“Roy Dotrice, O.B.E. (1923-2017)” by S.M. O’Connor

Best known now as Father on Beauty and the Beast (1987-1990) and as the narrator of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books, Shakespearean actor Roy Dotrice was a World War II veteran who played a wide range of roles on stage, screen, and radio.  From the 1940s to the 1970s, he was a leading man on stage, but afterward he smoothly transitioned to supporting roles on screen.  Over the past thirty years, he mostly played benign authority figures.   He was married for sixty years and was a great-grandfather.

Born on the isle of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel,[1] on Saturday, May 26, 1923, to Louis Dotrice, a master baker, and Neva (Wilton) Dotrice, he fled to England with his mother, brother, and some friends in a motorboat when the Germans occupied the island in 1940, shortly after Nazi Germany conquered France. [2]  He landed in a workhouse in Manchester before he lied about his age to volunteer, at the age of sixteen, to serve in the Royal Air Force as a wireless (radio) operator and air gunner. [3]  Captured in 1942, he spent the rest of the war in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he played female roles in plays. [4]  He explained the others prevailed upon him to so because “I was the youngest and prettiest.” [5]  His first role was as a fairy godmother in a pantomime play. [6]  He also related later that he learnt to play baseball from American P.O.W.s.  Freed in 1945, he discovered he had been promoted while in captivity and had back pay which he spent in six months on parties and multiple stays at the luxurious Savoy Hotel. [7]  Dotrice performed in a touring review of Back Home with fellow former P.O.W.s that benefitted the Red Cross. [8]  He briefly trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (R.A.D.A.). [9]  His first leading role was in Terrence Rattigan’s Flare Path, which was being staged at the Stockport Hippodrome. [10]  [The Hippodrome Theatre sat on the street St. Petersgate in Stockport,[11] England, no longer exists.[12]]  He was paid £4 per week. [13]

In 1946, he joined the Manchester Repertory Theatre.[14]  Dotrice would go on to gives thousands of performances on stage in repertory theatre (also known as repertory, rep theatre, of stock theatre); the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (now known as the Royal Shakespeare Company); and in one-man shows.  Between 1947 and 1955, he played hundreds of leading roles and directed in repertory theatre productions in the English cities of Liverpool, Oldham, and Manchester. [15]   In 1955, he founded the Guernsey Rep, and acted and directed with that company until 1957, when he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Strafford-on-Avon, where he became a contract player. [16]   Dotrice played Egeus in The Comedy of Errors and the Duke of Burgundy in the 1959 production of King Lear that starred stage-and-film actor and director Charles Laughton (1899-1962) as King Lear. [17]   That year – 1959 – the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre company included one of the most famous actors and directors of stage-and-screen, Sir Laurence Olivier (1907-1989),[18] who played the eponymous Roman statesman in Coriolanus; as well as Albert Finney; Dame Peggy Ashcroft (1907-1992); and the Black African-American actor and bass singer Paul Robeson (1898-1976), [19] who played the eponymous Moorish general in Othello. [20]  Not coincidentally, while he was still director-designate in 1959, Peter Hall (1930-2017), whom Queen Elizabeth II would later honor with a knighthood in 1977, announced his plans to turn the annual Shakespeare festival into a permanent theatre company.  In 1960, as director, Hall announced he also intended to acquire a theatre in London for select productions by the company.  The next year the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre became the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and its theatrical company would be known as the Royal Shakespeare Company.  For more than twenty years, the Royal Shakespeare Company (R.S.C.) performed at the Aldwych Theatre in Westminster, the capital city of England and Great Britain, until the R.S.C. moved to the Barbican Arts Centre in the City of London (not to be confused with Greater London, the conurbation that includes both the City of London and the City of Westminster) in 1982.  Dotrice was part of the R.S.C. who performed on stage in London like Diana Rigg, whom Queen Elizabeth honored in 1988 as a Dame Commander of the British Empire, and Ian Holm, whom Queen Elizabeth II later knighted in 1998.[21]   At the Aldwych Theatre in 1961, Dotrice appeared as Father Ambrose in a production of The Devils by John Whiting (1917-1963), which moved to the Criterion Theatre at Piccadilly Circus in the City of Westminster.[22]   A critic for The Stage wrote Dotrice’s performance was “one of the most moving pieces of acting the West End is likely to see for many a long day,” as Michael Quinn noted in his Dotrice obituary.[23]  In Aldrych, he also played Firs, the senile, eighty-seven-year-old manservant of the Russian aristocratic family who loses their family home in The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904).[24]  Dame Peggy Ashcroft played Madame Ranevsky and Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000), who also directed, played Gaev.[25]

