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User:Tiller54/Christopher Lee in the 1960s

< User:Tiller54

Sir Christopher Lee
CBE CStJ
Lee at the Berlin International Film Festival, February 2013
Born
Christopher Frank Carandini Lee

(1922-05-27) 27 May 1922 (age 101)
Belgravia, London, England, United Kingdom
Alma materWellington College
Occupation(s)Actor, singer, author
Years active1946–present
SpouseBirgit Krøncke (1961–present)
Children1
Military career
Allegiance Finland
 United Kingdom
Service/branchFinnish Army (December 1939)
British Home Guard (1940)
 Royal Air Force (1941–1946)
Years of service1939–1946
RankFlight Lieutenant
Battles/warsWinter War
World War II (North African Campaign, Allied invasion of Italy, Battle of Monte Cassino)
Websitechristopherleeweb.com

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ, (born 27 May 1922) is an English actor, singer and author. Lee initially portrayed villains and became best known for his role as Count Dracula in a string of popular Hammer Horror films. His other notable roles include Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Saruman in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and The Hobbit film trilogy (2012–2014), and Count Dooku in the final two films of the Star Wars prequel trilogy (2002 and 2005).

He was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011 and received the BFI Fellowship in 2013.[1][2][3] Lee considers his best performance to be that of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the biopic Jinnah (1998), and his best film to be the British horror film The Wicker Man (1973).[4]

Always noted as an actor for his deep, strong voice, he has, more recently, also been known for using his singing ability, recording various opera and musical pieces between 1986 and 1998 and the symphonic metal album Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross in 2010 after having worked with several metal bands since 2005. The heavy metal follow-up titled Charlemagne: The Omens of Death was released on 27 May 2013.[5][6] He was honoured with the "Spirit of Metal" award in the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden God awards ceremony.

Christopher Lee is one of the highest grossing actors of all time, having grossed $8,321,486,066 worldwide.

1960s edit

Lee broke in the 1960s with appearances in Too Hot to Handle, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll and The Terror of the Tongs, where he spoke only Cantonese.[7] Also that year, he filmed his first dual language film, The Hands of Orlac. A British-French production, they would film a scene in English and then do it again in French. Lee played a villainous night-club magician and was trained for his magic acts by Billy McComb.[8] Just before he married his fiancée Gitte (see Personal life section), Lee filmed Taste of Fear, which he regards as "the best film that I was in that Hammer ever made... It had the best director, the best cast and the best story."[9] The week after his wedding, Lee played a German-speaking Chinese detective in The Devil's Daffodil. Though fluent in German, speaking the lines with a Chinese accent proved challenging for him. Directed by Ákos Ráthonyi, a German version was filmed simultaneously, with Joachim Fuchsberger added to the cast and called Das Geheimnis der gelben Narzissen.[10]

In 1961, Lee was directed by Mario Bava in Hercules in the Haunted World. He played King Lico, nemesis to Reg Park's Hercules.[11]

In 1962, Lee starred as the pirate Captain LaRoche in The Pirates of Blood River. It was released on a double bill with Mysterious Island and was the biggest grossing double bill of the year.[12][13] During the making of The Puzzle of the Red Orchid, for the first time in his career, he fell out with a director: Helmut Ashley. Lee felt he was rudely totalitarian and overly critical of his American-German accent.[14] He and Peter Cushing made the British-Irish-German film The Devil's Agent, though they did not meet on set and Cushing's scenes were deleted.[14]

For a variety of reasons, Lee and his wife moved to Switzerland in 1962. It was a "well placed hub" for the increasing number of films he made in Europe and they were also attracted by the lower tax rate and beautiful countryside. They lived near Vevey, on the northern shore of Lake Geneva, just down the road from Charlie Chaplin.[15] The first film he made following his move was the West German production Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, loosely based on the story The Valley of Fear with Lee as Sherlock Holmes. He was optimistic, but thought the final film a "mess", the "brilliant" sets and cast let down by a dubbed soundtrack and "awful" music.[16] With his time in England rationed, he gave most of it to making Hammer films. In The Devil-Ship Pirates he played the Satanic pirate Captain Robeles and in The Gorgon, where he starred alongside Peter Cushing.[17]

