François Sureau

François Sureau is a French writer, lawyer and technocrat. He was born in the 14th arrondissement of Paris and educated at the École nationale d'administration (ENA). He is a co-founder and co-director of the French Review of Economics. He is also the founding president of the Association Pierre Claver which assists refugees and displaced persons who have arrived in France. He is also a member of the editorial board of the journal Commentary.

Sureau has won a number of prizes for his literary works. These include La Corruption du siècle, winner of the Prix Colette in 1988; L'Infortune, winner of the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française in 1990; Le Sphinx de Darwin, winner of the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle in 1997; and Les Alexandrins which won the Prix Méditerranée in 2003.

Léon Zitrone

Léon Zitrone was a Russian-born French journalist and television presenter.

Zitrone was born in Petrograd, Russia. He arrived in France with his family fleeing communism at the age of six. He graduated from the ESJ Paris. He began by training in scientific studies but his mastership of Russian, French, English and German gave him entrance in 1948 to the radio foreign broadcasting services of Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF). In 1959, he joined the television activity of RTF. From 1961, he became news presenter, function he occupied for nearly 20 years, first until 1975, on the first French television channel (now TF1), then also on Antenne 2, the other public service channel. Jean-Pierre Elkabbach called him back in 1979. He then took charge of the news program during the week-end (his contract was established until 1 February 1981). He would come back for those news programs also during the Easter and Pentecost week-ends.

But Léon Zitrone's celebrity is due to the programs he presented or co-presented. He was host of the televised program Intervilles (French counterpart of England's It's a Knockout) with Guy Lux. He commented 6 times the Tour de France, and he is remembered for his prodigious memory for names of riders. He presented the Olympics for 8 times, commented the Eurovision Song Contest on 4 occasions and presented 16 Bastille Day military parades. Above all, he was the key-commenter for big events, such as weddings, burials or investitures of world's key figures, some thirty of them during the course of his career.

In 1978, following French singer Marie Myriam's victory the previous year, the Eurovision song contest took place in Paris. Léon Zitrone co-presented with Denise Fabre and made the presentation in English.

In 1984, Zitrone took a leading role in the movie American Dreamer.

He died on his 81st birthday, November 25, 1995, at the Val-de-Grâce hospital in Paris.

Stanislaw Cisek

Stanisław Cisek was a Polish sailor, engineer, platoon cadet officer of the Home Army.

Cisek was the first owner of the yacht Narcyz, where he sailed from Poland to Venezuela (1972-1974). For his achievement, he was awarded in 1974 in the Rejoice of the Year 1974 Competition " Głos Wybrzeża "

Pierre Nord

Pierre Nord, real name André Léon Brouillard, was a French writer, spy and resistance member.

Brouillard was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord. He participated in the First World War as a resistance fighter and in 1916 was arrested by the Germans at Saint-Quentin, Aisne, condemned to death and later pardoned.

He was educated at Saint-Cyr (1920-1922), Ecole de Guerre (Superior War School) (1932-1934), and Ecole libre des sciences politiques (Free School of Political Science). As an armoured troops' officer, he took part in the campaign against Rif rebels in Morocco and there earned the distinction of knight of the Légion d'honneur.

In 1939, Brouillard was appointed chief of intelligence of the 9th and 10th Armies. During the German invasion of 1940, he was again captured, escaped and became commander of one of the most active units of the French resistance. He ended the Second World War as a colonel and was awarded numerous military decorations.

Brouillard published his first espionage novel, Double crime sur la ligne Maginot (Double Crime on the Maginot Line) in 1936, under the pseudonym of Pierre Nord. The tense and complicated plot revolved around the hunt for a murderous German spy who operated in one of the forts in the Maginot Line. The spy, masquerading as a lieutenant in the French army, was neutralized by an ingenious trap set by the Deuxième Bureau' operative Captain Pierre Ardant. (Curiously, the chief protagonists of Nord's novels almost invariably bear the first name of Pierre). The Double crime was followed by Terre d'angoisse (Land of Anguish) 1937, which described the struggle between the German and French secret services during the First World War. The hero of the story, under the alias of Lieutenant Heim (portrayed by actor Gabriel Gabrio in the 1939 film adaptation) penetrated the Kaiser's army.

