Getting to Know: James Mason

In addition to celebrating the achievements of some of the biggest stars in film history, Cinema Paradiso's Getting to Know series also recognises the sterling work done by the best character actors. One of the very finest was James Mason, who racked up 155 credits in a 50-year screen career. He had the talent to become one of the all-time greats. But he also held strong views that meant he didn't always find it easy to play by industry rules on either side of the Atlantic.

The BFI's Screenonline article on James Mason contains the lines, 'Anyone who makes over 100 films is inevitably going to be associated with some rubbish; Mason's achievement is, partly, that one wouldn't think of attributing the blame to him.' Critic David Thompson disagrees, stating, 'In every decade, from the 1930s to the 80s, James Mason did some poor work in disappointing pictures.'

Vincent Canby of the New York Times was more charitable. 'He has always been superb,' he wrote, 'it's just that because so many of his recent films have been less than great, it's easier to recognize his contributions. He is, in fact, one of the very few film actors worth taking the trouble to see, even when the film that encases him is so much cement.' The TCM website had fewer misgivings in declaring, 'Gifted with one of the most mellifluous and distinctive voices of his era, James Mason managed to convey volumes of emotion while often remaining surprisingly understated.'

Perhaps Mason's fiercest critic was himself. 'I suppose you could say I've made a tremendous professional mess of my life,' he once claimed. 'Every man has a grand idea of self-fulfilment which inevitably he then falls short of.' He may have made the odd contentious decision, while he freely admitted to taking roles for money following an expensive divorce. But Cinema Paradiso is pretty certain that there isn't a dud performance in any of the James Mason films in its peerless collection of 100,000 discs.

Drifting Into Acting

Born in Huddersfield on 15 May 1909, James Neville Mason was the third son of wealthy textile merchant John Mason and his wife, Mabel. Having followed brothers Rex and Edward to a prep school in Windermere, James joined them at Marlborough School, where he proved to be so bright that he earned a place at Peterhouse, Cambridge to study Classics. Intent on becoming a civil servant in India, Mason devoted himself to his studies. While rowing for the college at the Henley Regatta, however, he fell in with an arty crowd who persuaded him to act in a production of Euripides's play, The Bacchae, which boasted costumes by Humphrey Jennings, the future documentarist who would bring a poetic touch to Britain's wartime propaganda.

Having changed courses to study Architecture, Mason began acting more regularly. He played Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream and found himself alongside Flora Robson and Robert Donat in Tyrone Guthrie's company at the Festival Theatre. Having previously only seen a handful of silents, Mason also joined the Film Society and started watching such continental classics as Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Viktor Turin's short, Turksib (1929), which can be found on The Soviet Influence: From Turksibto Night Mail (2011). In his memoir, Before I Forget (1981), Mason also admitted to being a fan of Clara Bow, the 'It Girl' who can be seen in William A. Wellman's Wings (1927), which became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.

When the theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph commended Mason's performance as Flamineo in John Webster's The White Devil, he decided to try his luck on the boards. Despite having no formal training, he made his professional bow as the Grand Duke Maritzi in The Rascal at the Theatre Royal, Aldershot in 1931. He spent the next two years jobbing in rep before debuting in the West End in Gallows Glorious at the Arts Theatre. Invited to join the Old Vic by Tyrone Guthrie, Mason took supporting roles in a string of plays by William Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov and Oscar Wilde alongside Charles Laughton and his wife, Elsa Lanchester. During a sojourn at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, he starred in Cambridge chum Nigel Balchin's adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice but Mason's heart wasn't really in the project, as he had met the two people who had convinced him that his future lay in films.

A Rocky Start

While Mason was finding his feet in the theatre, he was introduced to the Hungarian film producer, Alexander Korda, who had just steered Charles Laughton to the first Oscar to be won by a British performer for his work in the title role of The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Korda offered Mason the role of Rodrigo in The Private Life of Don Juan (1934) but after just three days, however, he was fired and replaced by Barry MacKay after being informed he had been miscast.

Realising this was a polite way of saying he had been 'lousy', Mason returned to the stage. But he caught the eye of American director Albert Parker, who had discovered William Powell, given Rudolph Valentino his first major role and directed Douglas Fairbanks in the swashbuckling classic, The Black Pirate (1926). He cast Mason as a reporter in Late Extra (1935), which co-starred Alastair Sim, Michael Wilding and Virginia Cherrill.

