Francis L. Sullivan
Birth : 1903-01-06, Wandsworth, London, England
Death : 1956-11-19
History
Francis Loftus Sullivan (6 January 1903, Wandsworth, London - 19 November 1956, New York City) was an English film and stage actor. He attended Stonyhurst, the Jesuit public school in Lancashire, England whose alumni include Charles Laughton and Arthur Conan Doyle.
A heavily built man with a striking double-chin and a deep voice, Sullivan made his acting debut at the Old Vic aged 18 in Shakespeare's Richard III and appeared in his first film in 1932. Some of his notable film roles include Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist (1948) and Phil Nosseross in the film noir Night and the City (1950). Sullivan also played the part of Jaggers in two versions of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations - in 1934 and 1946. He appeared in a fourth Dickens film, the 1935 Universal Pictures version of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in which he played Crisparkle.
In 1938, he was featured in The Citadel, starring Robert Donat, and a decade later, he played the role of Pierre Cauchon in the technicolor version of Joan of Arc, starring Ingrid Bergman. Also in 1938 he starred in a revival of the Stokes' brothers play Oscar Wilde at London's Arts Theatre.
Sullivan also acted in light comedies, notably My Favorite Spy (1951), starring Bob Hope and Hedy Lamarr, in which he played an enemy agent, and the comedy Fiddlers Three (1944), portraying Nero. He also played the role of Pothinus in the 1945 film version of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. The film was directed by Gabriel Pascal, and was the last film personally supervised by Shaw himself. Sullivan later reprised the role in a stage revival of the play.
Sullivan, who eventually became a naturalized US citizen, won a Tony Award in 1955 for the Agatha Christie play Witness for the Prosecution. Earlier, he had played Hercule Poirot at the Embassy Theatre (London) in the Christie play, Black Coffee (1930). He died of a heart attack, aged 53 (some sources claim he died from an unspecified "lung ailment").
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Bosra
A wealthy young Hebrew traveling in Damascus renounces his faith after he is seduced by an alluring pagan priestess and cheated of his fortune by the High Priest as well.
Barzland
After being dumped by his fiancée, hard-drinking and depressed Mark Cormack loses his job in the Los Angeles district attorney's office and serves as bouncer in a Las Vegas casino. A wheelchair-using stranger Barzland hires him to locate a ruby that disappeared in a Caribbean plane crash. He lures Cormack into doing the job by telling him it may be in the possession of the very woman who jilted him. The ex-detective flies to remote island Santo Rosario to find the stone and investigate the mystery. When he finds his old flame he finds that her husband is in prison. Cormack, again falling for Janet, is convinced into helping him break out of jail. But Janet has other plans.
Commissioner Pierre Duvois
A smuggler (Dennis O'Keefe) buys a bride (Patricia Medina) in San Francisco to help him run guns in 1877 Tahiti.
Thomas Berrien
An American insurance adjuster, stranded in Havana, becomes involved with an archaeologist and a collector of antiquities in a hunt for treasure in the Mexican ruins of Zapoteca.
Dr. Bristol
Lamas plays an indentured servant who rises to power in Georgia shortly after the Revolutionary War.
Andrew McAllister
Francis Barclay, a former member of the British Admiralty, who was captured in the early 1700s, and sold into slavery, by Andrew McAllister, and forced into piracy, enlists the aid of Dick Lindsay, to help him invade MacAllister's fortified island. The latter falls in love with MacAllister's daughter,Christine.
Herod Antipas
The story, set 15 years after the Crucifixion, of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who is depicted as a victim of circumstances.
Karl Brubaker
A burlesque comic doubles for a spy in Tangier and meets the spy's girlfriend, who is also a spy.
Fat Freddy
A young man takes in a dog that turns out to be wanted by mobsters.
Philip Nosseross
Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.
Colonel Humphrey 'Blinker' Omicron
A Russian ballerina in Vienna tries to flee KGB agents and defect.
Francisco de Bobadilla
Christopher Columbus overcomes intrigue at the Spanish court and convinces Queen Isabella that his plan to reach the East by sailing west is practical.
Pierre Cauchon, Count-Bishop of Beauvais
In the 15th Century, France is a defeated and ruined nation after the One Hundred Years War against England. The fourteen-year-old farm girl Joan of Arc claims to hear voices from Heaven asking her to lead God's Army against Orleans and crowning the weak Dauphin Charles VII as King of France. Joan gathers the people with her faith, forms an army, and conquers Orleans.