Dotrice then returned to Stratford-on-Avon.  In 1963, he played Prospero’s inhuman servant Caliban in The Tempest, the eponymous imperator in Julius Caesar, and King Edward IV in the Wars of the Roses cycle of history plays Henry VI, Part 2; Henry VI, Part 3; and Richard III. [26]    The next year, he followed Olivier’s example in playing both Sir Henry Percy (“Hotspur”) in Henry IV, Part 1 and the elderly Justice of the Peace Robert Shallow in Henry IV, Part 2. [27]    A Times critic noted Dotrice played Hotspur as “a kilted, raw-boned Scot, moved by war to a sensual ecstasy, and whose cumulative rages suggest the mentality of an amiable psychopath.”[28]  In 1964, Dotrice also played Justice Shallow in Henry IV, Part 2.  In his Dotrice obituary, The Guardian’s theatre critic Michael Coveney described Dotrice’s performance as a “brilliant study in decrepitude.” [29]

Major film roles followed, though his international fame as a film actor never reached the level of his fame in England as a stage actor.  He played Jensen in The Heroes of Telemark (1965), which starred American movie star Kirk Douglas and Irish movie star Richard Harris (1930-2002).[30]    It was a work of historical fiction inspired by Knut Haukelid’s first-hand account of the Norwegian Resistance movement’s sabotage of the Vemork hydroelectric power plant, where Nazi Germany was creating heavy water for the manufacture of atomic bombs.[31]

Dotrice played “Gossip” in Lock Up Your Daughters! (1969), which starred Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, English actress Glynis Johns, and Welsh actress Susannah York (1939-2011).[32]    It was a bawdy comedy about three sex-obsessed sailors on leave in a town in 18^th Century England.

Next, Dotrice played General Mikhail Alekseyev (1857-1918) in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), a film about the last Emperor of All Russia, Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra, whom Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) had murdered, along with their children, in 1918.[33]  It was adapted from historian and biographer Robert K. Massie’s book Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia, published in 1967.  General Mikhail Alekseyev served as Chief of Staff of the Russian Imperial Army from August of 1915 until the February Revolution of 1917, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Provisional Government until May of 1917, and one of the leaders of the Volunteer Army, which fought the Bolsheviks in southern Russia during the Russian Civil War (1918-1922), until his death.

Dotrice starred as eccentric solicitor (lawyer) Albert Haddock in Misleading Cases (1967-1971), which ran for three seasons over nineteen episodes.  Haddock would, in each episode, bring a different case to court to expose and ridicule an aspect of English law.  The series was adapted from short stories Sir Alan Patrick Herbert (1890-1971).  Scottish character actor Alistair Sim (1900-1976), who played the judge, Stipendary Magistrate Mr. Swallow.[34]  Dotrice won a B.A.F.T.A. (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Award for his performance as Haddock.[35]

He won an Emmy for his performance in a television adaptation of The Caretaker (1967) by Harold Pinter (1930-2008).[36]  His co-star was a young Ian McShane.[37]

Director Patrick Garland (1935-2013) saw Dotrice’s performance as Justice Shallow in ’64 and was inspired to write a man-one show for him as 17^th Century diarist John Aubrey (1626-1697) in Brief Lives.[38]  Garland drew on Aubrey’s diaries, letters, and other writings to develop the monologues for the one-man show. [39]   The play debuted in 1967 at the Hampstead Theatre Club.  It moved to Broadway and returned, in 1969, to London’s Criterion, where Dotrice performed Brief Lives 400 times. [40]   From there, the one-man show moved to the May Fair Theatre.[41]   [The May Fair Theatre was a theatre in the famous May Fair Hotel in the Mayfair neighborhood of Westminster, Greater London, and is now a cinema.]  Brief Lives returned to Broadway for another season and then went on a world tour. [42]   Dotrice gave a total of 1,782 performances in the play.[43]   He thus earned his first of two entries in the Guinness Book of World Records.[44]

