Miles Malleson

Actor, playwright and screenwriter Miles Malleson's list of credits reads like a history of British cinema in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Croydon in Surrey, he attended Brighton College in Sussex before studying at Cambridge University with the intention of becoming a schoolmaster. However, he opted instead for the stage and went into repertory theatre in Liverpool and then onto the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. He wrote his first play in 1913 and, in contrast to the characters he often portrayed on screen, held socially progressive views which were often reflected in his work. His output included two plays about the First World War, "D Company" and "Black Eill", and one about the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

On the advisory council of the Masses Stage and Film Guild established by the Independent Labour Party in 1929 to bring plays and films of an international character to working-class audiences.

His most prolific period as a screenwriter was in the 1930s and 1940s, initially on historical subjects like Nell Gwyn (1934), Rhodes (1936), and Victoria the Great (1937). In many of these films he also began appearing in supporting roles, and from the mid-'30s onwards he found himself in increasing demand as an actor as well as a writer. Over the next 30 years he appeared in nearly 100 films, featuring in everything from Alfred Hitchcock thrillers and Ealing comedies to Hammer horrors.

He was the first chairman of the Screen Writers' Association, the predecessor of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, in 1937.

Usually cast as a befuddled judge or a doddering old doctor, academic or other local eccentric, he first caught audiences' imagination as the hearse driver in the Ealing chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945), after which he began to get bigger and better parts.

He also worked as a screenwriter on two documentaries for Paul Rotha, Land of Promise (1946) and World of Plenty (1943).

He made five films with Christopher Lee: One Night with You (1948), Saraband (1948), Private's Progress (1956), Horror of Dracula (1958) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959).

He was particularly memorable as the philosophical hangman in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), Dr.

McAdam in Folly to Be Wise (1952), the barrister Grimes in Brothers in Law (1957) and as Windrush Sr.

in Private's Progress (1956) and I'm All Right Jack (1959).

He was originally cast as Dr. Matthew Roney in Quatermass and the Pit (1958) but the role eventually went to Cec Linder.

A memorial service was held for him at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London on 16 April 1969.