Talk:Michael Gough

Name

How is his name pronounced? Goo? Goff? Goog? Gaw? Or what?--74.68.102.138 (talk) 07:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Goff.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 17:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Protection

Why does the permenant full protection icon appear on this article? 69.149.154.16 (talk) 03:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Year of birth

There seems to be confusion whether he was born in 1913/1914 or 1916/1917 – such dual discrepancy is quite common in age-based calculation (i.e. 2009 − 92 = 1917) for people born late of the year. Gough himself stated in The Times on June 23, 1997, that "There was some indecision as to when I was born. My sister said it was 1916. I'd lost my birth certificate.", as referenced at the TCM Movie Database. I wonder where the earlier date comes from. Curiously most of this articles references support 1916, yet 1913 is used. --Anshelm '77 (talk) 17:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

1916 has been confirmed by his wife; I've changed the date —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.59.121.15 (talk) 12:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Diablo?

Wasn't this guy the voice actor of Decard Cain in the Diablo game series? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.223.53.188 (talk) 22:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

No that is a different actor with the same name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.171.171.203 (talk) 14:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Filmography

Anyone know enough/have the time to create a proper filmography page for this guy, as per other actors? His actual roles within his films notable by their absence! Grunners (talk) 19:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Marriages

I have removed the years of marriage from the infobox and also the note that Anneke Wills was his third/first wife as these seem to be wrong or contradictory. I initially changed Wills to his first wife as the dates of marriage to Graves and Leon were after his marriage to her, but it looks like "third wife" was correct.

Until just now, the infobox says:

• Anneke Wills (1962–1979, divorced)
• Anne Leon (1979–1982, divorced)
• Diana Graves (1982–1983, divorced)
• Henrietta Lawrence (?–2011, his death)

I'll try and collect some references here to piece together when he married who:

• The Peerage says he married Anne Elizabeth Leon, and were divorced in 1964.
• The British Film Yearbook 1959 says he was married to Anne Leon at that time.
• Who's Who in the Theatre (1977) lists his wives as (1) Diana Graves (mar dis); (2) Anne Leon (mar dis); (3) Anneke Wills.

It looks like the order is Diana Graves, Anne Leon, Anneke Wills, Henrietta Lawrence. Still need to work out the dates as the Peerage and Wills' biography seem to have their marriages overlapping by about two years. --Canley (talk) 23:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Nine years on from the last entry, the dates are still overlapping. Valetude (talk) 00:56, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

According to the excerpt from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (quoted below, under Place of Death), the dates are Graves (1937-?); Leon (1950-1962); Wills (1964-1979); Lawrence (1981-2011, his death). I don't know if this is more reliable than the other sources. On the other hand, we do know the dates are wrong at the moment (because of the overlap). And the fact that exact dates are given in the Dictionary gives me additional confidence. I suggest we use these dates, with 1948 (from the current article) as the date of his divorce from Graves. 83.216.93.181 (talk) 23:01, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Sure, sounds good, go for it. --Canley (talk) 01:48, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Full name

I wouldn't change it without a corroborating reliable source, but this family tree of the Bowker children lists Michael Gough's full name as "Francis Michael Gough". Just a note to look out for a reference. --Canley (talk) 23:47, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Note — it seems his father was named Francis and his mother Frances! --Canley (talk) 23:50, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

We would need like one more source stating his full name as Michael Roland Gough before it could be put into the article Bped1985 (talk) 00:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Here: https://www.celebrities-with-diseases.com/celebrities/batman-star-michael-gough-passes-away-aged-94-14823.html, but who knows? The Web is a big echo chamber, endlessly reverberating bad information. —Quicksilver^{T @} 17:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Place of death

As of now the obituaries haven't given a place of death, other than he died at home with family members present. A fan site dedicated to providing mailing addresses for celebrity autographs and photos gives it as follows:

Torleigh
Green Ln.
Ashmore, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP5 5AQ
UK

There's no independent verification, however, whether this was Mr. Gough's residence. —Quicksilver^{T @} 17:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

His entry on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (published online in 2015), which cites his death certificate, confirms he did indeed die at his family home in Wiltshire (see full transcript below). I will change the article to reflect this.