In 1946, Brouillard left military service to take up writing full-time. As Pierre Nord, he became a prolific and popular author of spy fiction. His novels are characterized by realistic and intricate plots skillfully woven into both Cold War and Second World War settings. Many feature Colonel Dubois, the astute, veteran chief of French counter-espionage.

Sixième colonne (Sixth Column) 1955, deals with the ostensive defection to the East of a French bacteriologist and the search for him carried out by his brother, a lieutenant colonel in the medical service, Pierre Rocher. The threat of biological warfare is again addressed in Espionnage à l'italienne (Espionage a la Italian) 1963, where a French discoverer of a deadly bacillus disappears in Italy and is sought by the French, American and Russian intelligence services. In Pas de scandale a l'ONU (No Scandal at the UN) 1962, the son of a murdered French diplomat, trying to avenge the death of his father who worked for Colonel Dubois, stumbles upon a conspiracy against world peace orchestrated by some third world countries. In Le Kawass d'Ankara (The Kawass from Ankara) 1967, the Allied secret services in 1944 dispatched an agent, Pierre Frontin, to Turkey in a desperate effort to discredit vital information that fell into German hands. Le 13e suicidé (The Thirteenth Who Committed Suicide) 1971, features a high-ranking Russian defector who reveals that many leading figures in the West German intelligence service are in fact Soviet agents. When several of them take their own lives, Colonel Dubois begins to question the Russian's revelations. This novel was adapted into a film Le Serpent (Night Flight from Moscow) 1973 starring Yul Brynner, Henry Fonda and Dirk Bogarde. Le canal de las Americas (The Canal of the Americas, 1973) is a political intrigue set in the fictitious Latin American republic of Costaraguay. Altogether Nord authored nearly eighty novels.

He also wrote non-fiction. Between 1946 and 1949, Nord published a three-volume account of Free French intelligence actions during the Second World War under the title Mes Camarades sont morts (My Comrades are Dead), it won the Grand Prix Vérité. L'intoxication (The Deception), an analysis of the clandestine war of secret services, appeared in 1971.

In 1957, Nord moved from France to the principality of Monaco, where he lived until his death.

Bob Boothby

Robert John Graham Boothby, Baron Boothby, KBE, often known as Bob Boothby, was a British Conservative politician.

The only son of Sir Robert Tuite Boothby, KBE, of Edinburgh and a cousin of Rosalind Grant, mother of the broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy, Boothby was educated at St Aubyns School, Eton College, and Magdalen College, Oxford. Before going up to Oxford, near the end of the First World War, he trained as an officer and was commissioned into the Brigade of Guards, but was too young to see active service. After Oxford he became a partner in a firm of stockbrokers.

He was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for Orkney and Shetland in 1923 and was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Aberdeen and Kincardine East in 1924. He held the seat until its abolition in 1950, when he was elected for its successor constituency of East Aberdeenshire. Re-elected a final time in 1955, he gave up the seat in 1958 when he was raised to the peerage, triggering a by-election.

He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill from 1926 to 1929. He helped launch the Popular Front in December 1936. He held junior ministerial office as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food in 1940–41. He was later forced to resign his post and go to the back benches for not declaring an interest when asking a parliamentary question. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and served as a junior staff officer with Bomber Command, and later as a liaison officer with the Free French Forces, retiring with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. In 1950 he received the Legion of Honour for his latter services.

In 1954 (echoing words he had said in 1934) he complained that for thirty years he had been advocating 'a constructive policy on broad lines' but that this had not been taken up: 'The doctrine of infallibility has always applied to the Treasury and the Bank of England'. Boothby opposed free trade in food stuffs, and claimed that such a policy would invalidate the Agriculture Act 1947 and ruin British farmers. This economic liberalism of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rab Butler, led to Boothby complaining that 'The Tory Party have in fact become the Liberal Party' and cited what the leader of the Liberal Party (Clement Davies) had said to him about Butler: 'Sir Robert Peel has come again.' In response Davies claimed that Boothby 'has been sitting on the wrong side of the House for many years. Undoubtedly, he said tonight that he is the planner of planners. I do not believe in that kind of planning. The hon. Member seems to know better than the ordinary person what is good for the ordinary person, what he ought to buy, where he ought to buy it, where he ought to manufacture and everything else of that kind. There is the true Socialist'.

