Peter Cushing

Date of Birth

May 26, 1913

Birthplace

Kenley, Surrey, England

Main roles

Baron Frankenstein
Lawrence Van Helsing
Lorrimer Van Helsing

Images of Peter Cushing

External Links:

IMDB Site

Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE (26 May 1913 - 11 August 1994) was an English actor known for his appearences in Hammer Films, in which he played the sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, among many other roles. He appeared frequantly opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally Vincent Price. A familiar face on both sides of the Alantic, Cushing's best-known roles outside the Hammer productions include Sherlock Holmes, Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977) and Dr. Who in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966), films based of the Doctor Who television series.

Early Life[]

Cushing was born in Kenly, Surrey, the second son of George Edward Cushing and Nellie Maria Cushing. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Dulwich, South London. After the end of the First World War, they returned to the county of his birth: to neighbouring Purley, Surrey, where his father, a quantity surveyor, built an art deco house on St James Road in 1926. It was here that Cushing remained until early adulthood.

Educated at Shoreham College, Cushing left his job as a surveyor's assistant to take up a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Career[]

After working in a repeatory theatre in Worthing, Sussex, he left for hollywood in 1939, debuting in The Man In The Iron Mask later that year, before returning to England in 1941 after starring in several films. In one, A Chump In Oxford (1940), he appeared opposite Laurel and Hardy. His first major film role was that of Osric in Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet (1948)

In the 1950's, he worked in television, notably as Winston Smith in the BBC's 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), scripted by Nigel Kneale. Cushing was highly praised for his performance, although he considered his acting in the surviving version of the broadcast - it was performed live twice in one week, then a common practice, and only the second version exists in the archives - to be inferior to the first.

Among other TV appearences, Cushing starred as Fitzwilliam Darcy in the BBC's production of Pride and Prejudice (1952), as King Richard II in Richard Of Bordeaux (1955), and as Raan, a Prospero-like character in "Missing Link" (1975) an episode of Space: 1999. He also appeared in The Avengers and it's successor series, The New Avengers. In 1956, he received the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor.

Hammer Horror and Doctor Who[]

Cushing is well known for playing Baron Victor Frankenstein and Professor Van Helsing in a long series of horror films produced by Hammer Film Productions in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He was often cast alongside Christopher Lee, who became his best friend. His first appearences in his two most famous roles were in Terence Fisher's films The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958). He later said that his career decisions entailed selecting roles where he knew that he would be accepted by the audience. "Who wants to see me as Hamlet? Very few. But millions want to see me as Frankenstein, so that's the one I do."

Cushing also played Sherlock Holmes many times, originally in Hammer's The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1959), the first holmes adaptation to be filmed in colour. This was followed by a performance 16 episodes of the BBC series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (1968), of which six episodes survived. Cushing reprised the role, now playing the detective in old age, in The Masks Of Death (1984) for Channel 4.

In the mid-1960s, Cushing played Dr. Who in two films (Dr. Who and the Daleks and 'Daleks - I'nvasion Earth: 2150 A.D.) based on the BBC science-fiction TV series Doctor Who. He decided to play the part as a lovable and avuncular figure to counter the public's image of him as a horror actor.

In an interview published in ABC Film Review in November 1964, Cushing stated, "People look at me as if i were some sort of monster, But i can't think why. In my macabre pictures, I have either been a monster-maker or a monster-destroyer, but never a monster. Actrully, I'm a gentle fellow. Never harmed a fly. i love animals, and when i'm in the country i'm a keen bird-watcher." In an interview published in 1966, he added, "I do get terribly tired with the neighbourhood kids telling me 'My mum says she wouldn't want to meet you in the dark alley'."

Personal Life[]

In 1971, Cushing withdrew from the filming of Blood From The Mummy's Tomb following the death of his wife, actress Violet Helene Beck (8 February 1905 - 14 January 1971), to whom he had been married since 1943. The following year, he was quoted in the Radio Times as having said, "Since Helen passed on I can't find anything; the heart, quite simply, has gone out of everything. Time is interminable, the loneliness is almost unbearable and the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that my dear Helen and I will be reunited again some day. To join Helen is my only ambition. You have my premission to publish that ... really, you know, dear boy, it's all just killing time. Please say that."

