Tod Slaughter | |
|---|---|
 Slaughter as Sweeney Todd in 1936 | |
| Born | Norman Carter Slaughter 19 March 1885 Newcastle upon Tyne, England |
| Died | 19 February 1956 (aged 70) Derby, England |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1905–1956 |
| Spouse | Jenny Lynn |
Norman Carter Slaughter (19 March 1885 – 19 February 1956), also known as Tod Slaughter, was an English actor, best known for playing over-the-top maniacs in macabre film adaptations of Victorian melodramas.
Slaughter was born on 19 March 1885 in Gosforth and attended the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne. [1] The eldest surviving son of 12 children, he made his way onto the stage in 1905 at West Hartlepool. In 1913, he became a lessee of the Hippodrome theatres in the Richmond and Croydon areas of London. After a brief interruption to serve in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, he returned to the stage.
During Slaughter's early career, his stage name was "N. Carter Slaughter" and he primarily played the conventional leading man or character roles. After the war, he ran the Theatre Royal, Chatham before taking over the Elephant and Castle Theatre in London for a memorable few years from 1924 onwards that have since passed into British theatrical legend. His company revived Victorian "blood-and-thunder" melodramas such as Maria Marten , Sweeney Todd , Jack Sheppard , and The Silver King to enthusiastic audiences—not just locals but also sophisticated theatregoers from the West End who might have initially come for a cheap laugh but ended up enthralled by the power of the fare on offer. Slaughter also staged other types of production such as the annual Christmas pantomime, where he cast prominent local personalities in bit parts for audience recognition. Despite a local protest, the Elephant and Castle Theatre was closed down in 1927, after Slaughter's company vacated it several months earlier.
It was in 1925 that he adopted the stage name "Tod Slaughter", but his primary roles were still character and heroic leads. He played the young hero in The Face at the Window , poacher Tom Robinson in "It's Never Too Late To Mend", and village idiot Tim Winterbottom in Maria Marten. He also played the title character in The Return of Sherlock Holmes and D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers . Silent footage exists of Slaughter acting on stage at the Elephant and Castle in the military melodrama The Flag Lieutenant, in a documentary entitled London After Dark. [2] It is said he briefly retired from acting to become a chicken farmer at the start of the 1930s, but it proved a short-lived venture and he was soon back managing his company, touring the provinces and outlying London theatres with a repertoire of Victorian melodramas.[ citation needed ]
In 1931 at the New Theatre, London he played Long John Silver in Treasure Island during the day, and body snatcher William Hare in The Crimes of Burke And Hare at night. Publicised as "Mr. Murder", he lapped up his new-found notoriety by boasting he committed 15 murders each day for the duration of the run. Shortly afterwards, he played the title character in Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street for the first of 2,000 times on stage. Actor and role had found each other much in the same way as Béla Lugosi and Dracula , and the seal was set on Slaughter's subsequent career.
In 1934, at age 49, Slaughter began in films. Usually cast as a villain, his first film was Maria Marten or Murder in the Red Barn (1935), a Victorian melodrama filmed cheaply with Slaughter as the obvious evil-doer, and identified as such at the beginning of the play. In the old melodramatic style, each main member of the cast is introduced before the play begins and has his role explained. When Slaughter comes on, he favours the audience with a cold, evil grin as the on-stage announcer says "Squire Corder, Lord of the Manor...and a villain! Whose blood may be blue—but whose heart is black as night!" This set the general tone for the film series, although the introduction format was not used again.
Slaughter's next film role was as Sweeney Todd in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), directed and produced by George King, whose partnership with Slaughter was continued in the subsequent shockers: The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936); It's Never Too Late To Mend (1937); The Ticket of Leave Man (1938); The Face at the Window (1939) and Crimes at the Dark House (1940). Most of these films were 'quota quickies', films made quickly and cheaply to fulfil a government requirement that a certain portion of all films distributed by British studios had to be British made. Many such were forgettable, low-quality films, but the lack of studio interest paradoxically made for quality in one way: it gave the maker, by default, artistic control over the final product.
There were, however, some non-melodramatic roles in his career. He was a supporting player in The Song of the Road (1937) and Darby and Joan (1937). In Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror (1938), he played the head of an international gang of supervillains.
