Terence Bayler obit

Terence Bayler obituary

Film, stage and television actor who often worked with the Monty Python team

 

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During a 60-year career, the versatile actor Terence Bayler, who has died aged 86, became a recognizable face on television and in films, notably for his collaborations with the Monty Python team.

He played Gregory (and other roles) in the controversial Life of Brian (1979) – a religious spoof about a man mistaken for the Messiah – uttering two of the film’s most memorable lines. During the final crucifixion scene, Brian’s fellow prisoners try to pass themselves off as him in order to escape death (a subversion of the “I’m Spartacus” moment in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 film). Amid the many cries of “I’m Brian”, Gregory exclaims “I’m Brian, and so’s my wife” – an ad lib by Bayler. Earlier in the film, when the assorted throng worshipping Brian shout in unison “We are all individuals”, Bayler interjects “I’m not” - another ad lib. He had started working with the Python team after Eric Idle – whom he knew socially – saw him performing music hall songs in a small pub theatre and was impressed with his comic timing. Idle later cast him in his first stage play, Pass the Butler (Globe theatre, 1982).

Tall and distinguished looking, Bayler was cast as military officers and upper-class Englishmen, even though he was actually a working-class New Zealander. He was born in Wanganui, the son of Amy (nee Allomes) and Harold Bayler. His father, a lorry driver by day and theatre stagehand by night, got him free tickets to see shows, so he was well versed in the profession by the time he started working backstage and acting in amateur theatre.

His professional debut was the lead role in the first feature film produced in New Zealand after the second world war, Broken Barrier (1952). It was a groundbreaking film about a relationship between a Maori woman and a white man; in 1996, a still of Bayler and his co-star, Kay Ngarimu, was featured on a postage stamp issued to mark the centenary of New Zealand cinema.

He had already won a scholarship to study at Rada in London when the film was shot, and he moved to the UK in 1950. After training, he worked in theatre for Peter Hall in Twelfth Night and Richard III (Elizabethan Theatre Company, 1953). He made his West End debut in 1960 in Villa Sleep Four at the Strand theatre. The following year he won excellent notices for his comic performance in Ira Levin’s Critic’s Choice at the Vaudeville, and in 1964 he appeared in Glen Byam Shaw’s production of The Right Honourable Gentleman at Her Majesty’s theatre.

He had stints as Giles Ralston in The Mousetrap in 1967 and as the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show (Kings Road theatre, 1974), appeared at the National Theatre in The Magistrate (1986-87), was Cominius to Corin Redgrave’s Coriolanus (Young Vic, 1989) and in 1993 played Colonel Pickering to Maximilian Schell’s Henry Higgins in a European tour of Pygmalion (the production also featured the actor Valerie Cutko, who was to become Bayler’s second wife).

Television credits included the Player King in Hamlet (1961, with William Russell as Hamlet), Maigret (1963), Doctor Who (1966 and 1969, playing two different roles), The Brothers (1974), Upstairs, Downstairs (1975) and Dennis Potter’s Lipstick on Your Collar (1993). Having appeared in numerous episodes of Rutland Weekend Television (1975-76) for Idle, he then played Leggy Mountbatten, the band manager, in the 1978 TV film The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, a spoof documentary about a group not unlike the Beatles.

In his heftiest cinematic role, he was cast by Roman Polanski as Macduff in his film adaptation of Macbeth (1971). The director changed the schedule to secure Bayler’s services when the initial dates clashed with another project he had committed to. During the brutal final fight scene he sustained an injury above his eye when he was accidentally hit by Jon Finch’s sword.

Having impressed another Monty Python member, Terry Gilliam, Bayler found himself in the films Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985). Later big-screen work included James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day (1993) and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (as the ghostly Bloody Baron, 2001).

Bayler wrote the foreword to the book New Zealand Filmmakers (2007), describing the basic filming methods employed on Broken Barrier, an engagement for which he was paid “six pounds a week plus food and tobacco”. He worked on his native soil again in the film Pictures (1981), which reunited him with John O’Shea, the director of Broken Barrier, and on the 1992 miniseries The Other Side of Paradise.

He is survived by Valerie, and by the son and daughter of his first marriage, to the actor Bridget Armstrong, which ended in divorce.

