Willoughby Gray
   HOME
*





Willoughby Gray
John Willoughby Gray MBE (5 November 1916 – 13 February 1993) was an English actor of stage and screen. Early life Willoughby Gray was born in London to his mother, Mary Henderson; his father, John Gray, was killed in action in Iraq soon after his birth. In 1918 Mary remarried and Willoughby became the stepson of Lieutenant General Henry Pownall. Second World War Gray served with distinction during the Second World War with GHQ Liaison Regiment (Phantom). For most of the campaign in Europe he commanded a reconnaissance unit with 11th Armoured Division. For his gallant and distinguished services in the North West Europe campaign, he was appointed MBE. His recommendation reads: Captain Gray has commanded a divisional patrol with outstanding success throughout the campaign. The resource and initiative shown by him at all times has resulted in a great deal of vital information reaching Army and Corps HQ much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case, in addition, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, was one of a trio of male actors who dominated the Theatre of the United Kingdom, British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles. His family had no theatrical connections, but Olivier's father, a clergyman, decided that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End theatre, West End success in Noël Coward's ''Private Lives'', and he appeared in his first film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an establish ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Waterloo (1970 Film)
''Waterloo'' (russian: Ватерлоо) is a 1970 epic historical war film about the Battle of Waterloo. A co-production between Italy and the Soviet Union, it is directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and produced by Dino De Laurentiis. It stars Rod Steiger as Napoleon Bonaparte and Christopher Plummer as the Duke of Wellington with a cameo by Orson Welles as Louis XVIII of France. Other stars include Jack Hawkins as General Sir Thomas Picton, Virginia McKenna as the Charlotte Lennox, Duchess of Richmond, Duchess of Richmond and Dan O'Herlihy as Michel Ney, Marshal Ney. Steiger and Plummer often narrate sections in voice-over, presenting thoughts of Napoleon and Wellington. The film takes a largely neutral stance and portrays many individual leaders and soldiers on each side, rather than simply focusing on Wellington and Napoleon. It creates a mostly-accurate chronology of the events of the battle, the extreme heroism on each side, and the tragic loss of life suffered by all the armies ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Sergei Bondarchuk
Sergei Fyodorovich Bondarchuk (russian: Сергей Фёдорович Бондарчук, ; uk, Сергі́й Федорович Бондарчук, Serhíj Fédorovych Bondarchúk; 25 September 192020 October 1994) was a Soviet and Russian actor, film director, and screenwriter of Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbian origin who was one of the leading figures of Russian cinema of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He is known for his sweeping period dramas, including the internationally acclaimed four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's ''War and Peace'' and the Napoleonic War epic '' Waterloo''. Bondarchuk's work won him numerous international accolades. His epic production of Tolstoy's ''War and Peace'' won Bondarchuk, who both directed and acted in the leading role of Pierre Bezukhov, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film (1968), and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968. He was made both a Hero of Socialist Labour and a People's Artist of the USS ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Howards' Way
''Howards' Way'' is a television drama series produced by BBC Birmingham and transmitted on BBC1 between 1 September 1985 and 25 November 1990. The series deals with the personal and professional lives of the wealthy yachting and business communities in the fictional town of Tarrant on the south coast of England, and was filmed on the River Hamble and the Solent. Most of the location filming for the series was carried out in Bursledon, Hamble, Swanwick, Warsash, Hill Head, Lee-on-the-Solent, Lymington, Hythe, Southampton and Fareham—all in Hampshire. The Jolly Sailor pub in Bursledon featured in several episodes. History ''Howards' Way'' was created and produced by Gerard Glaister and Allan Prior, with lead writer Raymond Thompson as story and script consultant—at a point in the BBC's history when the organisation was making a concerted populist strike against ITV in its approach to programming. The series debuted on BBC1 in 1985, the same year that the BBC launched its ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken (born Ronald Walken; March 31, 1943) is an American actor. Prolific in film, television and on stage, Walken is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, as well as nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Tony Awards. His films have grossed more than $1.6 billion in the United States alone. Walken has appeared in supporting roles in films such as ''The Anderson Tapes'' (1971), ''Next Stop, Greenwich Village'' (1976), '' Roseland'' (1977) and ''Annie Hall'' (1977) before coming to wider attention as the troubled Vietnam War veteran Nick Chevotarevich in ''The Deer Hunter'' (1978). His performance earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was nominated for the same award for portraying con artist Frank Abagnale's father in Steven Spielberg's ''Catch Me If You Can'' (2002). Since his breakthrough, Walken has appeared in films in various genres, both in lead a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Max Zorin
Maximillian Zorin is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1985 James Bond film ''A View to a Kill''. He is portrayed by Christopher Walken. Biography Zorin was born in Dresden around the end of World War II, after which Dresden became part of East Germany. He later moved to France and became a leading businessman through energy trading, eventually transitioning into the electronics industry and operating on the microchip market. According to a briefing by M and Frederick Gray, Zorin is outwardly a staunch anti-communist with high influence in the French government. However, it is revealed later in the movie that he was the product of Nazi medical experimentation during the war, in which pregnant women were injected with massive quantities of steroids in an attempt to create "super-children." Most of the pregnancies failed. The few surviving babies grew to become extraordinarily intelligent—but also psychopathic. After the war, Dr. Hans Glaub (alias Dr. Carl Mor ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism (german: Hitlerfaschismus). The later related term " neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War. Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates a dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist '' Völkisch'' movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationalism since the late 19th century, and it was strongly influenced by the paramilitary groups that ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


