Wednesday Minute
No. 174 | October 6, 2010

Roaring Nineties

Our theme this week
Actors in their 90s, still going strong

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Eli Wallach
Tuesday         —   Norman Lloyd

Michael Gough

Born November 23, 1917
Age 92

The son of British parents, Michael Gough was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Gough (pronounced “Goff”) began acting on the London stage in the late 1930s, and continued to work in theater for most of his career.  A noted favorite among his performances was King Lear in 1974.  In 1979, he won the Tony for Best Actor, for Bedroom Farce, and was nominated again, in 1988, for Breaking the Code.

Since the late 1940s, Gough has worked in television and film as well, rolling up more than 170 credits over the years.  Primarily a character actor, Gough’s screen work has been an eclectic mix of the serious and schlock.  Among films in the former category are Anna Karenina (1948), the Ealing Studios satire The Man in the White Suit (1951), the Disney adventure The Sword and the Rose (1953), Richard III (1953), Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter’s The Go-Between (winner of top honors at Cannes for 1971), Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), The Dresser (1983), Out of Africa (1985), and as Henry van der Luyden in The Age of Innocence (1993).  Gough has collected a few checks doing British horror films too, chewing the scenery in a host of scarefests that include Dracula (1958), Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), and Black Zoo (1963).

Fifty years into his career, Gough first performed the part he is best known for today—Alfred Pennyworth, butler to Bruce Wayne—a role he has played four times, in Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), and Batman & Robin (1997).  Tim Burton, director of three of the Batman films, has cast Gough three times since, for Sleepy Hollow (1999), Corpse Bride (2005), and Alice in Wonderland (2010).

Gough’s televison work over the years includes roles in Pride and Prejudice, The Search for the Nile, Doctor Who (in “The Celestial Toymaker” serial), and as Sir Anthony Eden in Suez 1956. 

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The Making of ”Batman Returns” (1992)
Michael Gough as Alfred

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Wittgenstein (1993)
Derek Jarman, director
Ken Butler, Terry Eagleton, Derek Jarman, writers
James Wellend, cinematographer
Michael Gough (Bertrand Russell), Karl Johnson (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

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Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)
Arthur Crabtree, director
Herman Cohen, writer
Desmond Dickinson, cinematographer
Michael Gough as Edmond Bancroft, the thriller writer who hypnotizes his assistant to commit crimes

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Quote of note
Alfred:  May I help you, Master Grayson?
Dick:  How come this is the only locked door in this museum?  What do you have back here?
Alfred:  Master Wayne’s dead wives.
—Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Gough), Dick Grayson (Chris O’Donnell), Batman Forever (1995)

…58…59…60.