This crime drama may have been a Quota Quickie, but through it and Troubled Waters and Blind Man's Buff (both 1936), Parker taught Mason the fundamentals of screen acting. Such was his improvement that he was cast as Tom Tulliver in Tim Whelan's take on George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1936). Even Korda noticed the difference and hired Mason to play an ambassador in William K. Howard's Fire Over England, which starred Flora Robson as Elizabeth I, and as imperilled aristocrat Jean Tallien opposite Barry K. Barnes's Sir Percy Blakeney in Hanns Schwartz's The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (both 1937).

The same year saw Mason play Captain Heverell in Thorold Dickinson's The High Command, in which Lionel Atwill stars as an army officer in Africa whose murderous past catches up with him. Shuttling between Korda's Denham Studios and 20th Century-Fox's British base, Mason soon realised that he disliked being a contract player, as it limited his options. Having befriended cinematographer Roy Kellino and his actress wife, Pamela, while shooting Troubled Waters, Mason decided to make a film of his own and set up Gamma Productions. Despite being the daughter of Isidore Ostrer, who owned Gaumont-British, Pamela knew she couldn't expect any family favours and I Met a Murderer (1939) struggled to get many bookings, despite some encouraging reviews.

By opting to work outside the studio system, the trio were viewed with suspicion. Moreover, when Mason moved in with the Kellinos, tongued started wagging and polite society feigned horror when Pamela divorced Kellino and married Mason, who remained on such friendly terms with the couple that he later directed them in The Lady Possessed (1952) and Charade (1953). With war clouds gathering over Europe, however, the Masons found film work hard to come by and James became a familiar face on the BBC's new television service, as he featured in such live broadcasts as Cyrano de Bergerac (1938).

Transmissions ceased with the outbreak of the Second World War. But Mason was still something of a cinematic outcast, as he had registered as a conscientious objector and spent much of the next two years appealing against attempts to have him assigned to non-combatant military service. Having been gazumped by Rex Harrison for the role of Adolphus Cusins in Gabriel Pascal's adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (1941), he took the occasional stage role to pay the bills. But he discovered the extent to which his moral stance had made him a pariah when Noël Coward opted against offering him a part in his and David Lean's forthcoming naval saga, In Which We Serve (1942), because he didn't consider Mason fit to wear the uniform.

Eventually, film-making was proclaimed work of national importance and Mason was able to return to the fold and do his bit in his own way. He impressed as the doctor coming between Robert Newton and Deborah Kerr in Lance Comfort's adaptation of AJ Cronin's Hatter's Castle and as the fugitive hoping Parisian barmaid Margaret Lockwood can help him prove he didn't commit murder in Brian Desmond Hurst's Alibi (both 1942).

In Harold French's Secret Mission, he showed himself up for the fight as intelligence officer Raoul de Carnot, who is parachuted into Occupied France with three comrades (Michael Wilding, Hugh Williams and Roland Culver) to assess the strength of the German defences. Later that year, Mason also proved a solid foil to Michael Redgrave as Streeter in Roy Boulting's Thunder Rock, who ventures to the remote lighthouse on Lake Michigan, where Charleston has been suffering mental anguish after failing to alert his compatriots to the threat posed by Adolf Hitler.

The new year saw Mason playing firefighter Ted Robbins in Basil Dearden's The Bells Go Down, a tribute to the work of the Auxiliary Fire Service during the London Blitz that co-starred Tommy Trinder as a rookie at the Q depot in the East End's District 21. As Commander Richard Heritage, Mason is stripped off his naval rank for allowing himself to be duped by a Nazi spy in Karel Lamac's They Met in the Dark (both 1943). When he tries to track down his nemesis, however, Heritage finds himself being pursued for her murder.

George King's Candlelight in Algeria (1944) continued the espionage theme, as British agent Alan Thurston drops into North Africa to retrieve a camera containing images of Allied landing plans before they can fall into the hands of the menacing Dr Muller (Wolf Rilla). But an invitation to take the title role in a Gainsborough adaptation of Eleanor Smith's bodice-ripping novel transformed Mason's screen image.