Dotrice also played both the great English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and his father John Dickens (1785-1851) in the miniseries Dickens of London (1976).  This was a production of Yorkshire Television. 

In 1979, he played Fagin in Oliver! [45]  This was an adaptation of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens staged at the Albery. Dotrice also spent part of the 1970s in Chichester Festival Theatre in Chichester, Sussex, England, where he filled in for Christopher Plummer to play the eponymous character in Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt.[46]  He went on a tour of Australia in productions of Move Over, Mrs. Markham and The Apple Cart by the playwright, drama critic, screenwriter, and Fabian Society member George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).[47]

Subsequently, Dotrice went to the U.S.A. to make guest appearances on television and appear in one-man shows as Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), President of the United States of America (1861-1865); Dickens; Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1940-1945, 1951-1955); and cowboy, actor, newspaper columnist, and humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935).   Notably, he performed his one-man show Mister Lincoln, written by Herbert Mitgang (1920-2013), at Ford’s Theatre, where John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), a famous actor from a family of prominent actors, assassinated Lincoln.[48]  In 1981, Mister Lincoln appeared on the Hallmark Hall of Fame on P.B.S., with an introduction by the inimitable George C. Scott (1927-1999).  This was the first Hallmark Hall of Fame special to appear on P.B.S. rather than N.B.C.  American theatrical critics in Washington, D.C. and New York City appreciated his performances in another Ibsen play, An Enemy of the People, Noël Coward’s Hay Fever (where he played opposite Rosemary Harris, an English actress who is best known now as Aunt May in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, and is the mother of Anglo-American actress Jennifer Ehle) at the Music Box Theatre in New York City in 1985, and The Woman in Black. [49]

In 1982, he played the husband of an “unhinged art dealer” in the thriller Murder in Mind, staged at the Strand.[50]  His co-star was New Zealander actress Nyree Dawn Porter.  Three years later, he played Magwitch in a four-hour-long production of Great Expectations, another adaptation of a Dickens novel, at the Old Vic (Royal Victoria Hall).[51]

Dotrice played Leopold Mozart (1719-1787), a violinist, composer, and music teacher who was the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in Amadeus (1984).[52]  The film starred Assyrian-and-Italian-American character actor F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri (1750-1825), a composer, conductor, and music teacher who had the honor of being court composer of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II; American stage-and-screen actor (and now stage producer) Tom Hulce as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), one of the greatest composers in musical history; American stage-and-screen actress Elizabeth Berridge as Constanze Mozart (1762-1842); Mozart’s wife and mother of his six children; and (the now disgraced) American character actor Jeffrey Jones as Joseph II (lived 1741-1790, reigned 1765-1790).  Oscar-winning Czech director, screenwriter, and actor Miloš Foreman directed the film.[53]  Peter Levin Shaffer (1926-2016), whom Queen Elizabeth II later knighted in 2001, adapted his own play for the silver screen.[54]    Shaffer was inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s short play Mozart and Salieri, published in 1832.  He highly fictionalized the lives of Salieri and Mozart to make Salieri insanely jealous of the younger man’s talent.  Amadeus (1984) won eight Oscars.[55]  Producer Saul Zaentz won the Academy Award for Best Picture.  Foreman won the Academy Award for Best Director.  Shaffer won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Subsequently, Dotrice had an important supporting role on the C.B.S. series Beauty and the Beast, which starred Ron Perlman (Seasons 1-3), as Vincent (the Beast); Linda Hamilton (the Beauty) (Seasons 1-2), as Assistant District Attorney Catherine Chandler; and Jo Anderson (Season 3), as investigator Diana Bennett.  In Beauty and the Beast, Dotrice played Father (Dr. Jacob Wells), the foster father of lion-man Vincent.  Father was the co-founder and patriarch of a community of people who lived quasi-medieval lifestyles in subterranean tunnels and caves under New York City.  This was called the “World Below.”  They lived under the protection of Vincent and Father was initially somewhat resentful of Catherine Chandler because Vincent kept risking his life and the prospect of being captured by the police which would surely lead to him being studied by scientists in a laboratory, by ascending to the surface to protect her, too.  This series was the beginning of Dotrice’s personal friendship and public association with George R.R. Martin, a former science fiction novelist who wrote or co-wrote fourteen episodes of Beauty and the Beast.   Martin befriended Dotrice on the set of the series, where they worked together for three years.  After Dotrice passed away, Martin wrote, “Great memories, for me; that was a wonderful show, and a joy to work on.  We had an amazing team of writers, and a terrific cast, with the likes of Jay Acovone, Linda Hamilton, Jo Anderson, the incredible Ron Perlman…, and Roy, of course, as Father.  It was an honor and a privilege to write for him.”[56]

