Patrick Wymark

Acting

Patrick Wymark

Born 1926-07-11 · Lincolnshire, England, UK

​Born Patrick Carl Cheeseman in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, England. He was brought up in neighbouring Grimsby and frequently re-visited the area during the height of his career. He attended University College, London, before training at the Old Vic Theatre School and making his first stage appearance in a walk-on part in Othello in 1951. He toured South Africa the following year and then directed plays for the drama department at Stanford University, California. Moving to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Wymark played a wide range of traditional roles, including Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing and Stephano in The Tempest. He also played the parts of Marullus in Julius Caesar and Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other stage parts included the title role in Danton's Death and, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Ephihodov in The Cherry Orchard. His theatre roles also included playing the part of Bosola in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi in 1960. His film roles included: Children of the Damned (1964), Operation Crossbow (1965), Battle of Britain (1969), Where Eagles Dare (1968), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and Cromwell (1970). On television, where at one point he was considered as a replacement for William Hartnell on Doctor Who., he was best known for his role as the machiavellian businessman John Wilder in the drama series The Plane Makers/The Power Game, a role which led to offers of company directorships. Wymark, however, was a gentle man in real life, self-confessedly ignorant of business matters, who considered the Wilder character to be a "bastard" and was described by his wife as "the most inefficient, dreamy muddler in the world."

Acting credits

Where Eagles Dare poster
7.5

World War II is raging, and an American general has been captured and is being held hostage in the Schloss Adler, a Bavarian castle that's nearly impossible to breach. It's up to a group of skilled Allied soldiers to liberate the general before it's too late.

Where Eagles Dare

1968

Repulsion poster
7.4

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

Repulsion

1965

Battle of Britain poster
6.8

In 1940, the Royal Air Force fights a desperate battle against the might of the Luftwaffe for control of the skies over Britain, thus preventing an attempted Nazi invasion.

Battle of Britain

1969

Woman Times Seven poster
6.3

Seven mini-stories of adultery: a widow misbehaves at her husband's funeral, a wife turns to streetwalking for revenge, a prudish girl surprises, a neglected wife vies for her husband's attention, a fight over a dress, a death pact, and a detective revealed as a jealous husband's spy.

Woman Times Seven

1967

Cromwell poster
6.6

Disgusted with the policies of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell plans to take his family to the New World. But on the eve of their departure, Cromwell is drawn into the tangled web of religion and politics that will result in the English Civil War.

Cromwell

1970

The Blood on Satan's Claw poster
6.2

After a landsman in 18th century England discovers a corpse covered in fur buried in a field, the town becomes infected by "the devil's skin," leading the local children to engage in demonic rituals and criminal behavior.

The Blood on Satan's Claw

1971

Operation Crossbow poster
6.7

Allied agents infiltrate the Nazi rocket complex at Peenemunde in order to obtain their secrets and sabotage the plant. The film alternates between German developments of the V-1 missile and V-2 rocket (with a German cast speaking their own language) and discovery by British Intelligence of the weapon.

Operation Crossbow

1965

Witchfinder General poster
6.5

England, 1645. The cruel civil war between Royalists and Parliamentarians that is ravaging the country causes an era of chaos and legal arbitrariness that allows unscrupulous men to profit by exploiting the absurd superstitions of the peasants; like Matthew Hopkins, a monster disguised as a man who wanders from town to town offering his services as a witch hunter.

Witchfinder General

1968

Doppelgänger poster
6.2

A planet is discovered in the same orbit as Earth's but is located on the exact opposite side of the sun, making it not visible from Earth. The European Space Exploration Council decide to send American astronaut Glenn Ross and British scientist John Kane via spaceship to explore the other planet.

Doppelgänger

1969

Children of the Damned poster
6.1

Six children are found spread through out the world that not only have enormous intelligence, but identical intelligence and have a strange bond to each other.

Children of the Damned

1964

The Skull poster
6.1

Esoterica collector Dr Maitland buys an unusual skull from his ordinary source; the artifact is what remains of the Marquis De Sade. Much too soon, Maitland discovers that the skull is turning him into a frenzied killer.

