A Canterbury Tale

Eric Portman (Actor) .. Thomas Colpeper

Born: July 13, 1903
Died: December 07, 1969

Trivia: Yorkshire's own Eric Portman was on stage from 1924, mostly in Shakespearean roles. He kicked off his British film career in 1933, remaining within that country's film industry until his death, save for a brief visit to Hollywood in 1937 to play a minor role in The Prince and the Pauper. Shuttling from hero to villain and back again with finesse, Portman most strikingly demonstrated his versatility in a brace of Powell-Pressburger films of the war years: he played a scurrilous escaped Nazi in 49th Parallel (1941), then portrayed a heroic RAF officer in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942). As he grew older, Eric Portman harnessed his haughty bearing to play many a cashiered military officer and down-at-heels aristocrat; either way, his characters seldom removed their noses from the air.

Sheila Sim (Actor) .. Alison Smith

Born: June 05, 1922

Dennis Price (Actor) .. Peter Gibbs

Born: June 23, 1915
Died: October 07, 1973

Trivia: "I am not a star and never was. I lack that essential spark." There are precious few filmgoers who would agree with British actor Dennis Price's doleful self-assessment. The son of a military man, the Oxford-educated Price embarked upon an acting career in 1937. After several seasons in John Gielgud's acting company, Price began making films in 1944. He was often cast as handsome scoundrels, notably the charmingly homicidal heir in 1949's Kind Hearts and Coronets. A busy character actor into the 1970s, Price gained a whole new flock of fans for his appearances as Jeeves in the BBC TVer The World of Wooster. He was last seen onscreen as one of Vincent Price's victims in Theatre of Blood (1973).

John Sweet (Actor) .. Bob Johnson

Esmond Knight (Actor) .. Narrator/ Soldier/Idiot

Born: May 04, 1906
Died: February 23, 1987

Trivia: Active the London theatrical circles from 1925, British actor Esmond Knight first set foot on a movie sound stage with 1931's The Ringer. His career momentum was almost permanently interrupted in 1941, when, while serving with the Royal Navy, he was temporarily blinded in battle. He regained enough of his sight to resume his filmmaking activities in 1943, appearing in such productions as Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (1944), Black Narcissus (1946) and The Red Shoes (1947), Olivier's Henry V (1945) and Richard III (1955), and Jean Renoir's The River (1951). In 1960, Knight co-starred in Sink the Bismarck (1960), a reenactment of the naval battle in which he'd been blinded 19 years earlier. Long married to actress Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight died in Egypt while filming The Balkan Trilogy.

Charles Hawtrey (Actor) .. Thomas Duckett

Born: November 30, 1914
Died: October 27, 1988

Trivia: Birdlike, bespectacled British comic actor Charles Hawtrey was the son of a knighted theatrical star of the same name. On stage from age seven, Hawtrey earned his keep as a popular boy soprano on radio and in music halls. In the 1930s, Hawtrey frequently appeared in the films of Will Hay, playing one of the professorial Hay's cheekier students. Also during that decade, Hawtrey starred as radio's "boy detective" Norman Bones. From 1958 through 1972, Hawtrey was a mainstay of the hilarious "Carry On" film series. Charles Hawtrey left the "Carry On" series after a well-publicized argument about billing. Hawtrey died at the age of 74.

Hay Petrie (Actor) .. Woodcock

Born: July 16, 1895
Died: July 30, 1948

Trivia: In films from 1930, Scottish character-actor Hay Petrie usually showed up in eccentric bit roles. Petrie's larger film assignments included the unspeakable Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop (1936) and the mentally defective John Aloysius Evan in 21 Days Together (1937). Many consider his portrayal of the MacLaggan in The Ghost Goes West (1936) to be the actor's finest hour and a half. Active until his death, Hay Petrie's last role of note was Uncle Pumblechook in Great Expectations (1946).

George Merritt (Actor) .. Ned Horton

Born: December 10, 1890

Edward Rigby (Actor) .. Jim Horton

Born: February 05, 1879
Died: April 05, 1951

Freda Jackson (Actor) .. Prudence Honeywood

Born: December 29, 1909
Died: January 01, 1990

Trivia: Educated at the University of England at Nottingham, Freda Jackson made her professional stage bow in 1934. In films, Jackson cornered the market in spiteful (or at the very least, disgruntled) middle-aged shrews. She played such well-known literary harpies as Mistress Quickly in Henry V (1944), Mrs. Joe Gargery in Great Expectations (1947), and "Vengeance" in Tale of Two Cities (1958). Freda Jackson's final film was Clash of the Titans (1981), in which she played three blind witches.