Filmography

Film

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1952      Broken Barrier   Tom Sullivan      

1955      The Whiteoak Chronicles: The Building of Jalna   Robert Vaughan                TV film

1956      Alice's Adventures in Wonderland                            TV film

The Battle of the River Plate        Stoker - HMS Achilles      Uncredited

1961      Royal Foundation             Court Orderly     TV film

1963      The Hi-Jackers   Constable           

1970      Vile Bodies          The Major           TV film

1971      Macbeth              Macduff              

1974      Doctor Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery Carlos    TV film

1976      The Snow Queen              Robber Captain TV film

The Hunchback of Notre Dame   Cardinal               TV film

1978      The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash                Leggy Mountbatten        TV film

The Light Princess            Lord Chamberlain             TV film

1979      Monty Python's Life of Brian       Gregory               

1981      Time Bandits      Lucien  

Pictures                John Rochfort   

1984      This Office Life   Penny   TV film

1985      Brazil     T.V. Commercial Presenter         

1987      Crystalstone       Policeman          

1993      The Remains of the Day                 Trimmer              

2001      Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone              The Bloody Barron          

2008      Chemical Wedding           Professor Brent                

Television

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1959      Spy-Catcher                        Episode: "The Gentle Gestapo Man"

BBC Sunday Night Theatre            George Rawlings               Episode: "The Pohutukawa Tree"

1960      Probation Officer              First Policeman 1 episode

1960-1962          ITV Television Playhouse               Sergeant Gregory             2 episodes

1961      You Can't Win    Archie   Episode: "Professional Status"

Hamlet Player King          2 episodes

BBC Sunday-Night Play   Jeremy Hopkirk                 Episode: "The Big Noise"

ITV Play of the Week       Checker                Episode: "Countdown at Woomera"

1963      Moonstrike         Bernard                2 episodes

Compact              Raven    2 episodes

Maigret                Marcel Episode: "The Judge's House"

1964      ITV Play of the Week       Private Fletcher                 Episode: "Jacko at War"

1966      Mystery and Imagination              Nemeth               Episode: "Carmilla"

Doctor Who        Yendom               Episode: "The Return"

1969      Major Barrington              Episode: "The War Games"

The Very Merry Widow and How               Waiter Episode: "How About It?"

The Troubleshooters      David Neville      Episode: "Let's All Drop Out Together"

W. Somerset Maugham                 Jean-Pierre         Episode: "The Three Fat Women of Antibes"

1970      Ivanhoe                Chief Marshal    2 episodes

As Good Cooks Go           P.C. Wilson         Episode: "Frying Squad"

Play for Today    Stephen Calman               Episode: "The Lie"

1971      The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes     The Duke             Episode: "The Ripening Rubies"

Play for Today    Duty Clerk           Episode: "Traitor"

1972      Stage 2 Director of the Madhouse            Episode: "Peer Gynt"

1973      The Regiment    General Sir Herbert Kitchener     Episode: "Ambush"

Justice   James Lywood   Episode: "Covenant for Quiet Enjoyment"

A Picture of Katherine Mansfield               Jonathan Trout 1 episode

1974      The Brothers      Anthony Bromley             Episode: "The Hammond Account"

Special Branch   Security Man      Episode: "Double Exposure"

1975      The Venturers   Trevor Darcey    Episode: "The Leak"

Upstairs, Downstairs       Darrow Morton                 Episode: "Joke Over"

1976      Centre Play         Major Woods     Episode: "Commonwealth Season: New Zealand - Old Man March Is Dead"

1978      Law & Order       Michael Messick QC        Miniseries

A Soft Touch       RSPCA Inspector               Episode: "The Toad Work"

BBC2 Play of the Week   Surgeon               Episode: "The Vanishing Army"

Baron    Episode: "Renoir, My Father"

1980      Play for Today    Surgeon               Episode: "The Vanishing Army"

The Squad           Commander Fenton        2 episodes

1984      Horizon                LCC Chairman    Episode: "The Intelligence Man"

Murder Not Proven?       Craigie Aitchison KC        Episode: "A Big Romping Boy"

1985      Summer Season                Kania     Episode: "A Still Small Shout"

1986      Artists and Models           Leading Actor     Episode: "The Passing Show"

All at No 20         Mr. Warren         2 episodes

1987      Ffizz       Giles      Episode: "Pulling Together"

Pulaski Priest     Episode: "And the Killer of Rose Amelia Bonner"

1988      Me and My Girl                 Harry     Episode: "The Story of Foxy-Features and Melon-Head"

1989      London's Burning             Mr. Osbourne    1 episode

1990      Omnibus              Pissarro                Episode: "Van Gogh"

She-Wolf of London        Sir Robert            Episode: "Can't Keep a Dead Man Down"

1991      Ashenden           Military Chief     Miniseries

1992      The Other Side of Paradise           Colonel Fawcett                Miniseries

The Bill Mr. Axell              Episode: "Finders Keepers"

1993      Eye of the Storm               Matthew Montliskeard 1 episode

Lipstick on Your Collar    General                Miniseries

1995      Dangerfield         Howard                Episode: "The Call Girl"

Strange but True?            Reconstruction Cast        Episode: "UFOs"

1997      Bodyguards        Government Minister    Episode: "A Choice of Evils"

2004      The Courtroom Wilson Arbutnot               Episode: "Nudist Beach"

2005      Life Begins           Jack Russell         Episode: "Break for Love"