Richard Hurndall

Spoilers below
Paul Temple and the Van Dyke Affair

I finally heard the last episode of Paul Temple and the Van Dyke Affair.

The effeminite young man, Roger Shelley, turns out to be Van Dyke. In the previous 7 episodes, he'd used one particular voice, a kind of Agnes Moorehead-type voice, in which he pronounces the last consonant of each word in an extended way, in particular the "t"'s.

In episode 8 he dropped the effeminate accent. His voice was so different that for a second I thought a different actor had stepped in...but then as he continued talking a bit of the old Shelly voice creeped in, so I knew it was the same actor.

I wish I could see a younger Hurndall in a TV performance somewhere, but the only thing he's been in was as the First Doctor in The Five Doctors.

In this last ep, Paul Temple leaves Roger Shelley alone in a train compartment with Phillip Droste and Droste's right hand man, McCall. Shelley was responsible for the death of Droste's wife. So Droste opens up the outside door, and he and McCall throw Shelly off the train. Shelley did great fear in this ep, and as my steady readers know, I always become interested in men who do great fear...

Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case

I now have both the 1954 Gilbert Case - Peter Coke's first attempt at the role of Paul Temple, and the 1959 Gilbert Case - the one with Simon Lack as Lance Reynolds, as opposed to Richard Williams in the 1954 version.

It's fun to compare the two versions - the scripts are exactly the same, so its interesting to compare the vocal performances - both of Coke and Westbury (who reprise their roles) and the other actors. Lack far outshines Williams (of course.) [Williams played Sir Graham Forbes in the Lack version.]

I'll be posting a more detailed review later.

I now have all the Temples that Lack was in - except the lost Madison case which was recreated about ten years ago with Crawford Logan as Paul Temple. Unfortunately, although this version is available, they're charging $20 or more...not sure if I want to pay that much for a recreation of a Lack performance. But I probably will. ; )

Simon Lack: Inspector Mazioli in Jason King: Toki

Jason King, the episode Toki - with Felicity Kendall as Toki. King is in love with her, but she's murdered by her criminal boyfriend.

Mazioli (Lack) has only one scene, at the end. (And he's wearing the same costume he wore in his only other Jason King appearance, in the same role, but larger, "Buried in the Cold, Cold Ground").

Simon Lack: The Saint, the Organization Man

A few days ago I shared Simon's scene one, as he enters a safehouse under guard. He has three more scenes, each with Norman Bird. (He doesn't interact with Roger Moore at all in this one.)

Simon being interrogated. They've overdone the sweat - but he isn't close to cracking, he's just under a hot lamp!



Simon turns off the lamp, opens the shades and lectures Spode on what the Chinese have done for him. His office is a palace compared to what Spode has.



Spode drives Craddock away, but the Saint sees him and runs him off the road.

Simon Lack: The Androids of Tara

Simon Lack played Swordmaster Zanak in Tom Baker's Doctor Who: The Androids of Tara, which starred Peter Jeffrey as the villain.

He has no action in the role - no sword fighting.

Here's screencaps from Episode 1 and just a wee bit of Episode 2.

Episode 1











Reinhardt has been kidnapped. The Doctor must get his android working.

Simon Lack - an Obit

I'd asked for info about Simon Lack on a message board called Brit Movies, and someone very kindly posted a PDF, the text of which I reproduce below.

Lots of actors lost out during World War II. They went off to war for 6 years while other actors stayed home and acted in movies and plays and kept in the public eye. The soldier-actor comes home...and if he was a "juvenile" lead, all of a sudden he's too old to play that lead...so he gets relegated to character roles.

Especially if he's 5 ft 7 or less, which I suspect is what Lack was.

The Times, Tuesday, Aug 12, 1980

Mr. Simon Lack, the actor, who died on August 6, had a steady career that began, appropriately enough for a Scot, in the Brandon-Thomas repertory companies at Edinburgh and Glasgow during the season of 1935-37. Born at Cleland on December 19, 1917, son of Alexander and Euphemia Macalpine, he was educated at Eastland Academy, Glasgow.

Reasonably, too, his first West End part, confidently managed, was also a Scot, the Glasgow financier’s son, part of a slight love interest, in Bridie’s The Last Trump (Duke of York’s, 1938). In the following year he had the brief and poignant scene of the dead airman, reappearing in his mother’s memory, in [J.B.]Priestley’s Music at Night (Westminster). Later for six years he was out of the theatre, serving with The Lancashire Fusiliers and The Buffs (and being mentioned in dispatches.)

Reappearing on the stage in 1946 [at age 29], he found an odd variety of of plays and parts: David in H.P. Templeton’s You Won’t Need the Halo (Arts), set in a London mission-hall; another David in Peter Yates’ The Assassin, a bold attempt at a verse tragedy in the grand manner (Lyric, Hammersmith); Gilbert in Jane, S. N. Behrman’s version of a story by [Somerset] Maugham (Aldwych, 1947); and Sextus in Cage Me A Peacock, a musical (Strand, 1947) set in classical Rome.

He had a long run as an amiably sympathetic young man in [Noel] Coward’s Relative Values (Savoy, 1951); and at various times played one of the undergraduates in Charley’s Aunt, and the elder son in Enid Bagnold’s The Chinese Prime Minister (Globe, 1965), besides his work out of London and in films.

He also made a number of television appearances and had been seen recently in Enemy at the Door and Telford’s Change. He had a part, too, in the new BBC television production The Borgias.

Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery

I downloaded the Geneva Mystery audio from Amazon.com because it was only $11 or $12 (some of the others are available, but they cost more money than I want to pay - but I don't think BBC Radio 7 ever aired this serial - only 6 eps instead of 8.)

It's not very good - and its different from other Temple mysteries in that in the first couple of eps, scenes took place between two characters - not with Paul and his wife present. The word "bitch" is actually used to describe a character, and Simon Lack's Vince Langham calls a character a "basket" twice (obviously a version of bastard.)

In addition, Margorie Westbury must have had a cold, because in the later episodes she sounds like she has laryngitis.

Simon Lack is in this as film director Vince Langham. He does not have a very large role, though, but he does well with what he's given. In this one he gets beaten up (there's always at least one character beaten severely inevery Temple serial - usually they die. Vince survived, though.)

This is the second to last Paul Temple serial, recorded in 1965. The next, and final Paul Temple, Paul Temple and the Alex Affair, was not recorded until 1968. That's the one that gave Simon Lack his best role in the series, as the hallucinating Carl Lathom.