Attorney General
In pre-WW1 England, a youngster is expelled from a naval academy over a petty theft, but his parents raise a political furor by demanding a trial.
Mr. Bumble
When 9-year-old orphan Oliver Twist dares to ask his cruel taskmaster, Mr. Bumble, for a second serving of gruel, he's hired out as an apprentice. Escaping that dismal fate, young Oliver falls in with the street urchin known as the Artful Dodger and his criminal mentor, Fagin. When kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's evil henchman Bill Sikes plots to kidnap the boy.
Anton Perami
Passengers and crew struggle to survive after their plane crashes in the Alps.
Prosecuting Counsel
When her husband is wrongly accused of murder, an opera singer sets out to find the real culprit.
Mr. Braddock
A man goes on the run from hardened smugglers.
Mr. Jaggers
In this Dickens adaptation, orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.
Pothinus
The aging Caesar finds himself intrigued by the young Egyptian queen. Adapted by George Bernard Shaw from his own play.
Nero
Two British soldiers and a WREN take refuge at Stonehenge during a thunderstorm, they are struck by lightning and transported back to ancient Rome.
Leo Carrington
Rodney Playfair is persuaded, by a promise to meet his gambling debts, to impersonate a manservant named Chapman at his fiancée's house...
Minghetti
When she learns that the Nazis have confiscated Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece Mona Lisa, art-loving South American wanna-be spy Tamara (Jane Carr) journeys to Lisbon to snoop for the Germans in return for the iconic painting. But bumbling Nazi agents, Allied counterspies and multiple copies of the artwork soon confound her attempts at espionage.
French Skipper
Based on the true story of Melbourne Johns, an aircraft factory foreman sent to France to prevent the Nazis getting hold of some vital equipment.
Kommandant Ulrich Wettau
Sports journalist Colin Metcalfe is picked for the job of foreign correspondent in Norway when Hitler invades Poland. On the way to Langedal his boat is attacked by a German U-Boat, however when he tells the navy about it they do not believe him and, to make matters worse, he is removed from his job. When German forces invade Norway, Metcalfe returns determined to uncover what is going on and stop the Germans in their tracks.
General von Graum
Eccentric Cambridge archaeologist Horatio Smith takes a group of British and American archaeology students to pre-war Nazi Germany to help in his excavations. His research is supported by the Nazis, since he professes to be looking for evidence of the Aryan origins of German civilisation. However, he has a secret agenda: to free inmates of the concentration camps.
Mander
After Larry Darrent accidentally kills his lover's blackmailing husband, someone else is arrested for the crime. When he is found guilty, Larry and Wanda have just three weeks together before he must give himself up or let an innocent man go to the gallows.
Blackbeard, Vincent St George
An aristocrat falls in love with a human cannonball
Leon Poiccard
The Four Men of the title are British WWI veterans who decide to work secretly against enemies of the country. They aren't above a bit of murder or sabotage to serve their ends, but they consider themselves to be true patriots.
Attorney General
An aristocrat won't economize, then his rich brother in law is found murdered in the grounds of the aristocrat's house
Madman
Wealthy Nicky finds himself engaged to gold-digger Lady Constance, but he really loves scatty model Diana. Complications, slapstick and mountaineering are the result.
Ben Chenkin
Andrew Manson, a young, idealistic, newly qualified Scottish doctor arrives in Wales takes his first job in a mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its cause are thwarted, he moves to London. His new practice does badly. But when a friend shows him how to make a lucrative practice from rich hypochondriacs, it will take a great shock to show him what the truth of being a doctor really is.
Governor
Set in the India of the British Raj, the evil and untrustworthy Prince Guhl (Raymond Massey) plans to wipe out the British troops as they enjoy the hospitality of Guhl's spacious palace. It's up to the loyal young Prince Azim (Sabu) to warn the troops of Guhl's treachery by tapping out a message on his drum.
Lord Flamborough
Kate is secretary to Lord Flamborough. But she is also leader of a criminal gang. Can Mike Pemberton catch her red-handed?
Brogard
The daughter of a murdered financier works as a jewelry salesperson while she tracks her father's colleagues who plotted against him.