Slaughter was busy on stage during World War II, performing Jack the Ripper, Landru and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde . There were also one-act sketches such as The Touch of a Child.
After the war Slaughter resumed melodramatic roles on screen and starred in The Curse of the Wraydons (1946), in which Bruce Seton played the legendary Victorian bogeyman Spring-Heeled Jack, and The Greed of William Hart (1948) based on the murderous career of Burke and Hare. These were produced by Ambassador Films at Bushey Studios, who had made a healthy profit rereleasing Tod's 1930s films during the war years.
During the early 1950s Slaughter appeared as the villain in two crime films King of the Underworld (1952) and Murder at Scotland Yard (1953), which was adapted from the seven-part television series 'Inspector Morley: Late of Scotland Yard', starring Patrick Barr , Dorothy Bramhall , and Tucker McGuire . He also still regularly toured the provinces and London suburbs. However the public's appetite for melodrama seemed to have abated somewhat by this stage and he was declared bankrupt in 1953, [3] owing to a downturn in his touring income. He continued to act in stage productions, such as Molière's The Gay Invalid opposite future horror star Peter Cushing, and acting as the MC at an evening of old-fashioned music hall entertainment.
His last two films were each three episodes of the television series Inspector Morley cobbled together for theatrical release. A version of Spring-Heeled Jack starring Slaughter was one of the first live TV plays mounted by the BBC after the war. He continued performing on stage even at the end of his life.
He was guest on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs on 24 March 1955. [4]
On 19 February 1956, at the age of 70, Slaughter died of coronary thrombosis in Derby. [1] After his death, which followed a performance of Maria Marten, his work slipped almost completely into obscurity. Film historians have revived interest in Slaughter's cycle of melodramatic films, placing them in a tradition of "cinema of excess", which also includes the Gainsborough melodramas and Hammer Horrors. [5]
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1935 | Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn | William Corder |
| 1936 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Sweeney Todd |
| 1936 | The Crimes of Stephen Hawke | Stephen Hawke |
| 1937 | Darby and Joan | Mr. Templeton |
| 1937 | It's Never Too Late to Mend | Squire John Meadows |
| 1937 | The Song of the Road | Dan Lorenzo |
| 1938 | The Ticket of Leave Man | The Tiger |
| 1938 | Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror | Michael Larron |
| 1939 | The Face at the Window | Chevalier Lucio del Gardo |
| 1940 | Crimes at the Dark House | The False Percival Glyde |
| 1945 | Bothered by a Beard | Sweeney Todd |
| 1946 | The Curse of the Wraydons | Philip Wraydon (The Chief) |
| 1948 | The Greed of William Hart | William Hart |
| 1952 | King of the Underworld | Terence Reilly |
| 1952 | Murder at Scotland Yard | Terence Reilly |
| 1952 | Murder at the Grange | Patrick Reilly aka Clarence Beacham – posing as butler |
| 1952 | A Ghost for Sale | Caretaker |
| 1954 | Puzzle Corner No. 14 | Sweeney Todd |
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the villain of the penny dreadful serial The String of Pearls (1846–1847). The original tale became a feature of 19th-century melodrama and London legend. A barber from Fleet Street, Todd murders his customers with a straight razor and gives their corpses to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies. The tale has been retold many times since in various media.
East Lynne is an 1861 English sensation novel by Ellen Wood, writing as Mrs. Henry Wood. A Victorian-era bestseller, it is remembered chiefly for its elaborate and implausible plot centering on infidelity and double identities. There have been numerous stage and film adaptations.
Dennistoun Franklyn John Rose Price was an English actor. He played Louis Mazzini in the Ealing Studios film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and the omnicompetent valet Jeeves in 1960s television adaptations of P. G. Wodehouse's stories.
A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a very strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or excessively sentimental, rather than action. Characters are often flat, and written to fulfill established character archetypes. Melodramas are typically set in the private sphere of the home, focusing on morality and family issues, love, and marriage, often with challenges from an outside source, such as a "temptress", a scoundrel, or an aristocratic villain. A melodrama on stage, filmed, or on television is usually accompanied by dramatic and suggestive music that offers further cues to the audience of the dramatic beats being presented.