Gough, (Francis) Michael (1916–2011), actor, was born on 23 November 1916 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, the son of Francis Berkeley Gough (1883/4–1957), rubber planter, and his wife, Frances Atkins, née Bailie. The family returned to England when Gough was six (though his father subsequently took up farming in Kenya), and he was educated at Rose Hill School in Tunbridge Wells, Durham School, and Wye Agricultural College. However he had always dreamed of being an actor, and having failed academically—'I was hopeless in school, I never passed a single exam' (Chicago Tribune, 28 Jan 1988), he dropped out of college and set about fulfilling his dream.

After a stint washing dishes in Soho cafés, Gough gained a place at the Old Vic School in 1936, where he made his first professional appearance on stage, playing small parts during the 1936–7 season, among an exceptional company that included Edith Evans, Ruth Gordon, Jessica Tandy, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, and Alec Guinness, under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie. Later in 1937 he made his first appearance on Broadway, in Love of Women, but the play folded after eight performances, 'leaving him down and out in New York. Far from despondent he married one of the actresses' (The Independent, 19 March 2011). She was Diana Graves (1915–1975), the daughter of Richard Massie Graves, army officer, and a niece of the poet Robert Graves. They were married at St John's Episcopalian Church, New York, on 21 September 1937, and had a son, Simon (b. 1942).

During the Second World War, as a registered conscientious objector, Gough was enlisted in the Non-Combatants Corps, alongside the dramatists Christopher Fry and Wynyard Browne. The war over, Fry directed a production of The School for Scandal at the Oxford Playhouse, in which Gough played Charles Surface, with fellow pacifist Frith Banbury as his brother Joseph. He began to gain attention on the London stage and gave a succession of admired performances: in Frederick Lonsdale's But for the Grace of God (1946); as Hugo, the reluctant assassin, in Sartre's Crime passionel (1948); opposite Gertrude Lawrence in Daphne du Maurier's September Tide (1948)—'Play dreadful, Michael Gough brilliantly good, Gertie really beyond all praise', recorded Noël Coward in his diaries (Payn and Morley, 116)—and as Laertes to Alec Guinness's Hamlet (1951). He replaced Dirk Bogarde as Nicky Lancaster in a revival of Coward's The Vortex (1952), and, 'oozing sincerity' (Tynan, 113), was very fine as the idealistic Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck (1955).

Gough made his film début in 1948, as Valerie Hobson's ill-fated husband in Blanche Fury, and in the same year he was Nicholai to Vivien Leigh's Anna Karenina. For the next sixty years he excelled in a host of character roles in innumerable films, notably alongside his old friend Alec Guinness in The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Horse's Mouth (1958), as the outlaw Irish tinker in No Resting Place (1951), and as one of the murderers in the Tower in Olivier's Richard III (1955). Then, in what Gough called ‘GTMAR films’ (‘Get the money and run’), he achieved something like cult status, appearing in a succession of horror films starting with Dracula (1958). Gough referred to himself as 'a poor man's Peter Cushing' (Kemp, Michael Gough), while the producer Herman Cohen called him 'the cheaper version of Vincent Price' (Daily Telegraph, 18 March 2011), but in truth he was uniquely Michael Gough, lending his inimitable, seductively sepulchral voice and 'air of avuncular charm' (Kemp, Michael Gough) to such ghoulish titles as Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965), Berserk (1967), and Trog (1970), these last two starring the legendary Joan Crawford in her declining years.

As if all these film and stage roles were not enough, Gough also managed to have a distinguished television career, beginning in 1946. In 1955 he played Rakitin in A Month in the Country, directed by Robert Hamer, in 1957 he was the British Film Academy's best television actor, he was the Celestial Toymaker in Doctor Who (1965), perfect as both the March Hare in Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland (1966) and Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1967), and with Guinness again, he was Mikhel, the Estonian émigré, in Smiley's People (1982), 'showing us briefly how good he can be in much better parts' (Hughes, 43). But Gough had opportunities in leading roles too, and gave fine performances as David Livingstone in The Search for the Nile (1971), Anthony Eden in Suez 1956 (1979), and the old writer in Dennis Potter's controversial Blackeyes (1989).

