Donald Houston
Birthday: Born in 1923-11-06 in Clydach Vale, Rhondda, Wales, UK
Deathday: 1991-10-13
Donald Daniel Houston (6 November 1923 – 13 October 1991) was a Welsh actor known for a successful career as a character actor in British film and television.
TV Credits
Department S
Character: John Burnham
Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King, Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst. The trio were agents for a fictional special department of Interpol. The head of Department S was Sir Curtis Seretse....
Moonbase 3
Character:
The adventures of David Caulder and his crew stationed on Moonbase 3....
The Champions
Character: Richter
The Champions is a British espionage/science fiction/occult detective fiction adventure series consisting of 30 episodes broadcast on the UK network ITV during 1968–1969, produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company. The series was broadcast in the US on NBC, starting in summer 1968....
Shadows
Character:
Shadows is a British Supernatural television anthology series produced by Thames Television for ITV between 1975 and 1978. Extending over three seasons, it featured ghost and horror dramas for children. Guest actors included John Nettleton, Gareth Thomas, Jenny Agutter, Pauline Quirke, Brian Glover, June Brown, Rachel Herbert, Jacqueline Pearce and Gwyneth Strong. The series was also notable for reviving the character of Mr. Stabs. Notable writers for the series included J. B. Priestley, Fay W...
Man in a Suitcase
Character:
Accused of treason, a former U.S. intelligence officer based in London tries to clear his name, taking on freelance jobs around Europe as he searches for answers....
Paul Temple
Character:
Paul Temple is a British-German television series . It features Francis Matthews as Paul Temple, the fictional detective created by Francis Durbridge, who solves crimes with the assistance of his wife Steve. Paul Temple used overseas locations in France, Malta, Germany and elsewhere. T...
The Adventurer
Character: Jan De Groot
The Adventurer is an ITC Entertainment TV adventure series created by Dennis Spooner that ran for one season from 1972 to 1973. It premiered in the UK on 29 September 1972. The show starred Gene Barry as Gene Bradley, a government agent of independent means who poses as a glamorous American movie star....
Justice
Character: Fielding
Justice is a British drama television series which originally aired on ITV in 39 hour-long episodes between 8 August 1971 and 16 October 1974. Margaret Lockwood stars as Harriet Peterson a female barrister in the North of England. It was made by Yorkshire Television and was based loosely on Justice Is a Woman, an episode of ITV Playhouse broadcast in 1969 in which Lockwood had previously also played a barrister. The theme music was Crown Imperial by William Walton....
Return of the Saint
Character: Commander Denning
Follow the swashbuckling exploits of Simon Templar, a modern-day Robin Hood of sorts....
Gideon's Way
Character: Tony Erickson
Gideon's Way is a British television crime series made by ITC Entertainment in 1964/65, based on the novels by John Creasey. The series was made at Elstree in twin production with The Saint TV series. It starred Liverpudlian John Gregson in the title role as Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard, with Alexander Davion as his assistant, Detective Chief Inspector David Keen, Reginald Jessup as Det. Superintendent LeMaitre, Ian Rossiter as Detective Chief Superintendent Joe Bell and Basil Dignam...
Lilli Palmer Theatre
Character: George
A half-hour anthology series....
Public Eye
Character: Arthur Wellard
Public Eye is a British television series that ran from 1965 to 1975. It was produced by ABC Television for three series, and Thames Television for a further four series. The series depicted the investigations and cases handled by the unglamorous enquiry agent Frank Marker, an unmarried loner who is in his early forties when the series begins. In the words of an ABC trailer for the third series: "Marker isn't a glamorous detective and he doesn't get glamorous cases—he doesn't even get glamorous ...
Armchair Theatre
Character: David
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968....
Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime
Character: Boris
Spirited dialogue, posh Roaring '20s style, and devious mysteries abound as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford mix marriage and mystery solving....
Danger Man
Character: Edmund Bierce
Danger Man is a British television series which was broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. The series featured Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the programme and wrote many of the scripts. Danger Man was financed by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment....