One of the biggest supporting roles Dotrice had in terms of screen time was Anton Pamchenko, the famous Russian figure skating coach in The Cutting Edge (1992).  In that romantic comedy/sports film, tycoon Jack Mosley (Terry O’Quinn) has a burning ambition to see his daughter – his only child – win a gold medal at the 1992 Winter Olympics (fulfilling his late figure skater wife’s dream) and hires Pamchenko to guide her there.  The problem is that the spoilt heiress is a perfectionist who keeps burning through partners. It is Pamchenko’s idea to recruit Douglas Dorsey (T.B. Sweeney), a former college hockey star whose life was seemingly ruined during the Olympics when members of the German national hockey team injured him in such a way as to deprive him of peripheral vision in his _ eye, to become the figure skating partner of Kate Mosley (Moria Kelly).  The dangerous Pamchenko Twist the coach teaches them for the 1992 Winter Olympic Games so they will beat Russian rivals was satirized with the “Iron Lotus” in the bizarre comedy Blades of Glory (2007).  Dotrice has more screen time in The Cutting Edge than a coach otherwise might have in a motion picture that is as much a romantic comedy as it is a sports film (in as much as figure skating can be called a sport rather than ballet with ice skates) because Pamchenko sometimes has to mediate between Doug and Kate and because Pamchenko and Doug live together in an apartment at Jack Mosley’s private skating rink because they are both his retainers.

In 1998, Dotrice guest starred in three episodes of the popular syndicated series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-1999). He played Zeus, king of the Olympian gods and father of the eponymous hero Hercules (Kevin Sorbo).

In 2000, Dotrice played Irish farmer Phil Hogan in Daniel Sullivan’s revival on Broadway of Eugene O’Neill’s Moon for the Misbegotten.[57]  His co-stars were American character actress Cherry Jones and Irish movie star Gabriel Byrne.[58]  Dotrice won a Tony Award.

He appeared in “Lineage,” an episode of the final season of Angel (1999-2004) in 2003.  Dotrice played an android imposter of Roger Wyndam-Pryce, father of Wesley Wyndham-Pryce (Alexis Denisof).  It was one of Dotrice’s few villainous roles on screen.

In 2006, Dotrice returned to the Chichester Festival Theatre to play the Starkeeper in Angus Jackson’s revival of Carousel. [59]  At the Hampstead Theatre in the London Borough of Camden, he played George Bernard Shaw in Hugh Whitemore’s The Best of Friends. [60]  Patricia Routledge played Dame Laurentia McLachlan, O.S.B. (1866-1953), Abbess of Stanbrook Abbey, and Michael Pennington played Fitzwilliam Museum Director Sydney Cockerell (1867-1962).