Living so close to Italy, he made an increasing number of Italian films. One of them was Katarsis, which was eventually made into two films, the sequel being Faust '63. Lee Played Faust in the first and Mephistopheles in the second and he himself found the story baffling, let along "the people with the strength to see both". He reunited with Mario Bava for the gothic horror The Whip and the Body. He went straight from that into The Castle of Terror, playing a scarred SS veteran.[18] In 1964's Crypt of the Vampire, Lee played Count Ludwig Karnstein in an adaptation of the novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu and in Castle of the Living Dead, he played Count Drago, alongside Donald Sutherland, who was making his film début.[19]

In 1964, shortly after the birth of his daughter, he received an offer to do an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, which took him to Hollwood for the first time.[20] The episode, The Sign of Satan, co-starred Gia Scala was directed by his friend Robert Douglas.[21] Whilst filming, he met Ray Bradbury, who wanted him to play G. M. Dark in an adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes. That didn't come about, but he did play the Ahab figure in Bradbury's Leviathan 99, an adaptation of Moby-Dick which aired on BBC Radio 3 on 3 May 1968.[22][23]

By 1965, Lee and his wife were increasingly unhappy in Switzerland. He had not been getting the "pan-European spread" of films that he had hoped for and in his return to England to make Freddie Francis horror anthology Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, he only appeared in one of the stories, which he felt was "no way to keep a name before the public". So, they left and returned to England, where they lived next door to his friend Boris Karloff.[24] His first film after returning was the Hammer film She, based on the novel She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard.[25]

Also in 1965, he starred as Fu Manchu for the first time in The Face of Fu Manchu. They filmed in Ireland with Sax Rohmer's widow, who told Lee that he looked exactly like the man he had based the character on.[26] The weather was terrible and the makeup left Lee almost unable to move his face, but the film was a great success.[27] It was released in America as Chop-suey Bond at the same time as the 1965 New York City Mayoral election and the campaign "Fu Manchu for Mayor" received a considerable number of write-in votes.[27] Four sequels followed and Lee felt that "none of [them] lived up to the pioneer."[27] Lee thought that 1966's The Brides of Fu Manchu was "tosh", almost ruined by a publicity stunt whereby winners of national beauty competitions judged by Lee won a part in the film.[27] 1967's The Vengeance of Fu Manchu was filmed in Hong Kong, simultaneously with Five Golden Dragons, in which Lee played one of the Dragons. 1968's The Blood of Fu Manchu and 1969's The Castle of Fu Manchu quickly followed, with Lee feeling that the lack of trust in Rohmer's original stories was the reason for their weaknesses.[28]

While he made the first Fu Manchu film, Lee also made two more Hammer films: Rasputin, the Mad Monk and Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Lee felt that Rasputin was one of the best characters he's ever played and that the film was a deserved success.[29] In Prince of Darkness, he returned to the character for the first time, having refused to come back for 1960's The Brides of Dracula. To keep his "momentum" going, and unhappy when "resting" between jobs, Lee made as many films as he could, often looking for "some redeeming feature" in any script he was offered. In 1965 he starred alongside Peter Cushing in The Skull and, unusually, played a non-villainous character; in 1966's Circus of Fear, he played a lion-tamer; in 1967's Theatre of Death, he played a theatre director suspected of murder; and in 1968's Eve, he played a retired explorer.[30]

Lee's first narration work was for the documentary short Victims of Terror, about the ruined cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.[31] Also that year, he starred in The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, as "Count Frederic Regula", an allusion to Count Dracula. He returned to the role of Dracula the following year in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.[32] Best known for dying on screen as the villain, Lee put out feelers for variety. In 1967, he starred as one of the heroes in the science fiction horror Night of the Big Heat and in 1968, he finally succeeded in getting the "conservative" Hammer to make The Devil Rides Out, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Dennis Wheatley. The studio had been worried about the Church's response to a film about a Black Mass but he finally convinced them to make it, with him as Duke de Richleau, the hero of the film.[33] The film co-starred Charles Gray as the Satanist and was a big success, prompting a surge in Occult films. Out of it, Lee set up his own production company, Charlemagne, making the 1973 film Nothing But the Night. It did not do well, which Lee attributes to it being ahead of its time.[34]

