Michael Goodliffe
Birth : 1914-10-01, Bebington, Cheshire, England
Death : 1976-03-20
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Lawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe (1 October 1914 – 20 March 1976) was an English actor best known for playing suave roles such as doctors, lawyers and army officers. He was also sometimes cast in working class parts.
Goodliffe was born in Bebington, Cheshire (now Merseyside), the son of a vicar, and educated at St Edmund's School, Canterbury, and Keble College, Oxford. He started his career in repertory theatre in Liverpool before moving on to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon. He joined the British Army at the beginning of World War II, and received a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in February 1940. He was wounded in the leg and captured at the Battle of Dunkirk. Goodliffe was incorrectly listed as killed in action, and even had his obituary published in a newspaper. He was to spend the rest of the war a prisoner in Germany.
Whilst in captivity he produced and acted in (and in some cases wrote) many plays and sketches to entertain fellow prisoners. These included two productions of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, one in Tittmoning and the other in Eichstätt, in which he played the title role. He also produced the first staging of Noel Coward's Post Mortem at Eichstätt. A full photographic record of these productions exists.
After the war he resumed his professional acting career. As well as appearing in the theatre he worked in film and television. He appeared in The Wooden Horse in 1950 and in other POW films. His best known film was A Night to Remember (1958) in which he played Thomas Andrews, builder of the RMS Titanic. His best known television series was Sam (1973–75) in which he played an unemployed Yorkshire miner. He also appeared with John Thaw and James Bolam in the 1967 television series Inheritance.
Suffering from depression, Goodliffe had a breakdown in 1976 during the period that he was rehearsing for a revival of Equus. He committed suicide a few days later by leaping from a hospital fire escape, whilst a patient at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Goodliffe, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
George de Grass
An American occult novelist battles to save the soul of a young girl from a group of Satanists, led by an excommunicated priest, who plan on using her as the representative of the Devil on Earth.
Dr David Muray
A hard-working doctor must also carry the burden of a turbulent home life, due to the expectations of his demanding wife. Part of Thames Televison's Armchair Cinema.
Narrator (uncredited)
The brutally entitled Don't Be Like Brenda (1973) is an eight-minute lecture to young women, telling them not to be sexually promiscuous like the film's hapless heroine – although heaven knows, the promiscuity hinted at here is tragically modest. Poor Brenda goes all the way with a boy who does not marry her. The film is stunningly without any useful educational content on contraception and makes it entirely clear that the woman, not the man, is to blame. The film even makes her poor unwanted child suffer from a heart defect, so that no one wants to adopt the poor little thing – just to hammer the point home. (from: http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2009/feb/11/sex-education-films)
General Weidling
Hitler: The Last Ten Days takes us into the depths of der Furher’s Berlin bunker during his final days. Based on the book by Gerhard Boldt, it provides a bleak look at the goings-on within, and without.
Thomas More
1547, King Henry VIII's life has taken a turn for the worse and he is forced to look back over his life and the many loves which had brought him his three children, only one of which was the desired male heir to secure the Tudor dynasty.
Mr. Teevee (uncredited)
When eccentric candy man Willy Wonka promises a lifetime supply of sweets and a tour of his chocolate factory to five lucky kids, penniless Charlie Bucket seeks the golden ticket that will make him a winner.
David
A forgotten and aging actress tries to recapture her youth through her actress daughter's life. Her husband understands what is going on but invariably blames the daughter for his wife's disappointments.
Solicitor General
Disgusted with the policies of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell plans to take his family to the New World. But on the eve of their departure, Cromwell is drawn into the tangled web of religion and politics that will result in the English Civil War.
Snow
Two German deserting soldiers Bruno Grauber and Reiner Schultz are trying to avoid capture by the Canadian and Yugoslavian armies entering Auschwitz at the end of World War II. They are captured. Their fellow German prisoners of war discover that they are deserters. They are put through a formal trial for cowardice organised by Von Bleicher. They are sentenced to death on the "fifth day of peace". A Canadian General persuades the Canadian officer in charge of the prisoner of war camp to allow the execution to be carried out for the higher purpose of preserving army discipline.
Ostrovsky
Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bog who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the “ritual murder” of a Gentile child in Kiev. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.
Lt. Col. Paling
Brothers Michael and David Tremayne decide to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, not for criminal purposes, but to make themselves famous.
Hauser
A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Captain Stein
Von Ryan's Express stars Frank Sinatra as a POW colonel who leads a daring escape from WWII Italy by taking over a freight train, but he has to win over the British soldiers he finds himself commanding.
Jeff Driscoll
Tab Hunter as a scary-eyed Aryan-blonde psychopath living in London, who emerges from prison and immediately proceeds to psychologically - and eventually physically - destroy his small family.
Professor Jules Heitz
In the early 20th century a village experienced a series of inexplicable murders. All the victims were young men who had been turned to stone. The perpetrator of these deaths was a being so repulsive that she transformed the onlooker using the power of her deadly stare. Much of the time the creature took the form of a beautiful and seductive woman, but during periods of the full moon she becomes a living horror, vicious and deadly. A professor has come to investigate the deaths, bringing with him his beautiful assistant whose knowledge of the Gorgon is more intimate than anyone would ever realise.
