Michael Goodliffe

Acting

Michael Goodliffe

Born 1914-10-01 · Bebington, Cheshire, England

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Lawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe (1 October 1914 – 20 March 1976) was an English actor best known for playing suave roles such as doctors, lawyers and army officers. He was also sometimes cast in working class parts. Goodliffe was born in Bebington, Cheshire (now Merseyside), the son of a vicar, and educated at St Edmund's School, Canterbury, and Keble College, Oxford. He started his career in repertory theatre in Liverpool before moving on to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon. He joined the British Army at the beginning of World War II, and received a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in February 1940. He was wounded in the leg and captured at the Battle of Dunkirk. Goodliffe was incorrectly listed as killed in action, and even had his obituary published in a newspaper. He was to spend the rest of the war a prisoner in Germany. Whilst in captivity he produced and acted in (and in some cases wrote) many plays and sketches to entertain fellow prisoners. These included two productions of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, one in Tittmoning and the other in Eichstätt, in which he played the title role. He also produced the first staging of Noel Coward's Post Mortem at Eichstätt. A full photographic record of these productions exists. After the war he resumed his professional acting career. As well as appearing in the theatre he worked in film and television. He appeared in The Wooden Horse in 1950 and in other POW films. His best known film was A Night to Remember (1958) in which he played Thomas Andrews, builder of the RMS Titanic. His best known television series was Sam (1973–75) in which he played an unemployed Yorkshire miner. He also appeared with John Thaw and James Bolam in the 1967 television series Inheritance. Suffering from depression, Goodliffe had a breakdown in 1976 during the period that he was rehearsing for a revival of Equus. He committed suicide a few days later by leaping from a hospital fire escape, whilst a patient at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London. Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Goodliffe,  licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Acting credits

The Man with the Golden Gun poster
6.5

Cool government operative James Bond searches for a stolen invention that can turn the sun's heat into a destructive weapon. He soon crosses paths with the menacing Francisco Scaramanga, a hitman so skilled he has a seven-figure working fee. Bond then joins forces with the swimsuit-clad Mary Goodnight, and together they track Scaramanga to a Thai tropical isle hideout where the killer-for-hire lures the slick spy into a deadly maze for a final duel.

The Man with the Golden Gun

1974

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory poster
7.5

When eccentric candy man Willy Wonka promises a lifetime supply of sweets and a tour of his chocolate factory to five lucky kids, penniless Charlie Bucket seeks the golden ticket that will make him a winner.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

1971

Peeping Tom poster
7.5

Loner Mark Lewis works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen, the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making.

Peeping Tom

1960

The Battle of the River Plate poster
6.4

In the early years of the World War II, the Royal Navy is fighting a desperate battle to keep the Atlantic convoy routes open to supply the British Isles, facing the great danger posed by the many German warships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, which are scouring the ocean for cargo ships to sink.

The Battle of the River Plate

1956

The Night of the Generals poster
6.8

A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

The Night of the Generals

1967

Link Span poster
8.5

Twenty-four hours in the story of the British Railways Channel ferryboats, the 'link spans' directly joining the roads and railways of Britain with those of France and all the Continent. The Lord Warden laden with an assortment of road vehicles from Dover, and the Night Ferry from Newhaven carrying passengers bound for Paris, Vienna or Rome are two of the ferries illustrated in this film; and freight is not forgotten.

Link Span

1956

Von Ryan's Express poster
7.0

Von Ryan's Express stars Frank Sinatra as a POW colonel who leads a daring escape from WWII Italy by taking over a freight train, but he has to win over the British soldiers he finds himself commanding.

Von Ryan's Express

1965

A Night to Remember poster
7.6

The sinking of the Titanic is presented in a highly realistic fashion in this tense British drama. The disaster is portrayed largely from the perspective of the ocean liner's second officer, Charles Lightoller. Despite numerous warnings about ice, the ship sails on, with Capt. Edward John Smith keeping it going at a steady clip. When the doomed vessel finally hits an iceberg, the crew and passengers discover that they lack enough lifeboats, and tragedy follows.

