Alan Bates

His career ended in 1985 then picked up again in 2000 with Gosford Park. He died in 2003.

He played a character called Buttley, a suicidal alcoholic in a black comedy. He’s amazing in that film, almost channeling this really messy, complex bitchy character. It’s pretty astonishing.

Let’s get the naked wrestling scene from Women In Love out of the way quick shall we

As an aside: Who was more problematic? Bates, or Oliver Reed?

Sir Alan Arthur Bates CBE

R4 Neither. Reed was too busy with his 15 yr old girlfriend and Bates was too drunk.

First introduced to Master Bates in 1966's wonderful GEORGY GIRL. Throughout the late 60s he seemed to be in every great British film made then and his presence only made them better.

I was obsessed with Bates in the 1970s after Women in Love. On a trip to NYC, while staying at the Algonquin, I happened to read Bates was in the city also staying at the Algonquin. Never saw him but I did have a huge flower arrangement sent to his room.

Love him, but didn’t you all do this same subject a few months ago? Or was that Dirk Bogarde?

[quote] What a great actor.

How dare you make that mild of a claim in beginning a thread about an actor, OP.

This is Datalounge, after all! The proper way to begin this thread is to claim, "He is the greatest actor in the entire history of human civilization!"

Don't let the side down!

You're mistaking actors for actresses, r10.

He was a great actor

Once of my favorites

Whistle Down the Wind is one of my favourite films, and Bates is gorgeous in it.

I’d, too, would have been sent into a sexual frenzy had he turned up in my barn when I was a horny teenager.

I liked him in Quartet

Butley

He was very handsome, but I never got him, he just didn't register with me. Sorry. He was no Albert Finney or Peter O'Toole.

Oh, it's you again, OP.

We recognise your halting sentences and your over-use of the word 'great'.

If you keep describing every mediocrity as 'great' the word will lose its potency and its meaning.

And, r17, certainly no Barbara Bates!

R19 And no Florence Bates, either.

R20 I see a resemblance between Florence and Alan.

They both had round faces and fleshy jowls. Bates had to wear a beard in his latter years to disguise his flabby jowls and weak chin.

Thank goodness he was no Norman Bates.

Great actor, love him in Women in Love, The Go-Between Etc.

He acted with Our Faye. So he is welcome here.

R23 How dare you say great!!!!!!

When I was young and loved him when I saw him in movies on TV.

[quote] Bates …drinking partner… to Peter O'Toole, and Richard Harris.

You have imagined that, OP.

You can't show us any link between Bates and those two alcoholics.

OP, R7, R12, R23

Alan Bates knew himself that he wasn't one of those "great actors", those histrionic scenery-chewers that so many American Dataloungers like.

That's the reason he so rarely attempted Shakespeare on stage.

I had a mad crush on him as a college boy in the 70's when I was just coming out. Far from the Madding Crowd, Women in Love, Whistle Down the Wind. He was the epitome of sexy to me. A very good actor as well. His Gosford Park performance is lovely.

^ Did you get horny watching him in 'Women in Love'?

[quote] Buttley

R2 Butley.

Bates is gorgeous in a not very thrilling thriller called “The Running Man,” in which he co-starscwith a bleached blond Lee Remick (gorgeous, and what a figure!) and a bleached blond Laurence Harvey (weird and effete as always). Bates is the unassuming insurance investigator out to prove they have defeauded his company, and he’s in redibly beautiful in it — those green eyes!

[quote] not very thrilling thriller called “The Running Man

Yes, It was as 'non-thrilling' as The Amazing Mr Ripley where the director just abandoned the plot and let the camera gaze upon the lovely scenery.

Alan's character was rather ambiguous and Alan was still pretty before he developed that 'puppy fat'.

(and, I guess Carol Reed was enjoying all that widescreen on-location color, the lack of which doomed one of his more ambitious projects 'Outcast of the Islands' to failure)

He makes me think about those angsty class-driven “message” plays and movies the Brits were so fond of in the decades after wwii. So entertaining! 🙄

He was hot as hell when he was young.

[quote] He was hot as hell when he was young.

He made me so horny, baby.

R14 His beauty was in his lips, and his eyes and eyelashes, rather than his overall face

[quote]Bates is the unassuming insurance investigator out to prove they have defeauded his company,

Please tell me, r33, that Lee was innocent.

^ It was the effeminate Larry Skikne who was the thief.

I remember watching The Go-Between and thinking what a marvelous man, both as an actor and as a thing of beauty. He was one of my first crushes as a very young gayling.

[quote] A bisexual, he was famously known for saying "I am in love with women, but I love men in bed."