Trumphey
Political and personal intrigues surround a group of characters in Malaya, after the close of the Second World War.
Solicitor
Anthony Richmond schemes to get the fortune of his tyrannical, wheelchair-using tycoon uncle Charles Richmond by persuading Maria, a nurse he employs, to marry him.
Squadron Leader Frank Adams
When Norwegian resistance leader Lieutenant Erik Bergman reports the location of a German V-2 rocket fuel plant, the Royal Air Force's 633 Squadron is assigned the mission to destroy it. The plant is in a seemingly-impregnable location beneath an overhanging cliff at the end of a long, narrow fjord lined with anti-aircraft guns. The only way to destroy the plant is by collapsing the cliff on top of it.
Colonel Shaw
In a remote jungle outpost in the Far Eastern theater of World War II, a hotheaded American soldier murders an allied British sergeant in cold blood. Stalwart American Lt. Colonel Barney Adams (Mitchum) is dispatched to defend him in the ensuing court martial. But when Lt. Adams starts encountering roadblocks in his search for evidence, and his key witnesses start disappearing one after another, he soon realizes he's merely a pawn in a mysterious conspiracy that could extend to the highest levels of military power.
Clifford Preston
A doctor's already-shaky marriage is tested to an even greater extent when he has to contend with a smallpox epidemic.
Sir Harold Trevitt
An up and coming politician is caught in a compromising photograph taken by a maid, who turns out to be part of a sophisticated blackmail ring. When the girl is found murdered, he holds an incriminating old dueling pistol.
Clyde Burchard
A woman is found murdered in a house along the coast from Brighton. Local detectives Fellows and Wilks lead an investigation methodically following up leads and clues mostly in Brighton and Hove but also further afield.
An international criminal arrives in London, and a detective is anxious to pin something on him for some unprovable murders of former lovers. The villain starts to suspect servants and henchmen of being a police spy known as "Number Six".
Jacko Jackson the Night Editor
British reporters suspect an international cover-up of a global disaster in progress... and they're right. Hysterical panic has engulfed the world after the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously detonate nuclear devices and have caused the orbit of the Earth to alter, sending it hurtling towards the sun.
Dr. West
Johnnie Byrne is a member of the British Parliament. In his 40s, he's feeling frustrated with his life and his personal as well as professional problems tower up over him. His desires to win the next election are endangered by his constant looking for love and he is faced with the choice of giving up a career in politics or giving up the woman he loves.
Don Jarvis
Loner Mark Lewis works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen, the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making.
Father Desmaines
In wartime Italy nuns in a convent regularly smuggle Jewish children out of a nearby internment camp. The Italian army officer in charge suspects what may be going on but deliberately turns a blind eye. When the Germans take over the camp security the nuns' activities become far more dangerous.
Detective
Angela Barrows is a man-eating business woman sent by her American employer to investigate their export opportunities in Edinburgh. En route she meets Robert MacPherson, a businessman who asks for her help to bring his company into the 20th Century. The staff, led by Mr Martin, has other ideas—and a battle between the old and new business methods soon breaks out.
English Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Outside time and reality, the experiences of a poet. The judgement of the young poet by Heurtebise and the Princess, the Gypsies, the palace of Pallas Athena, the spear of the Goddess which pierces the poet's heart, the temptation of the Sphinx, the flight of Oedipus and the final Assumption. This film is the third part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).
Captain Banister
The story of the breakout of the German battleship Bismarck—accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen—during the early days of World War II. The Bismarck and her sister ship, Tirpitz, were the most powerful battleships in the European theater of World War II. The British Navy must find and destroy Bismarck before it can escape into the convoy lanes to inflict severe damage on the cargo shipping which was the lifeblood of the British Isles. With eight 15 inch guns, it was capable of destroying every ship in a convoy while remaining beyond the range of all Royal Navy warships.
Inspector Walters
Serving a jail sentence for a crime he didn't commit, Paul Langley makes several attempts to escape from prison, in order to clear his name. He also has other problems, his wife is about to go into labor with their first baby.
Lt. Commander Blakeney
The sequel to 'Up The Creek' sees David Tomlinson return as bumbling navy boffin Lieutenant Humphrey Fairweather. This time he is skipper of the ship Aristotle and, together with his second-in-command, Fairweather wreaks havoc when he is ordered to deliver the Aristotle to its new owners in a mythical Middle-Eastern country.
Thomas Andrews
The sinking of the Titanic is presented in a highly realistic fashion in this tense British drama. The disaster is portrayed largely from the perspective of the ocean liner's second officer, Charles Lightoller. Despite numerous warnings about ice, the ship sails on, with Capt. Edward John Smith keeping it going at a steady clip. When the doomed vessel finally hits an iceberg, the crew and passengers discover that they lack enough lifeboats, and tragedy follows.