Hugo Brant
A young woman finds herself as the intended victim of a murder plot on a transatlantic flight from London to New York.
Sir Quinton Jessops (as Francis Sullavan)
A bankrupt officer, accused of cheating at cards, defends his honour with a writ.
Rev. Mr. Septimus Crisparkle
A choirmaster addicted to opium and obsessed with a beautiful young woman will stop at nothing to possess her.
Sir Julian Weyre
Desperate to prove his father innocent of treason, a secretary arranges a clandestine assignation with his employer's wife in order to get the proof he needs. But the plan goes awry when he becomes implicated in her sudden death.
Dr. George Brockton
The Palmers, an apparently wealthy family, move into the house next door to the Lazarres. However, the Palmers are actually a gang of thieves plotting to rob the Lazarres.
Jaggers
A young boy, Pip, encounters an escaped prisoner, Magwitch, and steals food for him. After the convict is captured, Pip meets the reclusive Miss Havisham and her niece, Estella, eventually becoming friends with the girl. Wealth comes to Pip via a mysterious benefactor and he goes off to London for an education. As adults, Pip and Estella become romantic, and Pip learns the identity of his patron.
Richard Bentley, Prosecution Counsel
Young Raymond Rudford,sculptor, is on trial for slitting the throat of his uncle, who had adopted and raised him after Raymond's parent's died when he was a young boy. The prosecution allows his motive was fear of being disinherited if he married his fiancé, the fair Alicia Atherton, against his uncle's wishes, and the prosecution lays a mountain of evidence against Raymond, including his razor, dragged from an artificial lake on the estate, as the murder weapon; Raymond's bloody fingerprints and footprints found at the scene of bedroom crime, and his bloody shoes, found in his cupboard and bloody monogrammed-handkerchief found under his uncle's death bed. Raymond's only defense is that he could not have committed the crime as he goes into a paroxysm of dread at the mere sight of blood, a phobia he has had ever since childhood when his dog was run over by a lorry and the dog's blood was splattered into his face.
Prosecuting Counsel (uncredited)
Chided by his boss for a conspicuous lack of sensational stories, Lewis Bevan takes matters into his own hands to revive his flagging career.
The Caliph
Musical retelling of the "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves" Arabian Nights tale.
Carl Peterson
Bulldog Drummond forms a gang to rescue his wife and thwart his nemesis, Carl Peterson.
Stedding
Jim Bronton is an insurance investigator, but he's unhappy with his work and gets involved with a gang of arsonists. His conscience is troubling him ...
Cranley
Adapted from Lady Eleanor Smith’s novel, this 1934 feature tells the story of Joe Prince, an orphan child of circus people who, after many struggles, achieves his life-long ambition of owning a circus.
Juan de Texada (Phase IV)
Old Jerusalem: Matathias, spiteful over his lover's illness, spits on Jesus along the road to Calvary, and is cursed to live endlessly until His return. The Crusades, 1150: Matathias, now an anonymous knight, competes for glory in combat and for the wife of a soldier. Palermo, 1290: Matteos Battadios witnesses the death of his young son, leading to conflict with his wife over whether to take comfort in Christianity. Seville, 1560: Dr Matteos Battadios dedicates himself to the treatment and comfort of the poor, but his life and work are endangered by the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition.
A Sailor
Urged by famous airman Ellissen the Lennartz Company puts into reality the project proposed by his friend Droste: F.P.1, a huge floating platform in the Atlantic that makes long-distance flights viable. Ellissen is in love with company heiress Claire, but when he returns from his adventures to save the endangered F.P.1 he finds out that he has lost her to Droste. English version of F.P.1 antwortet nicht with Conrad Veidt replacing Hans Albers as the jaded pilot Ellissen.
Roger Stoneham
A shady financier tries to acquire a new chemical
Rodney Haines
Slippery Rodney Haines runs a high-class gambling joint in Hampstead, while elsewhere in London Lamberti's Fair for the less-well-off is on its last legs. The only link between them seems to be Tommy Blyth, whose betting has put him in serious debt with Haines and who fancies Mary, the Lamberti's adopted daughter. In fact, there is a further unexpected link between the two worlds.
Herman Strumm
A Mandarin takes the blame when the wife of his friend's son steals secret papers.
Baron von Guntermann
Holmes goes on the trail of a Rembrandt painting, stolen by a drug-addicted artist.
