Few have made film acting look as easy as Kenneth More. It was once said that he had 'the rare capacity to make decency interesting'. But there was often a hint of mischief about More's characters that made them seem affable and familiar. The secret to his success, however, was the sense of assurance that he exuded at a time when Britons were having to reassess themselves in the face of Austerity and the end of empire. As Cinema Paradiso discovers, More had the happy knack of persuading audiences - then and now - that things weren't as bad as they seemed.
Although he had a deceptive range, Kenneth More was one of those film stars who tended to play variations on his screen image. Whether battling Nazis or racing vintage cars, he played chirpy chappies who exuded pluck and positivity and called people 'old boy' or 'my old darling'. He might have been handsome, but he was never a conventional romantic lead. Similarly, for all his doughty resourcefulness, he was often a reluctant hero. More men often got the girl or the glory, but you always had the impression that they would have been just as content with a pint and a pipe.
The Wandering Schoolboy
Kenneth Gilbert More was born on 20 September 1914 in Gerards Cross, Buckinghamshire. Father Gilbert was an engineer who left wife Edith to raise Kenneth and his older sister Kate while he flew with the Royal Naval Air Service during the Great War. When the family moved to Bute House in Richmond, they were joined by a butler, a cook and a nanny. But the young Kenneth was bullied after being sent to board at Steyne School in Worthing and he was almost relieved when his father could no longer afford the fees after passing up an opportunity to collaborate with motor tycoon, William Morris. and frittering away an inheritance on ineffectual inventions.
Forced to accept the general manager post at the Jersey Eastern Railway, Gilbert relocated to St Helier in July 1924 and the 10 year-old Kenneth found Channel Island life much to his liking. Although not a star pupil, he settled at Victoria College, where he acted for the first time, most notably playing Lord Loam in a production of J.M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, a class comedy that would crop up twice more during More's professional career.
On leaving school, More followed in his father's footsteps by training to be a civil engineer. He didn't enjoy life in Shrewsbury, however. So, when Gilbert died in 1931, More quit his course and applied to join the RAF. Having been rejected on medical grounds, he took a job at Sainsbury's on The Strand to help his mother pay the bills. But he was keen to have an adventure and sailed to Canada with the intention of becoming a fur trapper. Unfortunately, his papers were not in order and the authorities took a dim view of the fact that one of his travelling companions was a fleeing married woman. So, More was deported under a cloud.
The Second Banana Who Went to Sea
While wandering through Central London, More spotted a vacancy notice for a stagehand at the Windmill Theatre in Soho. Open since 1932, this saucy venue had quickly become notorious for its nude tableaux vivants. However, it also presented 'Revudeville' sketches and owner Vivian Van Damm made More promise never to become an actor if he hired him.
Enjoying the backstage banter, More made such a good impression that Van Damm agreed to let him join comedian Ken Douglas on stage when his straight man cried off. Relishing the laughter in a sketch about a policeman, More began badgering Douglas and fellow comics Dick Tubb and Gus Chevalier to find spots for him in their acts. Having been promoted to assistant stage manager, More got a chance to act on camera in making his feature bow as an uncredited piano assistant in Basil Dean's Look Up and Laugh (1935), a Gracie Fields comedy that is available from Cinema Paradiso in a double bill with Monty Banks's Queen of Hearts (1936). Moreover, when Ace Films recorded 17 Windmill skits, More landed roles in Full Steam, Bottle Party (both 1936), Windmill Revels and Carry On London (both 1937).
Addicted to the roar of the greasepaint, More found himself an agent and took repertory jobs in Newcastle and Wolverhampton before being praised for his performance as an airman named Williams in James Parish's melodrama, Distinguished Gathering (1938), which played in Wimbledon and Hammersmith. The moment war broke out on 3 September 1939, however, he volunteered for the Royal Navy and saw action aboard the cruiser, HMS Aurora, and the aircraft carrier, HMS Victorious.
One of his duties aboard Aurora was to provide battle commentary for shipmates below deck and More took great pride in the fact that his acting experience enabled him to keep any hint of fear out of his voice. During one attack, he survived a narrow miss and later claimed that the horror of war meant that he refused to allow misfortune of any form to get him down.
