Michael Goodliffe

Michael Goodliffe
Goodliffe Painted by Aubrey Davidson-Houston in the role of Hamlet, performed while a POW in Germany. Goodliffe Painted by Aubrey Davidson-Houston in the role of Hamlet, performed while a POW in Germany.
Born	Lawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe (1914-10-01)1 October 1914 Bebington, Cheshire, England
Died	20 March 1976(1976-03-20) (aged 61) Wimbledon, London, England
Cause of death	Suicide by jumping
Years active	1936–1976

Lawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe (1 October 1914 – 20 March 1976) was an English actor known for playing suave roles such as doctors, lawyers and army officers. He was also sometimes cast in working class parts.

Biography

Goodliffe was born in Bebington, Cheshire, the son of a vicar, and educated at St Edmund's School, Canterbury, and Keble College, Oxford. He started his career in repertory theatre in Liverpool before moving on to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon. He joined the British Army at the beginning of the Second World War, and received a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in February 1940. He was wounded in the leg and captured at the Battle of Dunkirk. Goodliffe was incorrectly listed as killed in action, and even had his obituary published in a newspaper. He was to spend the rest of the war a prisoner in Germany.

Whilst in captivity he produced and acted in (and in some cases wrote) many plays and sketches to entertain fellow prisoners. These included two productions of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, one in Tittmoning and the other in Eichstätt, in which he played the title role. He also produced the first staging of Noël Coward's Post Mortem at Eichstätt. A full photographic record of these productions exists.

After the war he resumed his professional acting career. As well as appearing in the theatre, he worked in film and television. He appeared in The Wooden Horse in 1950 and in other POW films. His best-known film was A Night to Remember (1958), in which he played Thomas Andrews, designer of the RMS Titanic. His best-known television series was Sam (1973–75) in which he played an unemployed Yorkshire miner. He also appeared with John Thaw and James Bolam in the 1967 television series Inheritance.

Suffering from depression, Goodliffe had a breakdown in 1976 during the period that he was rehearsing for a revival of Equus. He committed suicide a few days later by leaping from a hospital fire escape while a patient at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon.

Filmography

• The Small Back Room (1949) as Till
• Stop Press Girl (1949) as McPherson
• The Wooden Horse (1950) as Robbie
• Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) as Col. Caillard - POW Escort
• Cry, the Beloved Country (1951) as Martens
• The Hour of 13 (1952) as Anderson
• Sea Devils (1953) as Ragan
• Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1953) as Robert Walpole
• Front Page Story (1954) as Kennedy
• John Wesley (1954)
• The Crowded Day (1954) as Eve's Husband
• The End of the Affair (1955) as Smythe
• The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955) as Count De Dunois
• The Way Out (1955) as John Moffat
• Wicked as They Come (1956) as Larry Buckham
• The Battle of the River Plate (1956) as Captain McCall - R.N., British Naval Attache for Buenos Aires
• Fortune Is a Woman (1957) as Detective Insp. Barnes
• The One That Got Away (1957) as R.A.F. Interrogator
• Carve Her Name With Pride (1958) as Coding Expert
• The Camp on Blood Island (1958) as Father Paul Anjou
• Up the Creek (1958) as Nelson
• A Night to Remember (1958) as shipbuilder Thomas Andrews
• Three Crooked Men (1958) as Shop customer
• Further Up the Creek (1958) as Le. Commander Blakeney
• The 39 Steps (1959) as Brown
• The White Trap (1959) as Inspector Walters
• Sink the Bismarck! (1960) as Captain Banister
• Testament of Orpheus (1960) as English narrator (voice, uncredited)
• The Battle of the Sexes (1960) as Detective
• Conspiracy of Hearts (1960) as Father Desmaines
• Peeping Tom (1960) as Don jarvis
• The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) as Charles Gill
• No Love for Johnnie (1961) as Dr. West
• The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) as 'Jacko' Jackson - Night Editor
• Jigsaw (1962) as Clyde Burchard
• 80,000 Suspects (1963) as Clifford Preston
• A Stitch in Time (1963) as Doctor on Children's Ward (uncredited)
• Man in the Middle (1963) as Col. Shaw
• Woman of Straw (1964) as Solicitor (uncredited)
• 633 Squadron (1964) as Squadron Leader Frank Adams
• The 7th Dawn (1964) as Trumphey
• The Gorgon (1964) as Professor Jules Heitz
• Troubled Waters (1964) as Jeff Driscoll
• Von Ryan's Express (1965) as Captain Stein
• The Night of the Generals (1967) as Hauser
• The Jokers (1967) as Lt. Col. Paling
• The Fixer (1968) as Ostrovsky
• Cromwell (1970) as Solicitor General
• The Fifth Day of Peace (1970) as Gen. Snow
• Te Johnstown Monster (1971) as McNeil

• Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972) as Thomas More
• Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) as Gen. Helmuth Weidling
• The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) as Bill Tanner, Chief of Staff (uncredited)
• To the Devil a Daughter (1976) as George de Grass

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1963	Maigret	Dr Javet	Episode: Maigret's Little Joke
1967	Inheritance	William Oldroyd	10 Episodes
1969	Callan	Hunter	5 Episodes (Series 2)
1969	Judge Dee	Judge Dee	6 Episodes
1969	Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)	Arthur de Crecy	Episode 13 "But What a Sweet Little Room"
1970	The Woodlanders (BBC Series - lost)	George Melbury	? Episodes
1973	Sam	Jack Barraclough	39 episodes

External links

• Michael Goodliffe at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Goodliffe at the British Film Institute
• Comprehensive site on Goodliffe's life and career including full photographic record of wartime productions