The Man They Loved to Hate

With his velvety voice, distinguished looks and saturnine demeanour, Mason was always better suited to rakish roguery than dashing heroism. Yet it took eight years before anyone realised he was capable of the kind of brooding brutality that made ingenues and audiences swoon. Resplendent in his Regency threads in Leslie Arliss's The Man in Grey (1943), Mason so impressed the critic from Time magazine that they enthused, 'Swaggering through the title role, sneering like Laughton, barking like Gable and frowning like Laurence Olivier on a dark night, he is likely to pick up many a feminine fan.'

He won many more with his cacklingly cruel display as Lord Manderstoke in Anthony Asquith's version of Michael Sadler's novel, Fanny By Gaslight (1944), which was set in London in the 1870s and centres on the fate of Fanny Hopwood (Phyllis Calvert) after she returns from finishing school to witness her father being murdered by Manderstoke. Political aide Harry Somerford (Stewart Granger) rallies to her cause, but her family's sordid past keeps catching up with her.

The Hays Office was so scandalised by the scenes set in a bordello that it denied the film a Production Code certificate and only consented to a much-delayed release after 17 minutes of morally dubious material had been cut. By contrast, British audiences saw every second and lapped it up. They were less wowed by Mason's return to espionage, as a medical student wrongfully accused of photographing secret installations in prewar France in Hotel Reserve (1944), which was based on Eric Ambler's novel, Epitaph For a Spy. But it did decent business, as did Bernard Knowles's take on Osbert Sitwell's A Place of One's Own (1945), in which Mason and Barbara Mullen play an elderly couple whose live-in companion (Margaret Lockwood) is possessed by the spirit of a girl who had supposedly been murdered by her guardians.

He was back in snarling mood as Geoffrey Lee in Arthur Crabtree's They Were Sisters, a commendably unflinching adaptation of a Dorothy Whipple novel that sees Lucy (Phyllis Calvert) and Vera (Anne Crawford) strive to protect their mousy sibling, Charlotte (Dulcie Gray), when it becomes clear that Lee is abusing her with the knowledge of his daughter, Margaret (Pamela Kellino). Mason later admitted that he had spent much of the shoot with a hangover, as he was drinking heavily to dull his frustration with the British film industry. Yet, while his schedule prevented him from appearing in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going (1945), it ensured he kept landing juicy roles that made him the country's leading box-office star between 1944-47.

The meaner he got, the more popular Mason became. Compton Bennett's The Seventh Veil (1945) was seen by 17.9 million people, making it one of the most watched British films of the century. This figure was exceeded by the 18.4 million who paid to see Leslie Arliss's The Wicked Lady (1945), which was based on Magdalen King-Hall's tome, The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton. Mason settled for the secondary character of Captain Jerry Jackson, the highwayman who offers Barbara Worth (Margaret Lockwood) some excitement after she gets bored with Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones), the landowner she had poached off her best friend, Caroline (Patricia Roc). But he still made a lasting impression, with his callous amusement at Barbara's corruption.

Once again, the Hays Office took exception to the content and extensive reshooting had to be done with Lockwood and Roc wearing dressed that revealed less cleavage. Mason (who had punched Arliss on the first day of shooting) found the whole thing tiresome and took to writing satirical magazine articles to express his dismay that Gainsborough had been acquired by flour magnate J. Arthur Rank, a strict Methodist who refused to sanction a sequel to what had become a box-office sensation. In addition to opining that Rank was the worst thing to have happened to the domestic film industry, Mason also upset the country's producers and technicians by declaring, 'I find precious little glamour in British pictures.'

As a result of his tirades, Mason was ostracised in certain quarters and, having turned down The Magic Bow (1946), Bernard Knowles's biopic of violinist Niccolo Paganini, he didn't make a single film in either 1946 or 1948. In between, he and Pamela entertained the troops in France and Germany, as part of a Red Cross ensemble. They also worked on a biopic about the Brontë sisters that would see Mason play their brother Bramwell. However, they shelved the plan when they discovered that Hollywood director Curtis Bernhardt was about to make Devotion (1946) with Olivia de Havilland, Ida Lupino and Nancy Coleman. Instead, they decided to write and produce a drama about a school teacher, only for the funding to fall through when both Celia Johnson and Phyllis Calvert declined the lead. Left only with the title, The Upturned Glass, the Masons turned it into a thriller about a brain surgeon who murders the woman who had killed his sweetheart. But, despite being backed by Sydney Box, Lawrence Huntington's film made little impact.