More of the Same
On being demobbed in January 1946, More returned to the stage in The Crimson Harvest at the Gateway Theatre in Notting Hill, where he was spotted by the BBC. As the neophyte television service had been suspended during the war, executives sought to ready studio technicians for the resumption of live broadcasting by staging a series of close-circuit productions. Among them was They Flew Through the Sand, in which More played an RAF wing commander in North Africa.
When the service was resumed for its 1350 licence holders, More reprised the role after making history by playing the first sympathetic Nazi on British television in Cyril Connolly's adaptation of Jean Bruller's novel, The Silence of the Sea. Howard Vernon took the role of Werner von Ebrennac when Jean-Pierre Melville filmed the book in 1949, by which time More was thinking of rejoining the navy because he was tired of being offered mediocre parts. However, he must have enjoyed playing Mr Badger in Toad of Toad Hall, which was adapted from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, which was memorably animated by Cosgrave Hall between 1984-90.
Back in November 1946, More made his West End debut as a bluff clergyman in And No Birds Sing at the Aldwych. Situated near the Sainsbury's where More had worked, this theatre was famed for its comedies and Cinema Paradiso users can take their pick from four volumes of Aldwych Farces. Further plays followed, along with a return to features as a Lancaster bomb aimer in Peter Ustinov's School For Secrets (1946). Uncredited and unrecognisable in his outsize goggles, More cheerfully pocketed the £10 for a single day's work and returned to the boards.
While appearing in the West End in Noël Coward's Peace in Our Time, More was cast as Lieutenant Teddy Evans in Charles Frend’s Scott of the Antarctic (1948). Evans skippered the whaler Terra Nova before seeing Captain Robert Falcon Scott (John Mills) and his party off on the last leg of their bid to reach the South Pole. As More was contracted to his play, a stand-in was used for the scenes shot in Norway. The role didn't have an immediate impact on his fortunes, however, and needing quick cash to pay his rent, he took an uncredited bit as a prison officer in an ill-fitting uniform in Alberto Cavalcanti’s For Them That Trespass (1949).
As beggars couldn't be choosers, he put up with being billed as 'Kenneth Moore' in Lawrence Huntington's Man on the Run. Once again, he had to settle for a minor role, but he produced a rare display of villainy as the gamekeeper's assistant trying to blackmail army deserter Derek Bond. Blink and you'd miss his turn as a copper called Bonzo in Michael Barry's Stop Press Girl and he's only fitfully on-screen in Gordon Parry's prison drama, Now Barabbas (all 1949).
But the same year saw More play Ross opposite future Avenger Patrick Macnee in George More O'Ferrall's TV production of Macbeth, which had been filmed so atmospherically two years earlier by Orson Welles. Following a reunion with John Mills as a lieutenant commander monitoring the progress of a stricken submarine in Roy Ward Baker’s Morning Departure, More came into his own as the easy-going engineer who becomes the works manager in Bernard Miles's Chance of a Lifetime (1950), after boss Basil Radford hands control of his Fenland farm machinery factory to his troublesome workers.
Filmed in a neo-realist style, this fine film is an allegory of the upper bracket's response to Clement Attlee's reforming Labour government, whose achievements are vaunted by Ken Loach in his 2013 documentary, The Spirit of '45. Along with Morning Departure, it was nominated for the BAFTA for Best British Film, but was pipped by Basil Dearden's The Blue Lamp (1950), which made a star of Dirk Bogarde and gave Jack Warner a role for life on the BBC in Dixon of Dock Green (1955-76).
While on the tail of a suspected killer, More found himself following Jean Simmons and Trevor Howard to Liverpool as secret service agent Willy Shepley in Ralph Thomas's The Clouded Yellow. By contrast, in Lawrence Huntington's adaptation of Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair (1951), More plays mechanic Stanley Peters who protects spinster Dulcie Gray and mother Marjorie Fielding from an angry mob after 14 year-old Ann Stephens accuses them of kidnapping and beating her.
