Posted on 06/11/2015 5:38:58 AM PDT by Jonty30
Christopher Lee: he could turn schlock into Shakespeare
Christopher Lee, who has died at the age of 93, brought dignity and gravitas to the most fantastical of roles.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
A legend has passed.
Oh wow. That's so sad. I had no idea he was that old. Besides Lord of the Rings, he had a nice role in the movie "Hugo" as well, as a kindly old bookstore owner in a Paris train station.
Christopher Lee talks The Hobbit, Hugo and Dark Shadows (2011)
Rest in Peace, Mr. Lee...
RIP
I chatted with him on the set of a certain movie. Girls were surrounding him and not the “other stars”. The dude was pushing 200 years old and still get the chicks. I actually believed this guy would never die, and I really started to remember that conversation with him. Mostly about cars and driving through the Nevada desert..
R.I.P. Flight Lt Christopher Lee
Godspeed to Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee
also bumping his WW2 contributions. wanted to do more, but his eyesight held him back, I think.
Robespierre’s head?
Shatner...Shakespeare? That explains the over acting on Star Trek.
To...BE?...ornotto...Be? (dramatic hand gestures)
(oh goodness gracious me...!)
My dad told me the news this morning and I was just devastated. I loved his roles as Count Dooku in Star Wars and as Saruman in Lord of the Rings. He was the only actor in the LOTR series who actually got to meet Tolkien. He will be greatly missed.
An entire series could made about his time with British Intelligence in WW2. He spoke six languages.
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/christopherlee.html
“Hang onto those autographed Saruman cards.”
No kidding!!!
An era seems to end with the passing of Sir Christopher Lee. He is still the first face I think of whenever anyone mentions ‘Dracula’ - and he remains my favorite Bond villain, as the suave Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun.
An extraordinary career but he was an even more extraordinary man. I love the fact that SOE, where he served during WWII, was known, unofficially, by that most British of titles - The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
RIP Sir Christopher. Have a good catch-up with Cushing.
I knew Lee was very accomplished, but I just finished reading the Wikipedia article on Lee - wow! What a full life!
I find myself wondering how he could do all that... It’s almost, you know, not human... (cue eerie music...)
Lee is lucky to have lived to 93 given the fact most of the people of his generation died much too early from the effects of too much smoking cigarettes (World War II got way too many Allied soldiers into the cigarette habit given it was part of the rations given to each soldier).
From the SAS To The Gurkhas: The Story Of Sir Christopher Lee
http://forces.tv/60797077
The real-life horrors that haunted Dracula: Deadly missions against Nazis. Witnessing the last death by guillotine. Extraordinary past that turned Christopher Lee into cinema’s seductive Prince of Darkness
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3120781/Christopher-Lee-died-week-fought-against-Nazis-witnessed-public-execution-guillotine.html
‘When I arrived in New Zealand to start filming as Gandalf, in the first week of the 21st Century, Peter Jackson held a dinner for some of the cast. I was happily next to Christopher Lee who I had known of throughout my actor-admiring life. He’d been cast as the white wizard Saruman but his opening line to me was: “I’ve always thought I should play Gandalf. I read ‘Lord of the Rings’ every year - sometimes twice.”
He then treated me to a snatch of the black speech of Mordor and I felt inadequate. Not that that was Chris’s intention: he was 78 and well practised in the art of gentlemanly rectitude. The epitome of “tall, dark and handsome” kept any inner demons for his acting Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and, once, as Sherlock Holmes.
It’s what made his Saruman so effective. With his long beard and white robes, he had the air of a stern yet benign Pope that belied his ambition to rule Middle-earth, with cruelty and spite.
Between our facing-off on the set, he could easily be persuaded to reminisce. After all there were over 200 films on his CV and a couple of singing albums. His earliest intention was to be an opera bass., Touchingly he was a little nervous at the outset. “Peter made me do my first speech 10 times!!” I told him not to worry as the previous day I’d had to repeat a scene 27 times. His dark eyes widened and glinted but he didn’t complain again.
Peter was tickled to have his Hammer Horror hero as the villain and devised a spectacular death to acknowledge his vampiric past - falling onto a spike which pierced his dastardly heart. Chris didn’t much approve and I think the episode can only be seen in the extended Director’s Cut.
An odd pity that he didn’t work in the theatre, nor direct a film, like his idol Laurence Olivier who had Chris as a spear-carrier in his film of ‘Hamlet.’ But he was justly proud of the span and success of his career in movies and when knighted must, like all of us, have been pleased to share a title with Sir Larry.
The last time Saruman and Gandalf filmed together was ‘round a table in Rivendell but while Galadriel, Elrond and I were in the Wellington studio, Sir Christopher’s interjections were filmed in London some months later. You can’t tell. In movies, all is not as it seems.
Yet when he joined the “Star Wars” cast he said he did all his own stunts without benefit of a stand-in. That certainly wasn’t true of his gravity-defying fight with Gandalf. I suspect he just wanted to declare he was in old age fit for purpose. He needn’t have worried. His acting prowess never declined.’
— Ian McKellen, June 2015
Not yet. IIRC, this scene was of Danton’s execution. Wish I could remember the name of this exceptional French production. The entire film is on YouTube, with English subtitles. Really first rate.
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