Michael Goodliffe
Birthday: Born in 1914-10-01 in Bebington, Cheshire, England
Deathday: 1976-03-20
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Lawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe (1 October 1914 – 20 March 1976) was an English actor best known for playing suave roles such as doctors, lawyers and army officers. He was also sometimes cast in working class parts. Goodliffe was born in Bebington, Cheshire (now Merseyside), the son of a vicar, and educated at St Edmund's School, Canterbury, and Keble College, Oxford. He started his career in repertory theatre in Liverpool before moving on to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon. He joined the British Army at the beginning of World War II, and received a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in February 1940. He was wounded in the leg and captured at the Battle of Dunkirk. Goodliffe was incorrectly listed as killed in action, and even had his obituary published in a newspaper. He was to spend the rest of the war a prisoner in Germany. Whilst in captivity he produced and acted in (and in some cases wrote) many plays and sketches to entertain fellow prisoners. These included two productions of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, one in Tittmoning and the other in Eichstätt, in which he played the title role. He also produced the first staging of Noel Coward's Post Mortem at Eichstätt. A full photographic record of these productions exists. After the war he resumed his professional acting career. As well as appearing in the theatre he worked in film and television. He appeared in The Wooden Horse in 1950 and in other POW films. His best known film was A Night to Remember (1958) in which he played Thomas Andrews, builder of the RMS Titanic. His best known television series was Sam (1973–75) in which he played an unemployed Yorkshire miner. He also appeared with John Thaw and James Bolam in the 1967 television series Inheritance. Suffering from depression, Goodliffe had a breakdown in 1976 during the period that he was rehearsing for a revival of Equus. He committed suicide a few days later by leaping from a hospital fire escape, whilst a patient at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London. Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Goodliffe, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
TV Credits
The Avengers
Character:
A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - teams with various assistants throughout the series' run, including Dr. David Keel, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, to repeatedly save the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally diabolical evil-doers (among them robots and man-eating monsters)....
The Protectors
Character: De Santos
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...
The Saint
Character: Dr. Quintus
Simon Templar is The Saint, a handsome, sophisticated, debonair, modern-day Robin Hood who recovers ill-gotten wealth and redistributes it to those in need....
Callan
Character:
Callan is the title of a British television series set in the murky world of espionage. Originally produced by ABC Weekend Television and later Thames Television, it was aired on the ITV network over four seasons spread out between 1967 and 1972. The series starred Edward Woodward as David Callan, a reluctant professional killer for a shadowy branch of the British Government's intelligence services known as 'the Section'....
Dixon of Dock Green
Character: Garfield Fenton
Created by Ted Willis. Dixon of Dock Green was a BBC television series following the activities of police officers at a fictional Metropolitan Police station in the East End of London from 1955 to 1976. Some episodes were later remade as a BBC radio series in 2005 and 2006....
Interpol Calling
Character: Wolf Barstrom
The adventures of Interpol policemen Duval and Mornay as they fought against international drug-running, homicide, robbery and forgery....
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....
Zero One
Character:
...
Maigret
Character:
BBC series based on the novels by Georges Simenon which starred Rupert Davies as Inspector Maigret, a French police detective who preferred to watch and listen in order to solve crimes. The series ran from 1960-63 on British television....
Hine
Character:
Barrie Ingham (The Caesars) stars as Joe Hine, an international arms dealer battling to stay one step ahead of the competition in this rapidly paced and typically stylish ATV drama series from the creator of The Plane Makers and The Power Game Wilfred Greatorex. Hine operates alone in a multi-billion-pound market dominated by a handful of monolithic corporations. His closest rival is arms firm Pendles, where Astor Harris (Paul Eddington) is head of weapons sales; he also faces regular tussles w...
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
Character: Arthur de Crecy
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) is a British private detective television series. In the initial episode Hopkirk is murdered during an investigation, but returns as a ghost. Randall is the only main character able to see or hear him, although certain minor characters are also able to do so in various circumstances throughout the series....
Sam
Character: Jack Barraclough
Sam is a drama set in the coalfields of Yorkshire in the inter-war period....
