
Acting
Ellen Pollock
Born — Died
1903-07-29 — 1997-03-29
Place of birth
Heidelberg, Germany
Known for
Acting
Credits
45 titles
Ellen Pollock (29 June 1902 – 29 March 1997) was a British character actress, mainly appeared on stage in London's West End. She also appeared in several films and TV productions. A devotee of Bernard Shaw, she was president of the Shaw Society from 1949. In their obituary, the Independent wrote "Pollock is believed to have played, in a career spanning 72 years, more Shavian heroines than anyone else. She directed London seasons of his plays; and it was during the London premiere of one of his lesser-known works – Farfetched Fables (Watergate, 1950) – that she announced Shaw's death from the stage." Pollock's dedication to acting began as a seven-year-old, when she saw Sarah Bernhardt on s…
Known for
8.4The Forsyte Saga is a 1967 BBC television adaptation of John Galsworthy's series of The Forsyte Saga novels, and its sequel trilogy A Modern Comedy. The series follows the fortunes of the upper middle class Forsyte family, and stars Eric Porter as Soames, Kenneth More as Young Jolyon and Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene. It was adapted for television and produced by Donald Wilson and was originally shown in twenty-six episodes on Saturday evenings between 7 January and 1 July 1967 on BBC2, at a time when only a small proportion of the population had television sets able to receive this channel. It was therefore the repeat on Sunday evenings on BBC1 starting on 8 September 1968 that secured the programme's success with 18 million tuning in for the final episode in 1969. It was shown in the United States on public television and broadcast all over the world, and became the first BBC television series to be sold to the Soviet Union.
The Forsyte Saga
1967
9.0A kid-friendly take on the exploits of King Richard the Lion Heart, from his participation in the Crusades, to his capture in Austria, to his final return to England.
Richard the Lionheart
1962
10.0Series based on the short French farces written by Georges Feydeau, Eugène Labiche, Marc Michel and Sacha Guitry. All of them include mistaken identities and impeccable timing.
Ooh La La!
1968
4.0In 19th century Paris, Bette Fischer, a poor and homely spinster, forms an alliance with the seductive courtesan Valerie Marneffe to orchestrate revenge on her handsome and wealthy relatives.
Cousin Bette
1971
Chéri is a 1973 British drama television series produced and aired by the BBC. The five-episode miniseries is an adaptation of the acclaimed French novels by Colette, following the turbulent romantic entanglement between an older courtesan and a much younger, spoiled man.
Chéri
1973
An incompetently managed zoo becomes a metaphor for the state of Britain as a nuclear crisis looms over Europe.
The Old Men at the Zoo
1983
Film credits
1980s · 2 titles
4.9Caroline is to be wed to Sir Ralph and invites her sister Barbara to be her bridesmaid. Barbara seduces Ralph, however, and she becomes the new Lady, but despite her new wealthy situation, she gets bored and turns to highway robbery for thrills. While on the road she meets a famous highwayman, and they continue as a team, but some people begin suspecting her identity, and she risks death if she continues her nefarious activities.
The Wicked Lady
1983
6.1This is the fact-based story of an aristocratic woman who defies Victorian society to reform hospital sanitation and to define the nursing profession as it is known today. After volunteering to travel to Scutari to care for the wounded soldiers, who are victims of the Crimean war, she finds herself very unwelcome and faces great opposition for her new way of thinking. However through her selfless acts of caring, she quickly becomes known as 'The Lady with the Lamp', the caring nurse whose shadow soldiers kiss.
Florence Nightingale
1985
1960s · 5 titles
7.1Agnes, a lonely teenage girl, and her father befriend an escaped convict, named Joseph, who arrives at their farm in Brittany, France. When Joseph develops an attraction to Agnes, her father threatens to break up the union.
Rapture
1965
8.0A scheming widow tries to persecute three old ladies, but fate takes its revenge on her.
Who Killed the Cat?
1966
4.7A young girl is framed for a robbery and sent to a harsh reform school, where she becomes the target of a vicious warden.
So Evil, So Young
1961
6.8Cliff Richard and the Shadows arrive in a small Spanish town for a concert when a U.S. plane accidentally drops a mini-bomb on it. The Shadows look for the bomb to return it.
