Francis L. Sullivan | |
|---|---|
 Sullivan in Behave Yourself! (1951) | |
| Born | Francis Loftus Sullivan 6 January 1903 |
| Died | 19 November 1956 (aged 53) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1932–1955 |
| Spouse | Frances Joan Perkins (1935–his death) |
| Awards | Best Featured Actor in a Play 1955 Witness for the Prosecution |
Francis Loftus Sullivan (6 January 1903 – 19 November 1956) was an English film and stage actor.
Francis Loftus Sullivan [1] was born in London on 6 January 1903. His parents were Mr. and Mrs. Michael Sullivan, and he had two brothers and a sister. He attended Stonyhurst, a Jesuit public school, and had additional schooling in Neuchatel, Switzerland, He initially planned to be an engineer. [2]
A heavily built man with a striking double-chin and a deep voice, Sullivan made his acting debut at the Old Vic at age 18 in Shakespeare's Richard III . He had considerable theatrical experience before he appeared in his first film in 1932, The Missing Rembrandt , as a German villain opposite Arthur Wontner as Sherlock Holmes. [3]
Among his film roles are Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist (1948) and Phil Nosseross in the film noir Night and the City (1950). Sullivan also played the part of the lawyer Jaggers in two versions of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations - in 1934 and 1946. He appeared in a fourth Dickens film, the 1935 Universal Pictures version of The Mystery of Edwin Drood , in which he played Crisparkle.
He was featured in The Citadel (1938), starring Robert Donat, and a decade later he played the role of Pierre Cauchon in the technicolor version of Joan of Arc (1948), starring Ingrid Bergman. In 1938 he starred in a revival of the Stokes brothers' play Oscar Wilde at London's Arts Theatre. He played the Attorney-General prosecuting the case defended by Robert Donat as barrister Sir Robert Morton, in the first film version of The Winslow Boy (1948).
Sullivan also acted in light comedies, including My Favorite Spy (1951), starring Bob Hope and Hedy Lamarr, in which he played an enemy agent, and the comedy Fiddlers Three (1944), portraying Nero. He also played the role of Pothinus in the film version of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1945). The film was directed by Gabriel Pascal, and was the last film personally supervised by Shaw himself. Sullivan reprised the role in a stage revival of the play.
On television, Sullivan starred in "The Man Who Would Be King", the 17 October 1950, episode of Suspense . [4]
Sullivan, who became a naturalised American citizen on 27 December 1954, won a Tony Award in 1955 for the Agatha Christie play Witness for the Prosecution . [2] Earlier, he had played Christie's detective Hercule Poirot in the plays Black Coffee (1930) and Peril at End House (1940), and in the TV play Wasp's Nest (1937).
In 1935, Sullivan married stage designer Frances Joan Perkins in Westminster in London. [5] In 1939 they were living at 'Hatch Hill' on Kingsley Green at Fernhurst in West Sussex. [6] They remained married until his death.
Sullivan died on 19 November 1956 in Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, aged 53. [2]
Charles Ellsworth Grapewin was an American vaudeville and circus performer, a writer, and a stage and film actor. He worked in over 100 motion pictures during the silent and sound eras, most notably portraying Uncle Henry in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz (1939), "Grandpa" William James Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road (1941), Uncle Salters in Captains Courageous (1937), Gramp Maple in The Petrified Forest (1936), Wang's Father in The Good Earth (1937), and California Joe in They Died With Their Boots On (1941).
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Leslie Stephenson Hiscott was an English film director and screenwriter who made over sixty films between 1925 and 1956. He was born in London in 1894. He directed Alibi (1931), the first ever depiction of Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, with Austin Trevor in the lead role. He directed a follow-up, Black Coffee, also starring Trevor.
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In Agatha Christie's mystery novels, several characters cross over different sagas, creating a fictional universe in which most of her stories are set. This article has one table to summarize the novels with characters who occur in other Christie novels; the table is titled Crossovers by Christie. There is brief mention of characters crossing over in adaptations of the novels. Her publications, both novels and short stories, are then listed by main detective, in order of publication. Some stories or novels authorised by the estate of Agatha Christie, using the characters she created, and written long after Agatha Christie died, are included in the lists.
George Hiram Robinson (1890-1958) was an American cinematographer from Los Angeles.
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