Despite making progress, More was back on one-scene cameo duty as a film director in Henry Cornelius's The Galloping Major. But he got to lose his temper with a Hollywood legend in Henry Koster's adaptation of Nevil Shute's No Highway in the Sky (both 1951), as his co-pilot of a Rutland Reindeer calls James Stewart 'a ruddy little squirt' after his aeronautical engineer sabotages a transatlantic flight after detecting metal fatigue.
Any hopes More had that this 20th Century-Fox release would boost his profile Stateside were dashed when he was denied an on-screen credit. But he fared better on being reunited with Glynis Johns (who had played a stewardess), as her pacifist artist cousin in Ralph Thomas's Appointment With Venus (1951), which took More back to the Channel Islands to help undercover soldier David Niven liberate a pedigree cow from the Nazis. He sailed on to France in John Eldridge's Brandy For the Parson (1952), as the gentleman smuggler who enlists the help of holiday sailors James Donald and Jean Lodge after they sink his boat and offer to take his contraband to London.
Adding some roguish charm to the trademark matey cheeriness, this companion to Alexander Mackendrick's Whisky Galore! (1949) saw More's name go above the title for the first time. He also participated in the climactic chase through the London Underground that resulted in J. Lee Thompson's The Yellow Balloon (1952) being released with an X certificate. However, More is largely confined to concerned support, as the bus-driving father of 13 year-old Andrew Ray, who is helping escaped crook William Sylvester after he threatens to tell the police that Ray killed his friend while they were playing on a bombsite.
He was also consigned to the margins in Delmer Daves's Never Let Me Go (1953), another brush with Hollywood that cast More as a radio correspondent who helps reporter Clark Gable smuggle ballerina wife Gene Tierney out of postwar Moscow. With Cornwall standing in for Estonia, this may be a clumsy chunk of Cold War propaganda. But More has a couple of choice scenes and the picture deserves to be better known.
The Everyman Superstar
Between 1954-62, Kenneth More was a permanent fixture in the top five stars in the Motion Picture Herald's annual box-office chart. Yet it was a stage role that set the ball rolling, as More was so lauded as former RAF pilot Freddie Page in Terence Rattigan's 1952 play, The Deep Blue Sea, that he was not only asked to reprise the role on BBC television, but also in Anatole Litvak's 1955 film version. More so impressed alongside Vivien Leigh that he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival (see Cinema Paradiso's Lions on the Lido article). Annoyingly, this version isn't available on disc in the UK, as audiences deserve to compare More's work with that of Tom Hiddleston in Terence Davies's 2011 remake.
Director Henry Cornelius was so taken by More on stage that he fought for him and John Gregson to play Ambrose Claverhouse and Alan McKim instead of the producer's choice of Guy Middleton and Dirk Bogarde in his motoring comedy, Genevieve (1953). Kay Kendall and Dinah Sheridan were wisely chosen for the pair's long-suffering partners, as their respective Spyker and Darracq motors creaked and caboomed their way through the London to Brighton vintage car rally to the jaunty accompaniment of Larry Adler's harmonica theme.
As More was doing eight stage performances a week during filming, Charlie Chaplin advised him to stop burning the candle at both ends. But the Rank front office didn't like the film and held it back while wondering how to promote it. Ultimately, it became one of the most beloved British comedies of all time and anyone who's not heard More's braying laugh should click the Add button on the Cinema Paradiso website right now.
With his big breakthrough stuck in the Pinewood vault, More had to keep taking whatever roles were offered, including that of the Irish stoker who competes for the affections of Joan Collins with journalist George Cole and professor Robertson Hare after they're shipwrecked on a desert island in Noel Langley's Our Girl Friday (1953). As More and Collins were still relative unknowns, the film didn't perform well on its first run. But it was relaunched as The Adventures of Sadie in 1957 in an effort to cash in on the pair's newfound fame.
Indeed, because Ambrose had still to become a bellwether for a nation on the upswing, More hired himself out at a bargain rate to play medical student Richard Grimsdyke in Ralph Thomas's Doctor in the House (1954). Although Dirk Bogarde was top-billed as Simon Sparrow, More won the BAFTA for Best British Actor and confirmed that he was now a bankable star. Indeed, he became so expensive that Rank couldn't afford to cast him in any of Thomas's six sequels - all of which are available from Cinema Paradiso: Doctor at Sea (1955); Doctor At Large (1957); Doctor in Love (1960); Doctor in Distress (1963); Doctor in Clover (1966); and Doctor in Trouble (1970).
