RICHARD BRADFORD

23 Mar

(10 November 1937 - 22 March 2016)

Giving up football following an injury, Richard Bradford headed for New York to train at the Actors’ Studio. His first film was Arthur Penn’s The Chase (1966) with Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford and a screenplay by Lillian Hellman. Then followed several television appearances including the ITV series Man in a Suitcase, about a former intelligence agent trying to clear his name. The usual run of TV also offered The High Chapparal, The Waltons, Marcus Welby M.D., Mannix and Kojak. It was Penn and Brando again for The Missouri Breaks (1976) and then came a film of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People with Steve McQueen. Jack Nicholson directed him in Goin’ South (Bradford was best man at Jack’s wedding), and he was also in a sequel to American Graffiti, Costa-Gavros’ Missing with Jack Lemmon and Wim Wenders’ Hammett. Bradford played the Sheriff in The Trip to Bountiful with Geraldine Page, the Police Chief in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, with Kevin Costner, and he was the ruthless property developer in Redford’s The Milagro Beanfield War. For another twenty years or so he graced popular TV series such as Cagney & Lacey, Midnight Caller, Time Trax, Earth 2, Sparks and Fitz – always working as the good character actor that he was. After more TV series and movies his last appearance was in Andy Garcia’s The Lost City (2005) which also starred Garcia.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

RICHARD BRADFORD

RITA GAM

PETER BROWN