Finders Keepers
1966
6.3Boris Turganev (Murray) is a Russian scientist who has absconded from a Communist prison in an attempt to achieve a better life working for the British. As Boris struggles to make his superiors believe he is there to work and not to spy for the Russians, an office romance blossoms that could put his mission in jeopardy.
Master Spy
1964
1950s · 9 titles
6.1A syndicate is set up to buy a racehorse, but they end up buying the wrong one by mistake. Unfortunately the horse is useless on the flat, so they try entering him as a jumper.
The Galloping Major
1951
6.0A man hides the fact that he lost his job from his wife by apparently going off to work each day as normal but runs into trouble when he is tailed by a reporter.
Something in the City
1950
8.0No synopsis available yet.
Mrs. Wickens in the Fall
1957
5.9Someone is stealing priceless paintings from the great museums of the world and replacing them with nearly flawless forgeries. Leonardo da Vinci's "Madonna and Child" is being shipped to London's Tate Gallery for a special exhibition, and Paul Mitchell is assigned to protect it. Upon the painting's arrival, Paul realizes it has been switched. Eager to collect the museum's $50,000 reward, he teams up with Mary Mason, a Tate employee, to recover the original.
The Fake
1953
4.8A man is permanently crippled in a horseback riding accident and then learns that he will soon die. He spends his last few days taking care of his family and trying to get his wife to find another man.
To Have and to Hold
1951
5.3Culver is a psychiatrist who uses hypnotism to treat his patients. When Carpenter, a test pilot, comes to see him complaining of blackouts that make his job difficult, Culver tries to mesmerise him into killing his wife.
The Hypnotist
1957
What initially looked like a young woman's suicide, turns into a murder investigation and Supt. Blake has two suspects - the victim's husband and his own daughter.
The Golden Link
1954
6.7Mr Pastry's social climbing daughter, president of a society for the rehabilitation for ex-convicts, hides the fact that her father is himself a prisoner. When he is released and arrives at her home, she panics and locks him in the attic until a job can be found for him, preferably abroad!
The Time of His Life
1955
9.0Young nurse Jill Holden gets involved with an extortion gang targeting Mrs Cheam, one of her patients. When Mrs. Cheam is murdered, Jill becomes a suspect and must clear her name.
The Long Knife
1958
1940s · 5 titles
5.2Bedelia Carrington is living happily, it appears, in Monte Carlo with her husband Charlie Carrington. But a cultivated young artist, Ben Chaney, begins probing into her past with curious concern. Chaney, who is really a detective, learns that Bedelia's obsession for money has led her, in the past, to husband-poisoning for the insurance money.
Bedelia
1946
5.4Working-class girl Joan Dodd's plan to marry Jack Fowler is thwarted when her mother Gladys interferes. Hoping to improve her daughter's social status, Gladys arranges for Joan to wed her boss Adolphus Pickering while Jack is away at war. Jack arrives home to discover his love is engaged to another man. Who will Joan decide to marry?
Kiss the Bride Goodbye
1945
Timid Don Chicago yearns to follow in the footsteps of his gangster mother, but is forced by the Mulligan Gang to leave America. In England, he tangles with a British police officer and high society.
Don Chicago
1945
6.5Featuring an early role for accomplished French actress Anne Vernon alongside Mary Poppins star David Tomlinson, this effervescent comedy charts the romantic adventures of a young woman who swaps her strict convent school for the heady pleasures of high society. Seventeen-year-old Renee slips away from her convent school, joins her fashionable mother and launches herself into Society with one aim: to conquer the hearts of all the men she encounters. Setting her sights on Max, a bridegroom-to-be, her expert scheming and manipulative behaviour soon ensures that he falls under her spell... but his fiancee isn't giving up without a fight
Warning to Wantons
1949
7.0George is an inept reserve policeman working in wartime Liverpool, who is chosen by a gang of Nazi saboteurs as the stooge for their planned destruction of the British battleship HMS Hercules. Framed by the villains and forced to go on the run, George sets out to clear his name with the aid of new girlfriend, Jane.
Spare a Copper
1940
1930s · 14 titles
6.8A young woman finds herself as the intended victim of a murder plot on a transatlantic flight from London to New York.
Non-Stop New York
1937
7.0The head of Dartmouth Training College has been murdered, and his successor, Captain Hyde, suspects that he himself may have been the intended target. He enlists the help of his own son Philip, a reluctant cadet at the college, to help him confirm his suspicions about planned enemy action... but meanwhile, there is a Secret Service agent staying at the college observatory, the foreign-born professor of astronomy is behaving strangely, and Naval Intelligence disclaim any knowledge of what is going on...
