Charles Gray Haiku
Choo Choo
here...
From: dessc...@aol.com (DESSCRIBE1)
Newsgroups: alt.obituaries
Subject: Charles Gray memorial haiku
This is usually Lawrence's department, but I thought of one I couldn't
resist:
God to Gray: "I would
like, if I may, to take you
On a strange journey..."
--
Choo Choo
Amateur Idiot, Professional Twerp
Random Quote Of The Moment:
"Some people are only alive because
it's illegal to shoot them"
HppyButchr
poetic?
~Jeremy
The Happy Butcher
groupi...@my-deja.com
azri...@perkygoth.net (Choo Choo) wrote:
> Found this over on alt.obituaries and thought it might be appreciated
> here...
>
> From: dessc...@aol.com (DESSCRIBE1)
> Newsgroups: alt.obituaries
> Subject: Charles Gray memorial haiku
>
> This is usually Lawrence's department, but I thought of one I
couldn't
> resist:
>
> God to Gray: "I would
> like, if I may, to take you
> On a strange journey..."
>
thats amazing..not the haiku, but that there is an obituary newsgroup...
-kate
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Choo Choo
>In article <x58y4.85$8y3....@news.uswest.net>,
> azri...@perkygoth.net (Choo Choo) wrote:
>> Found this over on alt.obituaries and thought it might be appreciated
>> here...
>
>thats amazing..not the haiku, but that there is an obituary newsgroup...
Yeah, it kinda' threw me at fist too.. but it's actually kind of neat.
Lots of posts about people's accomplishments and stuff.... a lot more
interesting htan some thirty second newsbrief. =]
Mizz <M>
Choo Choo <azri...@perkygoth.net> wrote in message news:c1jy4.1407> Yeah,
it kinda' threw me at fist too.. but it's actually kind of neat.
>
> Lots of posts about people's accomplishments and stuff.... a lot more
> interesting htan some thirty second newsbrief. =]
I agree! I just went and had a look and there's currently around 1500 posts,
on a variety of people. Absolutely fascinating.
I also found some more mentions of Charles Gray, firstly another haiku:
(I've just copied the entire post over here:)
---
DESSCRIBE1 wrote:
>
> This is usually Lawrence's department, but I thought of one I couldn't
resist:
>
> God to Gray: "I would
> like, if I may, to take you
> On a strange journey..."
And an almost haiku.
And now they are in
another place, lost in time...
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOW?
lost in space.
MattH
(only 4 times)
----
Kind of neat huh?
Someone else on alt.obituaries also posted the following obit for CG which I
thought you guys might like to see so I copied it over as well:
---
From today's Guardian
. Charles (Donald Marshall) Gray, actor, born August 29 1928; died March 7
2000
Actor who played a series of elegant cads - and a memorable opponent for
James Bond
Eric Shorter
Thursday March 9, 2000
The actor Charles Gray, who has died aged 71, never wanted to be loved, but
he won plenty of applause for his portraits of silken arrogance,
self-importance, oily malice and egotism. Among his film parts were the wily
Blofeld, James Bond's antagonist in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and the
chief apostle of evil in Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out (1967).
Gray endowed toffs, cads, crooks, and braggarts with hauteur and elegance.
What gave them authenticity was his belief in them. The voice was
commanding, though it rarely needed raising, and its tone belonged to high
society.
Gray learned his powers of spoken speech as a young Shakespearian in
Regent's Park, at Stratford-on-Avon and the Old Vic in the post-war heyday
of Richard Burton, John Neville and Paul Rogers. The actor cut an imposing
figure; and the voice and its inflections were under such control that
together they served undetectably as Jack Hawkins's when that even better
actor lost his voice from throat cancer.
Gray's shamelessly affected persona, which could be arrestingly camp or
plain overbearing, sometimes spilled over into his private life in
Kensington. Not as private as some neighbours, Gray used to entertain
friends into the small hours on his apartment balcony. When asked why he cut
such a self-important dash, he would protest: "I'm not in the least
aristocratic in real life, old boy. I much prefer a pint at the local."
Born in Bournemouth, he spent his early adult years in an estate agent's
office. By his mid-20s he felt the call of the stage; and under his real
name, Donald Gray, made his first professional appearance in As You Like It
(1952) for Robert Atkins in Regent's Park, playing Charles the Wrestler.
Changing his name to Charles for the next production, Cymbeline, Gray then
moved to Stratford-on-Avon in walk-on parts and in 1954 joined the Old Vic.
Almost immediately he created a stir as the messenger Mercadé, coming on at
the end of Frith Banbury's revival of Love's Labour's Lost, with decor and
costumes by Cecil Beaton.
By 1956 Gray was taking leads. One of his best was Achilles in Tyrone
Guthrie's Edwardian revival of Troilus And Cressida. "Looking like a
prize-fighter gone to seed, with muscle turning to flesh, a puffy,
dissipated monster, alternately petting and tormenting his favourite orderly
Patroclus," as Ivor Brown wrote in the Observer. Other Old Vic credits
included Macduff to Paul Rogers's Macbeth, Lodovico to Richard Burton's and
John Neville's Othellos, Escalus to Neville's Romeo, and Bolingbroke to
Neville's Richard II. If neither his Bolingbroke nor Macduff could stir the
audience, that would remain part of Gray's dramatic problem: however much we
might admire his acting, he could never touch our feelings.
After a north American tour in those roles and as Achilles, Gray returned to
the West End in 1958. In Wolf Mankowitz's musical Expresso Bongo (Saville
1958) he played Capt Cyril Mavors, condescending restaurateur.
In 1961 Gray was back on Broadway, this time as the Prince of Wales, later
William IV, in Kean, Sartre's sardonic revision of the Alexandre Dumas play
about the 19th century actor. When Peter Hall's newly formed Royal
Shakespeare Company launched its contemporary season in 1962, Giles Cooper's
black comedy Everything In The Garden did so well that it transferred to the
West End; and Gray then took over as the aghast suburban husband who
discovers in sundry pots and jars hundreds of pound notes, his wife's
illicit earnings in Wimpole Street.
Back at the Old Vic later that year Gray revelled in the role of the
voluptuous glutton, Sir Epicure Mammon, in Tyrone Guthrie's modern-dress
revival of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist; and in 1964 he won the Clarence
Derwent Award for the year's best supporting actor as the land-owning host
of a party given to taunt the hero of Anouilh's Poor Bitos (Arts, Duke of
York's and Broadway). Staying on in New York, Gray took the title-role in
The Right Honourable Gentle man (1965), a Victorian politician and sexual
hypocrite. Plenty of other stage credits followed.
Among small screen credits were Strickland in The Moon And Sixpence, rated
as rivalling George Sanders in the film, the bland brother-in-law in
Pinter's The Tea Party, the amorous TV personality in Fay Weldon's The Three
Wives Of Felix Hull, an overbearing Randolph Churchill in Hugo Charteris's
Asquith, the trouble-making judge in Blind Justice, the acerbic Sir Cathcart
in Porterhouse Blue, an impoverished peer in The Upper Crust series and an
imperious old buffer in Longitude.
Among film credits were Narrator in Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture
Show, the satanic priest who duelled with Christopher Lee in The Devil Rides
Out, the sinister butler in The Mirror Crack'd and Judge in Shock Treatment.
Charles Gray never married.
--
Emma
Dr Scott's Extra Forks
http://members.tripod.com/~extra_forks