Michael Gough

From Philosopedia

Michael Gough (23 November 1917 - 17 March 2011)

Gough [pronounced GAWF], the son of British parents Frances Atkins (née Bailie) and rubber planter Francis Berkeley Gough, was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya (now Malaysia).

He attended Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, and Durham school, dropping out of Wye Agricultural College in Kent in order to study acting at the Old Vic.

Contemporaries knew him as Alfred the wise butler in the Batman films of the 80's and 90's, but prior to that he was remembered for his acting in horror films such as Horror of Drucula in 1958. In Horrors of the Black Museum he was the murderous crime reporter; in Kinga, the mad scientist; in Black Zoo, the deranged zookeeper; in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, the practical joking artist; in They Came From Beyond Space, the master of the moon; in Crucible of Horror, the horsewhipping father; and in Joan Crawford's disastrous last film, Trog, the voice of rational common sense.

In the film Wittgenstein, the role of philosopher Bertrand Russell was played by Gough.

In 1979 he won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for his role in Bedroom Farce. In 1988 he was nominated for a Tony Award and also a Drama Desk Award for his role in Breaking the Code.

Gough's wife until his death was Henrietta Gough. But he had married three other times: Anne Leon, then divorced her; Diana Graves, then divorced her; and Anneke Wills, whom he married in 1962 and divorced in 1979 – he adopted her daughter Polly (whose biological father was Anthony Newley – and they had a son, Jasper, an actor. Polly was born in 1963 and died in 1982. His son Jasper was born in 1965.

A conscientious objector during World War II, he served in the Non-Combatant Corps and was a member of the No. 6 NCC in Liverpool.

Gough died in England at the age of 94 after a short illness.

The Guardian obituary (18 March 2011) mentions that

• in Frederick Lonsdale's But for the Grace of God, [t]he fistfight-to-the-death scene was done with such startling verisimilitude that nearly all the stage furniture was demolished nightly, and Gough broke three ribs and injured the base of his spine. So copiously did blood flow from his lower lip at one performance that his adversary, played by Robert McDermott, held him up by the scruff of the neck for the audience to gape at the gore dripping over the footlights.

The New York Times obituary includes Frank Rich's observations that Gough

• is one of those remarkable English character actors who should be much better known to American audiences. . . .There is fine, supple Chekhovian detail to his every small gesture, from his slow-dawning owlish smiles to the buttoning of his ill-fitting tweed jacket to the revealing tentativeness with which he fingers through a personnel file