The Protectors
Character: Lockier
The Protectors is a British television series, an action thriller created by Gerry Anderson. It was Anderson's second TV series using live actors as opposed to electronic marionettes, and also his second to be firmly set in contemporary times. It was also the only Gerry Anderson produced television series that was not of the fantasy or science fiction genres. It was produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company. Despite not featuring marionettes or any real science fiction element...
Movie Credits
Clash of the Titans
Character: Acrisius
To win the right to marry his love, the beautiful princess Andromeda, and fulfil his destiny, half-God-half-mortal Perseus must complete various tasks including taming Pegasus, capturing Medusa's head and battling the feared Kraken....
My Lover, My Son
Character: Robert
A woman deals with an unhappy marriage, the death of her lover, and her son's involvement in a crime....
Where Eagles Dare
Character: Christiansen
World War II is raging, and an American general has been captured and is being held hostage in the Schloss Adler, a Bavarian castle that's nearly impossible to breach. It's up to a group of skilled Allied soldiers to liberate the general before it's too late....
Carry On Jack
Character: First Officer Jonathan Howett
Tenth entry in the Carry On series. Able seaman Poop-Decker signs up for adventure on the high seas with the wicked Captain Fearless. Those swabbing the decks include Juliet Mills, Charles Hawtrey and Donald Houston. The film was originally to be titled Up the Armada, but the British Board of Film Censors objected to such a rude title....
A Letter for Wales
Character: Narrator (Voice)
Donald Houston plays a Welshman who tells the story of what it's like to live in small town Wales and how the train service helps....
The Viking Queen
Character: Maelgan
Set in ancient Britain, at a time when much of Europe was ruled with harsh tyranny by Rome, a tribe of Britons led by Selina, set out to defy the invaders and discard their yoke of bondage. The Roman commander, Justinian, is sent to quell the uprising, punishing the dissenters with brute force but when he becomes emotionally attached to Selina, he is torn between his duty to Rome and his love for the Viking Queen....
Tales That Witness Madness
Character: Sam Patterson (segment "Mr. Tiger")
Dr. Tremayne is an enigmatic psychiatrist running an asylum that houses four very special cases. Visited by his colleague Nicholas, Tremayne explains his amazing and controversial theories as to why each of the four patients went mad....
Room at the Top
Character: Charles Soames
An ambitious young accountant schemes to wed a wealthy factory owner's daughter, despite falling in love with a married older woman....
Maniac
Character: Georges
When a stranger enters a quiet, country town and is seduced by a sensuous married woman he unwittingly finds himself at the centre of a storm of sexual guilt and murder....
633 Squadron
Character: Group Captain Don Barrett
When Norwegian resistance leader Lieutenant Erik Bergman reports the location of a German V-2 rocket fuel plant, the Royal Air Force's 633 Squadron is assigned the mission to destroy it. The plant is in a seemingly-impregnable location beneath an overhanging cliff at the end of a long, narrow fjord lined with anti-aircraft guns. The only way to destroy the plant is by collapsing the cliff on top of it....
Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst
Character: Lieutenant Weston
While sailing lawfully up the Yangste in 1949, the British warship Amethyst found its return to the open sea blocked by Communist Chinese shore batteries that unexpectedly opened fire. In charge, Lietenant Commander Kerans was not however prepared for his crew and his ship to remain as a hostage for the Chinese to use as an international pawn....
A Run for Your Money
Character: David "Dai Number 9" Jones
Two Welsh coal-mining brothers win a trip to London to claim a monetary prize. They are supposed to meet a newspaper reporter who will be their escort. Instead, the brothers are launched into an adventure with some London riff-raff. It is up to the reporter to look out for the brothers, and what a job it turns out to be!...
Doctor in the House
Character: Taffy Evans
The first of the seven "Doctor" films, based on Richard Gordon's novels and released between 1954 and 1970. Simon Sparrow is a newly arrived medical student at St Swithin's hospital in London. Falling in with three longer-serving hopefuls he is soon immersed in the wooing, imbibing and fast sports-car driving that constitute 1950s medical training. There is, however, always the looming and formidable figure of chief surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt to remind them of their real purpose....
