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Julian Somers
John Julian Somers (12 November 1903 – 11 November 1976), known as Julian Somers, was a prolific English stage and screen actor. Career By 1934, Somers was appearing in rep at Croydon. In 1937, he was on stage in Jeffrey Dell's play '' Night Alone'' at the Embassy Theatre with Alexander Archdale. In 1944, he appeared as the White Rabbit in a stage production of ''Alice in Wonderland''. Early film roles came in ''The Peterville Diamond'' (1942) and '' Caravan'' (1946). Outside his developing screen career as a supporting actor, Somers continued to be heard in BBC radio productions and to appear in West End theatre plays and reviews. Private life In October 1939, Somers was living with his mother, Ethel M. Somers, at Wolnoth, Park Lane, Leatherhead, and was registered as an actor. In the summer of 1950, he married Betty Margaret Newcombe at Finsbury. They had three sons and a daughter. Death Somers died in London in 1976, aged 72. At the time of his death, he was living at 33 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English People
The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language in England, English language, a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language, and share a common history and culture. The English identity is of History of Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon origin, when they were known in Old English as the ('race or tribe of the Angles'). Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain around the 5th century AD. The English largely descend from two main historical population groups the West Germanic tribes (the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians) who settled in southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Ancient Rome, Romans, and the Romano-British culture, partially Romanised Celtic Britons already living there.Martiniano, R., Caffell, A., Holst, M. et al. Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons. Nat Commun 7, 10326 (2016). https://doi.org/10 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Registration Act 1939
The National Registration Act 1939 was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. The initial National Registration Bill was introduced to Parliament as an emergency measure at the start of the Second World War. The Act provided for the establishment of a constantly-maintained National Register of the civilian population of the United Kingdom and the Isle of Man, and for the issuance of identity cards based on data held in the register, and required civilians to present their identity cards on demand to police officers and other authorised persons. Following the passing of the Act by Parliament on 5 September 1939, registrations and the issuing of identity cards commenced on 29 September. Registration and identity cards Every man, woman and child had to carry an identity (ID) card at all times and the cards would include the following information: *Name *Sex *Date of birth (and thus age) *Occupation, profession, trade or employment. The Register had also collected informati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Moonraker
''The Moonraker'' is a British swashbuckler film made in 1957 and released in 1958 and set in the English Civil War. It was directed by David MacDonald and starred George Baker, Sylvia Syms, Marius Goring, Gary Raymond, Peter Arne, John Le Mesurier and Patrick Troughton."Moonraker, The", ''Monthly Film Bulletin''; London Vol. 25, Iss. 288, (1 January 1958): 62. It is based on the 1952 play of the same title by Arthur Watkyn. It was shot at Elstree Studios with sets designed by the art director Robert Jones The film depicts a fictionalised account of the escape of Charles II, arranged by a foppish royalist nobleman, the Earl of Dawlish, who leads a double life as a roundhead-baiting highwayman called The Moonraker, who already has helped more than thirty royalists to escape to France. The film was one of the last productions made by the Robert Clarke regime at Associated British-Pathe. Synopsis After the Battle of Worcester at the end of the Second English Civil War, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Cruiser Admiral Graf Spee
''Admiral Graf Spee'' was a "''Panzerschiff''" (armored ship), nicknamed a "pocket battleship" by the British, which served with the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany during World War II. The vessel was named after World War I Admiral Maximilian von Spee, commander of the East Asia Squadron who fought the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands, where he was killed in action. She was laid down at the ''Reichsmarinewerft'' shipyard in Wilhelmshaven in October 1932 and completed by January 1936. The ship was nominally under the limitation on warship size imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, though with a full load displacement of , she significantly exceeded it. Armed with six guns in two triple gun turrets, ''Admiral Graf Spee'' and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them. Their top speed of left only the few battlecruisers in the Anglo-French navies fast enough and powerful enough to sink them. The ship conducted five non-intervention patr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Battle Of The River Plate (film)
''The Battle of the River Plate'' (a.k.a. ''Pursuit of the Graf Spee'' in the United States) is a 1956 British war film in Technicolor and VistaVision by the writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, Bernard Lee and Peter Finch. It was distributed worldwide by Rank Film Distributors Ltd. The film's storyline concerns the Battle of the River Plate, an early World War II naval engagement in 1939 between a Royal Navy force of three cruisers and the German pocket battleship . Plot In the early months of the Second World War, Nazi Germany's ''Kriegsmarine'' sends out merchant raiders to attack Allied shipping. The heavily armed German pocket battleship the ''Admiral Graf Spee'' sinks a British merchant vessel, the '' Africa Shell''. The ''Africa Shell's'' crew is brought aboard the ''Admiral Graf Spee''. The ''Admiral Graf Spee'' docks with its supply ship and more captured British seamen are brought aboard. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Long Memory
''The Long Memory'' is a black-and-white 1953 British crime film directed by Robert Hamer and based on the 1951 novel of the same title by Howard Clewes. Filmed at locations such as London Waterloo railway station, the North Kent Marshes on the Thames Estuary, and the dingy backstreets of Gravesend, Kent, mainly Queen Street, its bleak setting and grim atmosphere have led to its acclaim as a British example of film noir. Plot Phillip Davidson boards a boat and embraces Fay Driver. Then he goes down below to try to convince her alcoholic father, Captain Driver, not to involve Fay in his criminal activity. However, Boyd brings aboard Delaney (a man he has agreed to smuggle out of the country) and two henchmen. When Boyd demands that Delaney pay him £500, rather than £200, a fight erupts, and Boyd knocks Delaney out. A broken oil lamp starts a fire, attracting the attention of the authorities, and Philip is fished out of the water. A charred corpse is found in the sunken boat. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Three Steps To The Gallows
