Anthony Dawson
Anthony Dawson had a face that did half the work: long, narrow and permanently faintly amused, the face of a man who has already calculated what you are worth to him. The Scottish actor built a career on it, and for more than thirty years he was who British and European producers called when a film needed somebody plausible and rotten.
Hitchcock used him best. As Charles Swann in Dial M for Murder he is the weak point in a clever man's plan, sweating politely through a scene that keeps tightening around him, and it remains the performance to judge him by. He repeated the trick for the studios in Midnight Lace and Libel, and again as Professor Dent in Dr. No, where he loses an argument to Sean Connery in the coldest scene the early Bond films ever staged.
He then appeared as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in From Russia with Love and Thunderball, which is a strange credit to hold: the most famous villain in the series, in films that never let the audience see his face. The rest is journeyman work in whatever happened to be shooting, from European Westerns like Death Rides a Horse through The Curse of the Werewolf, Tiger Bay, The Valachi Papers and, right at the end, Ghoulies II in 1987.
Movies (24)
- Dr. No (1962)
- From Russia with Love (1963)
- Thunderball (1965)
- Red Sun (1971)
- Dial M for Murder (1954)
- A Sky Full of Stars for a Roof (1968)
- The Count of Monte-Cristo (1975)
- Tiger Bay (1959)
- Death Rides a Horse (1967)
- The Battle of Neretva (1969)
- The Valachi Papers (1972)
- Triple Cross (1966)
- The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)
- The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
- Inchon (1981)
- Midnight Lace (1960)
- Ghoulies II (1987)
- The Long Dark Hall (1951)
- Libel (1959)
- Deadlock (1970)
- Operation Kid Brother (1967)
- The Jigsaw Man (1983)
- Where Is Parsifal? (1984)
- The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965)
TV (1)
Where to start with Anthony Dawson
Dial M for Murder first, and not only for him: it is the best film on the list, and his scene with Ray Milland is the reason the plot works at all. Watch what he does with ordinary politeness.
Dr. No next. Professor Dent is a small part with an enormous scene, and the Bond series never quite found that tone again. Then From Russia with Love and Thunderball for the Blofeld credits, which are more curiosity than performance.
For the rest, Tiger Bay is the strong British one, Midnight Lace the glossy Hollywood thriller, and Death Rides a Horse the pick of the European genre work, a handsome revenge Western that has aged better than most of its neighbours. The Curse of the Werewolf is the Hammer entry, and Ghoulies II the late curio.