The opposite was true of Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947). Inheriting a role rejected by Stewart Granger, Mason revealed a tragic vulnerability that contrasts with the swagger that Orson Welles brought to Harry Lime in Reed's equally atmospheric Graham Greene-scripted thriller, The Third Man (1949). While making this film, Alexander Korda offered Mason a six-film contract. But he had already made up his mind to decamp to Hollywood.

Hooray For Hollywood?

Mason had been monitored by Hollywood since his early days at Gainsborough, if only to take the strain off George Sanders as the studio system's resident British bounder. Both 20th Century-Fox and Universal made contact, with the former offering him John Cromwell's Anna and the King of Siam (1946) and Otto Preminger's Forever Amber (1947). Preston Sturges was keen for Mason to headline his adaptation of Prosper Mérimée's Colomba (which was never made), while Walter Wanger and Dudley Nichols respectively sought him for Green Dolphin Street and Mourning Becomes Electra (both 1947).

But his most ardent pursuer was Paramount's David E. Rose, whose insistence that Mason had signed a promissory note prevented him from accepting Korda's lucrative deal. Indeed, it would take a protracted legal case for Mason to prove that he had not agreed to join the American studio, during which time he was bad-mouthed by influential gossip columnist Louella Parsons and panned by the critics for his Broadway performance as King David opposite Pamela in Bathsheba (1947). The couple had more joy in publishing The Cats in Our Lives (1949), which contained Mason's drawings of his beloved pets, while he also did cinema a service when he bought Buster Keaton's house and paid to have a stash of nitrate films transferred to celluloid. In the process, he saved two-reelers like The Boat (1921), which can be seen on both Buster Keaton Vol.2 and Buster Keaton: The Complete Short Films 1917-1923.

Pamela became known as a lavish hostess, with one wag suggesting that her staying power at parties was down to the fact she had been 'vaccinated with a phonograph needle'. Among her regular house guests was Greta Garbo, who was discussing a comeback alongside Mason in Max Ophüls's adaptation of Honoré de Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais. Such was Mason's commitment to the project that he turned down the chance to headline Jean Renoir's The River (1951). But he forged a friendship with Ophüls, who cast him against type as the kindly doctor who rescues Barbara Bel Geddes from tyrannical millionaire Robert Ryan in Caught (1949), which was based on Libbie Block's novel, Wild Calendar.

Having played novelist Gustave Flaubert in Vincente Minnelli's Madame Bovary, Mason reunited with Ophüls on The Reckless Moment (both 1949), which saw him return to hissable villainy as the Los Angeles loan shark who tries to blackmail protective mother Joan Bennett in an adaptation of The Blank Wall, the Elizabeth Sanxay Holding novel.

Mason next teamed with Barbara Stanwyck on Mervyn LeRoy's East Side, West Side (1949) and Marta Torén on Hugo Fregonese's One Way Street (1950), which were made at MGM and Universal respectively. By freelancing in this manner, he avoided becoming attached to a single studio, which meant that he could also return to Britain for intriguing projects like Albert Lewin's Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), in which he played Hendrik van der Zee, the 17th-century Dutch sailor whose spirit enchants American nightclub singer, Pandora Reynolds (Ava Gardner).

However, Mason profitably returned to 20th Century-Fox for a number of assignments, including Henry Hathaway's The Desert Fox (1951). Mason was so impressed as Field Marshall Erwin Rommel that he reprised the role in Robert Wise's The Desert Rats (1953), a recreation of the Battle of Tobruk in 1941 that starred Richard Burton as the British commander striving to prevent the Afrika Korps from seizing control of the Suez Canal. He played another worthy wartime adversary in Joseph Mankiewicz's 5 Fingers (1952), which drew on the exploits of Elyesa Bazna, a double agent who worked as a valet to the British ambassador in Turkey and used the codename 'Cicero' to pass details of the proposed D-Day landings to the Nazis.

Feeling Restless

Having not enjoyed the experience of playing Rupert of Hentzau opposite Stewart Granger's Rudolph Rassendyll in Richard Thorpe's take on Anthony Hope's swashbuckler, The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), Mason derived even less pleasure from stooging for Alan Ladd in John Farrow's Botany Bay (1953) and Robert Wagner in Henry Hathaway's Arthurian adventure, Prince Valiant (1954), in which he had been cast as the treacherous Sir Brack. Despite relishing the role of Brutus, Mason had also been disappointed by Mankiewicz's all-star version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1953), which earned Marlon Brando an Oscar nomination for his depiction of Mark Antony, a role that had been earmarked for Richard Burton.