Doctor in Distress
Character: Major Tommy French
"Doctor in Distress" is the fifth of the seven films in the "Doctor" series, and focuses on Sir Lancelot Spratt, Simon Sparrow's old teacher and sometimes nemesis. When the eternal bachelor Sir Lancelot injures his back and falls in love with his physiotherapist Iris Marchant, he becomes very distressed and turns to Simon for help. Simon, who now is a senior doctor at fictional Hampden Cross Hospital and hopelessly in love with aspiring actress Delia, sends him to a nature cure clinic in a va...
The 300 Spartans
Character: Hydarnes
Essentially true story of how Spartan king Leonidas led an extremely small army of Greek Soldiers (300 of his personal body guards from Sparta) to hold off an invading Persian army now thought to have numbered 250,000....
The Prince and the Pauper
Character: John Canty
In the London of 1537, two boys resembling each other exactly meet accidentally and exchange "roles" for a short while. After many adventures, the prince regains his rightful identity and graciously makes his "twin" a ward of the court....
The Red Beret
Character: Taffy
Steve MacKendrick resigns from the US Army after causing the needless death of a fellow officer. Wanting to serve in the war, he enlists as a Canadian in the British 1st Parachute Brigade. He proves himself exceptionally skilled for a recruit, arousing the suspicion of his commanding officer who starts an investigation. He redeems himself during combat. The film was titled "Paratrooper" in the US....
The Large Rope
Character: Tom Penney
After being framed for a murder he didn't commit, Tom Penney (Donald Houston) serves his time and returns to his rural English home to establish a quiet life. When another victim is found, however, Tom is blamed for the crime and flees rather than returnng to prison. Hoping to find the real killer -- or killers -- Tom investigates while keeping a low profile to elude his pursuers, and a vital clue leads him on the path to possible redemption....
Crow Hollow
Character: Dr. Robert Armour
A greedy woman tries to poison her nephew's bride in a dark mansion....
The Girl in the Picture
Character: John Deering
A crime reporter investigating a murder discovers the case hinges on a mysterious woman he had photographed earlier....
The Man Upstairs
Character: Dr. Sanderson
The mental breakdown of a guilt-ridden man provides the drama in this fascinating psychological profile starring Richard Attenborough as a scientist who can't live with himself after he accidently kills the brother of his fiancee....
Dance Hall
Character: Phil
Episodic tale of four factory girls and their various romances at the local dance hall in Chiswick, London. Unusual at the time, the film tells its story from a feminine perspective. Today, it is mainly recognised for its post-war London atmosphere, with bomb sites, trolleybuses and rationing....
The Mark
Character: Austin
A man who served prison time for intent to molest a child tries to build a new life with the help of a sympathetic psychiatrist....
The Bushbaby
Character: John Leeds
The young daughter of a park ranger in Tanzania is distressed to learn that she and her father must permanently return to England, thus separating her from the one thing she loves most, a pet Bushbaby. Fearing what the future holds she decides to set the pet free but while doing so misses the boat back to England. After meeting up with a friendly native they try to resolve the situation together. Things take a turn for the worse when it is falsely reported that the native has kidnapped her, thus...
The Blue Lagoon
Character: Michael Reynolds
In the Victorian period, two British children survive a shipwreck in the South Pacific. After days afloat, they are marooned on a lush tropical island in the company of kindly old sailor. Together they survive solely on their resourcefulness and the bounty of their remote paradise....
The Flaw
Character: John Millway
A race car driver marries a woman for her money and plans to murder her. An old suitor steps in to help her but the driver takes steps to eliminate the rival. But there's a flaw in the driver's plans....
Small Town Story
Character: Tony Warren
Canadian ex-serviceman Bob Regan returns to Oldchester, the English town where he was posted during the war. Meeting up with his friend Mike, now manager of the local football club, he discovers that Oldchester are desperate for promotion as they stand to inherit £25,000 from recently deceased supporter Wallace Hammond if they make the Third Division a situation that Hammond's devious nephew finds intolerable......