Thirty-Minute Theatre
Character: The Minister
Thirty-Minute Theatre is an anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. Thirty-Minute Theatre followed on from a similarly named ITV series, beginning on BBC2 in 1965 with an adaptation of the black comedy Parsons Pleasure. In 1967 BBC2 launched the UK's first colour service,...
Inheritance
Character: Mr. Oldroyd
Inheritance was a 1967 Granada produced ITV drama based on a 1932 novel by Phyllis Bentley. The ten-part period drama revolved around the fortunes of the Oldroyds, a Yorkshire mill owning family from 1812 to 1965. The early part of the series featured the Luddite riots involving the burning of mills and the subsequent execution of those responsible. The series turned the expression "There's trouble at t'mill" into a catchphrase. The series featured Michael Goodliffe, John Thaw and James Bolam ...
Cities At War
Character: Self - Narrator
This three-part series uses newsreels and archival footage to chronicle the hardships of the people of London, Berlin and Leningrad during WWII....
Movie Credits
Hitler: The Last Ten Days
Character: General Weidling
Hitler: The Last Ten Days takes us into the depths of der Furher’s Berlin bunker during his final days. Based on the book by Gerhard Boldt, it provides a bleak look at the goings-on within, and without....
A Night to Remember
Character: Thomas Andrews
The sinking of the Titanic is presented in a highly realistic fashion in this tense British drama. The disaster is portrayed largely from the perspective of the ocean liner's second officer, Charles Lightoller. Despite numerous warnings about ice, the ship sails on, with Capt. Edward John Smith keeping it going at a steady clip. When the doomed vessel finally hits an iceberg, the crew and passengers discover that they lack enough lifeboats, and tragedy follows....
Peeping Tom
Character: Don Jarvis
Loner Mark Lewis works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen, the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making....
Von Ryan's Express
Character: Captain Stein
Von Ryan's Express stars Frank Sinatra as a POW colonel who leads a daring escape from WWII Italy by taking over a freight train, but he has to win over the British soldiers he finds himself commanding....
Cromwell
Character: Solicitor General
Disgusted with the policies of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell plans to take his family to the New World. But on the eve of their departure, Cromwell is drawn into the tangled web of religion and politics that will result in the English Civil War....
To the Devil a Daughter
Character: George de Grass
An American occult novelist battles to save the soul of a young girl from a group of Satanists, led by an excommunicated priest, who plan on using her as the representative of the Devil on Earth....
The Gorgon
Character: Professor Jules Heitz
In the early 20th century a village experienced a series of inexplicable murders. All the victims were young men who had been turned to stone. The perpetrator of these deaths was a being so repulsive that she transformed the onlooker using the power of her deadly stare. Much of the time the creature took the form of a beautiful and seductive woman, but during periods of the full moon she becomes a living horror, vicious and deadly. A professor has come to investigate the deaths, bringing with hi...
The Day the Earth Caught Fire
Character: Jacko Jackson the Night Editor
British reporters suspect an international cover-up of a global disaster in progress... and they're right. Hysterical panic has engulfed the world after the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously detonate nuclear devices and have caused the orbit of the Earth to alter, sending it hurtling towards the sun....
The Night of the Generals
Character: Hauser
A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler....
Testament of Orpheus
Character: English Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
An 18th century poet travels through time in search of divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic encounters with symbolic phantoms with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. Ultimately, the poet strives to achieve his rebirth as a celestial being....
The Battle of the Sexes
Character: Detective
Angela Barrows is a man-eating business woman sent by her American employer to investigate their export opportunities in Edinburgh. En route she meets Robert MacPherson, a businessman who asks for her help to bring his company into the 20th Century. The staff, led by Mr Martin, has other ideas—and a battle between the old and new business methods soon breaks out....
Dial 999
Character: John Moffat
A man tells his wife that the police are after him for having killed a bookie during an alcoholic binge, but that he is innocent and is being framed for the murder. The wife and her brother hide him and try to find out who the real killer was. The more they investigate, the more holes they begin to find in the husband's story....
Wicked as They Come
Character: Larry Buckham
A ruthless woman takes advantage of gullible men to climb up the social ladder....