Keen to develop his own projects, Mason and Pamela had collaborated with Roy Kellino again on Charade. But, having narrated animator Stephen Bosustow's evocative cartoon version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart (1953), he turned down the lead in Zoltan Korda's adaptation of Daphne DuMaurier's English Civil War saga, The King's General, which went unmade. However, Mason did return to Europe for Carol Reed's The Man Between (1953), a Cold War noir that sees fugitive Nazi Ivo Kern co-operate with the Communist forces in the partitioned city of Berlin, even though he hopes he can secure a safe passage to the West by rescuing kidnapped English teacher, Susanne Mallison (Claire Bloom).

On his return to Hollywood, Mason found himself cast as Norman Maine in George Cukor's 1954 remake of William A. Wellman's A Star Is Born (1937). With his stock rising again, he was lured to Disney to play Captain Nemo in Richard Fleischer's take on Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), which also brought Kirk Douglas aboard the Nautilus as Ned Land.

Around this period, Mason made his only film as a director, the 1954 short, The Child. He also started appearing on American television and even hosted the TV series, Lux Video Theatre (1954-55). On the film front, Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck tried to persuade him to play Rochester opposite Audrey Hepburn in a remake of Robert Stevenson's Charlotte Brontë adaptation, Jane Eyre (1943). But Mason found no backers for his own take on Richard Hughes's adventure novel, A High Wind in Jamaica, which was eventually filmed by Alexander Mackendrick in 1965.

He regretted guesting as a guardian angel in Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's comedy Forever, Darling (1956), and was baffled as to why the Andrew L. Stone thrillers Cry Terror! and The Decks Ran Red (both 1958), failed to become box-office hits. But Mason's patience paid off, as he got to create one of his finest roles in Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life (1956). Equally memorable was his performance as Phillip Vandamm in Alfred Hitchcock's sprightly thriller, North By Northwest (1959), in which he suavely menaces Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in a mod-con home perched above Mount Rushmore. Mason would reunite with the Master of Suspense for the 'Captive Audience' episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-65), which is available from Cinema Paradiso in the Series 1 boxed set.

Recovering from a serious heart attack, Mason replaced Clifton Webb in proving unfussily heroic as Professor Oliver Lindenbrook searching for the lost city of Atlantis in Henry Levin's Jules Verne adaptation, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). But he ended the decade on much more Masonian form as Commander Max Easton in Guy Hamilton's underrated comedy thriller, A Touch of Larceny (both 1959), in which love prompt a wartime hero to fake his defection to the Soviet Union.

Becoming a Jobbing Actor

Mason rather drifted through the early part of the 1960s. He tried his hand at producing again with Leslie Stevens's 18th-century seadog saga, Hero's Island (1962), after he and the writer-director had gotten along famously while making Walter Lang's comedy, The Marriage-Go-Round (1961), which Stevens had scripted for Mason and Susan Hayward. Moreover, he had fun winding up John Mills, as the blue-blooded captain who coasts through the war before blocking his old colonel's plans for a luxury hotel in Ted Kotcheff's Tiara Tahiti (1962).

He also found a worthy sparring partner in Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel, Lolita (1962). But he would later regret that he never again worked with anyone as exacting as Kubrick, as 'I work better if a director will needle me, discipline me, help sharpen up my ideas.' Rather than build on this remarkable performance, however, Mason was forced to seek projects where the paycheque counted for more than the script.

In 1964, Pamela hired lawyer Marvin Mitchelson to handle her divorce claim and succeeded in scooping a $1 million settlement that was the first of its kind in the United States. Mason chivalrously accepted a charge of adultery, but son Morgan has since suggested that the 22-year union ended because of Pamela's serial infidelities. Wherever the blame lay, Mason lost his home and Charles Frend's Torpedo Bay (1964) became the first of many mediocre movies that he made solely to keep up the $14,000 monthly child support payments.

Basing himself in Vevey in Switzerland, Mason signed up to play Timonides, the former slave advising Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness) in Anthony Mann's The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). He also cropped up as cutthroat Gentleman Brown in Richard Brooks's adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim; in 'yellowface' as Kam Ling, opposite Omar Shariff, in Henry Levin's Genghis Khan (both 1965); as Count von Klugermann. alongside Jeremy Kemp and George Peppard in John Guillermin's Great War flying drama, The Blue Max (1966); as scheming tycoon Charles Calvert in Robert Parrish's Duffy; and as Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef in Terence Young's take on Mayerling (both 1968), which starred Omar Shariff and Catherine Deneuve as the star-crossed lovers, Crown Prince Rudolf and Baroness Maria Vetsera.