Despite an extraordinarily busy screen career, Gough never entirely deserted the stage. He was Pastor Manders to Wendy Hiller's Mrs Alving in Ghosts in Cambridge (1967), King Lear in Coventry (1974), a favourite role, and in 1975 joined the National Theatre Company, most notably in a joyful double act with Joan Hickson in Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce (1977). When the production transferred to New York, both Gough and Hickson were rewarded with Tony awards. Gough was nominated again ten years later, when he played the cryptographer Dillwyn Knox in Hugh Whitemore's play about Alan Turing and Bletchley Park, Breaking the Code. Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times, captured the essence of Gough's acting: 'There is fine, supple Chekhovian detail to his every small gesture, from his slow-dawning owlish smiles to the buttoning of his ill-fitting tweed jacket to the revealing tentativeness with which he fingers through a personnel file' (New York Times, 16 Nov 1987).

There were ‘better’ films with better directors: Ken Russell's Women in Love (1969) and Savage Messiah (1972); Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (1971), giving a wonderful performance as the blinkered Mr Maudsley, for which he was deservedly nominated as best supporting actor by the Society of Film and Television Arts; Derek Jarman's Caravaggio (1986), as Cardinal del Monte, and Wittgenstein (1993), as Bertrand Russell; and Martin Scorcese's The Age of Innocence (1993). But it was his appearances in the 1960s horror movies that the director Tim Burton remembered when he was looking for someone to play Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's butler, in Batman (1989). According to Gough, Burton saw him on television and exclaimed, 'That's the guy who's in all those terrible movies! He's our Alfred!' (Kemp, Michael Gough). Gough's 'regal voice and gothic features' (The Independent, 19 March 2011) were perfect for the role, and he continued as Alfred in three subsequent films. Burton also provided Gough with two of his last roles, bringing him out of virtual retirement to appear in Sleepy Hollow (1999), and to voice the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland (2010), seventy-four years after his début at the Old Vic.

In his long and varied career Michael Gough had 'the knack for being able to move effortlessly from the high brow to the low brow' (The Independent, 19 March 2011). He was happy being a supporting player, could be wonderfully subtle and restrained or 'eye-bulgingly terrifying' (New York Times, 18 March 2011), and never took himself too seriously; 'I'd rather sit and watch my knickers fly around inside the washing machine than myself on film' he said (The Times, 18 March 2011). He was much loved and admired within his profession, and was a witty and seductively charming man, as his somewhat eventful personal life testified. He was married four times. He met his second wife, Anne Elizabeth Leon (1925–1990), actress, and daughter of Sir Ronald George Leon, third baronet, stockbroker, while performing in September Tide, and they were married at Chelsea register office on 19 December 1950. They had a daughter, Emma (b. 1953). Divorced in 1962, he married the actress Anneke Wills, née Anna Katrina Willys (b. 1941), daughter of Alaric Willys, army officer and gambler, at Fulham register office on 26 February 1965. They had a son, Jasper (b. 1965), and Gough also adopted her daughter Polly (1963–1982), whose biological father was the actor Anthony Newley. Divorced from Wills in 1979, he married, at Wandsworth register office on 7 July 1981, Henrietta Lawrence (b. 1946), secretary, and daughter of Terence Patrick Lawrence, stockbroker. He died at his home, Torleigh, Green Lane, Ashmore, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 17 March 2011, of pneumonia and prostate cancer. He was survived by his wife Henrietta and three children.

Sources

K. Tynan, Curtains (1961) I. Herbert, ed., Who’s who in the theatre, 16th edn (1977) Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat The Noël Coward diaries, ed. G. Payn and S. Morley (1982) Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat D. Hughes, Drama (spring 1983), 43 Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat D. Quinlan, British sound films: the studio years, 1928–1959 (1984) Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat D. Quinlan, Quinlan's character stars (2004) Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat The Times (18 March 2011)

(1 April 2011)

Daily Telegraph (18 March 2011) Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat The Guardian (18 March 2011)

(7 April 2011)

New York Times (18 March 2011) Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat The Independent (19 March 2011) Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat Western Daily Press (30 March 2011) Find it in your libraryGoogle PreviewWorldCat P. Kemp, ‘Michael Gough’, Sight and Sound, March 2012, old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/newsandviews/obituaries/michael-gough.php, 8 Sept 2014 personal knowledge (2015) private information (2015) m. certs. d. cert.