633 Squadron
Character: Squadron Leader Frank Adams
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....
In Sickness and in Health
Character: Dr David Muray
A hard-working doctor must also carry the burden of a turbulent home life, due to the expectations of his demanding wife. Part of Thames Televison's Armchair Cinema....
The Connoisseur
Character: Rev. Adrian Tenterden
George Stoupe, successful housemaster at the public school, has an eye to the main chance against his retirement. He chooses the boys for his house if their parents are rich and likely to help him in his profitable art-dealing sideline. Trouble threatens when the head boy of the house tries to expose some of the mal-practices amomg the boys....
The Small Back Room
Character: Till
At the height of World War II, the Germans begin dropping a new type of booby-trapped bomb on England. Highly skilled but haunted bomb disposal officer Sammy Rice must overcome his personal demons to defeat this new threat....
The One That Got Away
Character: R.A.F. Interrogator
Based on the true story of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war captured in Britain to escape back to Germany during the Second World War....
The Battle of the River Plate
Character: Captain McCall, R.N., British Naval Attache, Buenos Aires
In the early years of the World War II, the Royal Navy is fighting a desperate battle to keep the Atlantic convoy routes open to supply the British Isles, facing the great danger posed by the many German warships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, which are scouring the ocean for cargo ships to sink....
Three Crooked Men
Character: Shop Customer
Three men arrive in a small town to pull the local bank heist....
Sink the Bismarck!
Character: Captain Banister
The story of the breakout of the German battleship Bismarck—accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen—during the early days of World War II. The Bismarck and her sister ship, Tirpitz, were the most powerful battleships in the European theater of World War II. The British Navy must find and destroy Bismarck before it can escape into the convoy lanes to inflict severe damage on the cargo shipping which was the lifeblood of the British Isles. With eight 15 inch guns, it was capable of destroying...
The 5th Day of Peace
Character: Snow
Based on a true story. Near the end of World War II, two German deserters are put in an Allied POW camp. When a rigid and militaristic German colonel learns about their desertion, he wants them court-martialed, even if the war is over. The uninterested Allied officers oblige him, and the two men face the firing squad on "the fifth day of peace"....
Jigsaw
Character: Clyde Burchard
A woman is found murdered in a seaside house along the coast from Brighton in the county of East Sussex, England. Local D.I. Fred Fellows and D.S. Jim Wilks lead an investigation methodically following up leads and clues mostly in Brighton and Hove but also further afield. _-= Based on the novel "Sleep Long My Love" by Hillary Waugh and Inspired by the Brighton Trunk Murders of the late 1930's =-_...
Quentin Durward
Character: Count De Dunois
During the 15th century reign of France's King Louis XI, a young Scottish man is sent by his English Lord to woo a French lady on his behalf. The plan goes awry when the young man falls in love with her. Based on the classic novel by Sir Walter Scott....
The 7th Dawn
Character: Trumphey
Political and personal intrigues surround a group of characters in Malaya, after the close of the Second World War....
The End of the Affair
Character: Smythe
During the 1940s, Maurice Bendrix, a writer recently discharged from the armed service, falls in love with Sarah Miles, whom he interviews for a book. Sarah is married, but she and Maurice eventually give in to their mutual attraction, leading to an affair that lasts several months. Maurice's jealousy, along with the bombing of London by the Germans, seemingly leads to the end of their relationship. However, the reasons are later revealed to be more complex....
The Fixer
Character: Ostrovsky
Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bog who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the “ritual murder” of a Gentile child in Kyiv. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail....
The Jokers
Character: Lt. Col. Paling
Brothers Michael and David Tremayne decide to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, not for criminal purposes, but to make themselves famous....
The Camp on Blood Island
Character: Father Paul Anjou
Set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II, the film focuses on the brutality and horror that the allied prisoners were exposed to as the Japanese metered out subjugation and punishment to a disgraced and defeated enemy. This harrowing drama concentrates on the deviations of legal and moral definitions when two opposing cultures clash. Although fictional, this was one of the earliest films to deal realistically with life and death in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Sec...
