Christopher Lee

Christopher Lee's Desert Island Discs. Probable the classiest and most suave episode ever.

He was also a military spy, correct? Even if I’m wrong, it still fits.

The Devil Rides Out is a fun book and movie!

He is an opera lover!

Fluent in 5 languages.

Christopher Lee is probably the classiest man who ever lived:

Lover of classic literature, opera, classical music, wine, scotch, golf, yet was not scared to have fun and dress up as Frankenstein's Monster or Dracula. He never felt he was "too good" to perform in any film, stage, or television production.

no other comments?

Was he related to Bruce?

R7 No, we don't care, dear.

R9 why DEAR

He started in films in 1948, according to Wikipedia. Always loved him.

I love those dudes like him, Vincent Price, Donald Pleasance, John Carradine, etc. who would do any Z-grade movie just for a paycheck.

R12 Yes! They never acted like they were too good to appear in a terrible movie. It was all about "the craft," which really meant they needed/wanted the cash.

Another celeb mentioned in the Johnny Depp trial.

R14 When? How?

Christopher Lee co-starred - briefly - with Depp in 'Sleepy Hollow' (1999). He might have been mentioned in that context, R15.

Great actor, love him in all those Hammer Horror movie

Wizard Battle!

R15 Depp testified that he attended a lifetime achievement presentation for Lee in London. Amber stayed back at the rental. Johnny had a glass of champagne to toast Lee and Amber when ballistic.

Sir Christopher Lee is too classy to be involved in the Depp-Heard trial

Did he do any stage work? Didn't follow the Old Vic, Royal Shakespeare route to being called a "legit actor," instead of a camp figure, like Vinnie Price, Pete Lorre, Bela, and Boris....though Peter Lorre was a brilliant actor. Most underused in his later life. maybe it's because he was a junkie

R21 of course he did stage work. Why wouldn't he?

[quote] He is an opera lover!

Not anymore.

Did he ever act with Eric Porter?

[quote] why DEAR

Because he only appeared in B movies.

BDF

He should have dropped his father's surname and called himself 'Christopher Carandini'.

He had a striking appearance but I can't find any sexy pics from the 1940s.

Gianni Agnelli apartment in one of the Carandini houses, this one in Rome. It is said Gianni won two floors of the structure in a card game with the Count.

I recall reading when he died that he was very much "to the manor born" and took himself very seriously, despite his somewhat campy movie career, but he appreciated getting a second life in Burton's movies.

It's too bad the Hammer movies didn't have a better production value because he was a good Dracula: tall, regal, slightly foreign looking, physically imposing. His talents could've been put to better use

The Death of Saruman the White:

When did Saruman “the Wise” become a stranger to reason?

I'd imagine it was when he looked into the Palantir Stone and communicated with Sauron, R31.

[quote] "to the manor born"

Oh, dear! That was a sitcom.

Yes, I know the phrase as spelled has entered common parlance, but it's really a corruption of "to the manner born" (i.e., the manner of those born to a position of privilege). The original is more expressive of what's intended here.

Great obituary by the Guardian

He is a good actor.

[quote] He is a good actor.

Not anymore.

He was a serviceable actor.

He knew how to stand in front of a camera.

R37, he lived. He took up space. He was present.

I spent happy decades fairly convinced that Mr Lee, Peter Cushing and Christopher Plummer were essentially the same person.

^^Conflater troll!!

[quote] Peter Cushing and Christopher Plummer

Peter Plummer and Christopher Cushing.

[quote] He was born in London's Belgravia

Oh I didn’t know he was Eastern European.

Mother was a Carandini!

OP- Are you sure he wasn't the son of the Barefoot Contessa.

R13, As do most of us mere mortals, but we toil at jobs we cannot wait to retire from (yeah, yeah, preposition) for less money and no recognition. Nothing wrong with actors' taking work for the paycheck; it only reflects poorly if the actors give less than their best.

To his credit, he seemed to take it all seriously, no matter how ridiculous the movie while Vincent Price hammed it up. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, Price seemed to have a sense of humor about himself, but as R45 aptly noted, Lee seemed to go all in, no matter what the job.

Kind of reminds me of Nicolas Cage that way

Has anyone seen City of the Dead (1960)? It looks good. Streaming on Kanopy.

It is about a small town coven in Massachusetts. Christopher Lee, Venetia Stevenson, Dennis Lotis, Valentine Dyall, and Patricia Jessel

^ Shot completely in a very small English studio but pretending to be in Massachusetts.

R49 was it good though?

I really liked him in Hammer's 1959's The Hound of the Baskervilles as Sir Henry Baskerville

He managed to leave a net estate of NIL, zero, nothing in the UK despite clearly being wealthy.

Presumably to avoid the 40% death duties paid there. It was quite surprising at the time, the absolute height of estate planning.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭 (1968), aka 'Curse of the Crimson Altar', starring Boris Karloff, Michael Gough, and Christopher Lee:

Trashy, campy fun.

R50 No, it wasn't.

R54 Why was it not good? I am surprised.

Lee was raised to be an Edwardian. Somehow he lived into the 21st Century. He was Franz Joseph I of acting.

A great actor, very elegant—I always found him very sexy. Even seeing him with that crazy hair in The Wicker Man when I was a teenager, I thought he was hot. I think it's the bone structure and that booming voice. There was something about him that straddled the line between spooky and sexy. I recently watched "To the Devil, a Daughter", and you see him nude from behind in it. Even in middle-age, had a hot body and a great-looking ass. Did he ever bare himself in any other films?

R56 is that a problem?

R57 He was spooky and sexy in an intellectual and elegant way.

Far superior to that Hungarian ham Bela Lugosi.

