Reply With QuoteBiography: Close Up. I have just started reading it, quite interesting, although Fraser doesn't appear to let a simple things like facts get in the way of a good story!
While watching a grainy panned and scan DVD version(the only version available) of El Cid, as well as lamenting the fact that this brilliant epic should be restored and given a proper wide screen release, I was pleasantly reminded of how scottish actor John Fraser almost steals this film with his hysterical and tortured sister loving gay performance as King Alfonso of Spain. Quite brilliant.....is this great actor still with us? His performance as Bosey in "The Trials of Oscar Wilde" with Peter Finch is also memorable as is his appearance in Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" whatever happened to him? Why isn't he doing shakespeare or stage work at the London theatres? He must be in his seventies by now, I think he is a great and much overlooked actor, would like to know more, are there any books or biographies?
Biography: Close Up. I have just started reading it, quite interesting, although Fraser doesn't appear to let a simple things like facts get in the way of a good story!
Originally Posted by Joenoir
Autobiography, surely...?
He's put on a fair bit of weight but he was still onstage up until a few years ago - we spotted him on some billboards as we were walking through Haymarket - can't recall the year though...
Smudge
From The Digital Bits website just last week:
The Weinstein Company has confirmed that it will be releasing the four long-desired Samuel Bronston films on DVD as part of its new "Miriam Collection" of past and current classic titles presented in new special editions. El Cid will be the first to appear with 55 Days at Peking, Circus World, and Fall of the Roman Empire following. There are still no specific dates, but it sounds as though El Cid at least will appear this year.
Hi I got my copy of his book secondhand from Amazon Sellers Amazon.co.uk: Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales: Books: John Fraser
John Fraser now lives in Tuscany and has retired from acting.
Hello, and Thanks very much for the information that El Cid will be out on dvd. It's become a celebration for the family to get together and watch it at least once a year from the original tapes which are still holding up but a replacement DVD will be a relief. Fraser was mean and excellent. - Has anyone seen anything to verify any_thing in his memoirs?
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Regards,
Southern
thanks for that, got hold of a copy and I'm almost finished reading it, interesting fellow to say the least, he seems a little bitter that his choice to be openly gay stopped him being a mega hearthrob movie star. Doesn't say a great deal about working on El Cid apart from the fact that he enjoyed it immensly and was a highlight of his career.
John Fraser appears in an excellent episode of Danger Man called 'Don't Nail Him Yet' as Denis Rawson. There is a sort of hinted-at underworld of men meeting up in pubs and going back to someones' flat. John Drake goes undercover in a gauche raincoat, with awkward horn-rimmed glasses and attracts Rawson into conversation in the pub after an embarrassing incident with a brassy blonde played by Wendy Richard. The two men go back to Fraser's flat and Drake 'discovers' he loves the same music as Rawson and they have assignations at later dates on that premise.....
Poor old Rawson is selling secrets or something (weren't they all!) but I'm sure the cast must have done lots of nudging and winking as they played the scenes!! I wonder if the TV audience picked up on it at the time?
A great performance, but certainly nothing like the real Alfonso VI of Castille! (Richard Fletcher's The Quest for El Cid and John Aberth's A Knight at the Movies have a lot to say about the film, which owes a lot to the very Nationalist writer Ramon Menendez Pidal). If there's one thing that can't be said of Alfonso, it's that he was gay. Indeed, historians aren't entirely sure how many wives he had, because there's a fair number of concubines who may or may not have been legal wives!
The film is also a bit of a hatchet-job on him as a king.
John Fraser appears in an excellent episode of Danger Man called 'Don't Nail Him Yet' as Denis Rawson. There is a sort of hinted-at underworld of men meeting up in pubs and going back to someones' flat. John Drake goes undercover in a gauche raincoat, with awkward horn-rimmed glasses and attracts Rawson into conversation in the pub after an embarrassing incident with a brassy blonde played by Wendy Richard. The two men go back to Fraser's flat and Drake 'discovers' he loves the same music as Rawson and they have assignations at later dates on that premise.....