Boothby was a British delegate to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1949 until 1957 and advocated the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community, which later evolved into the European Union. He was a prominent commentator on public affairs on radio and television, often taking part in the long-running BBC radio program Any Questions. He also advocated the virtues of herring as a food.

He was Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Economic Affairs, 1952–56; Honorary President of the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture, 1934, Rector of the University of St Andrews, 1958–61; Chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 1961–63, and President, Anglo-Israel Association, 1962–75. He was awarded an Honorary LLD by St Andrews, 1959 and was made an Honorary Burgess of the Burghs of Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Turriff and Rosehearty. He was appointed an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1950, a KBE in 1953.

Boothby was raised to the peerage as a life peer with the title Baron Boothby, of Buchan and Rattray Head in the County of Aberdeen, on 22 August 1958.

There is a blue plaque on his house in Eaton Square, London.

Charles A. Wedemeyer

Charles A. Wedemeyer was a pioneer in the field of independent and distance learning. He challenged university administrators to expand access and opportunity to autonomous learners.

Claude Lefort

Claude Lefort was a French philosopher and activist.

He was politically active by 1942 under the influence of his tutor, the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. By 1943 he was organizing a faction of the Trotskyist Parti Communiste Internationaliste at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris.

Lefort was impressed by Cornelius Castoriadis when he first met him. From 1946 he collaborated with him in the Chaulieu–Montal Tendency, so called from their pseudonyms Pierre Chaulieu (Castoriadis) and Claude Montal (Lefort). They published On the Regime and Against the Defence of the USSR, a critique of both the Soviet Union and its Trotskyist supporters. They suggested that the USSR was dominated by a social layer of bureaucrats, and that it consisted of a new kind of society as aggressive as Western European societies. By 1948, having tried to persuade other Trotskyists of their viewpoint, they broke away with about a dozen others and founded the libertarian socialist group Socialisme ou Barbarie. Lefort's text L'Expérience prolétarienne was important in shifting the group's focus towards forms of self-organisation.

For a time Lefort wrote for both the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie and for Les Temps Modernes. His involvement in the latter journal ended after a published debate during 1952–4 over Jean-Paul Sartre's article The Communists and Peace. Lefort was for a long time uncomfortable with Socialisme ou Barbarie's "organisationalist" tendencies. In 1958 he, Henri Simon and others left and formed Informations et Liaison Ouvrières.

In his academic career, Lefort taught at the University of São Paulo, at the Sorbonne and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, being affiliated to the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron. He wrote on the early political writers Niccolò Machiavelli and Étienne de La Boétie and explored "the Totalitarian enterprise" in its "denial of social division... [and] of the difference between the order of power, the order of law and the order of knowledge".

Claude Darget

Claude Darget, was a journalist and presenter of French television.


Claude Darget was born Christian Savarit on January 26, 1910 in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.
His parents were journalist Celestin-Maurice Savarit and France Darget, creator of the theater company Le Coryphée, both poets, whose works were crowned by the French Academy.

Claude Darget started before the war at the Paris Post. When the Germans asked him to resume his post during the war, he refused, being in the Resistance. He providef comments on film news, for example on May 22, 1942 2 and in 1943 short film for Mother's Day Maternity Secretariat to the family with Gilberte Genia.

He was known for his personal, smiling or acidic comments according to the television news that he presented from 1954 to 1968. Philippe Bouvard describes him as "a consumer advocate for information."

The role of Claude Darget as well as the other presenters of the news program faded when Alain Peyrefitte was appointed Minister of Information in 1962, declaring to Leon Zitrone that henceforth, "the journalist should fade before the information." Darget was then confined to two programs: one of philately, which he was a connoisseur, the other he animated from 1952 to 1968 with Frederic Rossif named La Vie des animaux whose comments were just as sharp, but also very poetic.