R59 what about Peter Cushing

Sadly, R57, that was Lee's double in the nude scene.

I always thought he had tremendous sex appeal.

Interview in 1999

[quote] Christopher Lee is probably the classiest man who ever lived:

[quote] Lover of classic literature, opera, classical music, wine, scotch, golf, yet was not scared to have fun and dress up as Frankenstein's Monster or Dracula. He never felt he was "too good" to perform in any film, stage, or television production.

He sounds like Joel's neighbour.

Lee and Peter Cushing were kicked out of a movie theater once for making too much noise. They were loudly imitating Tweety Bird. “I tawt I taw a puddy tat! I did! I did tse a puddy tat!”

Class.

How old is he?

He is my favorite actor in the world. He’s just impossibly cool. I sure somebody has mentioned this upthread, but Ian Fleming is his cousin blah blah Bond is based on Lee, but did everyone know that he recorded a metal album at age 90 and was a commando in WW2?

I love him.

R48 City of the Dead is very moody and eerie, it'll get your attention and keep it, especially if you're into that era of low-budget horror. I am, and I liked it very much.

Wasn't he friends with Vincent Price?

Dead or alive?

He hinted at being a secret agent during WWII, and then always refused to sa more because of the Official Secrets Act. Some people have expressed doubt about his service record, said he exaggerated, but maybe not.

Lee spoke a dozen languages, many fluently, was intelligent, cultured, and from a "good family"... exactly the sort of person who might be recruited to go undercover on the Continent. Mostly because of the languages, but I believe class prejudice would also have been a factor, one that would have worked in Lee's favor.

Dead as hell

R72 very true!

Ian McKellan was, unsurprisingly, extremely patronizing toward Lee. He associated him with lowbrow horror but was quite surprised to find him a good actor and intelligent man.

This from “Magneto.”

R74, Lee also had a relative at the Office of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Ian Fleming. who was either a cousin or a cousin by marriage. So the existence of a family connection increases the odds that Lee really did work in Intelligence, because I'm under the impression that there was a lot of Old Boys' Networking going on, and if a cousin of someone on the inside spoke a bunch of languages he might be offered a position.

So I have no idea what Lee actually did during the war, and I don't expect to ever find out. I just think it's plausible that he actually did work in intelligence.

Love him!

He’s also on the album cover of “Band on the Run”. The story goes that McCartney had scheduled a photographer to come and shoot photos for the album cover so the band was together at McCartney’s place.

Several people showed up either randomly or had been invited for a party later and by the time the photographer got there, everyone was feeling mighty good.

The photographer said that the whole thing just became an exercise in cat herding as the assembled group was having too much fun to cooperate. He never got the shots he wanted or intended.

It sure looks like everyone was having a grand time.

Is that Peter Cushing second from the right, next to Christopher Lee?

Damn, McCartney threw a hell of a party in those days...

Probably, r78.

Cushing and Lee were famously great friends off screen.

And both Lee and Cushing got to be in Star Wars! 20 years apart, of course, but I assume George Lucas was a fan of theirs.

Both did a good job with their roles, in spite of working with the "Worst Actor's Director Alive". That's the thing about Lucas's films, the only good performances in them come from Old Pros like Lee and Cushing, the ones who know their shit so well they don't need a director.

R78, you could have just googled it.

Or looked at the image, since no one resembles Peter Cushing.

I googled for you, and the people in the photo are:

Michael Parkinson, Kenny Lynch, Paul McCartney, James Coburn, Clement Freud, Linda McCartney, Christopher Lee, Wings guitarist Denny Laine and John Conteh.

Wow

R76, isn’t that also more or less what the OSS was? It makes perfect sense they’d recruit the upper class twit types for their connections to govt. cf. Wallace “stop passing notes to the nazis for the love of Jesus” Simpson and her Nazi bf.

Who DID give up the throne for love and not because he was planning to side with the Nazis in a plot to murder half his family.

I swear it!

I don't think anyone can say anything bad about him.

R83, I forget where I read it, but I did read that before the days of computerized background checks, the British Intelligence services preferred to hire the family members of trusted staff members, because presumably they were being vouched for by someone on the inside and were therefore considered more trustworthy than, you know, anyone from the wrong sort of background.

So if the OSS didn't recruit Lee, with his dozen languages, 3-digit IQ, and the relative who worked there, they were missing a trick.

Given that the average IQ is 100, a 3-digit IQ is found in half the people in the world.

I prefer Theater of Blood with the incomparable Vincent Price over Theatre of Death.

[quote]R79: Cushing and Lee were famously great friends off screen.

They both did turns on 'Space 1999,' each an episode apart (Christopher Lee in 'Earthbound,' and Peter Cushing in 'Missing Link'). And they both wore the same white wig!

Bump because of the Halloween Holiday

OP, I always look forward to your introductions

"It makes perfect sense they’d recruit the upper class twit types for their connections to govt. cf. Wallace “stop passing notes to the nazis for the love of Jesus” Simpson and her Nazi bf."

No one has jumped in with an OH DEAR yet? Her name was WALLIS, sorry R83, I had to be the one.

He had class

Great voice. Perfect choice to be a Sith Lord in Star Wars.

He had style

I’M sorry. I should have checked r91, but I hate her so I didn’t, but I hate misspelling.

Too bad he looks like Peter Cushing in OP pic.

Imagine the people he knew who have long since passed:

King George VI

Ian Fleming

Jussi Bjorling

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Lady Diana Mosley

Lauirtz Melchior

and many many more that he could talk about well into his 90's

Apostrophe.

I always thought he was way too good looking to play monsters.

AGREED!

Jinnah (1997) was a great film, too!