner in which his character treats Van Helsing as his intellectual peer, while the latter is merely indulging an ally he clearly finds buffoonish and tiresome. Only Malleson is blind to the implications of Van Helsing’s attitude toward him, and continues to discuss matters of which he knows nothing in hushed professional tones. (“I might even put your specialist’s fee on my own little account!” he chirps delightedly.) While Cushing talks gravely of vampires to the headmaster of the girls’ school through which one is prowling, Malleson is clearly visible in the background, fumbling about at the headmaster’s desk, stealing our attention simply by picking things up and putting them down again, gazing distractedly at books and looking around the room. It is probably the humblest, most inadvertent bit of scene stealing in film history, but I challenge anyone to recall what Cushing is actually saying.

He pops up in one or two other interesting places, too, such as Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960). Here he is the elderly porn enthusiast who enters his local tobacconist’s and asks to see some “views”. The proprietor produces an album of soft core photos from under the counter, Malleson makes approving noises as he leafs through briefly before asking “How much would the lot be?” And he brings just the right blend of eccentricity and eeriness to the role of the ominous hearse driver/bus conductor in Dead of Night (1945).

“Room for one inside, sir…”

Malleson is always exactly the right man for the job; his scenes are funny not because he is given funny lines but because he is a superb interpretive actor who has been given lines that are exactly what his character would say. That’s why it is easy to believe that these parts were written with him in mind, or even were largely improvised. That we no longer actually need him to lighten the mood in horror in films that now seem uniformly charming and innocent only adds to his appeal. Stripped of his actual function, his performances are pure indulgence. And still, when he appears, forty years after he made his last film, we smile.

Feature: Matthew Coniam

Images: Marcus Brooks

'THE HOUSE OF HAMMER' NUMBER 11: HAMMER FILMS: THE GORGON TOLD IN COMIC STRIP

Cover Art: Brian Lewis. Script: Scott Goodall. Artwork: Goring and Cuyas.

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Read our feature on PRUDENCE HYMAN, 'The Gorgon'  HERE

'THE TRIALS OF VAN HELSING' PART ONE: PCAS TAKES A LOOK AT PETER CUSHING'S ARCH VAMPIRE HUNTER

In 1956, while planning their new color version of Frankenstein, Hammer films decided to take a chance on offering the role of Baron Frankenstein to Peter Cushing.  Producer Anthony Hinds didn’t really think they stood much of a chance – Cushing was, after all, the biggest television star in the country – but much to his surprise, the actor jumped at the chance.  When the film, finally titled The Curse of Frankenstein, became a smash hit across the globe it was only natural that they would want to continue using Cushing in their films.  For Cushing, this resulted in much soul-searching: he knew that doing more than one horror film, especially in rapid succession, would likely typecast  him as a “horror actor” and wasn’t sure that he wanted to go down that particular road. 

 

However, on-going health problems with his beloved wife Helen necessitated extensive – and costly – testing and treatments.  Hammer Horror was on the rise and it offered Cushing a degree of financial stability that he hadn’t really encountered at this stage in the game.  The actor elected to throw “respectability” to the wind – and he would embrace a long and fruitful association with Hammer and the horror genre in general.  When the time came for the studio to make their seemingly inevitable color version of Dracula (which would be released in the U.S. as Horror of Dracula to help distinguish it from the 1931 version directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi), it was every bit as inevitable that they would turn to Cushing to star.  He wasn’t really the right “type” to play Dracula himself, but the role of Van Helsing appeared to offer him a consolation prize.  The only problem was, the character as described by author Bram Stoker was an elderly Dutchman.  Producer Hinds and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster apparently toyed with the idea of sticking with the book and putting their star in a white wig, but Cushing had other ideas: he would play the role as a younger, more agile man.  It would prove to be a tremendous inspiration.

Much has been written about the resulting film over the years, but sooner than rehash the usual talk of Christopher Lee’s take on Dracula or director Terence Fisher’s elegant simplicity in realizing the material, let us consider what Peter Cushing brought to the table.  It’s well known that Cushing was not particularly enamored with the screenplays by Jimmy Sangster – least of all, the dialogue they contained.  A somewhat fussy and exceptionally dedicated actor, he would do his best to enliven the films he appeared in by working in unison with the directors, quietly making suggestions as to how to better develop the scenes and dialogue.  If Cushing had no problem shooting down the idea of playing Van Helsing a la Stoker, he was equally comfortable in making suggestions to Fisher about how to overcome some of the logical shortcomings present in Sangster’s scenario.  Sangster had written the climax with the idea of Van Helsing pulling a crucifix from his coat pocket and using it to force Dracula into the sunlight.  Cushing balked at this, however, rightly pointing out that he had already handed out several crucifixes and was in danger of coming across like a crucifix salesman!

He also felt the ending was a bit static and remembering a film from his youth, he suggested to Fisher that it might be more exciting if Van Helsing were to jump on the table in the Count’s library and use it to get a running start at jumping at the curtains, enabling him to flood the library with sunlight; he would then take two silver candlesticks and cross them together, using them to force his wounded foe into the light.  Fisher recognized a good idea when it was presented and wasn’t too proud to utilize it, and one of the most exciting finales in the history of the genre was formed.

