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Thats so weird. Was thinking of him thismorning as recounting a time in the early seventies when my family went to Brighton and we saw him on stage there in An Inspector calls. I was about 13 and it was my first time to see a play. And then just now i saw arthur's post of the news. Freaky. Was always fond of him as an actor after seeing him live.
Later of course he was brilliant as Harry Grout in Porridge, the lags unofficial guvnor in the prison who used to say with a severe look when Ronnie Barker cracked a gag... "Im not a very humourous man, Fletcher."
In 1980 he was the Dad, Billy Fox, in the series Fox, where Ray Winstone played one of his sons. I once spoke with Winstone about Fox and appearing with Vaughan and he said he always referred to Peter as "Dad" whenever they met up, coz he had played his father all those years ago.
Watch out for a brilliant little b&w thriller from 1964 called Smokescreen, where Vaughan plays an insurance investigator called Roper, complete with umbrella as a walking stick, who, although good at his job, is forever trying to scam on his expenses!! "Watch out for that Roper," says his boss to the secretary, "He claims for a taxi but always comes on the bus!"
Talented man, that Peter Vaughan. Rip Grouty.
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Damn, i just saw him in Village of the Damned the other night. I'll always remember him in Citizen Smith and as Grouty. He was ace in pretty much everything. He'd always bob up in Gilliam films, i recall. RIP that man.
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Posted: |
Dec 6, 2016 - 1:49 PM
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By: |
Brad Wills
(Member)
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Here's THE RETURN, a wonderfully moody two-character short horror film from the BBC, based on stories by A.M. Burrage and Ambrose Bierce, starring Vaughan and Rosalie Crutchley, photographed by Douglas Slocombe, and effectively scored by Marc Wilkinson. I don't believe that this was part of the Beeb's annual GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS, but it's certainly a worthy companion piece. Vaughan and Crutchley are both superb, and Slocombe's spooky lighting and long takes allow for the tension to slowly mount, while the music at first beguiles then slowly crawls under your skin. I've watched this several times; the ending is downright chilling in no large part due to Vaughan's work, and believe me, it gets scarier with each subsequent viewing.
The quality of the recording is not so good, but don't let that stop you from enjoying it.
Edit: After multiple attempts, I can't figure out how to embed the dang video, AAGH!!! Here's the link, someone else can try.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428aX2smPXk
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Just saw him in a rewatch of the Bill Murray The Razor's Edge a few nights ago.
I'll always remember him as the bloodthirsty patriarch in Straw Dogs and a couple of performances for Ken Russell: a bemused museum guard in Savage Messiah and a macho newspaper journalist who takes on the title character's pugilistic challenge in Valentino.
R.I.P.
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Posted: |
Dec 6, 2016 - 10:21 PM
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By: |
Heath
(Member)
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Yes, thanks for posting The Return, Brad. Always nice to revisit it occasionally. I love Wilkinson's chamber score for it. I wrote to the composer many years ago to congratulate him. He replied kindly.
For a while Vaughan seemed to be blessed with films featuring really wonderful and brooding scores - The Return, Straw Dogs, Symptoms, Brazil, Zulu Dawn.... even his appearance in the excellent Warning To The Curious edition of the BBC's ghost story for Xmas featured a subtle and chilling use of Ligeti's Atmospheres (in this context sounding very different to Kubrick's use of it in 2001). Then again, he worked a great deal over seven decades so his "good score" hit rate would have been pretty high.
Nevertheless, these sometimes strange and dark scores helped associate Vaughan's screen presence with a kind of eerie, quirky menace - for me anyway.
He could be very funny too. His sitcom work was great, but again always with a whiff of unsettling oddness.
Quite unique. I shall miss him.
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Hey bob, thanks for the info and posters so far. You got any info/poster on previously-mentioned smokescreen 1964?
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John - thanks for that Porridge clip - captures exactly the squirming torture that Fletcher went through everytime he got the "Grouty wants to see you" order. Vaughan played him so well, menacing and straight against Barker's quips but so funny.
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Posted: |
Dec 7, 2016 - 2:24 AM
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By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
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Thats so weird. Was thinking of him thismorning as recounting a time in the early seventies when my family went ...
Watch out for a brilliant little b&w thriller from 1964 called Smokescreen, where Vaughan plays an insurance investigator called Roper, complete with umbrella as a walking stick, who, although good at his job, is forever trying to scam on his expenses!! "Watch out for that Roper," says his boss to the secretary, "He claims for a taxi but always comes on the bus!"
Talented man, that Peter Vaughan. Rip Grouty.
We watched that film a few weeks ago ... wow, how times have changed! Apart from the cheating on expenses which was treated quite lightly it was the line about the victim stopping at the pub on his way home from work every evening for two, or was it three, double whiskies ... and the police inspector didn't raise an eyebrow!
But back to the late, great Mr. Vaughan ... seen in so many TV productions and films. Possibly my earliest recollection was a Friday evening series my parents watched (it seemed very adult to me at the time) called The Gold Robbers (1969) - each episode started with the theft (from a plane) and then followed the story of one of the robbers with Vaughan's Police Detective tracking him down.
A few years ago I finally got around to watching Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in The Remains of the Day (1993) and there he was in a role I'd never have expected from Grouty 
Mitch
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