Poor old Rawson is selling secrets or something (weren't they all!) but I'm sure the cast must have done lots of nudging and winking as they played the scenes!! I wonder if the TV audience picked up on it at the time?
I'm glad it wasn't just me that picked up on this element of that story - I mentioned this very episode as having a gay subtext on a previous thread. With different performances the same script would have nothing like the same power, which is pretty impressive for what is a very early episode of the series
Yes, it's the sort of thing that seems obvious in today's climate. I'm not sure that it was meant that way particularly - just that the more 'laddish' members of the crew might have 'seen' it that way.
McGoohan had made a movie with Anthony Asquith in 1961 called Two Living One Dead, which remained unreleased in 1963 - (anyone know if it ever got distributed in Britain?) - anyhow it had a similar sub-plot. In Two Living One Dead he played a lonely clerk who took to wandering the streets at night, after falling out with his wife (Virginia McKenna). He met up with a guy in a coffee-bar and they took to meeting up night after night......... Eventually he took the guy home 'for tea' and Virginia McKenna threw a wobbler because he'd been telling this guy all his worries and not her........ What the writers would do with such a plot nowadays gawd only knows...
Full credit to John Fraser though if he did sacrifice commercial success. He was/is certainly an amazingly handsome man.
John Fraser appears in an excellent episode of Danger Man called 'Don't Nail Him Yet' as Denis Rawson. There is a sort of hinted-at underworld of men meeting up in pubs and going back to someones' flat. John Drake goes undercover in a gauche raincoat, with awkward horn-rimmed glasses and attracts Rawson into conversation in the pub after an embarrassing incident with a brassy blonde played by Wendy Richard. The two men go back to Fraser's flat and Drake 'discovers' he loves the same music as Rawson and they have assignations at later dates on that premise.....
Poor old Rawson is selling secrets or something (weren't they all!) but I'm sure the cast must have done lots of nudging and winking as they played the scenes!! I wonder if the TV audience picked up on it at the time?
Also featuring Craven Cottage
What is that?
... Craven Cottage
Wikipedia says it's a football stadium in Fulham.
Just watched him doing a welsh accent in "Valley Of Song" which says it introduced him.
John Fraser was my teenage actor Mega-Crush!!! I bought every video and taped every film featuring him I could get my mitts on, I remember buying Waltz of the Toreadors and one of the Doctor films, (in Clover???) and taping and watching A Study In Terror many many times. I read his autobiography back along, I believe he is still alive. He also wrote another book that I read at the height of my infatuation called The Bard In The Bush which tells the story of him doing a tour of Africa performing Shakespeare with Suzan Farmer that is well worth a read, I'd like to read both books again, actually, and see Waltz and Terror again.He was/is certainly an amazingly handsome man.
He was gorgeous, I was truly smitten; this was before I discovered Barry of course...
A very interesting TV Times article, from the March 19th - 25th 1977 issue of TV Times.
Interesting article about John, thanks for posting! :-)
Thank you from me as well.
I wrote to him after reading his autobiography (my father was a fan of his, and we used to have a record he made - "Why Don't They Understand," I think it was called), and he wrote back a very nice letter.
Here's an article about him.
http://wp.me/p3awSz-10j
Thanks for this :-)
I think I mentioned it back along, but I read Close Up a few years ago and really enjoyed it, ditto The Bard In The Bush.
The other night watched him in A Study In Terror for the first time in 30 odd years, back when I was a teenager and madly in love with John Fraser (before Barry came along lol) I watched ASIT many times!!! It was nice to watch it again - and John's performance - for his acting as well as his good looks!
The film seems to get a lot of criticism especially from Sherlock Holmes fans. It has its faults but I think it's an entertaining film, quite Hammerish in some ways, good ghoulish fun and not to be taken too seriously! I also thought John Neville was really good as Holmes.
Last edited by LadyKat; 09-02-16 at 10:57 PM.
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