
Athene Seyler
Actor · 1889 – 1990 · Hackney, London, England, UK
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Athene Seyler, CBE (31 May 1889 – 12 September 1990) was an English actress. Although better known as a stage actress - she first appeared on the stage in 1909 - she made her film debut in 1921, and became known for playing slightly dotty old ladies in many British films from the 1930s to the 1960s. Her most memorable stage credits included Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, and a double-act, with her good friend Dame Sybil Thorndike, as the murderous spinster sisters in Arsenic and Old Lace. Her film and television career lasted into the 1960s, and included roles in The Citadel (1938), Night of the Demon (1957), and The Avengers (1964, 1965). She was also a regular cast member in screen adaptations of Charles Dickens' novels. She virtually retired from acting after 1970, but continued making public appearances until well into the 1980s. In 1990, at the age of 101, she appeared at the National Theatre, talking about her long life and career. Athene Seyler was President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) from 1950, and a member of the Theatrical Ladies' Guild. She also wrote The Craft of Comedy. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1959.
Movies24
Movie7.0FantasyHorrorAmerican professor John Holden arrives in London for a conference on parapsychology only to discover that the colleague he was supposed to meet was killed in a freak accident the day before. It turns out that the deceased had been investigating a cult lead by Dr. Julian Karswell. Though a skeptic, Holden is suspicious of the devil-worshiping Karswell. Following a trail of mysterious manuscripts, Holden enters a world that makes him question his faith in science.
Night of the Demon
1957 · 322 votes
Movie6.8WarDramaAll her life, Englishwoman Gladys Aylward knew that China was where she belonged. Unqualified to be sent as a missionary, Gladys works as a domestic to earn to send herself to a poor, remote village. There, she eventually lives a full and happy life: running the inn, acting as 'foot inspector', advising the local Mandarin, and even winning the heart of mixed-race Captain Lin Nan. Gladys discovers her real destiny when the country is invaded by Japan and the Chinese children need her to save their lives.
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
1958 · 87 votes
Movie6.0RomanceDramaWhat do women want? Don Juan is aging. He's arrived secretly in Seville after a 20 year absence. His wife Dolores, whom he hasn't lived with in five years, still loves him. He refuses to see her; he fears the life of a husband. She has bought his debts and will remand him to jail for two years if he won't come to her. Meanwhile, an impostor is climbing the balconies of Seville claiming to be Don Juan.
The Private Life of Don Juan
1934 · 21 votes
Movie6.8DramaHistorySet against the conditions leading up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, French doctor Alexandre Manette serves an 18-year imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, followed by his release to live in London with the daughter he has never met.
A Tale of Two Cities
1958 · 22 votes
Movie6.1DramaAfter mercifully killing her terminally ill lover, Dr. Christine Allison loses her medical license and spends two years in prison. Once she has completed her sentence, the lawyer who prosecuted Christine, Stephen Dane, hires her to care for his emotionally unstable wife, Liane. Christine takes the job, but when Liane's allegedly dead father reappears, Christine sets out to reveal the family's dark secrets.
I Thank a Fool
1962 · 7 votes
Movie6.4DramaRomanceYoung, idealistic, newly qualified Scottish doctor Andrew Manson arrives in Wales and takes his first job in a mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its cause are thwarted, he moves to London. His new practice does poorly, but when a friend shows him how to make a lucrative practice from rich hypochondriacs, it will take a great shock to show him what the truth of being a doctor really is.
The Citadel
1938 · 35 votes
Movie6.0ComedyNorman Wisdom does to P.G. Wodehouse in Girl on the Boat what Jerry Lewis did to Gore Vidal in Visit to a Small Planet. The zany Wisdom, put in charge of his aunt's cottage during an English summer in the roaring twenties, decides to invite several of his friends to his posh new digs. Among the invitees is the title character, played by the delightful comedienne Millicent Martin. All sorts of slapstick chaos ensues, but Wisdom manages to save the day before things get hopelessly out of hand. Like Jerry Lewis, Norman Wisdom is an acquired taste, but he's worth sampling at least once. ...The Girl on the Boat
The Girl on the Boat
1962 · 6 votes
Movie6.5DramaFantasyA czarist captain stops at nothing to learn the secrets of a countess rumored to have sold her soul to the devil in order to always win at cards.
The Queen of Spades
1949 · 62 votes
Movie6.1DramaFantasyEbenezer Scrooge, the ultimate Victorian miser, hasn't a good word for Christmas, though his impoverished clerk Cratchit and nephew Fred are full of holiday spirit. In the night, Scrooge is visited by spirits of the past, present, and future.
Scrooge
1935 · 53 votes
Movie7.0ComedyIn a quiet summer corner of Wiltshire that is forever England, David and Janet decide to tie the knot. Unfortunately this is the cue for everyone else to take over proceedings, to the dismay of the couple and the increasing despair of Janet's father.
Happy Is the Bride
1958 · 5 votes
Movie7.0ComedyAdventureThe Pickwick Club sends Mr. Pickwick and a group of friends to travel across England and to report back on the interesting things they find...
The Pickwick Papers
1952 · 16 votes
Movie6.7DramaA fatherless boy tries to make his fortune despite interference from his rich uncle.
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
1947 · 22 votes
Movie5.3ComedyRomanceA post-war housing crisis leaves a shy woman to share a house with two couples. Comic situations arise as the new roomer becomes infatuated with one of the husbands.
