Saturday Night and the Morning After

Steyn Online ^ | 9 Feb 2019 | Mark Steyn

[Rummyfan]

Albert Finney died on Thursday, apparently from one of those sudden infections generally harmless to youth but swiftly lethal to otherwise healthy old men. His last film was in 2012 - Skyfall, one of the best of all 007 outings, in which he played the Bond family's ancient Scottish retainer at James' crumbling childhood home. In that diamond jubilee year of Cubby Broccoli's lucrative franchise, it was a role fairly obviously intended for Sean Connery, but which Sir Sean, after Never Say Never Again, decided to say never again to, perhaps wisely. Finney was hairy, game, and, in his scenes with M (Judi Dench), not un-tender. And so half a century on screen ended with affectionate reviews for an undemanding turn in a global blockbuster.

Finney became a West End star at 23 in Keith Waterhouse's 1959 stage adaptation of Billy Liar, his novel of a northern working-class fantasist dreaming of life as a comedy writer in the Smoke (London). His second film, based on Alan Sillitoe's book Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, found him in a more naturalistic treatment of the same general milieu - a machinist at a bicycle factory in the East Midlands - and so for a while Finney was grouped with the so-called "angry young men" of gritty kitchen-sink dramas. A scion of Salford Grammar School, he would later concede that his own childhood hadn't, in fact, been quite that "gritty", and he was not by nature that "angry" (quite the opposite in my limited experience), but he kept his working-class vowels through the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and he belonged to the first generation of British actors who didn't aspire to drawl "Anyone for tennis?" as though born to it.

[Rummyfan]

Albert Finney on Saturday Night ...and as Daddy Warbucks, Winston Churchill, and Erin Brockovich's lawyer

[miss marmelstein]

Wonderful actor. I once sat across him at a restaurant in London in the late 1990s. I believe it was The Ivy. He was surrounded by booze, food and beautiful broads. He knew how to live.

[MHGinTN]

Finney, a man in full. He was the best version of Perot in Murder On The Orient Express, most like the detective portrayed / depicted in the novels. I have four movie versions. Not to detract from Suchet’s Perot.

[hotsteppa]

Loved him in Miller’s crossing.

[willk]

He was great as Winston Churchill. Forget the name of the movie but it is very good one to watch. Set right before the war as he is trying to get back into politics and trying to warn his country of the dangers ahead with Germany.

[stanne]

Read the piece

[jjotto]

The Gathering Storm

BBC TV

[Deo volente]

Also great as Jason Bourne's psychiatrist.

[monkeyshine]

Great film, great actor. I hadn’t known he passed. God bless, Albert Finney.

[trisham]

I just watched Skyfall a couple of weeks or so ago. He was great. RIP, Mr. Finney.

[PlateOfShrimp]

I loved him as John Newton in Amazing Grace

[Clioman]

Don’t forget “Tom Jones.” Four Oscars, including Best Picture (1963). I didn’t know of Finney’s passing;I think I’ll rewatch it tonight as a tribute.

[Rummyfan]

Probably one of his lesser known roles but he was great as an NYPD detective in Wolfen. He could play American characters better than most American actors.