1. Famously known? To whom was he 'famously known'?

2. Is this quote from The Daily Mail from long after his demise?

Hott

^ be still my loins.

Paging Joanna “I was supposed to be at Sharon’s & Roman’s that night” Pettet.

“In 2003, actor Alan Bates bequeathed Pettet £95,000 (equivalent to £159,787 in 2021) upon his death. The two had been friends for many years and Pettet provided support and companionship during his final months after he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2002. Pettet was quoted as saying: "It was a very touching gesture because he had done everything while he was in hospital to make sure I would be looked after following his death."

Bates & Pettet in 1964, on Broadway in Poor Richard.

[quote] Bates & Pettet in 1964

So they were on stage together 39 years ago. But they never appeared together on screen.

I'm suspicious about his secretive private life.

[quote] He makes me think about those angsty class-driven “message” plays and movies the Brits were so fond of in the decades after wwii. So entertaining! 🙄

I liked them.

R30- He was always a bit too husky for me to be considered sexy.

I've had a crush on him since forever--precisely my kind of man. It all began with "King of Hearts," when he first showed his naked butt. He was never shy about his naked butt.

He was no Alan Ladd.

What on earth did he see in the odd looking Olympic skating champion John Curry?

Sorry, R 39, but we discover in the first 10 minutes that she’s guilty as sin. Just one of the problems with this suspenseless suspenser. But Bates and Remick, beautifully photographed in Technicolor, make it worth a look.

I liked him in Gosford Park as the drunk head butler. He doesn't have much dialogue, but he is always on the screen doing something interesting.

When Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello is singing on the piano, the guests are all bored. Bates is trying to contain himself from dancing.

R51, yes, in the sense that he wasn't 5'4"

R55 Don't overdo it. Here he is with Joan Crawford who was (officially, anyway) 5' 3". Assuming she was wearing her usual heels, he's still taller than her.

And here's Joan with Fred Astaire, who was around 5' 8".

Oh dear this thread has gone completely off-topic.

You eldergays should continue over here—

R58 Yeah, that never happens.

[quote] He was always a bit too husky for me to be considered sexy.

He was always a bit too musky…

R60 that's not Alan Bates? If so, what movie?

R61 Who else would it be?

I liked him in Quartet with Maggie Smith

R60 = Zorba the Greek (1964)

R56 Here he is with Sal Mineo.

[quote] It all began with "King of Hearts," when he first showed his naked butt.

His buttocks need to photographed carefully to show them at their best.

I only know him from “The Rose”. I’m 35, I looked at his film credits and recognized some titles but I don’t think a lot of them are in circulation.

R66 Hideous granny ass. That turns you on?

For a young guy that's a terrible ass, but back then people were cast for talent unless they were playing Tarzan.

Shocked to hear Alan Bates and that hammy Peter Wyngarde were lovers!

"In the late 1950s he moved to a flat in number 1 Earls Terrace off Kensington High Street in London. He would live in the same building for the rest of his life. He shared a flat there for some years with fellow actor Alan Bates and according to some sources this was a romantic relationship.It was always assumed within the acting community that Wyngarde was gay and while the nickname Petunia Winegum is often quoted it may have originated in a comedy sketch rather than being a genuine nickname."

R66, R68 That is a VERY unflattering picture. His nude Rupert Birkin was better photographed.

R70 I'm shocked to hear that too.

In fact I don't believe it at all; they were merely sharing the lease on the flat. Alan Bates getting involved with that leering queen with the fake name was almost as foolish a decision as him not playing the doctor in 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'.

He made a gorgeous pairing with Lee Remmick in The Running Man

This hair is so weird. I have picture of my dad with hair like this and it makes him look so much older than he was at the time.

R60 when I saw that photo I realised why as a youngster I knew i was gay. I wish men still looked like that. I find him sexier than Sean Connery at the time. Just beautiful.

"Bates had numerous gay relationships, including those with actor Nickolas Grace and Olympic skater John Curry as detailed in Donald Spoto's authorised biography Otherwise Engaged: The Life of Alan Bates.

Spoto characterised Bates's sexuality as ambiguous, and said, "he loved women but enjoyed his closest relationships with men”. Even after homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England in 1967, Bates rigorously avoided interviews and questions about his personal life, and even denied to his male lovers that there was a homosexual component in his nature.

Throughout his life Bates sought to be regarded as a ladies' man or at least as a man who, as an actor, could appear attractive to and attracted by women. He also chose many roles with an aspect of homosexuality or bisexuality, including the role of Rupert in the 1969 film Women in Love and the role of Frank in the 1988 film We Think the World of You.

