Marius Goring

Marius Re Goring, (23 May 191230 September 1998) was a British stage and screen actor. He is best remembered for the four films he made with Powell & Pressburger, particularly as Conductor 71 in '' A Matter of Life and Death'' and as Julian Craster in '' The Red Shoes''. He is also known for playing the title role in the long-running TV drama series, '' The Expert''. He regularly performed French and German roles, and was frequently cast in the latter because of his name, coupled with his red-gold hair and blue eyes. However, in a 1965 interview, he explained that he was not of German descent, stating that " Goring is a completely English name."

Life and career

Goring was born in Newport, Isle of Wight, the son of the eminent physician and researcher Dr Charles Buckman Goring (1870-1919), the author of ''The English Convict'', and Kate Winifred (née Macdonald, 1874–1964), a professional pianist of Scottish descent who was also a suffragette. He had an older brother, Donald, who died in Yemen, in 1936, from injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident. After attending The Perse School in Cambridge, where he became a friend of an older boy, the future documentary film maker Humphrey Jennings, Goring studied modern languages at the universities of Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna and Paris.Tom Vallenc
Obituary: Marius Goring
''The Independent'', 2 October 1998 Encouraged by both of his parents to pursue his acting ambitions, he made his professional debut in 1927 playing Harlequin, and toured the continent playing classical roles with the Compagnie des Quinze. He toured under the directorship of Michel Saint-Denis, whom he would later encourage to come to England and work as a director. He also studied under Harcourt Williams and at the Old Vic dramatic school from 1929 to 1932. His early stage career included appearances at the Old Vic, Sadler's Wells, Stratford and several European tours; he was fluent in French and German. During the 1930s, he played a variety of Shakespearean roles at the Old Vic, including the title role in '' Macbeth'' and Romeo in '' Romeo and Juliet'' (1933), Feste in ''Twelfth Night'' (1937), in addition to Trip in Sheridan's ''The School for Scandal''. He first worked in the West End in a 1934 revival of Granville-Barker's ''The Voysey Inheritance'' at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

In 1929, he became a founding member of British Equity, the actors' union, served on its council from 1949 and was three times its vice-president from 1963 to 1965, 1975 to 1977 and again from 1980 to 1982. Goring's relationship with his union was fraught with conflict: he took it to litigation on three occasions. In 1978, regarding the issue of the supremacy of a referendum to decide Equity rules, he took it as far as the House of Lords and won his case. In 1992, he unsuccessfully sought to end the restriction on the sale of radio and television programmes to apartheid South Africa. Stressing that he opposed apartheid and would not perform for segregated audiences, he argued that the ban was depriving actors of work, and stated that he wished to stage a production of the play ''She Stoops to Conquer'' with an all-black cast. This particular litigation nearly bankrupted him, due to the heavy amount of court costs.

In November 1931, at the age of nineteen, he married twenty-nine year old Mary Westwood Steel (1902-1994) at Gretna Green, Scotland (they had a second marriage ceremony in a London register office in February 1932) and their only child, a daughter Phyllida, was born in March 1932. The marriage did not succeed and he became engaged in 1935 to ballet choreographer and designer, Susan 'Susy' Salaman, older sister of Merula Salaman, wife of Alec Guinness. Susy contracted acute encephalitis in late 1935 and was left brain-damaged. Goring wanted to go ahead with the wedding but Susy's father, Michel Salaman, would not allow it.

In 1935, he co-founded the London Theatre Studio with Michel Saint-Denis, George Devine and Glen Byam Shaw. It trained actors, directors and designers and was a precursor of the Old Vic Theatre School. Marius taught Shakespeare there to the students. It had to close in late 1939 due to the outbreak of war.

Goring's film career began with an uncredited role in ''The Amateur Gentleman'' (1936) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr and a small speaking role in '' Rembrandt'' (also 1936). He shared his one scene in this film with the star Charles Laughton, with whom he had previously worked on stage at the Old Vic. He made two further films released in 1939: ''Flying Fifty-Five'' with Derrick de Marney where he showed off his comedic skills playing an amusing drunkard and co-starred with Conrad Veidt in his first Powell and Pressburger film, '' The Spy in Black'', an intriguing spy thriller set during World War One, where he played a German officer for the first of many times in his film career.

When war was declared in September 1939, he was back in the West End as Pip in a production of '' Great Expectations'', adapted for the stage by Alec Guinness. Along with all other plays, it was closed down temporarily by the war but was the first to resume when theatres were reopened in early 1940. He joined the British Army in June 1940, and was seconded in 1941 to the BBC
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