In Memoriam

Michael Gough, 1917-2011

By March 17, 2011No Comments

Gough

With Joan Greenwood in The Man In The White Suit, Alexander Mackendrick, 1951. All the obits are of course cit­ing his avun­cu­lar Alfred, but I always most enjoyed him play­ing non-snivelling little shits of this sort—he had great fea­tures for con­vey­ing unstud­ied con­tempt, an emo­tion I can thor­oughly relate to, I have to admit. Such a fant­ast­ic pres­ence, always; we should all be glad he enjoyed such a long and fruit­ful career, he gave us an awful lot to savor. 

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No Comments

  • jwarthen says:
    March 17, 2011 at 2:19 pm

    Having enjoyed Gough in six dec­ades of per­form­ances, I was espe­cially pleased to see him in a fat eld­er role: as Firs the reac­tion­ary peasant-butler in Chekhov’s CHERRY ORCHARD. In a seem­ingly minor part Ralph Richardson also played in one of his last stage appear­ances, Gough aces the role so thor­oughly that for once, in this pro­duc­tion, no one should be sur­prised at which char­ac­ter Chekhov gave the last mono­logue of his career to.

  • Pete Apruzzese says:
    March 17, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    One of my favor­ite roles that Gough played was as the paint­er in “Dr Terror’s House of Horrors” where he humi­li­ates smug art crit­ic Christopher Lee.
    RIP.

  • Michael Adams says:
    March 17, 2011 at 3:13 pm

    Gough is also very good in anoth­er film with Alec Guinness, as an arrog­ant sculptor in The Horse’s Mouth.

  • Ray says:
    March 17, 2011 at 4:19 pm

    I first encountered him in KONGA, a film that prob­ably ought to be for­got­ten. But I saw it when I was 11, so to me it’s pretty darn mem­or­able, as was Mr. Gough’s mad sci­ent­ist. There was a paper­back nov­el­iz­a­tion, which I also read at the time, and it was mem­or­able for hav­ing a set of expli­cit sex scenes in it. I can still quote parts of it: “And there, on the fam­il­ar rose-colored bed­spread, …” Certainly got my atten­tion! I got that nov­el­iz­a­tion via mail order, along with one for REPTILICUS. Same thing: mon­ster story with porn. Had to hide them from my par­ents. Weird mar­ket­ing back then.

  • Sorilla says:
    March 17, 2011 at 6:41 pm

    You’ll be missed! :’(
    My friend cre­ated a memori­al for Michael Gough, please leave a mes­sage for him. http://memorialmatters.com/memorials.php?page=MichaelGough

  • Benjamin Rousseau says:
    March 17, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    Just to agree about Horse’s Mouth, which I found rev­el­at­ory. His Alfred avun­cu­lar status car­ried over well – but with added mus­tache! – to Age of Innocence, so I had thought that his keen-eyed kind­ness might be in many of his char­ac­ters, and poten­tially part of him­self. But the brio he brought to the char­ac­ter of the sculptor in Horse’s was not only won­der­ful and brash, it was per­fectly entwined with Guinness’ per­form­ance in a won­der­ful tangle of con­trast and par­al­lel with his vis­ion, ideals, and naked opportunism.

  • D Cairns says:
    March 17, 2011 at 7:25 pm

    A friend who knew him said he was one of the cleverest act­ors he’d ever met (not inten­ded as a knock against the pro­fes­sion in gen­er­al!) You can see his keen intel­li­gence in many of his per­form­ances, even in some of the less worthy films.

  • bill says:
    March 18, 2011 at 10:09 am

    He was great, and as someone poin­ted out on Facebook, he was one of the very few remain­ing threads con­nect­ing that era to ours. Say what you want about Tim Burton, but one thing I’ve always liked about him is that he con­sist­ently gives people like Gough work, when most in Hollywood could give a shit about them.