Although he got the girl every now and then, More was never considered a romantic lead. However, his brisk positivity reflected the country's coming to terms with its new status. His can-do attitude was comically harnessed by Wendy Toye in Raising a Riot (1955), in which More is forced to park his high-flying naval career in order to care for his three children in a remote windmill after his wife is called away to nurse her mother. The sight of More in a pinny prompted Picturegoer to declare him the actor who best encapsulated the modern mood.
While he was filming The Deep Blue Sea, More was offered the lead in David Lean's adaptation of Richard Mason's novel, The Wind Cannot Read. However, he had read Paul Brickhill's account of the exploits of Douglas Bader, who had flown with the RAF and been imprisoned in Colditz Castle despite losing both legs in a flying accident in the 1930s. Ignoring the advice of fabled producer Alexander Korda and the great Laurence Olivier, More signed on for the lead in Lewis Gilbert's Reach For the Sky after Richard Burton had turned it down to headline Robert Rossen's Hollywood epic, Alexander the Great (both 1956).
More played golf with Bader before filming and decided to tone down what he considered his Rudyard Kipling characteristics. Films and Filming approved in averring that More's Bader was 'a symbol of everything we like to think of as English'. He lost out at the BAFTAs to Peter Finch in Jack Lee's adaptation of Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice for Best Actor, but his performance did much to land the Best British Film award, as Reach for the Sky became the biggest box-office hit in the UK since Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939).
Lean never forgave More for doubting his ability to direct him as the flight lieutenant who falls for a Japanese interpreter in wartime India. Ultimately, Dirk Bogarde took the role opposite Yoko Tani in Ralph Thomas's The Wind Cannot Read (1958). But Lean actually owed More his gratitude, as his reluctance convinced Lean to ditch the project in favour of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Oscar for Best Director.
Around the time he reportedly turned down several overtures from Hollywood (including two vehicles with Marilyn Monroe), More provided the bookend narration for Harold French's The Man Who Loved Redheads (1956), in which diplomat John Justin spends a lifetime besotted with Moira Shearer. In 1957, More signed a five-year deal for seven films with the Rank Organisation and kicked things off by revisiting The Admirable Crichton. Director Lewis Gilbert cast Cecil Parker as Lord Loam and teamed More and Diane Cilento as the butler and maid who take charge when a wealthy family is shipwrecked on a desert island. The critics fulminated at the revival of a theatrical warhorse when angry young men had stormed the London stage. But the film made money and reinforced More's reputation as a reassuring presence in a time of uncertainty.
He didn't have much luck with boats, though, as he demonstrated with his next two features. At least he managed to stay afloat in Henry Cornelius's Next to No Time, as his socially awkward engineer benefits from a glitch caused by the clock in the Queen Elizabeth's bar that gives him an entire Atlantic crossing to pluck up the courage to pitch an idea to tycoon Roland Culver. He had to think much more quickly, however, as Second Officer Charles Lightoller in Roy Ward Baker's A Night to Remember (1958), a harrowingly restrained recreation of the sinking of RMS Titanic in April 1912 that incorporated footage from Herbert Selpin's Titanic (1943).
This was made in Nazi Germany at the height of the war and released several months after its director was found dead in his cell after being arrested by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels for supposedly questioning the courage of the Third Reich's forces. Despite being lauded for its historical accuracy, Baker's film only did modest business, even after winning a Golden Globe. Academics have since suggested that the disaster came too close after the humiliation of the 1956 Suez Crisis for audiences to watch the slow demise of the unsinkable ship that had been emblematic of British hubris.
Today, camps form around A Night to Remember and James Cameron's Titanic (1997). But More's performance remains one of his finest, although he turned down a chance to reunite with Baker on The One That Got Away (1957), as he felt he would be miscast as an escaping German POW. The role went to Hardy Krüger, but More never got to fulfil his ambition of playing an army captain caught up in the Indian Mutiny, as Baker's planned adaptation of John Masters's bestseller, Nightrunners of Bengal, never came to fruition.