Sunstruck
Character:
Stanley Evans, a Welsh schoolteacher, decides to emigrate to Australia for a better life but ends up working in a school in the dead-end town of Kookaburra Springs. He forms a school choir and decides to compete in a singing competition in Sydney...
Thirteen to Centaurus
Character: Dr. Francis
Interstellar travel at sub-light speeds: the enormous distances, isolation from human culture and the aching loneliness of space are enough to drive the strongest personality insane. Better to block all memories of human contact and to program the 12-strong crew to accept only the reality they can see and touch within their spacecraft. But a child born on "the Station" becomes insistent on learning the truth about 'Outside'....
The Longest Day
Character: RAF Pilot
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"...
The Happiness of Three Women
Character: John
Three women staying at a remote Welsh inn toss coins into a well wishing to improve their miserable lives. Along comes postman Evans (who also wrote the original play and collaborated on the screenplay) to help them out and set them straight....
Find the Lady
Character: Bill
During New Year's Eve, a young model spends the day searching for her grandmother, who has suspiciously gone missing....
The Sea Wolves
Character: Hilliard
A German spy is passing on information about the location of Allied ships in the neutral harbor of Goa, India, with catastrophic results. Unable to undertake a full military operation in the Portuguese stronghold, English intelligence brings out of retirement a crew of geriatric ex-soldiers, veterans from World War I, using their age as cover. These old soldiers are asked to take to the seas and pull off an unlikely undercover mission....
Devil's Point
Character: Michael Mallard
A Thames River barge operator finds a mysterious package dropped by smugglers....
Twice Round the Daffodils
Character: John Rhodes
Twice Round the Daffodils is a 1962 British comedy drama film directed by Gerald Thomas and starring Juliet Mills, Donald Sinden, Donald Houston, Kenneth Williams, Ronald Lewis, Andrew Ray, Joan Sims and Jill Ireland. A new group of patients arrive at a hospital to be treated for tuberculosis where they all take a fancy to one of the nurses. The film was adapted from the play Ring for Catty by Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale. Carry on Nurse from 1959 was based on the same play. The cast and pro...
My Death Is a Mockery
Character: John Bradley
A fisherman cannot make a decent living from his trawler so he decides to turn his hand to smuggling....
The Surgeon's Knife
Character: Dr. Alex Waring
A doctor becomes the victim of extortionists when one of his patients dies under questionable circumstances....
A Study in Terror
Character: Doctor Watson
When Watson reads from the newspaper there have been two similar murders near Whitechapel in a few days, Sherlock Holmes' sharp deductive is immediately stimulated to start its merciless method of elimination after observation of every apparently meaningless detail. He guesses right the victims must be street whores, and doesn't need long to work his way trough a pawn shop, an aristocratic family's stately home, a hospital and of course the potential suspects and (even unknowing) witnesses who a...
Voyage of the Damned
Character: Dr. Glauner
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival....
Danger Within
Character: Capt. Roger Byfold
Drama set in an Italian prisoner of war camp during World War 2, where a group of British soldiers find their plans for escape thwarted by a mysterious traitor in their midst....
The Secret Adversary
Character: Boris
After a chance meeting and an indiscreet conversation, childhood friends Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley become involved in a convoluted intrigue led by a mysterious man known simply as Mr. Brown....
Every Valley
Character: Narrator (voice)
A look at the transport system in the South Wales Valleys and how it effects peoples livelihoods and everyday lives....
A Question of Adultery
Character: Mr. Jacobus
Mark Loring is madly jealous of his wife, Mary, former American cabaret singer. Due to an automobile accident, she loses her unborn child, and Mark becomes sterile. His father, Brit-stuffy Sir John Loring, has never approved of the marriage and, again, tries to break it up. Believing that a child will hold the marriage together, Mary suggests artificial insemination to Mark, who finally agrees to accompany her to a clinic in Switzerland. However, when she is again pregnant, Mark finds it impossi...