However, Mason wasn't entirely swayed by bumper pay days, as he stirred the pot as Bob Conway accusing Jake Armitage (Peter Finch) of having an affair with his wife during a Moroccan film shoot in Jack Clayton's interpretation of Penelope Mortimer's bestseller, The Pumpkin Eater (1964). As children's home owner James Leamington, he ignored the age gap to take a shine to Georgina Parkin (Lynn Redgrave) in Silvio Narizzano's take on Margaret Foster's novel, Georgy Girl (1966). His performance earned him a Best Supporting nomination. But Mason had little time for the Oscars, telling one reporter, 'They don't mean anything unless you win one; then your salary goes up.'

He certainly didn't make a fortune as the on-screen guide in Norman Cohen's nostalgic documentary, The London Nobody Knows (1967), which is available from Cinema Paradiso as part of a double bill with Douglas Hickox's offbeat love story, Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1968). Moreover, he was denied the privilege of playing George Smiley in Sidney Lumet's The Deadly Affair (1967), an all-star adaptation of John Le Carré's first novel, Call For the Dead, as Columbia was prevented from using the intelligence officer's name after Paramount had acquired the rights to it after casting Rupert Davies in Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965). However, Mason got to headline a second Le Carré outing in 1967, when he crossed into East Berlin to collect his father's body for burial in Ted Kotcheff's Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn, which was Rediffusion's first colour film for television.

The memorable roles kept coming, however. As John Lawyer, Mason sobers up to relive his glory days at the bar in order to help Geraldine Chaplin's boyfriend prove himself innocent of murder in Pierre Rouve's Stranger in the House (1967), a remake of the 1942 Henri Decoin thriller that was inspired by a novella by the prolific Georges Simenon. Even more notably, he finally got to hook up as actor and co-producer with Michael Powell (after being long linked with playing Prospero in an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest) on Age of Consent (1969), a reworking of Norman Lindsay's autobiographical novel about Australian artist Bradley Morahan, whose retreat to an island off the Great Barrier Reef brings unexpected inspiration in the form of free-spirited teenager, Cora Ryan (Helen Mirren).

The Velvet Voice Lives On

Despite his Yorkshire roots, Mason took no part in the social realist revolution until he crossed the Pennines to play Rafe Crompton in Peter Hammond's version of Bill Naughton's play, Spring and Port Wine (1970), in which the stern paterfamilias memorably keeps serving up the herring that daughter Hilda (Susan George) had refused to eat. While this remains one of Mason's signature roles, the less said the better about Burgess Meredith's The Yin and the Yang of Mr Go and a reunion with George in Richard Fleischer's sordid slave drama, Mandingo (1975), as both reflect poorly on all concerned.

Now considering himself a character actor, Mason started taking smaller roles in a growing range of pictures, including Eugenio Martin's Spaghetti Western, Bad Man's River (1972), and Fernando Di Leo's poliziottesco, Kidnap Syndicate (1975). In Terence Young's Cold Sweat (1970), he kidnaps Liv Ullmann in order to coerce Charles Bronson into undertaking a mission on the French Riviera, while he plays an active KGB operative masquerading as an MP in John Huston's quirky thriller, The Mackintosh Man (1973). On television, Mason narrated the BBC's six-part historical drama, The Search For the Nile (1971), while also appearing as Dr Polidari in Jack Smight's miniseries, Frankenstein: The True Story (1973), which starred Michael Sarrazin as The Creature.

Sadly, it's not currently possible to see how Mason fared in replacing Marlon Brando in Sidney Lumet's Child's Play (1972) or his cameo in Herbert Ross's cult neo-noir, The Last of Sheila (1973). But Mason steals the show as Magwich in Joseph Hardy's version of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1974), which stars Michael York as Pip. He would prove equally menacing as Grimes the chimney sweep in Lionel Jeffries's adaptation of Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1978), which combines live-action and animation. Yet Mason could still produce surprises, such as his relishable performance as Cyril Sahib, whose take on the home movies screened by an exiled Indian princess (Madhur Jaffrey) varies greatly from that of his hostess in James Ivory's Autobiography of a Princess (1976), which was produced by Ismail Merchant and scripted by Ruth Jawer Prahbvala.

