Raymond Huntley
| Raymond Huntley | |
|---|---|
 Raymond Huntley in one of his more popular roles as Sir Geoffrey Dillon | |
| Born |
23 April 1904 Birmingham, Warwickshire, England |
| Died |
19 October 1990 (aged 86) London, England |
Raymond Huntley (23 April 1904 – 19 October 1990) was an English actor who appeared in dozens of British films from the 1930s through to the 1970s.[1] Huntley also appeared in the ITV period drama Upstairs, Downstairs as the pragmatic family solicitor Sir Geoffrey Dillon.[2]
Life and career
Born in Birmingham in 1904, Huntley was often cast as a supercilious bureaucrat or other authority figure, and his many film appearances included The Way Ahead, I See a Dark Stranger, Passport to Pimlico and The Dam Busters.
Huntley has been credited as the first actor to portray Count Dracula, but that is incorrect. Huntley was first to play the role in Hamilton Deane's stage adaptation, later revised by John L. Balderston and now the most successful stage version of Bram Stoker's novel. The very first stage performance of Dracula occurred in 1897, shortly after the novel was published; Stoker himself mounted a one-off dramatisation of the novel at Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London, where Stoker was manager.
In Huntley's later years, he became well known on television as Sir Geoffrey Dillon, the family solicitor to the Bellamys in LWT's popular 1970s drama series Upstairs, Downstairs.
Huntley died in the Westminster Hospital, London in 1990
In his obituary, The New York Times wrote, "During his long career the actor played judges, bank managers, churchmen, bureaucrats and other figures of authority. He could play them straight if necessary, but in comedy his natural dryness of delivery was exaggerated to the point where the character he was playing invited mockery as a pompous humbug."[3]
Filmography
References
External links
- Raymond Huntley at the Internet Movie Database
- Raymond Huntley at the Internet Broadway Database
- The Four Word Film review - Films linked with 'Raymond Huntley'
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