Christopher Godfrey Bond is a British actor, playwright and theatre director whose 1970 retelling of the Victorian tale Sweeney Todd formed the basis of Stephen Sondheim's musical of the same name, with book by Hugh Wheeler. He wrote this while he was resident dramatist at Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent (1970–71). He was artistic director of the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool (1976–78), director of Liverpool Playhouse (1981–83), and artistic director of Half Moon Theatre (1984–89). He lives in West Cornwall.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, also known as Sweeney Todd is a 1979 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. It is based on the 1970 play Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond. The character of Sweeney Todd first appeared in a Victorian penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls.
Michael John Elphick was an English film and television actor. He played the eponymous private investigator in the ITV series Boon and Harry Slater in BBC's EastEnders. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1983 film Gorky Park. With his gruff Sussex accent and lip-curling sneer, he often played menacing hard men.
Eric Harold Portman was an English stage and film actor. He is probably best remembered for his roles in three films for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger during the 1940s.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 2007 musical slasher film directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay by John Logan, based on the stage musical of the same name by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, which in turn is based on the 1970 play Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond. The film retells the melodramatic Victorian tale of Sweeney Todd, an English barber and serial killer. After arriving in London, Todd begins seeking revenge on Judge Turpin who wrongfully convicted and exiled him in order to steal his wife. Sweeney Todd commits serial murders on his customers and, with the help of his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, processes their corpses into meat pies.
George King was an English actors' agent, film director, producer and screenplay writer. He is associated with the production of quota quickies. He directed several of Tod Slaughter's melodramas, including 1936's The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British drama film produced and directed by George King, and written by Frederick Hayward, H. F. Maltby, and George Dibdin-Pitt. The film features actor Tod Slaughter as the barber Sweeney Todd.
The Red Barn Murder was a 1827 murder in Polstead, Suffolk, England. A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover William Corder at the Red Barn, a local landmark. The two had arranged to meet before eloping to Ipswich. Corder sent letters to Marten's family claiming that she was well, but after her stepmother spoke of having dreamed that Maria had been murdered, her body was discovered in the barn the next year.
Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn is a 1935 British film melodrama film directed by Milton Rosmer and starring Tod Slaughter and Eric Portman. It is based on the true story of the 1827 Red Barn Murder, in which a 25-year-old woman was killed by her lover and her stepmother claimed to have dreamt of the murder the night of the event.
The Crimes of Stephen Hawke is a 1936 British historical melodrama film directed by George King and starring Tod Slaughter as the nefarious Stephen Hawke - who masquerades as the 'Spine-Breaker'. It also features Marjorie Taylor, D. J. Williams and Eric Portman. It was made at Shepperton Studios, with sets designed by Philip Bawcombe.
Charles Montagu Slater was an English poet, novelist, playwright, journalist, critic and librettist.
Mrs. Lovett is a fictional character appearing in many adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. Her first name is most commonly referred to as Nellie, although she has also been referred to as Amelia, Margery, Maggie, Sarah, Shirley, Wilhelmina, Mary and Claudetta. A baker from London, Mrs. Lovett is an accomplice and business partner of Sweeney Todd, a barber and serial killer from Fleet Street. She makes meat pies from Todd’s victims.
Murder at Scotland Yard is 1953 British crime film directed by Victor M. Gover and starring Tod Slaughter, Patrick Barr and Tucker McGuire. It is a sequel to King of the Underworld (1952).
Gaslight Theatre (TV series) is a 60-minute UK anthology television series produced by and airing on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1965. It consisted of six 19th century melodramas presented in the spirit of the Victorian theatre. Among its guest stars were Ronnie Barker, Joss Ackland, and Patricia Routledge.
The Ticket-of-Leave Man is an 1863 stage melodrama in four acts by the British writer Tom Taylor, based on a French drama, Le Retour de Melun. It takes its name from the Ticket of Leave issued to convicts when they were released from jail on parole. A recently returned convict is blackmailed by another man into committing a robbery, but is rescued thanks to the intervention of a detective. It has been described as apparently being the first play to give a truly significant role to a detective.
Spring-Heeled Jack or The Terror of Epping Forest is a 1950 British play by the writer Geoffrey Carlile and the actor-manager Tod Slaughter who was known for his villainous roles in melodramatic productions.