Following a late cameo as Joseph of Arimathea in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, Mason joined James Coburn and Maximilien Schell in the German army suffering in the Soviet wilderness during Operation Barbarosa in Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron (both 1977). He remained in the Reich ranks as Eduard Seibert protecting Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) from Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) in Franklin J. Schaffner's adaptation of Ira Levin's bestseller, The Boys From Brazil. The Second World War also provided the backdrop to J. Lee Thompson's The Passage (1979), a take on Bruce Nicolayson's novel, The Perilous Passage, which sees Basque mountaineer Anthony Quinn lead scientist Mason and his family to safety before they can be apprehended by Malcolm McDowell's fulminating Nazi.

As he approached his 70th birthday, Mason found himself on the side of the angels in playing celestial messenger Mr Jordan in Heaven Can Wait (both 1978), Warren Beatty's remake of Alexander Hall's Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941), in which Robert Montgomery and Claude Rains have to deal with the fallout of a clerical error at the Pearly Gates. Mason proved equally affable as Dr Watson, alongside Christopher Plummer's Sherlock Holmes, as they strive to catch Jack the Ripper in 1880s Whitechapel in Bob Clark's Murder By Decree (1979).

A change of pace saw Mason play Richard Straker, the mysterious owner of a New England antique shop in Tobe Hooper's two-part take on Stephen King's Salem's Lot, while he remained in literary blockbuster territory to essay Sir Alec Nicholas, the shareholder watching the back of pharmaceutical heiress Elizabeth Roffe (Audrey Hepburn) in Terence Young's R-rated version of Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline (both 1979). The year also saw Mason take to the stage again, opposite his new Australian wife Clarissa Kaye, only for Faith Healer to close after just 20 performances.

Undaunted, he returned to the film fray as Admiral Brindsen, who is ordered by Downing Street to supervise troubleshooter Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (Roger Moore) in his bid to defuse the bombs that have been placed on an oil rig in Andrew V. McLaglen's North Sea Hijack (1980), which Jack Davies adapted from his own novel, Esther, Ruth and Jennifer. By contrast, Mason comes under suspicion as Odell Gardener in Guy Hamilton's Evil Under the Sun (1982), an Agatha Christie whodunit that brings Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) to the exclusive Adriatic hotel run by Daphne Castle (Maggie Smith).

Despite Anthony Andrews playing the title role, Mason received top billing in Douglas Camfield's tele-adaptation of Sir Walter Scot's Ivanhoe (1982), as Isaac of York, the Jewish merchant whose daughter, Rebecca (Olivia Hussey), inspires a penniless knight to heroic deeds at a time of tension between the Saxon populace and their Norman overlords. But Mason was on fiercer form later the same year, as Ed Concannon in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict.

It's safe to say that few expected to see Mason crop up alongside Monty Pythonites Graham Chapman, Eric Idle and John Cleese in Mel Damski's Yellowbeard (1983). But he camps it up with the best of them, as Captain Hughes, whose ship sets sail from Plymouth with a piratical stowaway aboard. Indeed, his love of comedy led him to narrate Kevin Brownlow's TV documentary, Unknown Chaplin (1983), which was very much a personal project, as Mason had befriended Charlie Chaplin after becoming his neighbour in Vevey.

Having completed his last leading role, in Michael Lindsay-Hogg's BBC adaptation of Graham Greene's novella, Dr Fischer of Geneva, Mason stepped into the role of landowner Sir Randolph Nettleby in Isabel Colgate's pacifist allegory, The Shooting Party (both 1985), after Paul Scofield was injured on the first day of filming. His scenes with John Gielgud, as anti-blood sport protester Cornelius Cardew, were the highlight of a feature that reflected Mason's own views as an animal lover.

He didn't live to see the film's release, however, as he died of a heart attack in Lausanne on 27 July 1984. His ashes remained in a bank vault until November 2000 after a legal wrangle involving Mason's children and the Sathya Sai Baba religious sect. But he was eventually interred close to Chaplin in the cemetery of Corsier-sur-Vevey on the shores of Lake Geneva. The tombstone bore Senator Edward Kennedy's words of comfort to Portland and Morgan on their father's passing: 'Never say in grief you are sorry he's gone. Rather, say in thankfulness you are grateful he was here.'