Roy Dotrice reunited with Ron Perlman on screen, although they shared no screen time together, in Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008).  This was a sequel to Hellboy (2004), Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mike Mignola’s graphic novel Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, published by Dark Horse Comics.  That film had starred Perlman as Anung Un Rama (“Hellboy”), a half-demon/half-human summoned to our world by a Nazi occultist during World War II.  Sir John Hurt (1940-2017) played Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm, Hellboy’s adoptive father and founder of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense.  Introduced as a Catholic lay scholar who is an advisor on occult matters to F.D.R., Prof. Broom tries to use a small detachment of American commandos to prevent an immortal Grigori Rasputin (Karel Rodin) leading a Thule Society/Nazi/German Army group from physically bringing a demon into this world on a Scottish island they’ve seized.  The Americans are able to kill the Nazis, but fail to prevent the demon from coming through the gate, yet it’s a baby, and Professor Broom endeavors to raise the demon-child to become a sort of superhero.  This was the second time Perlman played an inhuman creature raised by a benevolent father to defend humans.  In the sequel, Roy Dotrice appeared briefly on screen as King Nalor of Elfland.  English actor-musician Luke Goss, who had played a mutant vampire in del Toro’s Blade II (2002), played King Nalor’s evil son, Prince Nuada Silverlance, while English actress Anna Walton played Nuada’s virtuous twin sister Princess Nuala, who becomes a love interest for Abe Sapien.  To play elvish royalty, Roy Dotrice, Luke Goss, and Anna Walton spoke Gaelic.  [In the reboot, Hellboy (2019), David Harbour, who plays Police Chief Jim Hopper on the Netflix streaming series Stranger Things, will play Hellboy and Ian McShane will play Prof. Bruttonholm.]  As if he had not played Aubrey often enough, Dotrice returned to the U.K. for a 2008 revival of Brief Lives, but this touring production never reached London.[61]

That same year, Queen Elizabeth II honored Dotrice as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.[62]  Afterward, he would be referred to as Roy Dotrice, O.B.E.

Dotrice appeared on an English stage for the last time in 2009 at The Lowry in Salford, Greater Manchester.[63]  He played General Waverly (a retired army general who opened a ski resort in Vermont) in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas: The Musical.  This was an adaptation of the film White Christmas (1954), which starred Bing Crosby (1903-1977), Danny Kaye (1911-1987), Rosemary Clooney (1928-2002), and Vera-Ellen (1921-1981).

Dotrice narrated the first five audiobooks in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of high-fantasy novels.  He gave voice to 224 characters for the first novel in the saga, A Game of Thrones, alone.[64]  In 2004, this earned him a second entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.[65]  After Dotrice recorded the audiobooks for A Game of Thrones, he recorded the audiobooks for the second and third novels in the series, as well, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords, but he was unavailable to record the audiobook for the fourth novel in the series, A Feast for Crows.  As Martin recalled, this was because Dotrice was back in England, performing in a play in Birmingham.[66]  Random House, Martin’s publisher, arranged for another actor to read the audiobook, but there was such a fan backlash that Random House brought Dotrice into the studio to re-record A Feast for Crows.[67]  There could be no doubt who would record the audiobook for A Dance with Dragons.[68]

Consequently, it was only natural that in 2010, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss the showrunners[69] of the H.B.O. television series Game of Thrones, and Martin (who is also a producer of the series) would announce they had cast Dotrice in a major supporting role, as Grand Maester Pycelle, the duplicitous advisor to several kings.  Unfortunately, due to bad health, he had to back out.  The producers cast Julian Glover, an English character actor best known for playing General Veers in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980); Aristotle Kristatos, a Greek crime lord who is in league with the K.G.B. in the James Bond film For Yours Eyes Only (1981); Walter Donovan, an American businessman in league with the Nazis, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989); and the voice of the monstrous spider Aragog in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). Perhaps it is for the best.  Glover excels at playing villains and helped shape how the showrunners depicted the character.  It is difficult enough to watch Glover murdered on screen at the end of Season 6 (in a different manner from how Pycelle dies in A Feast for Crows), but it would have been stomach-turning for fans of Dotrice who associated him with Father from Beauty and the Beast and similar roles to see him die that way on screen. In Season 2, the producers of Game of Thrones cast Dotrice in a smaller but critical supporting role as Pyromancer Wisdom Hallyne, the Head of the Alchemists’ Guild.[70]  In Martin’s books, rather than trying to turn lead into gold, alchemists produce what they call “the Substance,” a chemical compound that can be ignited to create “Wildfire.”  This is a magical version of real-world Greek fire, which the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire used as an incendiary weapon, particularly in naval battles, until knowledge of how to make it disappeared.  Dotrice appeared in two episodes: “The Ghost of Harrenhal” and “Blackwater.”  Martin wrote, “Many of the news stories about Roy’s death identified him as A GAME OF THRONES cast member.  He was that, of course.  He played the pyromancer Hallyne in two episodes during our second season, and, as with everything he did, he played him wonderfully.”[71]