Up the Creek
Character: Nelson
Bumbling navy officer Lieutenant Humphrey Fairweather (David Tomlinson) is transferred to HMS Berkeley, an old World War II destroyer, to keep him out of harm's way. But together with Chief Petty Officer Doherty (Peter Sellers), Fairweather gets into more trouble than might be thought possible, with events coming to a riotous conclusion when the Admiralty turn up for an inspection of the ship....
Sea Devils
Character: Ragan
Gilliatt, a fisherman-turned-smuggler on the isle of Guernsey, agrees to transport a beautiful woman to the French coast in the year 1800. She tells him she hopes to rescue her brother from the guillotine. Gilliatt finds himself falling in love and so feels betrayed when he later learns this woman is a countess helping Napoleon plan an invasion of England. In reality, however, the "countess" is an English agent working to thwart this invasion. When Gilliatt finds this out, he returns to France t...
Fortune Is a Woman
Character: Detective Insp. Barnes
An insurance man discovers his ex-girlfriend and her husband's art-forgery/arson scam....
The Man with Two Faces
Character: Jeff Driscoll
Tab Hunter as a scary-eyed Aryan-blonde psychopath living in London, who emerges from prison and immediately proceeds to psychologically - and eventually physically - destroy his small family....
Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue
Character: Robert Walpole
After the 1715 defeat of the clans, one of the highland leaders, Rob Roy MacGregor escapes, has lots of adventures, gets married, and eventually becomes enough of a nuisance to George I to be outlawed, and hunted by the English...
Stop Press Girl
Character: McPherson
A young woman leaves her backwards hometown to go to London to find a runaway suitor. What she doesn't know is that she has inherited a strange ability; if she's in the vicinity of a machine for more than fifteen minutes, it stops working....
Conspiracy of Hearts
Character: Father Desmaines
In wartime Italy nuns in a convent regularly smuggle Jewish children out of a nearby internment camp. The Italian army officer in charge suspects what may be going on but deliberately turns a blind eye. When the Germans take over the camp security the nuns' activities become far more dangerous....
80,000 Suspects
Character: Clifford Preston
A doctor's already-shaky marriage is tested to an even greater extent when he has to contend with a smallpox epidemic....
The Wooden Horse
Character: Robbie
True story of three British POWs and their attempt to escape from Nazi Germany...
The Hour of 13
Character: Anderson
1890, London, and a serial killer known as The Terror is murdering policemen. When gentleman thief Nicholas Revel unwittingly becomes the chief suspect, he must use his guile and wits to prove he’s not the killer; whilst also not getting caught for a jewel robbery he has just committed....
Family Portrait
Character: Narrator (voice)
In preparation for the celebration of the 1951 Festival of Britain, this short film was released to assure British citizens of their nation's place in the world and of their own places within that nation. Illustrative scenes of farming, science, political, and social life are juxtaposed to present a familiar and reassuring image of Britain....
The White Trap
Character: Inspector Walters
Serving a jail sentence for a crime he didn't commit, Paul Langley makes several attempts to escape from prison, in order to clear his name. He also has other problems, his wife is about to go into labor with their first baby....
Don't Be Like Brenda
Character: Narrator (uncredited)
The brutally entitled Don't Be Like Brenda (1973) is an eight-minute lecture to young women, telling them not to be sexually promiscuous like the film's hapless heroine – although heaven knows, the promiscuity hinted at here is tragically modest. Poor Brenda goes all the way with a boy who does not marry her. The film is stunningly without any useful educational content on contraception and makes it entirely clear that the woman, not the man, is to blame. The film even makes her poor unwanted ch...
Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.
Character: Col. Caillard - POW Escort
Captain Horatio Hornblower leads his ship HMS Lydia on a perilous transatlantic voyage, during which his faithful crew battle both a Spanish warship and a ragged band of Central American rebels....
Woman of Straw
Character: Solicitor
Anthony Richmond schemes to get the fortune of his tyrannical, wheelchair-using tycoon uncle Charles Richmond by persuading Maria, a nurse he employs, to marry him....