The Skull

1965

The League of Gentlemen poster
7.1

Involuntarily-retired Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, although civilian irritations do start getting in the way.

The League of Gentlemen

1960

Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow poster
6.9

English vicar Dr. Syn becomes a scarecrow on horseback by night to thwart King George III's taxmen.

Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow

1963

Brand poster
9.0

Brand's a bleak and desolate play that challenges the notion of a stern and stoic faith in the will of God. The title character is a pastor who returns to his ancestral home to find the villagers on the verge of starvation. He believes ministering to these poor people to be his calling. Over the course of the play, however, he faces many difficult choices. The decisions he makes, based on his stark and idealistic view of morality, have dire consequences for all the people he touches and, ultimately, for his own embattled soul.

Brand

1959

The Criminal poster
6.4

When a robbery at a racetrack goes wrong ex-con Johnny Bannion is caught and sent back to prison. He won't tell the rest of the gang where he has stashed the loot leading to violent consequences.

The Criminal

1960

The Psychopath poster
6.4

Four men involved in the investigation of a German millionaire at the end of World War II are found murdered with tiny dolls beside their corpses.

The Psychopath

1966

The Secret of Blood Island poster
9.0

Based on the true story of a British secret agent, shot down over Malaya near to a Allied POW forced labour camp. There she is hidden, disguised as a youthful prisoner, until her escape can be effected. The costs of keeping her identity secret fall on all the POW's as the Japanese embark on a policy of ruthless terror to extract her and the focus shifts to the conflicts of the group' s collective concerns against the necessities of personal survival.

The Secret of Blood Island

1964

Tell Me Lies poster
6.4

Adapted and directed by Peter Brook from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘production-in-progress US’, this long-unseen agitprop drama-doc – shot in London in 1967 and released only briefly in the UK and New York at the height of the Vietnam War – remains both thought-provoking and disturbing. A theatrical and cinematic social comment on US intervention in Vietnam, Brook’s film also reveals a 1960s London where art, theatre and political protest actively collude and where a young Glenda Jackson and RSC icons such as Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scofield feature prominently on the front line. Multi-layered scenarios staged by Brook combine with newsreel footage, demonstrations, satirical songs and skits to illustrate the intensity of anti-war opinion within London’s artistic and intellectual community.

Tell Me Lies

1968

West 11 poster
6.9

In Notting Hill's jazz club, coffee bar and bedsit land of the early 1960s, Joe Beckett is a young unemployed misfit and drifter whose life takes a turn for the worse when he encounters Richard Dyce, an ex-army officer.

West 11

1963

No artwork available
7.0

One of the earliest hits for the newly established RSC, Michael Elliott’s sparkling version of Shakespeare's comedy is still remembered with joy by a generation of theatre-goers. The design was dominated by a huge oak tree, but the production is most memorable for Vanessa Redgrave’s luminous Rosalind, supported by Max Adrian and Ian Bannen.

As You Like It

1963

No artwork available
NR

Inhabitants in a remote village laughs off and dismiss a couple of schoolboys' claims that they are being invaded by aliens.

The Invasion

1963

The Man from the Other Side poster
7.0

After the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. A Russian engineer gets the assignment to purchase locomotives from Sweden. Paid in gold. Claimed by the opponents of the revolution.

The Man from the Other Side

1972

Twentieth Century Theatre: Colombe poster
7.0

A diva of the Paris stage transforms her mousy daughter-in-law into an attractive ingenue to spite her hated son, away on military service.

Twentieth Century Theatre: Colombe

1960

The Cherry Orchard poster
8.0

Madame Ranevsky and her daughter Anya return home from Paris to find that their beloved family estate and cherry orchard are to be auctioned off to pay debts. Lopahin, a former serf on the estate who is now a wealthy landowner, proposes razing the home and cherry orchard and dividing the estate into plots that could be leased at great profit. The family, however, continues to hold out hope that their beloved home can somehow be saved from destruction.

The Cherry Orchard

1962