Betty Jardine (Actor) .. Fee Baker

Born: January 01, 1941
Died: January 01, 1945

Eliot Makeham (Actor) .. Organist

Born: December 22, 1882
Died: February 08, 1956

Trivia: Slight, unobtrusive-looking British actor Eliot Makeham made his first film appearance in 1932. Makeham was most effectively cast as put-upon clerks or henpecked husbands. He played a handful of leads in the 1930s, then settled into supporting and featured roles. No matter the size of his part, he always made the most of what he was given; an excellent example was his performance as Schwab in Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich. Married three times, Eliot Makeham's third wife was another familiar British character player, Betty Shale.

Leonard Smith (Actor) .. Leslie

Beresford Egan (Actor) .. P.C. Ovenden

Charles Paton (Actor) .. Ernie Brooks

Born: January 01, 1873
Died: January 01, 1970

Jane Millican (Actor) .. Susanna Foster

John Slater (Actor) .. Sergeant Len

Born: August 22, 1916
Died: January 09, 1975

Trivia: Cockney character actor John Slater entered films in 1941, remaining active until his death 34 years later, despite such setbacks as a life-threatening auto accident in 1946 and sporadic bouts of ill health. He could usually be seen as military officers, constables, and doctors. His voice was familiar to millions of moviegoers via his narration duties in the Mining Review documentary series. John Slater's later credits included a lengthy run as Sgt. Stone on the enormously popular TV weekly Z Cars.

Michael Golden (Actor) .. Sergeant Smale

Born: August 15, 1913

Graham Moffatt (Actor) .. Sergeant Stuffy

Born: January 01, 1918
Died: January 01, 1965

Esma Cannon (Actor) .. Agnes

Born: December 27, 1905

Michael Howard (Actor) .. Archie

Born: March 04, 1916

Trivia: Versatile British supporting actor Michael Howard got his start as the house comic at the notorious Windmill burlesque house during the war years and became a popular radio star. Howard also wrote scripts, worked in British theatre and appeared in assorted films between 1946 and 1957.

Judith Furse (Actor) .. Dorothy Bird

Born: January 01, 1911
Died: January 01, 1974

Trivia: Prior to 1924, British actress Judith Furse worked on stage not only performing but also producing and directing. She went on to play character roles in numerous films, particularly in the '30s and '40s. She was typically cast as a dour, overbearing woman.

Barbara Waring (Actor) .. Polly Finn

Joss Ambler (Actor) .. Police Inspector

Born: January 01, 1899
Died: January 01, 1959

H.F. Maltby (Actor) .. Mr. Portal

Born: November 25, 1880
Died: October 25, 1963

Trivia: H.F. Maltby was a prolific stage actor, director and playwright long before his 1933 film debut. Many of Maltby's stage plays, notably The Rotters and The Right Age to Marry, were successfully adapted to the screen. As a film actor, he excelled in roles calling for brusque pomposity: magistrates, politicians, and the like. As a screenwriter, he turned out several Todd Slaughter melodramas of the 1930s, as well as such lighter fare as 1944's Over the Garden Wall. Busy though he was in films, he managed to find time to write for radio during the war years. In 1950, H. F. Maltby published his autobiography, Ring Up the Curtain.

Eric Maturin (Actor) .. Geoffrey's Father

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: January 01, 1957

Kim Hunter (Actor) .. Johnson's Girl

Born: November 12, 1922
Died: September 11, 2002
Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan, United States

Trivia: Born Janet Cole, American actress Kim Hunter trained at the Actors Studio. At age 17, she debuted onscreen in The Seventh Victim (1943) before appearing in several subpar films. Her popularity was renewed with her appearance in the British fantasy A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and, in 1947, she created the role of Stella Kowalski on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, reprising the role in the 1951 film version, for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. But her career was dealt a terrible blow when her name appeared without cause in Red Channels, a Red-scare pamphlet during the McCarthy Era, and she was blacklisted. Several years later, she was called as the star witness in a court case instigated by another Red Channels victim, and her testimony discredited the publication and made it possible for dozens of other performers to reclaim their careers. She returned to films sporadically after this, and also did much work on stage and television; among her roles was appearing as a female ape in three Planet of the Apes films. She also wrote Loose in the Kitchen, a combination autobiography-cookbook. Hunter was married to writer Robert Emmett from 1951 until her death in 2002.

Anthony Holles (Actor) .. Sergeant Bassett

Born: January 17, 1901
Died: March 05, 1950

Trivia: Usually billed as Anthony Holles, this prolific British character actor made his first movie appearance in 1921. Holles' more sizeable film roles of the 1930s included "Bonzo" in Star Reporter (1932), and a female-impersonator turn in Hotel Splendide (1932). The war years found Holles playing working-class types like Roy Todd in Thursday's Child (1943) and Sgt. Bassett in A Canterbury Tale (1946). Otherwise, Antony Holles was seen in fleeting, functional roles, most of which didn't even have character names: in his last film, The Rocking Horse Winner (1950), Holles is identified only as "Bowler Hat."

Margaret Scudamore (Actor) .. Mrs. Colpeper

07:45 am - 10:00 am, Sunday, November 16 on Turner Classic Movies ()