In 1947, Dotrice wed actress Kay Newman and they remained married until her death in 2007.[72]  After Dotrice moved to the U.S.A., he retained a London residence in the form of a flat on Saint Martin’s Lane next door to the Duke of York’s Theatre, but The Guardian’s Coveney felt this was more so he and Kay could visit their daughters than so he could stay active in English theatre. [73]  They had three daughters: Michele, Yvette, and Karen, all three of whom became actresses.  Michele is best known as Betty Spencer on the B.B.C. sitcom Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em (1973-1978, 2016).  Karen is best known as Jane Banks in Mary Poppins (1964).  She read the interstitial author biographies for the audiobook adaptation of the anthology Dangerous Women, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardener Dozois.  In 1987, Dotrice became the father-in-law of his contemporary English actor, Edward Woodward (1930-2009), who was then the star of The Equalizer (1985-1989), when Woodward wed Michele Dotrice, with whom he already had a daughter, Emily Beth Woodward, born in 1983.  Edward and Michele, his second wife, remained married until his death in 2009.  In addition to Emily Beth Woodward, Roy & Kay Dotrice had six other grandchildren. Karen and her husband, Alex Hyde-White, one of the last contract players under Hollywood’s old studio system, had three children.   Yvette also had three children.  B.B.C. News reported his family announced Roy Dotrice died at the age of ninety-four on Monday, October 16, 2017 at his home in London, surrounded by all three of his daughters, his grandchildren, and his great-grandson.[74]

Ron Perlman tweeted, “Love you dear Pop. Forever and ever. You were the best of us. My heart is broken…See you up top…XoxO Roy Dotrice……”

In tribute to Dotrice, Martin wrote, “He was a supremely gifted actor.  He was also my friend.  He in the United Kingdom and I lived in New Mexico, so we did not see each other often, bit whenever we did get together, it was a delight.  I will always treasure the memory of the dinner I shared with Roy and his wife Kay (who passed away a few years ago) at his club, the Garrick, a centuries-old haunt of the legends of the British stage.  That was a truly amazing evening.  The last time I saw Roy was in Los Angeles, however, at the party his daughter threw him on the occasion of his 90^th birthday.” [75]

About a month before he died, a physically frail Dotrice recorded a video for Beauty and the Beast colleagues and fans that appeared on the “Treasure Chambers” YouTube channel.  In one of them, he said, “I want to send my fondest love and best wishes to all my friends in the Beauty and Beast organization, and it is an organization.  It is amazing how it continues, and I continually get reminded by kind people who send me letters to say how much they enjoyed the show.  They can’t have enjoyed it as much as I did, because I loved every moment of it, but it is a show that I think will linger with everybody, and not just for the message it sent, which was all about love and family.  We had some good times together, Ron and Linda, and so many of the people who helped make the show, I think, a success.  I love you all, I miss you all, and I hope that we meet again, one day.  God bless you.”

 

[1] The Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English Channel.  They are all that remains to the British Crown of the Duchy of Normandy, as mainland Normandy was lost to the French Crown centuries ago.  As such, the Channel Islands are not legally part of England.  Nor are they part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[2] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/oct/16/roy-dotrice-obituary) Accessed 10/23/17

[3] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

See also Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017 (https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/obituaries/2017/obituary-roy-dotrice/) 11/01/17

See also “Roy Dotrice: Guernsey actor dies aged 94,” B.B.C. News (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-guernsey-41638573) Accessed 11/01/17

[4] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[5] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[6] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[7] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[8] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[9] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[10] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[11] Stockport is a large town on the River Mersey that is southeast of the City of Manchester.  It is the most densely populated part of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport in Greater Manchester (the metropolitan county of Manchester).

