Actor known for his Shakespearean roles, but who also appeared on TV and in films including Winstanley and Orlando
Jerome Willis, who has died at the age of 85, was an actor who might have described himself, without bitterness, as an "attendant lord". He was a natural Shakespearean, in possession of a strong physique and the ability to speak verse with enviable confidence. In a distinguished career spanning almost 60 years, he brought to every part he undertook a perceptive intelligence that illuminated even the smallest cameo. He also became a familiar face on television from 1974 to 1978 as Charles Radley, the deputy governor of Stone Park prison in Within These Walls, with Googie Withers as his boss.
Jerome began his career as a disc jockey, newsreader and actor by turns, posted to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1946 for his national service in the Raf and serving in communications for the Ceylonese station Radio Seac.
Jerome Willis, who has died at the age of 85, was an actor who might have described himself, without bitterness, as an "attendant lord". He was a natural Shakespearean, in possession of a strong physique and the ability to speak verse with enviable confidence. In a distinguished career spanning almost 60 years, he brought to every part he undertook a perceptive intelligence that illuminated even the smallest cameo. He also became a familiar face on television from 1974 to 1978 as Charles Radley, the deputy governor of Stone Park prison in Within These Walls, with Googie Withers as his boss.
Jerome began his career as a disc jockey, newsreader and actor by turns, posted to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1946 for his national service in the Raf and serving in communications for the Ceylonese station Radio Seac.
- 1/27/2014
- by Paul Bailey
- The Guardian - Film News
This black and white biopic of Diggers founder Gerrard Winstanley's truly level take on these socialist ancestors never sacrifices authenticity for entertainment
• More from the Reel history archive
Winstanley (1975)
Director: Kevin Brownlow
Entertainment grade: C+
History grade: A
Gerrard Winstanley began True Levellers, a Christian group devoted to egalitarian and communal living that formed in the wake of the English civil war. They became known as the Diggers, and are often considered precursors of socialists or communists.
Name check
Few things warm the cockles of a historian's cold, dispassionate heart like a long list of eminent advisers named in the opening credits of a film. Winstanley shouts out to several museum curators (from the V&A, Tower of London and the Museum of English Rural Life), somebody from the Roundhead Association (yes, it still exists) and a brigadier from the Sealed Knot. A prologue provides historical background, complete with...
• More from the Reel history archive
Winstanley (1975)
Director: Kevin Brownlow
Entertainment grade: C+
History grade: A
Gerrard Winstanley began True Levellers, a Christian group devoted to egalitarian and communal living that formed in the wake of the English civil war. They became known as the Diggers, and are often considered precursors of socialists or communists.
Name check
Few things warm the cockles of a historian's cold, dispassionate heart like a long list of eminent advisers named in the opening credits of a film. Winstanley shouts out to several museum curators (from the V&A, Tower of London and the Museum of English Rural Life), somebody from the Roundhead Association (yes, it still exists) and a brigadier from the Sealed Knot. A prologue provides historical background, complete with...
- 12/13/2013
- by Alex von Tunzelmann
- The Guardian - Film News
Kill List director Ben Wheatley turns the period drama to his usual subversive ends in a grisly slice of English civil-war psychedelia
• Stuart Heritage will be liveblogging the UK television premiere of A Field in England from 10.45pm tonight. Join him here from about 8.30pm GMT
During the English civil war, Thomas Hobbes wrote in his Leviathan that without general submission to the sovereign, our natural selfishness would predominate, chaos would reign and the life of man would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". If Hobbes had seen this film, he would amend the passage to read "intensely solitary, very poor, extremely nasty, horribly brutish and rather similar to Mr Ben Wheatley's 91-minute mummery, A Field in England." Or perhaps, given that these circumstances apply despite the characters' submission to a sovereign, of sorts, he might want to delete it altogether.
Wheatley's new film is grisly and visceral,...
• Stuart Heritage will be liveblogging the UK television premiere of A Field in England from 10.45pm tonight. Join him here from about 8.30pm GMT
During the English civil war, Thomas Hobbes wrote in his Leviathan that without general submission to the sovereign, our natural selfishness would predominate, chaos would reign and the life of man would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". If Hobbes had seen this film, he would amend the passage to read "intensely solitary, very poor, extremely nasty, horribly brutish and rather similar to Mr Ben Wheatley's 91-minute mummery, A Field in England." Or perhaps, given that these circumstances apply despite the characters' submission to a sovereign, of sorts, he might want to delete it altogether.
Wheatley's new film is grisly and visceral,...
- 7/5/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Kevin Brownlow has won a lifetime-achievement Oscar and made superb films. So why isn't he better known?
On 13 November last year Kevin Brownlow received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, alongside Francis Ford Coppola (Jean-Luc Godard didn't turn up). In his letter of nomination, Martin Scorsese declared that "Mr Brownlow is a giant among film historians and preservationists, known and justifiably respected throughout the world for his multiple achievements: as the author of The Parade's Gone By, a definitive history of the silent era, and . . . a biography of David Lean . . . and as the director with Andrew Mollo of two absolutely unique fiction films, Winstanley (1975) and It Happened Here (1964) . . . On a broader level, you might say that Mr Brownlow is film history." This sums up pretty well the extraordinary record of a remarkable Englishman.
But while Brownlow's achievements – as a historian of film, in preserving and restoring silent-era classics, and...
On 13 November last year Kevin Brownlow received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, alongside Francis Ford Coppola (Jean-Luc Godard didn't turn up). In his letter of nomination, Martin Scorsese declared that "Mr Brownlow is a giant among film historians and preservationists, known and justifiably respected throughout the world for his multiple achievements: as the author of The Parade's Gone By, a definitive history of the silent era, and . . . a biography of David Lean . . . and as the director with Andrew Mollo of two absolutely unique fiction films, Winstanley (1975) and It Happened Here (1964) . . . On a broader level, you might say that Mr Brownlow is film history." This sums up pretty well the extraordinary record of a remarkable Englishman.
But while Brownlow's achievements – as a historian of film, in preserving and restoring silent-era classics, and...
- 7/22/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
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