Please say that. To join Helen is my only ambition. [10] The scene in which Tarkin and Organa appear together on the Death Star, just before the destruction of the planet Alderaan, was the first scene with major dialogue that Fisher filmed for Star Wars. He gets atop a refectory table, and with a running jump, Van Helsing tears the curtains down, exposing Dracula to the light of day. [10] Along with Alec Guinness, who was ultimately cast as Kenobi, Cushing was among the best known actors at the time to appear in Star Wars, as the rest of the cast were then relatively unknown. "Charleston fanatics ready to celebrate 'Revenge'". Cushing played one part against Hayward in one scene, then the opposite part in another, and ultimately the scenes were spliced together in a split screen process that featured Hayward in both parts and left Cushing's work cut from the film altogether. $10.64 . Cushing gained worldwide fame for his appearances in 22 horror films from the Hammer studio, particularly for his role as Baron Frankenstein in six of their seven Frankenstein films, and Doctor Van Helsing in five Dracula films. But millions want to see me as [Baron] Frankenstein, so that's the one I do. Chibnall, Steve and Petley, Julian (2001). Peter Wilton Cushing was born on May 26, 1913 in Kenley, Surrey, England, to Nellie Maria (King) and George Edward Cushing, a quantity surveyor. Fisher agreed, and the scene was used in the film. By the time Van Helsing arrives in Karlstadt to inform the Holmwood family of Harker’s death, Lucy is already infected  by Dracula. [18] Although the job meant Cushing received no actual screen time, he was eventually cast in a bit part himself as the king's messenger, which made The Man in the Iron Mask his official film debut. [105] Cushing used the emotions from the recent loss of his wife to add authenticity to the widower character's grieving. Worse still, one of Dracula’s brides bites Harker in the neck. [7] Cushing harboured aspirations for the arts all throughout his youth, especially acting. After so many lean years, Peter loved that he could finally give Helen more than the bare necessities she’d lived on without complaint for so long. A Place in the Sun (1951) & Shelley Winters vs. Frank Sinatra! [45] After his wife's death Cushing visited several churches and spoke to religious ministers, but was dissatisfied by their reluctance to discuss death and the afterlife, and never joined an organized religion. [11], Cushing wanted to enter the acting profession after school, but his father opposed the idea, despite the theatrical background of several of his family members. In Horror of Dracula Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), comes searching for him but finds the castle deserted. Text taken from Peter Cushing, Wookieepedia, Wikia. [12], Cushing eventually applied for a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. $10.64. $36.80 Buy It Now 18d 16h, $31.72 Shipping, 30-Day Returns, eBay Money Back Guarantee. Harker knows that Dracula is a vampire, and that he preys on the town’s citizens. Once again, Helen was there for Peter. The set provided technical difficulties, and all of Cushing's lines had to be post-synched. During Frankenstein, Lee even thought he lost his vision after acid from the fake blood used in one scene got into his eyes. With each Hammer film Peter Cushing starred in, he became more and more associated with the horror film genre, something that deeply worried his wife Helen, who longed for Peter’s versatility to be recognized. [121], When Star Wars was first released in 1977, most preliminary advertisements touted Cushing's Tarkin as the primary antagonist of the film, not Vader;[122] Cushing was extremely pleased with the final film, and he claimed his only disappointment was that Tarkin was killed and could not appear in the subsequent sequels. Likes. The hectic schedule became overbearing for Cushing, who had to drop out of the play and resolved to never again attempt a film and play simultaneously. He was not cast because he insisted he could not perform in an American accent. Helen’s constant supply of encouraging notes further boosted Peter’s confidence. Stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Lee then further injured himself as he stumbled around the set in a teary, blurry haze from the discomfort of those red lenses! By 1956, Peter Cushing’s skilled television performances and popularity with audiences caught the attention of film studios. He advises Lucy’s brother Arthur (Michael Gough) and his wife Mina (Melissa Stribling) to keep the windows to Lucy’s room closed—so Dracula can’t get in—and to put garlic flowers around the room, a vampire repellent. The Satanic Rites of Dracula was the last Dracula film that Christopher Lee played the Dracula role in, as ... John Carpenter states that he offered the role of Samuel Loomis to Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, before Donald Pleasence took the role. "[32], Hamlet won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and earned Cushing praise for his performance. Knight, Chris (1971). link] the two men became fast friends: “From the first time we met on the set of Frankenstein, at Bray, Peter Cushing and I were friends. [45] He later said that his career decisions entailed selecting roles where he knew that he would be accepted by the audience. Adapted from a serial novella of the same name, it was a drama film about a nurse played by Carole Lombard working in a poorly-equipped country hospital. [114], During the filming of Star Wars, Cushing was provided with a pair of boots far too small to accommodate the actor's size twelve feet. By Dracula, the friendship was sealed. Lee also shares in his book that once fully bandaged up in his “creature” costume for Frankenstein, he loved nothing better than to go sing opera to Peter: “Generally when I was fully encased in bandages, I preferred to go in and harass Peter, singing opera to him through the crevices, and performing soft-shoe shuffles with him…”. Jimmy Sangster, who wrote the screenplays for Frankenstein and Dracula, believed that these films remain captivating because of their unique spins on classic stories. At