[12] The Hippodrome Theatre opened as the Empire Theatre in 1905.  The name changed to the Hippodrome Theatre in 1915.  The owner converted into a cinema in 1931 and in 1940 a new owner converted it back into a legitimate theatre.  In 1951, it became the Astor Cinema, which closed after being badly damaged by a fire in 1960.  Originally, the façade was retained when the building was demolished in 1965, but it, to, was demolished in 1968.  See Matthew Lloyd, “The Hippodrome Theatre, St. Petersgate, Stockport,” ArthurLloyd.co.uk.com (http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/StockportTheatres.htm#hipp) Accessed 10/31/17

[13] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[14] Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

(https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/obituaries/2017/obituary-roy-dotrice/) 11/01/17

[15] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[16] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[17] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

See also Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

[18] In 1947, King George VI (lived 1895-1952, reigned 1936-1952) honored Laurence Olivier with a knighthood as a Knight Bachelor.  In 1970, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him with a life peerage.  From that point onward, Baron Olivier would have been addresses as “Lord Olivier.”

[19] In 1930, during a West End production of Othello, Robeson had played Othello and Ashcroft had played Desdemona, his Italian wife.  Back then, they had an affair that almost ruined his marriage with Eslanda Robeson (1895-1965).

[20] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[21] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

Dame Diana Rigg is best known as Emma Peel from 1965 to 1967 on the globally syndicated ITV series The Avengers (1961-1969), the most popular assistant of the stylish spy John Steed, played by Patrick Macnee (1922-2013); Countess Teresa di Vincenzo, the only woman whom James Bond loved enough to marry, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969); and as Lady Oleanna Tyrell (also known as “The Queen of Thorns”), matriarch of House Tyrell, on Seasons 3-7 of the H.B.O. series Game of Thrones.  Sir Ian Holm is best known now as the android Ash from The Alien (1979) and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (2001-2003), Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s three-volume novel The Lord of the Rings. Holm reprised the role as an elderly Bilbo in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies (2014), the first and third installments in a trilogy of films Jackson ostensibly made from Tolkien’s children’s book The Hobbit.

[22] Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

See also Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[23] Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

[24] Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

See also Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[25] Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

[26] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

See also Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

[27] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[28] The Times, 17 April, 1964.

[29] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[30] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

Kirk Douglas is over 100 years old.  Best known now as Spartacus, the gladiator who led the last slave revolt against the Roman Republic in Spartacus (1960), Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Howard Fast’s work of historical fiction.  [The ancient Romans called this conflict the Third Servile War.  Plutarch called it the Gladiator’s War.]  He is the father of Michael Douglas.  Richard Harris (1930-2002) played King Arthur in Camelot on screen and stage, as he starred in Camelot (1961) and was multiple stage productions of the musical, which included a 1981-82 run on Broadway.  The year 1970 was the high point of his career.  In Cromwell (1970), he played Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), who led the Round Heads against King Charles I (lived 1600-1649, reigned 1625-1649), played by Alec Guinness (1914-2000), in the English Revolution, which for centuries has been mislabeled the English Civil War.  Despite the fact Cromwell was a regicidal tyrant who attempted to turn the British Isles into a hereditary tyranny like ancient Syracuse or modern North Korea, the film was pro-Cromwell.  In A Man Called Horse (1970), adapted from the short story of the same name by Dorothy M. Johnson (1905-1984), Richard Harris played John Morgan, an English aristocrat captured by Lakota Sioux who gains status as a warrior by killing tribal enemies and undergoing brutal initiation rites, adopts the name Horse, and eventually becomes leader of the band.  He is best known now for his performance as Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) – called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the U.S.A. – and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).  The actors Jared Harris and Jamie Harris and the screenwriter-director Damian Harris are his sons by his first wife, Welsh socialite Joan Elizabeth Rees-Williams.