Crisso (talk) 20:53, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Best known for

I'd love to think the fame of Doctor Who would make his 1966 appearance in a four-episode story the thing that Mr Gough was best known for, but this is clearly not the case, even for British audiences (probably even for Doctor Who fans). While appearances in early episodes of that series might be a claim to fame for some, Mr Gough's "Celestial Toymaker" story was lost (three out of four episodes, at least - enough to prevent it being repeated), so can't even be said to have picked up a following in later years. My feeling is that the role in four Batman films, most of which did well in film and video release, must be said to be the place most people in Britain and abroad would know him from. Labdude (talk) 06:28, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

• Well the audio recordings of the episodes still exist. On top of that, Gough's likeness was continued to be used in novels and comics for the show. --Victory93 (talk) 03:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Victory93, you are confusing 'Whovians' with the wider population who will have no interest in the soundtracks of the 'lost 108' episodes or the various offshoots. Philip Cross (talk) 10:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

McGregor's Syndrome

It says that he died from MacGregor's Syndrome, but I'm pretty sure that it's not a real syndrome, just one made up for the Batman movie? 81.109.152.223 (talk) 00:17, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

It looks like it's just a nod to Alfred's sickness, though, at 14 years, this vandalism is pretty outdated. --Boycool (talk) 02:49, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

And it keeps being re-added...old vandalism jokes never die. --Τασουλα (Shalom!) (talk) 12:03, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

It's being added several times a day. I've semi-protected the article to block anon edits temporarily, hopefully this silly game will die down. --Canley (talk) 22:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Cause of death and nationality

I don't want to get into an edit war here, so just wanted to raise a discussion about the edits I've reverted adding "Cause of death: Short-illness" and "Nationality: British-Malaysian". I removed the cause of death as I don't think it's useful to cite short illness, natural causes or old age as a cause of death, and additionally, while Gough may have died after a short illness, it doesn't mean it was the cause of his death. Also, although he was born in British Malaya, is there any evidence that he possessed "Malaysian nationality"? --Canley (talk) 04:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm guessing it depends on one's definition of nationality, which in my view refers to a combination of ethnicity, citizenship and residence, but I would be pretty certain Michael Gough possessed neither Malaysian citizenship or ethnicity, and does not appear to have resided in Malaya for very long. The notion of nationality of people of British parentage born in what were then British colonies complicates it a bit, but it also should be noted that the concept of "Malay(si)an citizenship" most likely did not exist at the time of Gough's birth, and also Malaysia neither permits dual citizenship, nor recognises jus soli. --Canley (talk) 05:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Malaysian should not come into it at all, as you've rightly pointed out...and we generally don't list nationality for actors, I think. English in the lead seems to do fine. He was remember for his very English roles, er,cultural...and so on. --Τασουλα (Shalom!) (talk) 13:46, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The infobox now makes clear he was British, not Malayan or Malaysian. This is what the nationality field in the infobox is for - so the reader can quickly ascertain the subject's identity and vital info. The fact that relevant info is missing from many other infoboxes and articles on Wikipedia is due to the fact that there are many times more articles than regular editors to add such info. There is not a policy to exclude it. Jim Michael (talk) 16:27, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The Perfect Husband in Sherlock Holmes

He appeared as Russell Partridge in episode "The Perfect Husband" of the b&w Sherlock Holmes television series (1955). IMDB link to The Perfect Husband episode.AdderUser (talk) 16:40, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

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Marriage dates error?

There would seem to be an inconsistency in the dates in the infobox as it states Michael Gough married Anneke Wills in 1962, but did not divorce his previous wife, Anne Leon, until 1964. Dunarc (talk) 23:45, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Now fixed. Crisso (talk) 01:19, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting so quickly. Dunarc (talk) 23:55, 2 November 2022 (UTC)