In his autobiography, Cushing impiles that attempted suicide on the night of his wife's death by running up and down the stairs in the vain hope that it would induce a heart attack. He later stated that this had simply been a hysterical borne out of grief, and that he had not purposely attempted to end his life; a poem left by Helen had implored him not to die until he had lived his life to the full, and he had resolved that to commit suicide would have meant letting her down. Although he did not consider himself as a religious person, Cushing maintained strong ethics.

The effects of his wife's death proved to be as much physical as mental. For his role in Dracula A.D. 1972, Cushing had orignally had been cast as the father of Stephanie Beachman's character, But had aged so visibly and lost so much weight that the script was hastily re-written to make him her grandfather. In a silent tribute to Helen, a shot of Van Helsing's desk includes a photograph of her. In 1986, Cushing appeared on the BBC TV show Jim'll Fix It, his wish being to have a strain of rose named after Helen.

Later Career[]

Star Wars[]

In 1976, Cushing was cast in Star Wars in the part of Grand Moff Tarkin. He was presented with ill-fitting riding boots, which pinched his feet so much that he was given permission by director George Lucas to play the role wearing his slippers. The camera operators filmed him only from the knees up, or else standing behind the table of the Death Star conference room set.

Morecambe and Wise []

Following Star Wars, Cushing continued to appear sporadically in film and television, as his health permitted. In 1969, he had appeared in a comedy play by Ernie Wise on The Morecambe And Wise Show on BBC2. Throughout the BBC era of the show, he would regularly join Wise and his comic partner, Eric Morecambe, on stage; he would constantly seek payment for his first appearence, wearily asking "Have you got my five pounds yet?"

This running joke continued when the duo left the BBC and moved to Thames Television in 1978. Cushing appeared in their first special for Thames Television on 18 October, still asking to be paid, with the hosts repeatedly trying to get rid of him; at the end of the show, Morecambe placed some money in a wallet wired up to a bomb, in an attemp to blow Cushing up in exaggerated comedic style. In the duo's christmas special, Cushing pretented to be the Prime Minister while Morecambe and Wise caroled outside 10 Downing Street; he made the comedians give him money and finally came out to declare "paid, at last!"

Wise was a guest for Cushing's appearence on This Is Your Life in 1989. He promptly presented Cushing with a five pround note, only to extort it back from him. Cushing was delighted and exclaimed "All these years and I still haven't got my fiver!"

Later Life and Death[]

Cushing was diagnosed with postate cancer in 1982, but managed to survive for 12 years without surgery, although his health remained fragile. In 1989, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, although his friend Christopher Lee publicly opined that the honour was "too little, too late". Cushing retired to Whitstable, on the Kent coast, where he had bought a seafront home in 1959, and continued his hobby of birdwatching while writing two autobiographies. He also worked as a painter, specialising in watercolours, and wrote and illustrated a children's book of Lewis Carroll-style humour, The Bois Saga. He was the patron of the Vegetarian Sociaty from 1987 until his death.

Cushing's final professional commitment was the co-narration of the TV documentary Flesh And Bone: The Hammer Heritage Of Horror, produced by American writer and director Ted Newsom. His contribution was recorded in Canterbury, near his house. The programme was broadcast only a few days before his death on 11 August 1994, aged 81.

In an interview included on the DVD release of The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1959), Lee said of his friend's death: "I don't want to sound gloomy, but, at some point of your lives, every one of you will notice that you have in your life one person, one friend whom you love and care very much. That person is so close to you that you are able to share some things only with him. For example, you can call that friend, and from the very first maniacal laugh or some other joke you will know who is at the other end of that line. We used to do that with him so often. And then when that person is gone, there will be nothing like that in your life ever again."