| Colin Tapley | |
|---|---|
Colin Tapley, 1 January 1936 |
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| Born | May 7, 1907 Dunedin, New Zealand |
| Died | December 1, 1995 (aged 88) Coates, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | actor |
| Years active | 1933–1983 |
| Spouse | Patricia Hambro |
Colin Tapley (7 May 1907 – 1 December 1995) was a British actor. Born in New Zealand, he served in the Royal Air Force and an expedition to Antarctica before winning a Paramount Pictures talent contest and moving to Hollywood. He acted in several films before returning to Britain during the Second World War as a flight controller with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He returned briefly to New Zealand before returning once again to Britain to renew his acting career. His most famous role is as William Glanville in The Dam Busters but he spent much of his later career typecast as a police inspector, a role he played in several films and TV series before retiring to Gloucestershire.
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Tapley was born on 7 May 1907 at Dunedin, New Zealand. He took part in the first of Richard Byrd's expeditions to Antarctica before moving to the United Kingdom and joining the Royal Air Force.
In 1933 he entered a talent contest organised by Paramount Pictures and was selected as one of thirty winners and one of only two from New Zealand.. He was rewarded with a contract with Paramount as a bit part actor, was credited in If I Were King (1938) and appeared uncredited in several other films. Tapley had the debonair good looks, voice and talent of a star, but he found his niche in playing character roles, and appeared in American and British films for more than 30 years without any real desire for movie stardom.[1] Colins desire for character parts came early in his Hollywood career. He wrote home enthusiastically to one of his brothers about his small part in The Scarlet Empress (1934), describing the long black beard and wonderful uniform that transformed him into the captain of the queen's bodyguard. Although his performance went uncredited, Tapley is seen directing the firing of the guns from the palace battlements, and yelling, "It's a boy!" to the excited crowd after the future empress played by Marlene Dietrich gives birth to a son".[1] He continued to work in some of the biggest movies of the 1930s, starring the likes of Cary Grant, Loretta Young, Sir Richard Redgrave and Gary Cooper. "The most wonderful experience of my life," is how he later recalled those years "I adored every bit of it."
During this time he shared a flat with Donald Gray and they would remain close friends until Gray's death in 1978. His best friend in Hollywood was Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray, who with his first wife, Lillian Lamont visited Colin in New Zealand and England with his second wife, when Colin had moved back to be with his own wife and children. MacMurray and Tapley remained great friends up until MacMurray's death in 1991.[1] Colin was a keen horseman and an avid polo player; playing at the Riveria Polo Club, and on his ranch in the San Fernando Valley where his friends and neighbours would spend time, one of whom being Ginger Rogers. He recalled later, 'popping over to her place for tennis and what not', before the war broke out whereupon he left Hollywood and returned to England.[1]
In 1940 Tapley returned to Britain and to help the war effort but found that he could not find transport direct from the United States due to war restrictions and so enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He found employment as a flight instructor due to his past experience in the Royal Air Force and was later transferred to Britain as a flight controller. During his service he was forced to parachute from a crashing aircraft and so was awarded membership of the Caterpillar Club.
After demobilisation in 1945 Colin along with his new wife, returned to his native New Zealand for the first time since 1933. He intended to establish a launch rental service in Wanaka, South Island and to set up home there with his Patsy, but soon tired of this and returned to Hollywood to re-establish his film career. Legendary American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer Cecil B. DeMille personally gave him a role in his new film, Samson and Dalia, which Colin accepted. But Colin and Patsy found that Hollywood had changed for the worse and after finishing Samson and Dalia, they headed back to England. Due to Colin's upper class accent he found no trouble finding work in the film industry; it was also the boom period of British war films in the '50s and '60s and he landed the role of a lifetime, the revered war epic The Dam Busters film of 1955 where along side Michael Redgrave he played William Glanville who helped to develop the famous bouncing bomb. From 1954 to 1958, he appeared as a police inspector named Parker, working with his good friend Donald Gray, in the detective television series The Vise (later known as Saber of London). He was subsequently typecast and would play a police officer in many of his later films. His acting career ended in 1983, at the age of 74, and he retired to Coates, Gloucestershire.
During his time in England while in the RAF, Tapley met Patricia "Patsy" Lyon, the widowed daughter of Major-General Sir Percival and Lady Hambro of the Hambro banking dynasty. Despite being from one of England's most prestigious aristocratic-banking families, with close family ties to the Royal family, Patsy encouraged that they marry quietly being as it was very much war time in England and London lay in ruin as an aftermath of "the Blitz". And so they did with her parents, twin brother, Everard Hambro and other family members present at St Martin-in-the-Fields in August 1943.[2] Colin and Patsy lived in New Zealand and Hollywood before settling down in Coates, Gloucestershire remaining there until his death in December 1995, aged 88. He was survived by son Nigel Tapley, stepdaughter, Charlotte Ann Lyon wife of the late shipping mogul Sir Kerry St. Johnston.[3] Colin was buried in his old city of Dunedin, New Zealand next to his first son Martin, who had died at the age of 3 of leukemia in 1947. Patsy remained at their house in Coates, Gloucestershire until her death in January, 2000.