More did make it to the Raj, however, as he helped American nanny Lauren Bacall escort a maharajah's son across the subcontinent in 1905 in J. Lee Thompson's North West Frontier (1959). Much of the action was filmed in Spain, where More had previously swapped a pith helmet for a cowboy hat to play English gunsmith Jonathan Tibbs, who winds up having to keep frontier law and order alongside hotel owner Miss Kate (Jayne Mansfield) in Raoul Walsh's spoof Western, The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958). The Wild West set in Almeira would later be used for Spaghetti Westerns like Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), while the plot of a Brit going West to drum up business and becoming an accidental lawman was borrowed for Gerald Thomas's Carry On Cowboy (1965).
More had worked regularly with Thomas's brother, Ralph (see the Cinema Paradiso article Introducing a British Film Family ). But they were deemed to be the wrong choices to direct and headline a remake of The 39 Steps (1959), the John Buchan espionage thriller that had been staged so brilliantly by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935 and would be reworked again to clock-dangling effect by Don Sharp in 1978. Yet, while there's only fleeting chemistry between More and Finnish actress Taina Elg, he plays Richard Hannay with a tweedy derring-do that is closer in spirit to Robert Donat than Robert Powell. Three years later, Sean Connery would change the rules of the spy game in Terence Young's Dr No (1962). But this remains an entertaining caper that's well worth renting from Cinema Paradiso.
Falling Out of Step
More started the 1960s as he had left off the decade that had made him by delivering one of the most nuanced performances of his entire career in Lewis Gilbert’s adaptation of C.S. Forester's Sink the Bismarck! (1960). Rather than bestriding the bridge of a warship, Captain Jonathan Shepard prowled the operations room at the Admiralty, as he co-ordinated the search for the German battleship skippered by Günther Lütjens (Karel Štepánek), who had sunk his last command. Tempering bitter enmity with strategic calculation, More also got a rare chance to show emotion, as he reacts to the news that his son is missing in action.
As social realism brought a political edge to British cinema, More was offered the role of a strike-breaker in Bryan Forbes's factory drama, The Angry Silence. At 46, More felt he was too old for a part that slewed too far away from his screen image and Richard Attenborough (who was nine years his junior) stepped into the breach. However, More also seemed out of place in Basil Dearden's Man in the Moon (both 1960), a comedy in which a man immune to every known disease begins training to be an astronaut only to prove his fallibility after he falls in love with Shirley Anne Field.
More was so blindsided when the picture flopped that he took time out to direct his first play. Set in Malta during the wartime siege (which had been covered in Brian Desmond-Hurst's Malta Story, 1953), Anthony Kimmins's The Angry Deep (1961) included trot-on parts for four pigs named Zsa Zsa. Tallulah, Vera and Bessie. When the play went on tour, however, a Foot and Mouth outbreak meant that the porcine quartet had to be replaced by models
Against his better judgement, More was coaxed into playing a jewel thief who becomes the subject of a teenage crush when Susannah York and her siblings come to stay in the French countryside with his paramour, Danielle Darrieux. Lewis Gilbert's adaptation of Rumer Godden's The Greengage Summer (1961) echoes Jean Renoir's take on another of Godden's novels, The River (1951). More regarded it as one of his happiest assignments, but the sense of well-being didn't last long, as he was fired by Rank for heckling managing director John Davis at a BAFTA gala at the Dorchester. To add insult to injury, More was replaced by David Niven in J. Lee Thompson's blockbuster version of Alistair MacLean's The Guns of Navarone (1961).
Richard Burton's travails on the Roman set of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's over-running epic, Cleopatra (1963), afforded More the opportunity to return to television as an interviewer striving to expose cabinet minister Ralph Richardson in Alvin Rakoff's Heart to Heart (1962), a Terence Rattigan play that had been inspired by the BBC series, Face to Face (1959-62), which is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. He also showed his philanthropic side when he worked solely for expenses on Clive Donner's Some People (1962), which was made in aid of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme and the National Playing Fields Association.
