Ralph Bates

Ralph Bates

Birth : 1940-02-12, Bristol, England

Death : 1991-03-27

History

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Ralph Bates (12 February 1940 – 27 March 1991) was an English film and television actor, known for his role in the British sitcom Dear John and for being one of Hammer Horror's best-known actors from the latter period of the company. Bates was born in Bristol, England, of French ancestry (He was the great, great nephew of French scientist Louis Pasteur) and educated at Trinity College Dublin. He read French there, before winning a scholarship to Yale Drama School. The course completed, Bates returned to Ireland to make his stage debut in Shaw's You Never Can Tell at The Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 1963. A career in repertory theatre soon followed and the young actor gained experience in productions ranging from Hedda Gabler, to raucous comedies. Later, Bates carved a niche in the world of horror films and played important roles or the lead in several Hammer Horror productions, such as Taste the Blood of Dracula, The Horror of Frankenstein, Lust for a Vampire, and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, in which he played a deranged doctor who mistakenly transforms himself into a beautiful siren. He portrayed Caligula in the series The Caesars and alongside Cyd Hayman in a passionate French tale of murder and mystery - Crime of Passion series. After playing Thomas Culpeper in an episode of The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), he went on to star in the BBC drama series, Moonbase 3 (1973) and the long-running Poldark, in which he played villainous George Warleggan. The series ran for 29 episodes, starting in 1975. He also played Communist Paul Vercors in the final season of the drama series Secret Army. Because of his French ancestry and dark looks, he was often chosen to play a Frenchman on television. Bates also appeared in the television movie Minder on the Orient Express, again as a Frenchman. It looked, for some time, as if he might remain typecast in sinister roles, but he was offered a part in a farcical comedy by the writer John Sullivan, which saw Bates as the loveable but loveless central character among a singles group, with each of its members looking for that perfect but ever elusive partner. Dear John (1986–87), in which he realistically played the part of a divorcee returning to single life, lasted for two series, and around the same time he appeared in the ITV Yorkshire Television sitcom Farrington of the F.O. (1986) with Angela Thorne and Joan Sims. Bates became ill and was diagnosed with cancer. He died in London at age 51 from pancreatic cancer. He was divorced from the actress Joanna Van Gyseghem, and survived by his second wife, the actress Virginia Wetherell (married 1973-1991). The couple had one daughter actress Daisy Bates (b. 1974), and a son William Bates (b. 1977), an actor & musician. Description above from the Wikipedia article  Ralph Bates, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Profile

Ralph Bates

Movies

Santa's Christmas Crash
Santa's sled crash-lands in the desert where some children and a herd of magic camels help get him back in the air.
King of the Wind
LeDuc
In 1727, an Arab colt is born with the signs of the wheat ear and the white spot on his heel: evil and good. And thus begins the life of Sham. He is a gift to the King of France, through a series of adventures with his faithful stable boy, Agba, he becomes the Godolphin Arabian, the founder of one of the greatest thoroughbred racing lines of all time.
Flying in the Branches
Ed
Sue hasn't seen her family in Prague since she became a refugee in London in 1968. When her younger sister, Dana, is allowed to visit the West for the first time, Sue is reminded of things she had tried to forget. Amid the tensions of the sisters' less than joyful reunion, Dana announces that she wants to find a husband.
Les louves
Bernard
During World War II, two allied soldiers escape from a Nazi POW camp to Lyons, where they accept the hospitality of mademoiselle Helene.
Mrs. Reinhardt
Mr. Reinhardt
An Englishwoman seeking to escape her marriage arrives at French hotel.
I Don't Want to Be Born
Gino Carlesi
A woman gives birth to a baby, but this is no ordinary little tyke. The child is seemingly possessed by the spirit of a freak dwarf who the mother once spurned. Cue a spate of strange deaths, the one common factor being the presence of a baby in pram at the scene...
Murder Motel
A young woman looking into the disappearance of her fiance discovers that the last place he was seen was at a very strange motel.
Persecution
David Masters
A cat lover (Lana Turner) kills her husband, blackmails her lover (Trevor Howard) and torments her son (Ralph Bates).
Fear in the Night
Robert Heller
It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Penny is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?
Thank You Very Much
Peter
Raucous satire from NF Simpson, the famous absurdist author of One Way Pendulum et al. Featuring Ralph Bates, Stanley ‘Howard Hughes’ Lebor and Joanna ‘Duty Free’ van Gysegham.
Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde
Dr. Jekyll
In foggy London Dr Jekyll experiments on newly deceased women determined to discover an elixir for immortal life. Success enables his spectacular transformation into the beautiful but psychotic Sister Hyde who stalks the dark alleys of Whitechapel for young, innocent, female victims, ensuring continuation of the bloodstained research. With each transformation Sister Hyde becomes the more dominant personality, determined to eventually suppress the frail, ineffectual Dr Jekyll forever.
Lust for a Vampire
Giles Barton
In 1830, the Karnstein heirs use the blood of an innocent to bring forth the evil that is the beautiful Mircalla - or as she was in 1710, Carmilla. The nearby Finishing School offers rich pickings not only in in the blood of nubile young ladies but also with the headmaster who is desperate to become Mircalla's disciple, and the equally besotted and even more foolish author Richard Lestrange.
The Horror of Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein
Young Victor Frankenstein returns from medical school with a depraved taste for beautiful women and fiendish experiments.
Taste the Blood of Dracula
Lord Courtley
Three elderly distinguished gentlemen are searching for some excitement in their boring borgoueis lives and gets in contact with one of count Dracula's servants. In a nightly ceremony they restore the count back to life. The three men killed Dracula's servant and as a revenge, the count makes sure that the gentlemen are killed one by one by their own sons.