In May 1968, ORTF journalists went on strike, protesting against state pressure on their freedom of expression. President Charles de Gaulle considered the act as a betrayal at a time when the country was going through a serious crisis and they were all dismissed on July 31, 1968. Claude Darget had never been compensated for this dismissal both abusive and political. He then deals only with his philatelic activities including Figaro.

Philippe Bouvard later found Claude Darget to interview him on television. When he asked: "What did you do when you left the television? Darget answered him, philosophically and with his customary impertinence which is close to that of Bouvard: "My faith, I did what you would do if tomorrow you were thrown out of doors." Bouvard obviously appreciated this trait of spirit worthy of the greatest years of his friend.

Claude Darget also participated in the animation of the mid-day show on Europe 1 "32 million for an answer more" in the 1970s, before being replaced by Pierre Bellemarre.

Claude Darget died on March 26 , 1992.

Peter Hasen

Peter Franklin Hansen was an American actor, best known for his role as a lawyer Lee Baldwin, on the soap opera General Hospital, playing the role from 1965 to 1976, 1977 to 1986, briefly in 1990, and again from 1992 to 2004. In 1989, he appeared in the movie The War of the Roses with Danny DeVito, Kathleen Turner, and Michael Douglas.

Hansen was born on December 5, 1921 in Oakland, California. His family moved to Detroit, Michigan. Hansen served in World War II in the United States Marine Corps and flew combat in the South Pacific. He flew F4U Corsairs and participated in the invasion of Peleliu in September 1944. In 1950, after he left the Marines, Hansen signed a contract with Paramount Pictures and became an actor.

Career
Hansen has appeared in more than 100 films, television series and made-for-television movies. His early acting roles was at the famed Pasadena Playhouse. Hansen was a guest star on Reed Hadley's CBS crime drama, The Public Defender, and the television adaptation of Gertrude Berg's comedy The Goldbergs. In addition to his work on General Hospital, he notably co-starred in 1963 on the NBC soap opera Ben Jerrod. He also appeared on The Golden Girls in 1985 (Season 1, Episode 5) as Dr. Elliott Clayton, a casanova who makes a pass at Blanche while dating Dorothy. In 1988, he starred in an episode of Cheers ("And God Created Woodman"; Season 6, Episode 14), as Daniel T. Collier, the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Lillian, the company which owns Cheers. Other notable appearances include work on Broken Arrow, Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Maverick, Sea Hunt, Petticoat Junction, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., How The West Was Won, The Adventures of Jim Bowie, Magnum, P.I., L.A. Law, Night Court, and Growing Pains.

Hansen had a major role in the 1950 Western film Branded with Alan Ladd, the 1951 science fiction film When Worlds Collide, and the 1952 Western film The Savage with Charlton Heston. In the 1960s, He made commercials for Chrysler products, mostly Plymouths, on shows hosted by Lawrence Welk, Steve Allen, and Garry Moore. In 1961, Hansen was a news anchor at the Los Angeles based TV station KCOP-TV.

In 1997, Hansen began playing the character on the sister show Port Charles. The early years of Port Charles saw the Baldwins as the core family, focusing on Lee's son, Scotty, and granddaughter, Karen. After their storyline took them back to "GH", Peter made occasional appearances on both shows, last appearing in 2004. Although he retired from acting afterwards, he did appear at the off-screen 50th Anniversary party in 2013 along with former on-screen wife Susan Brown.

Hansen met his future wife, Florence Elizabeth (née Moe), while in high school and married her in 1943. Together, they had two children, Peter and Gretchen, had three grandchildren: Allison, Erik and Jamal. Betty died in 1993. He then shared 24 years as companion to Barbara Wenzel.

Hansen resided in Tarzana, California, with his family, and he enjoyed flying, owning his own Cessna for decades, spent many vacations in the Sierra Nevada high country. He led a devoted spiritual life at St. Nicholas of Myra Episcopal Church, in Encino, California. Hansen died on April 9, 2017, at his home in Tarzana, California at the age of 95.

