Michael Gough
Poised and distinguished-looking, with an eloquent speaking voice and a long-lipped sneer, Gough deployed his talent for depicting seducers, serial killers and other well-bred villains to menacing effect as a deranged writer in Herman Cohen?s Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), a film which begins with a girl being killed by binoculars with steel spikes which shoot out from the eyepieces. Gough (whom Cohen referred to as ?the cheaper version of Vincent Price?) also featured in Black Zoo (1963), Berserk (1967) and Trog (1970), and Konga (1961), as a mad scientist who turns a baby chimpanzee into a giant gorilla.
In his middle and later years, Gough tended to be cast as the archetypal remote British gentleman. He played Anthony Eden in the Ian Curteis television play Suez 1956 (1979) and Livingstone in the epic television series The Search for the Nile. But when Tim Burton was looking to cast Batman?s butler it was Gough?s role in schlock horror films, so bad that Burton had been unable to forget them, that commended him: ?I know that man, he?s in terrible films!? Gough recalled Burton exclaiming.
Beginning with Batman (1989), Gough played Alfred Pennyworth in four Batman films and continued to work with Burton on such films as Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Alice In Wonderland. Yet he always regarded the stage as his true calling: ?I?m essentially a jobbing actor. If I?m out of work, I?ll be the back end of a donkey.?
Michael Gough was born in Malaya on November 23 1916 and educated at Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, and Durham College. He dropped out of Wye Agricultural College aged 19 to join the Old Vic Theatre School, playing small parts with the Old Vic Company and appearing in 1937 on Broadway in Love of Women.
His first West End work was in Harcourt William?s production of Dorothy Sayers? The Zeal of Thy House. After the war he rejoined the Old Vic at its wartime refuge, the Liverpool Playhouse, acted at Oxford Playhouse and soon became a name to be reckoned with on the London stage, his swift rise to the top of his profession sometimes attributed to his resemblance to Stephan Haggard, a popular young actor who had been killed on active service.
It was his vigorous role in Frederick Lonsdale?s But For the Grace of God (1946) that made him famous overnight. He played a blackmailer righteously incensed by an American?s love affair with an Englishwoman while her husband was on active service. The play featured a violent encounter between blackmailer and victim (played by Hugh McDermott), at the end of which Gough supposedly died from a broken neck. In fact, during the play?s run, Gough suffered three broken ribs, an injury to the base of his spine and a cut lip, prompting the management to engage two professional boxers to teach him how to avoid injuries.
Among numerous West End productions in which he appeared over 40 years, one of Gough?s biggest successes was as Gregers Werle in Ibsen?s Wild Duck (1955), ?oozing sincerity,? as Kenneth Tynan put it, ?while letting the man?s neuroses seep through the facade?.
In 1975 he joined the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic and later on the South Bank, where his roles included the Governor in Phaedra Britannica, and Glen, the dying writer, in Osborne?s Watch It Come Down.
Towards the end of his theatrical career he won ecstatic reviews for a hilarious performance in Alan Ayckbourn?s Bedroom Farce (1977) as a downtrodden husband frustrated in his attempts to celebrate his wedding anniversary by sharing a supper of pilchards on toast in bed with his wife. The play transferred to New York, winning Gough a Tony award. He also earned enthusiastic reviews for his portrayal of Baron von Epp in A Patriot For Me (1983, Haymarket), supervising a military ?drag? ball in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As the curtain rose, Gough was to be seen as an elderly ?Queen Alexandra?, clad in a sumptuous gown with handbag, elbow-length gloves, fan and a tiara, getting ready to dance with Alan Bates?s Colonel Redl.
Michael Gough was married four times. His first three marriages, to Anneke Wills (who played Dr Who?s sidekick Polly during the 1960s), Anne Leon and Diana Graves, were dissolved. He is survived by his fourth wife, Henrietta, and by a daughter and two sons.