A Night to Remember

1958

The Fixer poster
6.2

Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bog who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the “ritual murder” of a Gentile child in Kyiv. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.

The Fixer

1968

633 Squadron poster
6.2

When Norwegian resistance leader Lieutenant Erik Bergman reports the location of a German V-2 rocket fuel plant, the Royal Air Force's 633 Squadron is assigned the mission to destroy it. The plant is in a seemingly-impregnable location beneath an overhanging cliff at the end of a long, narrow fjord lined with anti-aircraft guns. The only way to destroy the plant is by collapsing the cliff on top of it.

633 Squadron

1964

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

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. poster
7.0

Captain Horatio Hornblower leads his ship HMS Lydia on a perilous transatlantic voyage, during which his faithful crew battle both a Spanish warship and a ragged band of Central American rebels.

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.

1951

Sink the Bismarck! poster
6.8

The story of the breakout of the German battleship Bismarck—accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen—during the early days of World War II. The Bismarck and her sister ship, Tirpitz, were the most powerful battleships in the European theater of World War II. The British Navy must find and destroy Bismarck before it can escape into the convoy lanes to inflict severe damage on the cargo shipping which was the lifeblood of the British Isles. With eight 15 inch guns, it was capable of destroying every ship in a convoy while remaining beyond the range of all Royal Navy warships.

Sink the Bismarck!

1960

The Small Back Room poster
6.7

As the Germans drop explosive booby-traps on 1943 Britain, the embittered expert who'll have to disarm them fights a private battle with alcohol.

The Small Back Room

1949

Wicked as They Come poster
5.0

A ruthless woman takes advantage of gullible men to climb up the social ladder.

Wicked as They Come

1956

To the Devil a Daughter poster
5.5

An American occult novelist battles to save the soul of a young girl from a group of Satanists, led by an excommunicated priest, who plan on using her as the representative of the Devil on Earth.

To the Devil a Daughter

1976

The Gorgon poster
6.4

In the early 20th century a village experienced a series of inexplicable murders. All the victims were young men who had been turned to stone. The perpetrator of these deaths was a being so repulsive that she transformed the onlooker using the power of her deadly stare. Much of the time the creature took the form of a beautiful and seductive woman, but during periods of the full moon she becomes a living horror, vicious and deadly. A professor has come to investigate the deaths, bringing with him his beautiful assistant whose knowledge of the Gorgon is more intimate than anyone would ever realise.

The Gorgon

1964

Testament of Orpheus poster
7.6

An 18th century poet travels through time in search of divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic encounters with symbolic phantoms with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. Ultimately, the poet strives to achieve his rebirth as a celestial being.

Testament of Orpheus

1960

Hitler: The Last Ten Days poster
6.2

Hitler: The Last Ten Days takes us into the depths of der Furher’s Berlin bunker during his final days. Based on the book by Gerhard Boldt, it provides a bleak look at the goings-on within, and without.

Hitler: The Last Ten Days

1973

The Wooden Horse poster
6.8

True story of three British POWs and their attempt to escape from Nazi Germany

The Wooden Horse

1950

Woman of Straw poster
6.2

Anthony Richmond schemes to get the fortune of his tyrannical, wheelchair-using tycoon uncle Charles Richmond by persuading Maria, a nurse he employs, to marry him.

Woman of Straw

1964

The 39 Steps poster
6.3

In London, a diplomat accidentally becomes involved in the death of a British agent who's after a spy ring that covets British military secrets.

The 39 Steps

1959

The Day the Earth Caught Fire poster
6.8

British reporters suspect an international cover-up of a global disaster in progress... and they're right. Hysterical panic has engulfed the world after the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously detonate nuclear devices and have caused the orbit of the Earth to alter, sending it hurtling towards the sun.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

1961

Steel Town poster
NR

A documentary portrait of the Samuel Fox steelworks at Stocksbridge, examining industrial production and community life.

Steel Town

1958