Cushing was also ahead of the curve in recognizing that Van Helsing wasn’t entirely “all there.”  As he would later recall, anybody who doesn’t leave the house without a supply of crucifixes, holy water, stakes and hammers is hardly your average practicing physician!  As such, Cushing would play the role with an edge, making him different from Stoker’s conception and also a bit more ambiguous than other Van Helsings on film, like Edward Van Sloan (Dracula, 1931; Dracula’s Daughter, 1936), Herbert Lom (Jess Franco’s Count Dracula, 1970), Frank Finlay (the BBC’s superb Count Dracula, 1978) and his old friend Laurence Olivier (Universal’s big budget Dracula, 1979).  Cushing’s Van Helsing, especially in this first entry, is a steely adversary largely because he’ ever-so-subtly off his rocker.  This is most neatly summed up in the marvelous scene wherein the porter played by Geoffrey Bayldon (who would go on to co-star in such Cushing classics as Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, 1969, and The House That Dripped Blood, 1970) gets flustered because he thought he had heard Van Helsing talking with someone when in fact the good doctor is all alone; the truth is, Van Helsing was recording on his Dictaphone, but he elects to alarm the nosy servant by proudly proclaiming that he was talking to himself.  It’s a rich moment of dark humor that stands in relief against the more wince-inducing comedic relief provided by George Benson late in the film.

Cushing’s Van Helsing is obsessive to a fault, barely taking time to provide much in the way of consolation to the uncomprehending people caught up in the drama.  His warmest moment occurs when he comforts the little girl (Janina Faye) who nearly became vampire fodder herself, and it could be that Cushing was insistent upon adding this in to soften the character just a little (it would seem that the controversial line he says about “teddy bears” was an ad lib on his part; the line elicits groans from some viewers because the term did not come into existence until well after the timeframe in which the film is set). 

The film was released to tremendous box office and mixed reviews in 1958 and would help to cement Cushing as the successor to Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.  A sequel would have seemed inevitable, yet it took a while to materialize.  Here again, the trials and tribulations in bringing what was eventually released as The Brides of Dracula to the screen can be read elsewhere (I wrote up a piece on the film for this very site HERE), but what Cushing brought to it again deserves special consideration.

As was par for the course with Cushing, he had issues with Jimmy Sangster’s original screenplay.  Indeed, he was so appalled by aspects of it that he asked to allow a friend, Edward Percy, to come in and do a proper dialogue polish.  Producer/co-writer Anthony Hinds allowed the request and also acquiesced to the actor’s desire for a new climax – as the original one devised by Sangster (wherein Van Helsing uses black magic to defeat the vampire) clashed with his conception of the character.  Hinds devised a new bit of derring-do for Cushing to perform and quietly pocketed the original ending with the hopes of dusting it off for a later project… which he would do, on The Kiss of the Vampire (1962).

Cushing would play the character as a bit softer this time around.  He’s a warmer, more approachable character and while he’s still fixated on eradicating evil, he seems less obsessive about it.  He even displays something of a romantic interest in the film’s damsel in distress (Yvonne Monlaur), which would have seemed unthinkable in the more tunnel-vision-oriented characterization present in Dracula.  The film withholds Cushing’s entrance until the second act, but from that point on he quietly dominates the proceedings – no mean feat when one considers the truly imposing work by David Peel as the effete Baron Meinster, Martita Hunt as his disgraced mother and Freda Jackson as the cackling nanny-turned-vampire-midwife.  Cushing’s attention to detail manifests itself throughout as does his propensity for juggling as many props as possible without calling too much attention to himself – a fetish of sorts which prompted director Val Guest to refer to him as “Props Peter.” 

Brides of Dracula would be another hit for Hammer, but curiously, they would elect to not bring Van Helsing back for future installments like Dracula Prince of Darkness (1965), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969) and Scars of Dracula (1970).  The Van Helsing surrogates in these later films would range from Andrew Keir’s no-nonsense Father Sandor and Rupert Davies stern Monsignor to John Carson’s folklore-friendly Jonathan Secker and Michael Gwynn’s basically ineffectual village priest.  They were all fine in their respective roles, but one couldn’t help but wonder why it was that Cushing was no longer part of the franchise.  Things would change, however, when Hammer decided to “update” the franchise to the modern day…

Part Two Later This Week...

Written by: Troy Howarth

Banner and Images: Marcus Brooks

PART TWO of 'The Trials of Van Helsing' can be found: HERE

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DR WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965) : FULL COLOUR COMIC STRIP ADAPTION PART ONE

DR WHO AND THE DALEKS: UK 1965

CAST:

Peter Cushing (Doctor Who), Roy Castle (Ian Chesterton), Jennie Linden (Barbara), Roberta Tovey (Susan), Barrie Ingham (Alydon), Michael Coles (Ganatus), John Brown (Antodus), Geoffrey Toone (Temmosus), Mark Peterson (Elyon)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Gordon Flemyng, Screenplay – Milton Subotsky, Based on the Episode The Daleks Written by Terry Nation from the tv series Doctor Who, Producers – Max J. Rosenberg & Milton Subotsky, Photography – John Wilcox, Music – Barry Gray, Special Effects – Ted Samuels, Art Direction – Bill Carpenter. Production Company – AARU Productions.