Father Paul Anjou
Set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II, the film focuses on the brutality and horror that the allied prisoners were exposed to as the Japanese metered out subjugation and punishment to a disgraced and defeated enemy. This harrowing drama concentrates on the deviations of legal and moral definitions when two opposing cultures clash. Although fictional, this was one of the earliest films to deal realistically with life and death in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Second War.
Coding Expert
London, England, during World War II. After living a tragic life experience, young Violette Szabo joins the Special Operations Executive and crosses the German enemy lines as a secret agent to aid a French Resistance group.
R.A.F. Interrogator
Based on the true story of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only german prisoner of war captured in Britain to escape back to Germany during the Second World War.
Detective Insp. Barnes
An insurance man discovers his ex-girlfriend and her husband's art-forgery/arson scam.
Captain McCall, R.N., British Naval Attache, Buenos Aires
In the early years of the World War II, the Royal Navy is fighting a desperate battle to keep the Atlantic convoy routes open to supply the British Isles, facing the great danger posed by the many German warships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, which are scouring the ocean for cargo ships to sink.
Larry Buckham
A ruthless woman takes advantage of gullible men to climb up the social ladder.
Narrator (voice)
Twenty-four hours in the story of the British Railways Channel ferryboats, the 'link spans' directly joining the roads and railways of Britain with those of France and all the Continent. The Lord Warden laden with an assortment of road vehicles from Dover, and the Night Ferry from Newhaven carrying passengers bound for Paris, Vienna or Rome are two of the ferries illustrated in this film; and freight is not forgotten.
John Moffat
A man tells his wife that the police are after him for having killed a bookie during an alcoholic binge, but that he is innocent and is being framed for the murder. The wife and her brother hide him and try to find out who the real killer was. The more they investigate, the more holes they begin to find in the husband's story.
Count De Dunois
During the 15th century reign of France's King Louis XI, a young Scottish man is sent by his English Lord to woo a French lady on his behalf. The plan goes awry when the young man falls in love with her. Based on the classic novel by Sir Walter Scott.
Smythe
During the 1940s, Maurice Bendrix, a writer recently discharged from the armed service, falls in love with Sarah Miles, whom he interviews for a book. Sarah is married, but she and Maurice eventually give in to their mutual attraction, leading to an affair that lasts several months. Maurice's jealousy, along with the bombing of London by the Germans, seemingly leads to the end of their relationship. However, the reasons are later revealed to be more complex.
Kennedy
A workaholic newspaper editor lets his wife leave on the holiday without him just at that time some important news stories break, including a plane crash, the one which his wife took....
Ragan
Gilliatt, a fisherman-turned-smuggler on the isle of Guernsey, agrees to transport a beautiful woman to the French coast in the year 1800. She tells him she hopes to rescue her brother from the guillotine. Gilliatt finds himself falling in love and so feels betrayed when he later learns this woman is a countess helping Napoleon plan an invasion of England. In reality, however, the "countess" is an English agent working to thwart this invasion. When Gilliatt finds this out, he returns to France to rescue the woman who's true purpose has been discovered by the French.
Anderson
1890, London, and a serial killer known as The Terror is murdering policemen. When gentleman thief Nicholas Revel unwittingly becomes the chief suspect, he must use his guile and wits to prove he’s not the killer; whilst also not getting caught for a jewel robbery he has just committed.
Narrator (voice)
Southampton, a deep-water port with four tides a day, is an ocean terminal for the world's largest liners. Their coming and going, and the people who work with them are the subject of this film as they reflect in their personal lives some of the drama and romance of its situation. Among them are a tug skipper and his crew, a stewardess on a Cape ship, an assistant wharfinger in charge of handling baggage and freight, a taxi driver, and a pilot taking a great liner down Southampton water at night.
Part of BFI's "National Coal Board Collection".
Martens
In the back country of South Africa, black minister Stephen Kumalo journeys to the city to search for his missing son, only to find his people living in squalor and his son a criminal. Reverend Misimangu is a young South African clergyman who helps find his missing son-turned-thief and sister-turned-prostitute in the slums of Johannesburg.
Col. Caillard - POW Escort
Captain Horatio Hornblower leads his ship HMS Lydia on a perilous transatlantic voyage, during which his faithful crew battle both a Spanish warship and a ragged band of Central American rebels.
Narrator (voice)
In preparation for the celebration of the 1951 Festival of Britain, this short film was released to assure British citizens of their nation's place in the world and of their own places within that nation. Illustrative scenes of farming, science, political, and social life are juxtaposed to present a familiar and reassuring image of Britain.
Robbie
True story of three British POWs and their attempt to escape from Nazi Germany
McPherson
A young woman leaves her backwards hometown to go to London to find a runaway suitor. What she doesn't know is that she has inherited a strange ability; if she's in the vicinity of a machine for more than fifteen minutes, it stops working.
Till
At the height of World War II, the Germans begin dropping a new type of booby-trapped bomb on England. Sammy Rice, a highly-skilled but haunted bomb-disposal officer, must overcome his personal demons to defeat this new threat.
