Background
Stanley Baker was born on 27 February 1928 in Rhondda Cynon Taff, United Kingdom.
Stanley Baker was born on 27 February 1928 in Rhondda Cynon Taff, United Kingdom.
He is the first hint of proletarian male vigor against the grain of Leslie Howard, James Mason, Stewart Granger, John Mills, Dirk Bogarde, and the theatrical knights. Baker was a welcome novelty, that he is one of Britain’s most important screen actors, and that he has not yet been equaled—not even by Michael Caine.
Baker was for years typed as ugly, boorish, indelicate: Undercover (43, Sergei Nolbandov); All Over the Town (48, Derek Twist); Captain Horatio Hornblower (51, Raoul Walsh); Whispering Smith Hits London (52, Francis Searle); The Cruel Sea (53, Charles Freud); The Red Beret (53, Terence Young); Hell Below Zero (54, Mark Robson); Knights of the Round Table (54, Richard Thorpe); and The Good Die Young (54, Lewis Gilbert).
It was notable that his glowering hostility won him parts in American films—Beautifid Stranger (53, David Miller); Alexander the Great (55, Robert Rossen); and Helen of Troy (55, Robert Wise)—but in Britain he remained a heavy: as the upstart Welshman Henry Tudor in Richard III (55, Laurence Olivier) and in Campbell's Kingdom (57, Ralph Thomas).
The turning point came through Cy Endfield who directed Baker in three surprisingly American films set in moderately plausible British settings: Child in the Home (56); Hell Drivers (57)—about lorry drivers; and Sea Fury (58).
Baker appeared as a credible Gestapo man in The Align/ Hills (59, Robert Aldrich) and then fell in with Joseph Losey who capitalized on his growing power: first as the police inspector with a cold in Blind Date (59); next as Bannion, the doomed hero in The Criminal (60); and then as Twian, the fraud besotted with Eve (62). His Bannion captured all the rough strength of his earlv work and is one of Losey’s subtlest heroes. As for Twian—a Welshman— Baker lost nothing of the man’s maudlin self-loathing and showed that a utility-style actor was quite capable of the baroque.
As soon as he was established. Baker branched into production. Acting now seemed a secondary interest and he did not take enough time choosing his parts: The Guns of Nava rone (61, |. Lee Thompson); Sodom and Gomorrah (62, Aldrich); A Prize of Arms (62, Cliff Owen); In the French Style (63, Robert Parrish); Accident (66, Losey); La Ragazza con la Pistola (67, Mario Monicelli); Where’s Jack? (68, James Clavell); The Games (69, Michael Winner); and The Last Grenade (69, Gordon Flemyng).
He had produced, with great success: Zulu (64, Endfield), about Welsh soldiers in South Africa; Sands of the Kalahari (65, Endfield); Robbery (67, Peter Yates)—a rather coy version of the Great Train Robber)'; and Pei feet Friday (70, Peter Hall). Acting in all four, his thoughts had seemed fixed on the papers in his office.