In the later years of his life, Bates had a relationship with the Welsh actress Angharad Rees.”

Angharad Rees was the red haired Demelza in the original 1970s Poldark series. Robin Ellis portrayed Poldark.

Rees died on July 21 2012, aged 68, of pancreatic cancer.

Up late one night years ago and caught "King of Hearts" on local PBS. Young Alan Bates was beautiful. Plus you get to see his naked bum at end of film.

R56 and R65 that's Alan LADD not Alan Bates, wtf?

The Go-Between is another great film.

Another clip; 1970's and 1980's seemed like a golden era for British and indeed perhaps European films of period drama sort.

I adore Margaret Leighton but she was given some unflattering, outsized hats and coiffures in this slightly disconcerting film.

Wonderful actor and interesting person. They broke they mould after he was born.

"...but she was given some unflattering, outsized hats and coiffures..."

At least for the ladies in this film hair alone must have taken hours. All those falls, pieces and other extra hair piled on top of their heads.

Am surprised Margaret Leighton and others could even move very far; between corsets, long skirts and weight of all that extra hair going more than a few steps must have been exhausting.

shouting in The Shout.

Honorable mention goes to Charles Fox in "the Go-Between".

Even with that horrible fake scar on his face there is just something about Charles Fox that sends me.

Cannot put an finger upon it exactly; just a general undercurrent of being slightly evil or malicious but in the most respectable way of an English gentleman.

Yes, R84, "Charles Fox" alludes to that line in the first minute of this clip.

R82 Feminists will tell us that those clothes were a symbol of patriarchal oppression.

Marion Maudsley has to strip off that 'symbol of patriarchal oppression' and fornicate nude with Ted Burgess the gamekeeper (Alan Bates).

Just like Constance Chatterly and Oliver Mellors.

R52

John Curry was a gorgeous young man and even when bit older. This and of course he was a fantastic skater. Sadly his life was tragic.

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Princess Margaret fancied a slice of that herself.

Always loved watching him, but I watched BUTLEY again not long ago and he just didn't modify his stage performance for the screen unfortunately. The character of Butley grows tiresome very quickly. I'm sure on stage Bates was electric.

Alan was a wonderful , truly wonderful person, and the best lover ever. He was also the most beautiful human being. I hate to see him discussed here.

Alan bates was a mean drunk who couldn't get it up. He should be exposed here for all of his faults.

Alan didn't drink, you must be Joanna Pettet, still bitter

Very much like Tab Hunter, Alan was blackmailed all his life, even by his inner circle. Peter Wyngarde was one such blackmailer. He "kept Alan out of the streets and out of trouble" (a la Gielgud) , but he was also extremely abusive, and Alan didn't know how to escape his grip. He almost had a nervous breakdown during the shooting of ZORBA , and finally eloped with a woman, his first straight relationship. He was extremely shy, very unprepared for stardom. Nickolas Grace clung to him for dear life, but Alan , even though he liked having him around, didn't really appreciate his obvious move to be associated with his family (and fame). The Donald Spoto book is full of crap. Alan 's most meaningful relationships were kept from the public eye, and even from his closest friends and family (apart from Simon gray and Roz Chatto).

Wyngarde sounds like a bossy bottom. And I hated his hair.

PS - he was also a liar…

Alan had integrity even if he was surrounded by slimy people such as that illustrated at R98.

"He was also the most beautiful human being."

Get your prescription checked STAT. He's about as sexy as Walter Matthau...

R100 You are too cruel. Look at R38

His beauty was in his lips, and his eyes and eyelashes, rather than his overall face

HIs beauty was wasted on film. IRL he was the most beautiful person, he was mesmerizing.

I wouldn't go that far, R102.

He got fat in the face as the years passed by. He NEVER changed his casual brushed-over hairstyle.

He never wore his hair with a centre-parting which would have been appropriate for many of his roles.

he was magnetic and generous. Lots of people have tried to be with Alan, and were rejected, they're obviously all on this thread.

He appeared in more gay roles than any other top mainstream actor.

Four, was it or five?

I wish I was old enough for him to have fucked me. Repeatedly.

Are you interesting, R106? Physically or Intellectually?

Scene from 'We Think the World of You' (1988), Alan Bates was looking terribly bloated and worn.

R108 Back when Gary Oldman was last hot (in the 1980s).

R21 Reportedly, so did Florence.

Alan Bates was in 2001 remake of "Love in a Cold Climate" playing "Uncle Matthew".

^ His presence couldn't save that show.

The second picture here of Frank Finlay reminds me of the vivacity of the young Alan Bates—