Norman Wooland

Norman Wooland was a British character actor who appeared in many major films, including several Shakespearean adaptations who was born in Düsseldorf, Germany to British parents.

During the Second World War he was a junior radio announcer, reporting the news for the BBC. His acting break came when he played Horatio in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), and in which his "fine work" was noted by The New York Times. Then came Catesby in Olivier's film of Richard III, and Paris in Romeo and Juliet (1954). He also had supporting roles in Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), Background (1953), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Life for Ruth (1962) and International Velvet (1978).

Wooland kept a herd of cows, each of which was named after a Shakespearean character. He died in 1989, aged 79.

Anton Giulio Majano

Anton Giulio Majano was an Italian director and screenwriter.

He was born in Chieti from Odoardo Majano and Agata Maraschini, a graduate in political science, attended the Military Academy of Modena, from which he emerged with the rank of cavalry officer.

He was one of the "fathers" of the Italian teleromanzo. Coming from "some cinematic experiences not excelled, but with a good literary kit behind him, Majano applied, since the zero hour of Italian TV, to the formula of the" script ", mediating it from the film transcriptions of the widely popular novels made especially from Hollywood cinema.”

For over thirty years he has linked his name to television dramas that have made the history of Italian television, directing actors like Alberto Lupo, Luigi Vannucchi, Virna Lisi, Romolo Valli, Enrico Maria Salerno, Arnoldo Foà, Lea Massari, a very young Loretta Goggi (discovered by him) and many others. His works were also numerous in radio prose, both in EIAR and in RAI, from the late thirties to the early sixties.

In the late thirties he began working in the cinema, as assistant director and screenwriter and at the end of World War II he continued to work on screenplays, until he became director directing numerous films.

Among his films for the cinema are: Vento d'Africa (1949), with Luigi Almirante and Franca Maj , L'eterna catena (1951), with Marcello Mastroianni and Gianna Maria Canale , La domenica della buona gente (1953) ), with Maria Fiore , Memmo Carotenuto and a newcomer Sophia Loren , Cento serenate (1954), with Giacomo Rondinella , Una donna prega (1954), with Alba Arnova and Franca Maj , actress who had already directed in Vento d'Africa and who at that time became his wife, but the marriage collapsed after a few years (later the director was tied to actress Maresa Gallo , who directed in several television dramas), The rival (1955), with Anna Maria Ferrero , Terror on the city (1956), with Andrea Checchi and Maria Fiore , Il padrone delle ferriere (1959), with Virna Lisi and Warner Bentivegna (the latter couple was then again directed by Majano in 1962 in the television drama An American tragedy ), Seddok, l heir of Satan (1960), with Alberto Lupo , Lui, lei and his grandfather (1961), with Gilberto Govi , I fratelli corsi (1961), with Amedeo Nazzari and Emma Danieli .

Claudio Villa

Claudio Villa was an Italian singer and actor

Tenor Claudio Villa was born Claudio Pica in the Trastevere quarter of Rome in 1926. He recorded over 3000 songs, sold 45 million records, and appeared in 25 musicals during his career.

His parents gave him the name "Claudio" in honor of Claudio Serio. Many songs made famous by Villa, like "'A Tazza 'E Cafe'," were recorded for the Fonit Cetra label. On his grave (he died in 1987) are the words "Life, you are fine. Death, you stink".

Together with Domenico Modugno Villa holds the record for the most wins at the Sanremo Music Festival, where he won the competition in 1955, 1957, 1962 and 1967. In 1963 he won the Festival di Napoli with the song "Jamme ja". He also sang at another Italian music competition, Canzonissima, a television event shown on RAI from 1956 to 1974. He won Canzonissima in 1964 with "O sole mio" and in 1966 with "Granada". He competed in the Eurovision Song Contest: in 1962 he sang "Addio, addio" and came in ninth; in 1967 he sang "Non andare più lontano", finishing eleventh.

His death in 1987 by a heart attack was announced live by host Pippo Baudo during the last night of that year's Sanremo Festival.

