Monday, September 16, 2024

John Wood: From silly-ass curate to world-weary genius


One of the great pleasures of Talking Pictures TV is spotting, with or without the aid of IMDb, British actors in their early years.

Take this vicar and silly-ass curate from the opening of Live Now Pay Later, a 1962 film that was shown the other day and is currently on the channel's online catch-up service. The vicar (on the left) is unmistakably Andrew Cruickshank, but who is his curate?

The answer is John Wood, a celebrated stage actor who paid the bills by taking small parts in a dozen British films of this era.

He then made an unexpected screen return, playing the world-weary genius Dr Stephen Falken, who has to be persuaded to try to attempt to save the world by Matthew Broderick, in the teen film WarGames.

I don't know how he came to be cast in a Hollywood film, but he was perfect for the part.

After that he appeared in a run of good films (Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, Ian McKellen's Richard III, The Madness of King George) and died in 2011 at the age of 81.

Live Now Pay Later, incidentally, tries so hard to entertain you that it becomes irritating. But you can see Ian Hendry (with hair) in the days when he got top billing, a miscast John Gregson and a generous handful of other British actors you can try to name.

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