Sons of the Sea
1939
7.0Two businessmen have the shock of their lives when a woman appears out of their past bearing a 23 year old son - and one of them may be the father!
Aren't Men Beasts!
1937
9.0A man tries to burgle his own safe on the same night that a professional criminal attempts it.
Too Many Crooks
1930
Farcical confusions ensue when newlywed bride Peggy Gay overhears her husband Jack discussing the purchase of a piano, and somehow interprets what he has said to mean he is the father of an illegitimate child.
My Wife's Family
1931
7.0A young English reporter makes a bet with a wealthy publisher that he can disappear for a month. In his absence the publisher makes much of the mysterious disappearance in an attempt to boost the circulation of his newspaper.
It's a Bet
1935
8.0A model inherits a great deal of money and pretends to be a movie star.
Heads We Go
1933
'Rich man returns to first wife on finding second wife loves younger man.' (British Film Catalogue)
The First Mrs Fraser
1932
An inventor is mistaken for his twin brother, and is forced to take his brother's place in the Royal Air Force.
Splinters in the Air
1937
A frugal coal miner turns into a spendthrift when he wins £20,000 on the football pools!
The Last Coupon
1932
Two feuding millionaires try to destroy each other's business while their children fall in love with each other.
Millions
1937
9.0Following an argument with his co-star during the rehearsals for a new stage show, famous singer Richard King walks out of the theatre, still wearing his ragged stage costume. Mistaken for a beggar, he’s taken in by a pair of street entertainers and joins their act incognito.
The Street Singer
1937
2.0Early British thriller about a master criminal named 'Flash Jack', who heads a gang of top-hatted thieves that rob the wealthy. A detective tracks the crimes to a posh night club.
Night Birds
1930
A mother and father who, in order to shock their extended family out of their idle spendthrift ways, pretend to have lost all their money.
The Happy Family
1936
1920s · 3 titles
6.5A young Chinese woman, working in the kitchen at a London dance club, is given the chance to become the club's main act.
Piccadilly
1929
6.3A man betrays his best friend, a member of a terrorist organisation, to the authorities and is then pursued by the other members of the organisation.
The Informer
1929
6.5An odd and tightly directed tale of a singer/dancer at the Moulin Rouge, who meets her daughter's fiance, only to have him fall obsessively in love with her and she with him. Alienation, betrayal and near tragedy result.
Moulin Rouge
1928
Series credits
8.4The Forsyte Saga is a 1967 BBC television adaptation of John Galsworthy's series of The Forsyte Saga novels, and its sequel trilogy A Modern Comedy. The series follows the fortunes of the upper middle class Forsyte family, and stars Eric Porter as Soames, Kenneth More as Young Jolyon and Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene. It was adapted for television and produced by Donald Wilson and was originally shown in twenty-six episodes on Saturday evenings between 7 January and 1 July 1967 on BBC2, at a time when only a small proportion of the population had television sets able to receive this channel. It was therefore the repeat on Sunday evenings on BBC1 starting on 8 September 1968 that secured the programme's success with 18 million tuning in for the final episode in 1969. It was shown in the United States on public television and broadcast all over the world, and became the first BBC television series to be sold to the Soviet Union.
The Forsyte Saga
1967
9.0A kid-friendly take on the exploits of King Richard the Lion Heart, from his participation in the Crusades, to his capture in Austria, to his final return to England.
Richard the Lionheart
1962
10.0Series based on the short French farces written by Georges Feydeau, Eugène Labiche, Marc Michel and Sacha Guitry. All of them include mistaken identities and impeccable timing.
Ooh La La!
1968
4.0In 19th century Paris, Bette Fischer, a poor and homely spinster, forms an alliance with the seductive courtesan Valerie Marneffe to orchestrate revenge on her handsome and wealthy relatives.
Cousin Bette
1971
Chéri is a 1973 British drama television series produced and aired by the BBC. The five-episode miniseries is an adaptation of the acclaimed French novels by Colette, following the turbulent romantic entanglement between an older courtesan and a much younger, spoiled man.
Chéri
1973
An incompetently managed zoo becomes a metaphor for the state of Britain as a nuclear crisis looms over Europe.
The Old Men at the Zoo
1983