In 1969, he appeared in The Oblong Box, marking his first film appearance alongside his friend Vincent Price.[35]

References edit

  1. ^ "Hammer Horror star Lee knighted". BBC. Retrieved 7 May 2012
  2. ^ "Christopher Lee to receive Bafta Fellowship". BBC. Retrieved 7 May 2012
  3. ^ "Depp surprises Sir Christopher Lee with film award". BBC. Retrieved 14 December 2013
  4. ^ "The Total Film Interview – Christopher Lee". Total Film. 1 May 2005. Archived from the original on 12 June 2007. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
  5. ^ Sir Christopher Lee releases second heavy metal album
  6. ^ Farrell, John (28 May 2012). "Christopher Lee Celebrates 90th Birthday By Recording Heavy Metal". Forbes. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  7. ^ Lee 2003, p. 192.
  8. ^ Lee 2003, p. 197.
  9. ^ Hearn, Marcus; Barnes, Alan (September 2007). "Taste of Fear". The Hammer Story: The Authorised History of Hammer Films (Limited ed.). Titan Books. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-84576-185-1.
  10. ^ Lee 2003, p. 199-200.
  11. ^ Lee 2003, p. 203-.
  12. ^ Marcus Hearn, The Hammer Vault, Titan Books, 2011 p55
  13. ^ Lee 2003, p. 202-203.
  14. ^ a b Lee 2003, p. 204.
  15. ^ Lee 2003, p. 205.
  16. ^ Lee 2003, p. 206.
  17. ^ Lee 2003, p. 207.
  18. ^ Lee 2003, p. 207-208.
  19. ^ Lee 2003, p. 208.
  20. ^ Lee 2003, p. 213.
  21. ^ Lee 2003, p. 215-217.
  22. ^ Lee 2003, p. 217.
  23. ^ http://home.wlv.ac.uk/~in5379/audio/leviathan99/leviathan.htm Leviathan 99
  24. ^ Lee 2003, p. 218-219.
  25. ^ Lee 2003, p. 219.
  26. ^ Lee 2003, p. 220.
  27. ^ a b c d Lee 2003, p. 221.
  28. ^ Lee 2003, p. 222.
  29. ^ Lee 2003, p. 222-223.
  30. ^ Lee 2003, p. 223-224.
  31. ^ Lee 2003, p. 225.
  32. ^ Lee 2003, p. 226.
  33. ^ Lee 2003, p. 226-227.
  34. ^ Lee 2003, p. 227.
  35. ^ Lee 2003, p. 294.

Bibliography edit

  • Christopher Lee's Treasury of Terror, edited by Russ Jones, illustrated by Mort Drucker & others, Pyramid Books, 1966
  • Christopher Lee's New Chamber of Horrors, Souvenir Press, 1974
  • Christopher Lee's Archives of Terror, Warner Books, Volume I, 1975; Volume 2, 1976
  • Tall, Dark and Gruesome (autobiography), W.H. Allen, 1977 and 1999
  • The Hammer Story: The Authorised History of Hammer Films, by Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes, Titan Books, 1997 and 2007 – Foreword by Christopher Lee
  • Christopher Lee: The Authorised Screen History by Jonathan Rigby, Reynolds & Hearn, 2001 and 2003
  • The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare by Chris Smith, HarperCollins, 2003 – Foreword by Christopher Lee
  • Lee, Christopher (2003) [1977]. Lord of Misrule: The Autobiography of Christopher Lee. London: Orion Publishing Group. ISBN 0-75285-770-3.
  • Dans les griffes de la Hammer by Nicolas Stanzick, Le Bord de l'eau Editions, Paris, 2010.
  • Sir Christopher Lee by Laurent Aknin, Nouveau Monde Éditions, Paris, 2011.
  • Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares, by John Landis, DK Publishing, 2011 – Interview with Christopher Lee
  • Le Seigneur du désordre (autobiography, a French version of Lord of Misrule), Christopher Lee, Camion Blanc (Coll. "Camion Noir"), 2013.

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