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James Donald

James Donald

Actor · 1917 – 1993 · Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia James Donald (18 May 1917 - 3 August 1993) was a Scottish actor. Tall and gaunt, he specialised in playing authority figures; military officers, doctors or scientists. Donald was born in Aberdeen, and made his first professional stage appearance sometime in the late-1930s, having been educated at Rossall School on Lancashire's Fylde coast. During World War II he appeared in minor roles in such propaganda classics as In Which We Serve (1942), Went the Day Well? (1942) and The Way Ahead (1944), and he played Mr. Winkle in the 1952 film version of The Pickwick Papers. However, leading roles eluded him until Lust for Life (1956), in which he played Theo Van Gogh. His work in the theatre included Noël Coward's Present Laughter (1943) which starred Coward himself, and The Eagle with Two Heads (1947), You Never Can Tell (1948), and The Heiress (1949) with Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft and Donald Sinden. He memorably portrayed Major Clipton, the doctor who expresses grave doubts about the sanity of Col. Nicholson's (Alec Guinness) efforts to build the bridge in order to show up his Japanese captors, in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). The final words are his: "Madness!, Madness!" He also played Group Captain Ramsey, the Senior British Officer in The Great Escape (1963), as well as supporting roles in other notable films both in Britain and the United States, including The Vikings (1958), King Rat (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), and Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Donald starred in a 1960 television adaptation of A. J. Cronin's The Citadel and appeared regularly in many other television dramas in the UK and USA, as well as on stage. In 1961, he played Prince Albert opposite Julie Harris's Queen Victoria, in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina. Description above from the Wikipedia article James Donald, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Movies24

  • Movie7.9

    The Great Escape

    1963 · 2.9K votes

  • Movie7.8
  • Movie7.0

    The Vikings

    1958 · 385 votes

  • Movie6.3

    Cast a Giant Shadow

    1966 · 64 votes

  • Movie7.2

    Lust for Life

    1956 · 210 votes

  • Movie6.7

    In Which We Serve

    1942 · 107 votes

  • Movie5.8

    The Big Sleep

    1978 · 105 votes

  • Movie6.7

    Quatermass and the Pit

    1967 · 282 votes

  • Movie6.5

    Beau Brummell

    1954 · 35 votes

  • Movie6.7
  • Movie7.2

    King Rat

    1965 · 83 votes

  • Movie6.4
  • Movie6.6
  • Movie6.1
  • Movie6.4

    Hannibal Brooks

    1969 · 40 votes

  • Movie7.0

    The Pickwick Papers

    1952 · 16 votes

  • Movie6.3

    The Net

    1953 · 6 votes

  • Movie8.0

    Victoria Regina

    1961 · 1 votes

  • Movie6.2

    The Jokers

    1967 · 18 votes

  • Movie6.5

    Edward, My Son

    1949 · 22 votes

  • Movie6.6

    Gift Horse

    1952 · 23 votes

  • Movie6.7

    Cage of Gold

    1950 · 14 votes

  • Movie6.5

    The Way Ahead

    1944 · 42 votes

  • Movie5.9

    Conduct Unbecoming

    1975 · 24 votes

Series7

  • TV5.9
  • TV5.9

    Ben Casey

    1961 · 15 votes

  • TV7.8

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents

    1955 · 265 votes

  • TV
  • TV8.0

    Play of the Week

    1959 · 1 votes

  • TV7.4
  • TV8.8

    Hallmark Hall of Fame

    1951 · 8 votes