[31] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[32] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[33] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[34] Sim is best known now as Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge (1951), which is called A Christmas Carol (1951) in the U.S.A.  It was adapted from the Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol, published in 1843.

[35] Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

See also “Roy Dotrice: Guernsey actor dies aged 94,” B.B.C. News

See also Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[36] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[37] Ian McShane is a British movie and television star of English, Scottish, and Irish descent who made a marked impression on American audiences with his performance as a pilot in Battle of Britain (1969).   McShane’s profile rose in American pop culture when he played the pimp Al Swearengen (1845-1904) in the H.B.O. series Deadwood (2004-2006). He provided the voice of the villainous tiger Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda (2008).  McShane played Brother Ray in the Sixth Season episode of Game of Thrones, “The Broken Man.”

[38] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[39] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[40] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[41] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[42] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

See also Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

[43] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[44] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[45] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[46] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

See also Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

[47] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[48] Michael Quinn, “Obituary: Roy Dotrice,” The Stage, 24 October, 2017

[49] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[50] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[51] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[52] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[53] His first American film had been One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ken Kesey (1935-2001), which won five Oscars from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  Producers Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Screenwriters Lawrence Hauben (1931-1985) and Bo Goldman won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.  Foreman won the Academy Award for Best Director.  Jack Nicholson won the Academy Award for Best Actor.  Louise Fletcher won the Academy Award for Best Actress.  Foreman’s second film had been Hair (1979), a rock and roll musical adapted from the Broadway musical Hair: An American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.  Playwright and screenwriter Michael Weller, who adapted Hair for the silver screen, also adapted for Foreman Ragtime (1981), an adaptation of the novel of the same name by E.L. Doctorow (1931-2015).  It was nominated for eight Oscars.

[54] The play had debuted at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1979 with Paul Scofield (1922-2008) as Salieri, Simon Callow as Mozart, Felicity Kendal as Constanze, and John Normington (1937-2007) as Emperor Joseph II.  The play went on to the staged in the West End of London with Frank Finlay (1926-2016). In 1980, it debuted at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway.  Ian McKellan, whom Queen Elizabeth II later knighted in 1992, played Salieri.  Tim Curry played Mozart and Jane Seymour played Constanze.

[55] F. Murray Abraham won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.  German-Russian-American production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein and Czech art director and production designer Karel Černý (1922-2014) won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction.  Czech costume designer, uniform designer, and photorealistic artist Theodor Pištěk won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.  American prosthetic makeup artist Dick Smith (1922-2014) and American makeup artist Paul LeBlanc won the Academy award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.  American sound engineer Mark Berger, American sound engineer Thomas Scott, American film composer Todd Boekelheide, and American sound mixer Chris Newman won the Academy Award for Best Sound.

[56] “George R.R. Martin, “Rest in Peace Roy,” (https://grrm.livejournal.com/552374.html) 17 October, 2017 Accessed 10/24/17

[57] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[58] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[59] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[60] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[61] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[62] “Roy Dotrice: Guernsey actor dies aged 94,” B.B.C. News

See also Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[63] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[64] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[65] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[66] “George R.R. Martin, “Rest in Peace Roy,”

[67] “George R.R. Martin, “Rest in Peace Roy,”

[68] “George R.R. Martin, “Rest in Peace Roy,”

[69] The showrunner of a television series is both its executive producer and its head screenwriter.  In the case of Benioff and Weiss, they are business partners show share these duties on Game of Thrones.

[70] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[71] “George R.R. Martin, “Rest in Peace Roy,”

[72] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

See also “Roy Dotrice: Guernsey actor dies aged 94,” B.B.C. News Rest in Peace Roy,”

[72] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[73] Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[74] “Roy Dotrice: Guernsey actor dies aged 94,” B.B.C. News

See also Michael Coveney, “Roy Dotrice obituary,” The Guardian, 16 October 2017

[75] “George R.R. Martin, “Rest in Peace Roy,”