The singer was largely unknown in North America until the 1996 film Big Night was released, co-directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott. The film won international acclaim. The soundtrack includes three Claudio Villa songs: "Stornelli Amorosi", "La Strada Del Bosco" and "Tic Ti, Tic Ta". According to the liner notes accompanying the CD, "Stanley grew up listening to vocalists such as Carlo Buti and Claudio Villa, huge names in Italy but little known here. Villa is a master of the stornello, a traditional song style that we thought had just the right, delicate feeling for the film's opening. But we and co-director Campbell Scott were further amazed by Villa when in the editing room, we chanced upon his boisterous "Tic Tic, Tic Ta" and his shamelessly romantic "La Strada del Bosco".

Gipo Farassino

Giuseppe Farassino, known as Gipo, was an Italian singer-songwriter, actor and politician.

Wilfrid Brambell

Henry Wilfrid Brambell was a British television and film actor best known for his role in the television series Steptoe and Son. He also performed alongside the Beatles in their film A Hard Day's Night, playing Paul McCartney's fictional grandfather.

Brambell was born in Dublin, the youngest of three sons born to Henry Lytton Brambell, a cashier at the Guinness Brewery, and his wife, Edith Marks, a former opera singer. The family surname was changed from "Bramble" by Wilfrid's grandfather Frederick William Brambell.

His first appearance was as a child, entertaining the wounded troops during the First World War. After leaving school, he worked part-time as a reporter for The Irish Times and part-time as an actor at the Abbey Theatre before becoming a professional actor for the Gate Theatre. He also did repertory at Swansea, Bristol and Chesterfield. In the Second World War he joined the British military forces entertainment organization ENSA.

Brambell had roles in film and television films from 1947, first appearing in Odd Man Out as a tram passenger (uncredited) in 1947. His television career began during the 1950s, when he was cast in small roles in three Nigel Kneale/Rudolph Cartier productions for BBC Television: as a drunk in The Quatermass Experiment (1953), as both an old man in a pub and later a prisoner in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954) and as a tramp in Quatermass II (1955). All of these roles earned him a reputation for playing old men, though he was only in his forties at the time. He appeared as Bill Gaye in the 1962 Maurice Chevalier/Hayley Mills picture, In Search of the Castaways. He was heard in the original soundtrack of The Canterbury Tales, which was one of the quickest selling West End soundtrack albums of all time. He also released two 45-rpm singles, "Second Hand"/"Rag Time Ragabone Man", that played on his Steptoe and Son character, followed in 1971 by "Time Marches On", his tribute to the Beatles, with whom he had worked in 1964 (and met many times). It featured a Beatles-esque guitar riff with Brambell reciting words about the Beatles splitting up. The B-side was "The Decimal Song" which, at the time of Britain adopting decimal currency, was politically charged. He played Paul McCartney's fictitious grandfather in the Beatles' 1964 film, A Hard Day's Night.

He featured in many prominent theatre roles. In 1966 he played Ebenezer Scrooge in a musical version of A Christmas Carol. This was adapted for radio the same year and appeared on Radio 2 on Christmas Eve. Brambell's booming baritone voice surprised many listeners: he played the role straight, true to the Dickens original, and not in the stereotype Albert Steptoe character. In 1971, he starred in the premiere of Eric Chappell's play, The Banana Box, in which he played Rooksby. This part was later renamed Rigsby for the TV adaptation called Rising Damp, with Leonard Rossiter replacing Brambell in the role.


It was this ability to play old men that led to his casting in his best remembered role as Albert Steptoe, the irascible father in Steptoe and Son (his son Harold was played by Harry H. Corbett), a man who, when the series began, was said to be in his sixties, even though Brambell was only aged 49 in 1962 (thirteen years older than Corbett). The series began as a pilot on the BBC's Comedy Playhouse, and its success led to commission of a full series. It ran from 1962 to 1974 including a five-year hiatus. A constant thread throughout the series was Albert being referred to by Harold as a "dirty old man", for example when he was eating pickled onions while taking a bath, and retrieving dropped ones from the bathwater. There were also two feature film spin-offs, a stage show and an American incarnation entitled Sanford and Son.