the end of the day, most of us like it when the good guys win, and in both Frankenstein and Dracula, they do. Peter Cushing as the ruthlessly committed Van Helsing in Dracula/Horror of Dracula. “Dramatic use” indeed! [109] Cushing appeared in the television film The Great Houdini (1976) as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. He earned particular acclaim for his lead performance in a BBC Television adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954). [87] Cushing played the role in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. [14][144] In accordance with his wishes, Cushing had a low-key funeral with family and friends, although hundreds of fans and well-wishers came to Canterbury to pay their respects. Despite the torn critical response, Universal Studios was obviously impressed, for after the success of both The Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula, Universal gave Hammer the rights to re-make the rest of the gothic horror tales Universal had earlier popularized onscreen, including The Mummy and The Phantom of the Opera. '"[47], Unlike Frankenstein (1931) produced by Universal, the Hammer films revolved mainly around Victor Frankenstein, rather than his monster. Although one of her lines referred to Tarkin's "foul stench," she said the actual actor smelled like "linen and lavender," something Cushing attributed to his tendency to wash and brush his teeth thoroughly before filming because of his self-consciousness about bad breath. [58] Cushing said one of the biggest challenges during filming was not missing whenever he struck a prop stake with a mallet and drove it into a vampire's heart. [78] Among his final Hammer roles was Fear in the Night (1972), where he played a one-armed school headmaster apparently terrorising the protagonist, played by Judy Geeson. [21] In the first, The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), his protagonist is sentenced to death by guillotine, but he flees and hides under the alias Doctor Victor Stein. I can totally picture Christopher Lee, all gruesome-looking in full costume, serenading Peter, and dancing with him. [102][87] Cushing wrote the forewords to two books about the detective: Peter Haining's Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook (1974) and Holmes of the Movies: The Screen Career of Sherlock Holmes (1976), by David Stuart Davies. Van Helsing performs a blood transfusion from Arthur, to Mina, and saves her life. "[156], In his autobiography, Cushing implies that he attempted suicide on the night of his wife's death by running up and down stairs in the vain hope that it would induce a heart attack. Tags: vampire, dracula-prince-of-darkness, frankenstein, dracula, abraham-van-helsing Cushing died in 1994 of prostate cancer. [18] In the autumn of 1946, after the war ended, Cushing unsuccessfully auditioned for the part of Paul Verrall in a stage production of the play Born Yesterday that was being staged by famed actor and director Laurence Olivier. 0. "Does this cancer run in the family? Van Helsing was only pretending to be unconscious, and he breaks free from Dracula. The film gave Cushing the highest amount of visibility of his entire career, and helped inspire younger audiences to watch his older films. [81], He appeared in the biographical epic film John Paul Jones (1959), in which Robert Stack played the title role of the American naval fighter in the American Revolutionary War. Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2020. [51] Many felt Cushing's performance helped create the archetypal mad scientist character. No, Dracula is not in it, but Peter Cushing is, and his performance as Van Helsing here is one of his best roles ever. [21] Around the same time, Cushing played the original nineteenth century Van Helsing in The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (also 1974), a co-production between Hammer Studios and the Shaw Brothers Studio, which brought Chinese martial arts into the Dracula story. With that much dedication to gaining insight into his characters, it’s no wonder that The Curse of Frankenstein  and Horror of Dracula continue to captivate and gain fans. He performed in such plays as Robert E. Sherwood's The Petrified Forest, Arnold Ridley's The Ghost Train, S. N. Behrman's Biography and a modern dress version of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. During filming he asked director Terence Fisher for permission to drive a harpoon through the mummy's body during a fight scene, to explain the poster image. [14][27] They fell in love and were married on 10 April 1943. [35][10] Among them was the John Huston film Moulin Rouge (1952) in which he played a racing spectator named Marcel de la Voisier appearing with José Ferrer, who played the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. [63] The next year, Cushing appeared in I, Monster (1971),[10] which was adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, alongside Lee as the Jekyll/Hyde figure. In January 1995, a memorial service was held in The Actor's Church in Covent Garden, with addresses given by Christopher Lee, Kevin Francis, Ron Moody and James Bree. So, what is it that makes these two Hammer horror films—which each generated their own epic series of films through the years—so timeless and compelling? The horror pictures give so much pleasure. [65], Although most well known for his roles in the Frankenstein and Dracula films, Cushing appeared in a wide variety of other Hammer productions during this time. [10] Far from being deterred by Cushing's unsuccessful audition the year before, Olivier remembered the actor well and was happy to cast him,[18][10] but the only character left unfilled was the relatively small part of the foppish courtier Osric. As Fisher once shared: “If my films reflect my own personal view of the world in any way, it is in their showing of the ultimate victory of good over evil, in which I do believe. His old friend and co-star John Mills encouraged him to publish his memoirs as a way of overcoming the reclusive state Cushing had placed himself into following her death. Why I preferred Cushing … [153] He also had a great interest in ornithology and