More's face didn't quite fit in this semi-realist study of juvenile delinquency and redemption in a rundown part of Bristol. But he met future wife Angela Douglas during filming before, ironically, playing a man who runs away with a woman 25 years his junior in Ted Kotcheff's ITV teleplay, Collect Your Hand Luggage (1963). He was in more familiar surroundings as an officer keeping some raw recruits out of trouble in Wendy Toye's We Joined the Navy. although his beard made him hard to recognise as Juno beachmaster Captain John Maud in The Longest Day (both 1962), an all-star adaptation of Cornelius Ryan's account of the D-Day landing that was co-directed by Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton and Bernhard Wicki.
Following this cameo, More returned to the stage for the first time in 11 years opposite Celia Johnson in the comedy, Out of the Crocodile (1963). However, the critics were less kind to Our Man Crichton (1964), a musical reworking of the Barrie satire that More knew was doomed when he looked into the audience and saw Noël Coward sadly shaking his head.
Confronting the fact that his fortunes were starting to dwindle, More excelled in Peter Yates's The Comedy Man (1964), as Chick Byrd, an ageing actor who is struggling to reinvent himself after being fired from a repertory company in the north for sleeping with the producer's wife. Enduring personal and professional humiliations with good grace, More's performance deserved award recognition. But news of his affair shocked his fans and the delayed feature was eventually released in an odd double bill with Peter Brook's adaptation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1963).
Once again, the fates conspired to kick More when he was down, as his role as Samantha Eggar's mentor in William Wyler's adaptation of John Fowles's The Collector (1965) was left on the cutting room floor. Having just turned 50, he could have been forgiven for thinking that his career was on the down slope. But More was about to reach his biggest audience to date, on television.
A Small-Screen Sunset
With his cinematic options narrowing, More kept himself busy in television and theatre. Having played military types in The Scapegoat and Old Soldiers (both 1964), he headlined the four-part serial, Lord Raingo (1966), which was based on an Arnold Bennett story inspired by the Great War exploits of Lord Beaverbrook. However, he wasn't sure he was suitable for either of the roles he was offered in 1967.
He turned down the lead in Roy Ward Baker's sci-fi thriller, Quatermass and the Pit, but accepted reassurances from writer-producer Donald Wilson that he was ideal casting for Young Jolyon in the BBC's 26-part serialisation of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga. This was the last major chapterplay the corporation made in black and white and the lack of colour has limited its revival options. But, as Britain went psychedelic during the Summer of Love, audiences were gripped by the antics of Jolyon, Soames (Eric Porter), Irene (Nyree Dawn Porter) and Fleur (Susan Hampshire). Their appeal was also global, as this became the first BBC programme to be shown in the Soviet Union.
More featured in the first 15 episodes and, despite having been a film star for over a decade, he couldn't go anywhere without being recognised. The role passed to Rupert Graves when ITV remade The Forsyte Saga in 2002. But it didn't come close to having the same cultural impact as its predecessor, which is unfortunately unavailable through Cinema Paradiso. No one, however, can see More's follow-up project, as BBC Controller of Features David Attenborough had made a deal to make The White Rabbit (1967) on the proviso that the tapes were wiped to ensure a proposed biopic of war hero Wing Commander Frederick Yeo-Thomas had no competition. Despite Richard Burton, Dirk Bogarde, James Mason and John Mills being linked with the role, however, the picture was never made and More's acclaimed performance vanished after a single transmission.
Having played an alcoholic doctor in Dark of the Sun (aka The Mercenaries), Jack Cardiff's take on Wilbur Smith's novel about Congolese diamond smugglers, More enjoyed a pleasing stage run in William Douglas Home's comedy, The Secretary Bird (both 1968). But, while he was still in demand for TV and theatrical leads, he was largely confined to supporting roles in features like Alberto Lattuada’s Fräulein Doktor, Richard Attenborough's directorial debut, Oh! What a Lovely War, and Guy Hamilton's Battle of Britain (all 1969). Swapping the uniform of Kaiser Wilhelm II for RAF blue, More took cover from a Luftwaffe raid with Susannah York in what proved to be his last war film.