The success of Steptoe and Son made Brambell a high-profile figure on British television, and earned him the supporting role of Paul McCartney's grandfather in the Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night (1964). A running joke is made throughout the film of his character being "a very clean old man", in contrast to his being referred to as a "dirty old man" in Steptoe and Son. In real life, he was indeed nothing like his Steptoe persona, being dapper and well-spoken. In 1965, Brambell told the BBC that he did not want to do another series of Steptoe and Son, and in September that year he went to New York to appear in the Broadway musical Kelly at the Broadhurst Theatre.

Apart from his role as the older Steptoe, Brambell achieved recognition in many films. His performance in The Terence Davies Trilogy won him critical acclaim, far greater than any achieved for Steptoe and Son. Although he appears throughout the full 24-minute piece, Brambell does not speak a single word.

After the final series of Steptoe and Son was made, in 1974, Brambell had some guest roles in films and on television. He and Harry H. Corbett also undertook a tour of Australia in 1977 in a Steptoe and Son stage show. In 1982 Brambell appeared on the BBC's television news paying tribute to Corbett after the latter's death from a heart attack. In 1983 Brambell appeared in Terence Davies's film Death and Transfiguration, playing a dying elderly man who finally comes to terms with his homosexuality.

Brambell died as a result of cancer at his home in Westminster, London, aged 72 on 18 January 1985.

Marcus Goodrich

Marcus Aurelius Goodrich was an American screenwriter and novelist. He was the first husband of actress Olivia de Havilland.

He associated with the Ernest Hemingway group in Paris and was a protégé of Philip Wylie. He is best known for his 1941 novel Delilah.

Jack Trevor

Jack Trevor, born Anthony Cedric Sebastian Steane, was an English film actor of the silent era and sound era. He appeared in 67 films between 1922 and 1943.

Although winning the Military Cross serving with the Manchester Regiment during World War I, during World War II he made propaganda films for Joseph Goebbels’ ministry, for which he was eventually sentenced to three years’ imprisonment but the sentence was quashed on appeal as he was held to be acting under duress.

Arthur Shields

Arthur Shields was an Irish actor on television, stage and film.

Born into an Irish Protestant family in Portobello, Dublin, Shields started acting in the Abbey Theatre when he was 17 years old. He was the younger brother of Oscar-winning actor Barry Fitzgerald. They were the sons of Adolphus Shields, who "was well-known in Dublin as a labor organizer" although the 1901 census listed his occupation as "press reader," and Fanny Sophia Shields.

An Irish nationalist, Shields fought in the Easter Rising of 1916. He was captured and held for six months in the Frongoch internment camp in Frongoch, Wales.

Shields returned to the Abbey Theatre and had a varied career there from 1914 to 1939 as actor, assistant director, director and stage manager. He appeared in many productions while he was there, three of the productions he appeared in were by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy 'The Reapers' 'Temporal Powers' and 'Katie Roche'. Three times he brought the Abbey Company to the United States.

In 1936, John Ford brought him to the United States to act in a film version of The Plough and the Stars. Some of his memorable roles were in Ford films. Shields portrayed the Reverend Playfair in Ford's The Quiet Man, opposite John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara and his brother, Barry Fitzgerald. He played Dr. Laughlin in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon with Wayne and Joanne Dru, and appeared yet again with Wayne and Barry Fitzgerald in Ford's Long Voyage Home. His other films include: Little Nellie Kelly, The Keys of the Kingdom, The Fabulous Dorseys, Gallant Journey, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, Drums Along the Mohawk, Lady Godiva, National Velvet and The River. He also made television appearances including a 1958 role on Perry Mason as Dr. George Barnes in "The Case of the Screaming Woman."

Married to Bazie Magee in 1920. Son Adam is born in 1927. Married Aideen O'Connor in 1943. Daughter Christine is born in 1946. Aideen died in 1950. Married Laurie Bailey in 1955.

Shields died of complications related to emphysema on 27 April 1970, in Santa Barbara, California