Young Wives' Tale
1951 · 13 votes
Movie6.0AdventureDramaGiven only six months to live, Englishman Bruce Campbell goes to Canada to claim "Campbell's Kingdom", the land he inherited from his grandfather. In order to clear his grandfather's name and prove there is oil on the land, Campbell must face up to a ruthless contractor and work against the clock to find oil before "Campbell's Kingdom" is flooded by a new power dam.
Campbell's Kingdom
1957 · 19 votes
- Movie
Inhabitants in a remote village laughs off and dismiss a couple of schoolboys' claims that they are being invaded by aliens.
The Invasion
1963
Movie7.5MusicComedyThe suburban peace of the Bentley household is shattered when John Bentley is informed by his wife Stella that their two married daughters, Pat and Corrine, are in trouble and need funds to come home and bring their husbands, Peter, a penniless Parisian artist, and Barnaby, a Texas cowboy, with them. And the youngest daughter, Gwen, has tricked an American singer, Bobby Denver, into visiting them on the pretext that it is the home of a noted British film magnate. When all the women in the household – including the maid – fall for the singer's charms, Bentley consults a crackpot psychiatrist, Dr. Schneider, who almost succeeds in ousting not the singer but Bentley's wife, with his advice to Bentley to make her jealous by living it up with Pearl, a showgirl recruited for the purpose.
As Long as They're Happy
1955 · 4 votes
Movie6.5DramaJean Raymond an upper class woman with a gambling addiction, is given a twelve-month prison sentence resulting from her inability to pay her debts. At first she is overwhelmingly depressed by life in the women's prison; gradually, however, her misery is relieved by the many close friends she makes there. This sympathetic drama traces the contrasting lives and often faltering progress of the inmates of a women's prison.
The Weak and the Wicked
1954 · 12 votes
Movie6.8DramaCrimeA young woman finds herself as the intended victim of a murder plot on a transatlantic flight from London to New York.
Non-Stop New York
1937 · 12 votes
Movie6.9DramaCrimeLocked in her cell, a murderer reflects on the events that have led her to death row.
Yield to the Night
1956 · 41 votes
Movie5.1HistoryCrimeAdaptation of John Gay's 18th century opera, featuring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath and Hugh Griffith as the Beggar.
The Beggar's Opera
1953 · 6 votes
Movie5.8ComedyRomanceIn postwar London a young graduate and his girlfriend decide to marry. Her well-to-do parents are not convinced, but they agree once he has got a £5.10.0 job and a 30/- a week single-room flat. The newly-weds find money fearfully tight, the flat cramped, the neighbours a trial, and her parents always hovering. Can faith conquer all? Is there some way of getting rid of tea-leaves except down the sink?
For Better, for Worse
1954 · 10 votes
Movie7.0ComedyCrimeA broke British nobleman targets his Canadian uncle, but other relatives get in the way.
How to Murder a Rich Uncle
1957 · 9 votes
Movie6.9ComedyIn a mansion block in Knightsbridge, a gang of middle-aged biddies decide to brighten up "the dullness of the tea time of life" by staging a series of robberies on furriers, then donating the proceeds to charitable concerns. Terry Thomas as a retired army officer leads the gang, which includes Athene Seyler and Hattie Jacques, on a series of capers that nearly go awry when their maid, Billie Whitelaw, an ex-con and also a resident of the block, falls for a police officer.
Make Mine Mink
1960 · 17 votes
Movie5.7ComedyRomanceLosing out to Dr. Bingham (Michael Medwin) in a competition for house surgeon when he offends a member of the board, young Dr. Simon Sparrow (Dirk Bogarde) finds himself going from post to post, filling in for other physicians. At one distant country post, he is taken aback when he works with a patient whose husband died after Simon treated the man years before. In another hospital, Simon examines a surprisingly mature teen and also tries courting devoted nurse Nan McPherson (Shirley Eaton).
Doctor at Large
1957 · 25 votes
Series5
TV5.2DramaA BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.
BBC Play of the Month
1965 · 8 votes
TV7.8Action & AdventureCrimeA quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - teams with various assistants throughout the series' run, including Dr. David Keel, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, to repeatedly save the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally diabolical evil-doers (among them robots and man-eating monsters).
The Avengers
1961 · 156 votes
TV7.2DramaThe Third Man
1959 · 11 votes
- TV7.0Comedy
Based on P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories, The World of Wooster, broadcast on BBC One from 1965 to 1967, followed the farcical adventures of young upper-class twit Bertie Wooster and his invaluable manservant Jeeves. It starred Ian Carmichael as Wooster and Dennis Price as Jeeves. Wodehouse initially felt that Carmichael would be fine as Wooster, but later believed that Carmichael overacted; however, Wodehouse was satisfied enough with to later ask Carmichael to portray Bertie or Jeeves in a musical comedy. Carmichael declined, feeling too old to play Bertie again and that public perception prevented him from playing Jeeves. Wodehouse was far more positive about Price's Jeeves, stating that Price was the best Jeeves he had ever seen. Like many other series of the time, much of the episodes were wiped, leaving all but two now lost. In 2018, it was included at #51 in a list of the top 100 most wanted missing television programmes by TV archivist organisation Kaleidoscope.
The World of Wooster
1965 · 3 votes
TV6.0DramaArmchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968.
Armchair Theatre
1956 · 6 votes