Number Six
Character:
An international criminal arrives in London, and a detective is anxious to pin something on him for some unprovable murders of former lovers. The villain starts to suspect servants and henchmen of being a police spy known as "Number Six"....
The £20,000 Kiss
Character: Sir Harold Trevitt
An up and coming politician is caught in a compromising photograph taken by a maid, who turns out to be part of a sophisticated blackmail ring. When the girl is found murdered, he holds an incriminating old dueling pistol....
The Trials of Oscar Wilde
Character: Charles Gill
England, 1890s. The brutal and embittered Marquis of Queensberry, who believes that his youngest son, Bosie, has an inappropriate relationship with the famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde, maintains an ongoing feud with the latter in order to ruin his reputation and cause his fall from grace....
Plan for Coal
Character:
Part of BFI's "National Coal Board Collection"....
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Character: Mr. Teevee (uncredited)
When eccentric candy man Willy Wonka promises a lifetime supply of sweets and a tour of his chocolate factory to five lucky kids, penniless Charlie Bucket seeks the golden ticket that will make him a winner....
Henry VIII and His Six Wives
Character: Thomas More
Adapted from the BBC2 serial The Six Wives of Henry VIII. 1547, King Henry VIII's life has taken a turn for the worse and he is forced to look back over his life and the many loves which had brought him his three children, only one of which was the desired male heir to secure the Tudor dynasty....
Further Up the Creek
Character: Lt. Commander Blakeney
The sequel to 'Up The Creek' sees David Tomlinson return as bumbling navy boffin Lieutenant Humphrey Fairweather. This time he is skipper of the ship Aristotle and, together with his second-in-command, Fairweather wreaks havoc when he is ordered to deliver the Aristotle to its new owners in a mythical Middle-Eastern country....
Cry, the Beloved Country
Character: Martens
In the back country of South Africa, black minister Stephen Kumalo journeys to the city to search for his missing son, only to find his people living in squalor and his son a criminal. Reverend Misimangu is a young South African clergyman who helps find his missing son-turned-thief and sister-turned-prostitute in the slums of Johannesburg....
No Love for Johnnie
Character: Dr. West
Johnnie Byrne is a member of the British Parliament. In his 40s, he's feeling frustrated with his life and his personal as well as professional problems tower up over him. His desires to win the next election are endangered by his constant looking for love and he is faced with the choice of giving up a career in politics or giving up the woman he loves....
Man in the Middle
Character: Colonel Shaw
In a remote jungle outpost in the Far Eastern theater of World War II, a hotheaded American soldier murders an allied British sergeant in cold blood. Stalwart American Lt. Colonel Barney Adams (Mitchum) is dispatched to defend him in the ensuing court martial. But when Lt. Adams starts encountering roadblocks in his search for evidence, and his key witnesses start disappearing one after another, he soon realizes he's merely a pawn in a mysterious conspiracy that could extend to the highest level...
Ocean Terminal
Character: Narrator (voice)
Southampton, a deep-water port with four tides a day, is an ocean terminal for the world's largest liners. Their coming and going, and the people who work with them are the subject of this film as they reflect in their personal lives some of the drama and romance of its situation. Among them are a tug skipper and his crew, a stewardess on a Cape ship, an assistant wharfinger in charge of handling baggage and freight, a taxi driver, and a pilot taking a great liner down Southampton water at night...
Link Span
Character: Narrator (voice)
Twenty-four hours in the story of the British Railways Channel ferryboats, the 'link spans' directly joining the roads and railways of Britain with those of France and all the Continent. The Lord Warden laden with an assortment of road vehicles from Dover, and the Night Ferry from Newhaven carrying passengers bound for Paris, Vienna or Rome are two of the ferries illustrated in this film; and freight is not forgotten....
Carve Her Name with Pride
Character: Coding Expert
London, England, during World War II. After living a tragic life experience, young Violette Szabo joins the Special Operations Executive and crosses the German enemy lines as a secret agent to aid a French Resistance group....
The 39 Steps
Character: Brown
In London, a diplomat accidentally becomes involved in the death of a British agent who's after a spy ring that covets British military secrets....