He was next seen as a singing Ghost of Christmas Present haunting Albert Finney's Victorian miser in Ronald Neame's Scrooge (1970), which was nominated for four Oscars and five Golden Globes. Following more stage success in a revival of Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (1970) - which had been filmed by Anthony Asquith with Robert Donat in 1948 and would be again by David Mamet with Jeremy Northam in 1999 - More starred in Alan Bennett's second play, Getting On (1971). He also showed his versatility in the BBC series, Six Faces (1972), in which he played a businessman who presents a different aspect to everyone he encounters.
This is the kind of series that should be available on DVD, along with the likes of Shades of Greene, which showcased the short stories of Graham Greene. Having been plagued by a kidney stone while rehearsing the short-lived play, Sign of the Times (1974), More hit form again in the title role of Father Brown (1974), ITV's 13-case dip into G.K. Chesterton's fiendish whodunits. Almost half a century later, a debate rages about who came closer to capturing the literary character of the Catholic cleric: Alec Guinness in Robert Hamer's Father Brown (1954), More or Mark Williams in the long-running BBC update, Father Brown (2013-).
Consistently turning down offers from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, More took huge pride in the opening of The Kenneth More Theatre in Ilford, Essex in 1975. But he brought down the curtain on his own stage career two years later, when he played the Duke of Bristol in a revival of Frederick Lonsdale's On Approval. Further TV roles followed, alongside Joanna Lumley in Goose With Pepper and Claire Bloom in Alvin Rakoff's In Praise of Love (1975), a one-act Rattigan play that had been inspired by the marriage of Rex Harrison and More's Genevieve co-star, Kay Kendall.
More still had unfinished business with the cinema, however. as he burst into song once again as King Michael Hordern's chancellor in Bryan Forbes's The Slipper and the Rose (1976). This reworking of Cinderella with Gemma Craven and Richard Chamberlain boasted songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, who were played by Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak in John Lee Hancock's Saving Mr Banks (2013) which chronicled the making of Walt Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).
In Peter Medak's tele-version of The Rocking Horse Winner, More assumed the avuncular role that Ronald Squire had taken in Anthony Pelissier's 1949 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence story (which is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso). However, he was on more dynamic form as Professor Lindenbrook in Juan Piquer Simón's version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth (aka Where Time Began, 1977), the Jules Verne adventure that Henry Levin had filmed with James Mason in 1959 and Eric Brevig would film with Brendan Fraser in 2008.
More completed a busy year by playing a hotel owner who hopes to seduce the Queen during a Coronation regatta in Two Stars For Comfort and by narrating David Rolfe's BAFTA-winning documentary about the Turin Shroud, The Silent Witness (both 1977). He also published a second volume of autobiography, More or Less, and essayed Susan Penhaligon's protective father in Gerry O'Hara's Leopard in the Snow (1978), a Mills & Boon romance penned under a pseudonym by the prolific Mildred Grieveson, who has written over 160 romantic novels.
Although one wouldn't associate the name of Kenneth More with a cult hit, his performance as soap opera writer Peter Ingram has somewhat flown under the radar in the excellent three-part BBC series, An Englishman’s Castle (1978), in which a resistance force is formed to oppose the regime imposed upon a conquered Britain by the victorious Nazis. He seemed less engaged while seated at the Round Table, with John Le Mesurier's Sir Gawain, in Russ Mayberry's Unidentified Flying Oddball (aka The Spaceman and King Arthur, 1979), a Disneyfication of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court, which had been filmed by Tay Garnett with Bing Crosby in 1949.
Following the teleplay, The Pump, More made his final appearance as Dr Jarvis Lorry in Jim Goddard's tele-adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities (both 1980), the role that had been taken by Cecil Parker in Ralph Thomas's 1958 version, with Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carton. As his health declined following a diagnosis of a rare form of Parkinson's Disease, More was forced into retirement. Nursed by Angela Douglas, he died on 12 July 1982 at the age of 67.
A unique talent whose work reflected his own dignity, geniality and courage, More remains instantly recognisable the second he appears on screen and he is certain to continue bringing pleasure to millions for decades to come.