''Three Steps to the Gallows'', released in the United States as ''White Fire'', is a 1953 British crime film directed by John Gilling and starring Scott Brady, Mary Castle and Gabrielle Brune. The film, essentially a British second feature, is enhanced by the attractive American leads. Premise An American merchant ship officer on shore leave in London learns that his brother is about to be hanged in three days and sets out to prove his innocence against an organised smuggling gang based in a nightclub. His plight becomes increasingly tense in the face of double crosses and bad decisions in a race against time. Partial cast * Scott Brady - Gregor Stevens * Mary Castle - Yvonne Durante * Gabrielle Brune - Lorna Dryhurst * Ferdy Mayne - Mario Sartago * Colin Tapley - Arnold Winslow * John Blythe - Dave Leary * Michael Balfour - Carter * Lloyd Lamble - James Smith * Julian Somers – John Durante * Ballard Berkeley - Inspector Haley * Ronan O'Casey - Crawson * Johnnie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Story Of Robin Hood And His Merrie Men
''The Story of Robin Hood'' is a 1952 action-adventure film produced by RKO- Walt Disney British Productions, based on the Robin Hood legend, made in Technicolor and filmed in Buckinghamshire, England. It was written by Lawrence Edward Watkin and directed by Ken Annakin. It is the second of Disney's complete live-action films, after ''Treasure Island'' (1950), and the first of four films Annakin directed for Disney. Plot Young Robin Hood, in love with Maid Marian, enters an archery contest with his father at the King's palace. On the way home his father is killed by henchmen of Prince John. Robin takes up the life of an outlaw, gathering together his band of merry men with him in Sherwood Forest, to avenge his father's death and to help the people of the land whom Prince John is over taxing. Cast * Richard Todd as Robin Hood * Joan Rice as Maid Marian * Peter Finch as the Sheriff of Nottingham * James Hayter as Friar Tuck * James Robertson Justice as Little John * Martita Hun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gambler And The Lady
''The Gambler and the Lady'' is a 1952 British crime film directed by Patrick Jenkins and Sam Newfield and starring Dane Clark, Kathleen Byron and Naomi Chance. It was made by Hammer Films. Plot An American gambler, Forster (Clark), aspires to find acceptance amongst the British nobility after falling in love with the aristocratic Lady Susan Willens (Chance), a prominent blueblood who has actually been pursuing him. To start a relationship with her, he dumps his girlfriend (Byron), a singer in one of his nightclubs who becomes murderously jealous. He must also deal with mobsters who try to take over his nightclubs. Swindled by an upper-class con-man (Ireland) into voluntarily selling out to the mobsters anyway all his valuable assets including the gambling-casino nightclubs, a racehorse and a boxer, in order to invest in a gold-mining scam that is eventually unmasked as a fraud. He finds himself broke and in a gunfight with the mobsters, who have been deceived by a gang member ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hunted (1952 Film)
''Hunted'' (U.S. ''The Stranger In Between'') is a British Noir crime film directed by Charles Crichton and released in 1952. ''Hunted'' is a crime drama in the form of a chase film, starring Dirk Bogarde, and written by Jack Whittingham and Michael McCarthy. It was produced by Julian Wintle and edited by Gordon Hales and Geoffrey Muller, with cinematography by Eric Cross and music by Hubert Clifford. The film won the Golden Leopard award at the 1952 Locarno International Film Festival. Plot Robbie (Jon Whiteley), an orphaned 6-year-old boy, has been placed with uncaring and harsh adoptive parents in London. Having accidentally set a small fire in the house, he fears he will receive severe punishment as he has in the past for misdemeanours, so flees into the London streets. Here, he literally runs into Chris Lloyd (Dirk Bogarde) who is himself on the run as he has, in the heat of passion, just killed his wife's employer, whom Lloyd had discovered, was having an affair wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diamond City (film)
''Diamond City'' is a 1949 British drama film directed by David MacDonald and starring David Farrar, Honor Blackman, Diana Dors and Niall MacGinnis. Plot In 1870s South Africa, Englishman Stafford Parker tries to persuade Boer leader Jan Bloem to hand over control of a potential diamond field. This upsets Bloem's nephew Piet Quieman and businessman Muller; Muller has made his fortune through selling cheap rum to black workers. New arrivals come to Hopetown: a missionary, Hart, and his daughter Mary, and David Raymond. A diamond is found on Bloem's territory. Parker persuades Bloem that he can maintain law and order and Bloem picks Parker over Piet and Muller. Parker and a number of people from Hopetown set up a new establishment at Klipdrift. Muller tries to cause trouble but Parker beats him in a fight. Klipdrift becomes a thriving town. David Raymond suspects Muller is buying diamonds directly from the natives, going around Parker's arrangement with Bloem. Eventually Parker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Small Back Room
''The Small Back Room'', released in the United States as ''Hour of Glory'', is a 1949 film by the British producer-writer-director team of Powell and Pressburger, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger starring David Farrar (actor), David Farrar and Kathleen Byron and featuring Jack Hawkins and Cyril Cusack. It was based on the 1943 The Small Back Room (novel), novel of the same name by Nigel Balchin. The theme is the unsung heroes of the last war, the 'backroom boys', gradually coming into their own. Staff (January 26, 1949"Film Reviews: The Small Back Room"''Variety (magazine), Variety'' p.22 Plot Sammy Rice (David Farrar (actor), David Farrar) is a British scientist working with a specialist "Boffin, back room" team in London as a bomb disposal expert during the World War II, Second World War. Rice is embittered because he feels military scientific research is being incompetently managed. He is also enduring unremitting pain from his artificial foot. The painkillers he has bee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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