A View To A Kill
''A View to a Kill'' is a 1985 spy film and the fourteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and is the seventh and final appearance of Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Although the title is adapted from Ian Fleming's 1960 short story "From a View to a Kill", the film has an entirely original screenplay. In ''A View to a Kill'', Bond is pitted against Max Zorin (played by Christopher Walken), who plans to destroy California's Silicon Valley. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who also wrote the screenplay with Richard Maibaum. It was the third James Bond film to be directed by John Glen, and the last to feature Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, who frequently took umbrage with the effects of Moore's advanced age on his performance, it was a commercial success, with the Duran Duran theme song "A View to a Kill" performing well in the charts, becoming the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is ''With a Mind to Kill'' by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny. The character—also known by the code number 007 (pronounced "double-oh-seven")—has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games and film. The films are one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total at the box office ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

The Princess Bride (film)
''The Princess Bride'' is a 1987 American fantasy adventure comedy film directed and co-produced by Rob Reiner and starring Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant, and Christopher Guest. Adapted by William Goldman from his 1973 novel of the same name, it tells the story of a swashbuckling farmhand named Westley, accompanied by companions befriended along the way, who must rescue his true love Princess Buttercup from the odious Prince Humperdinck. The film preserves the novel's metafictional narrative style by presenting the story as a book being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson. The film was first released in the United States on September 25, 1987, and was well received by critics at the time. After only having modest success at the box office at first, it has over time become a cult film and been considered as one of the best films of the 1980s, and one of Reiner's best works. The film is number 50 on the Bravo's "10 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


The Hit (1984 Film)
''The Hit'' is a 1984 British road crime film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Hurt, Terence Stamp, Laura del Sol and Tim Roth. It was Stamp's first starring role in over a decade, and Roth won an Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer. The title music is provided by Eric Clapton and Roger Waters. Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia performed the soundtrack music. The film was released by The Criterion Collection on DVD in April 2009 and on Blu-ray in October 2020. Plot London gangster Willie Parker gives evidence against his criminal compatriots in return for a very generous offer from the police. Ten years later, Parker is living in comfortable retirement in Spain. Four Spanish youths kidnap him and deliver him to British hit man Braddock and his sidekick Myron, hired by the kingpin that Parker helped put away. In the course of the kidnapping the youths run down a Spanish policeman who has been assigned to guard Parker. Three of the youths are t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]