wildlife in general. Davies, the Purley County Grammar School physics teacher who produced all the school's plays, recognised some acting potential in him and encouraged him to participate in the theatre, even allowing Cushing to skip class to paint sets. Cushing sought and was cast in the role. Peter on the other hand was a bit more pragmatic than Helen about the typecasting issue. Cushing appeared only briefly in A Chump at Oxford (1940) and his scenes took just one week to film, but he was proud to work with whom he called "two of the greatest comedians the cinema has ever produced. Instead, seizing upon Cushing's interest in art and drawing, he got his son a job as a surveyor's assistant in the drawing department of the Coulsdon and Purley Urban District Council's surveyor's office during the summer of 1933. [21], Cushing later starred in the fifteen-episode BBC television series Sherlock Holmes, once again reprising his role as the title character with Nigel Stock as Watson, though only six episodes now survive. Cushing's biographer Tony Earnshaw said Cushing's performance in The Masks of Death was arguably the actor's best interpretation of the role, calling it "the culmination of a life-time as a Holmes fan, and more than a quarter of a century of preparation to play the most complex of characters". Scully, Rob (11 August 1994). Hammer Studios' publicity department put out a story that when Cushing first encountered Lee without the make-up on, he screamed in terror. As a result, he asked Lucas to film more close-up shots of him from the waist up and, after the director agreed, Cushing wore slippers during the scenes where his feet were not visible. [27] In 1972, he was quoted in the Radio Times as having said, "Since Helen passed on I can't find anything; the heart, quite simply, has gone out of everything. The film stars Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing and takes place in a contemporary setting. Find great deals on eBay for peter cushing dracula. [67] Cushing and Lee appeared together in the Hammer horror The Mummy (1959), with Cushing as the archaeologist John Banning and Lee as the antagonist Kharis. Cushing starred as Parson Blyss, the local reverend of an 18th-century English coastal town believed to be hiding his smuggling activities with reports of ghosts. Cushing’s push for a younger Van Helsing was wise: there’s no way the final showdown between Dracula and Van Helsing would be as gripping if Peter’s natural athleticism was stifled by geriatric costume and makeup. "How Jim fixed it for horror actor Cushing" (8 May 2004). The latter film starred Deborah Kerr, Cushing's co-star from The End of the Affair, and Gary Cooper, one of Cushing's favourite actors. Cushing wished for a strain of rose to be named after his wife, and it was arranged for the Helen Cushing Rose to be grown at the Wheatcroft Rose Garden in Edwalton, Nottinghamshire. Cushing appeared in several other Hammer films, including The Abominable Snowman (1957), The Mummy and The Hound of the Baskervilles (both 1959), the last of which marked the first of the several occasions he portrayed the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. [39] Cushing was cast in the lead role of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), marking the first of twenty-two films he made for Hammer. [5] Although raised during wartime, Cushing was too young to understand or become greatly affected by it, and was shielded from the horrors of war by his mother, who encouraged him to play games under the kitchen table whenever the threat of possible bombings arose. When the cross is placed in Mina’s hand, it burns her skin, evidence that Dracula has already bit her, and plans to make Mina his next bride. [27] He suffered from nyctophobia from early in his life, but in his later years overcame this by forcing himself to take walks outside after midnight. [21] It was filmed on location in County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland. All these you defeated and rose and triumphed to win the heart of the nation.”. [48] Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster wrote the protagonist as an ambitious, egotistical and coldly intellectual scientist who despised his contemporaries. Like Guinness, Cushing had difficulty with some of the technical jargon in his dialogue, and claimed he did not understand all of the words he was speaking. Free shipping . His mother had so hoped for a daughter that for the first few years of his life, she dressed Peter in girls' frocks, let his hair grow in long curls and tie them in bows of pink ribbon, so others often mistook him for a girl. He appeared in Corruption (1968), a film that was billed as so horrific that "no woman will be admitted alone" into theatres to see it. Peter Cushing was known for his great contributions of research and ideas to his films over the years. Dracula is Hammer Films’ 1958 classic horror film directed by Terence Fisher and which starred Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing. The only one who may be able to protect them is Dr. van Helsing, Harker's friend and fellow-student of vampires, who is determined to destroy Dracula, whatever the cost. He scrutinised the costumes and screenwriter Peter Bryan's script, often altering words or phrases. A second optical scare occurred during the filming of Dracula, when Lee’s eyes reacted adversely to the red contact lenses that were so integral to Dracula’s blood-thirsty appearance. 0. [118], During this period, Cushing was honoured by the British Film Institute, which invited him in 1986 to give a lecture at the National Film Theatre. It’s a concept that seems quite removed from the horror films produced today, making Fisher’s take all the more compelling sixty-plus years later. As Peter Cushing shared in a 1973 interview, “No one connected with that first film had any idea that this incredible snowball would start and keep rolling to this very day.”. [137] Cushing also wrote a children's book called The Bois Saga, a story based on the history of England. [134] The final notable roles of Cushing's career were in the comedy Top Secret! 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