Donald Pleasence

Shortly before his death in 1995, he was scheduled to star in a production of “King Lear” that would have featured daughters Angela Pleasence, Polly Jo Pleasence and Miranda Pleasence.

He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1994 Queen’s New Year Honours List for his services to drama.

In 1991, Donald Pleasence appeared in another production of Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker.”.

Among the possible actors for the roles of Dr. Hans Fallada and Sir Percy Heseltine in Lifeforce (1985). Frank Finlay and Aubrey Morris won the respective roles.

Was originally chosen to play Blair in The Thing (1982), but a scheduling conflict prevented him from doing so. Therefore, the role went to Wilford Brimley.

According to one of his daughters, the actor had a battle with alcohol for many years. Then from the early 1980s on-wards, he gave it up for good.

Balding, quietly-spoken, of slight build and possessed of piercing blue eyes — often peering out from behind round, steel-rimmed glasses — Donald Pleasence had the necessary physical attributes which make a great screen villain. In the course of his lengthy career, he relished playing the obsessed, the paranoid and the purely evil. Even the Van Helsing-like psychiatrist Sam Loomis in the Halloween (1978) franchise seems only marginally more balanced than his prey. An actor of great intensity, Pleasence excelled on stage as Shakespearean villains.

On screen, he gave a perfectly plausible interpretation of the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, in The Eagle Has Landed (1976).

He was a convincingly devious Thomas Cromwell in Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), disturbing in his portrayal of the crazed, bloodthirsty preacher Quint in Will Penny (1967); and as sexually depraved, alcohol-sodden ‘Doc’ Tydon in the brilliant Aussie outback drama Wake in Fright (1971).

Was known for his eye for details and authenticity, including in regards to his costumes. He arrived in Sydney for the filming of Wake in Fright (1971) with a beard suggestive of the kind favored by bushrangers and immediately rejected the costume that was assigned to him, opting to purchase his own clothes from a Vinnies thrift shop.

And, of course, he was Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (1967). These are some of the films, for which we may remember Pleasence, but there was a great deal more to this fabulous, multi-faceted actor.

He and his The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) co-stars Telly Savalas and Max von Sydow all later played the Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld: Pleasence in You Only Live Twice (1967), Savalas in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and von Sydow in Never Say Never Again (1983).

It took several more years, until international recognition came his way: first, through the filmed adaptation of The Guest (1963); and, secondly, with his blind forger in The Great Escape (1963), a role imbued with added conviction due to his own wartime experience. Some of his best acting Donald reserved for the small screen.

In 1962, the producer of The Twilight Zone (1959), Buck Houghton, brought Donald to the United States (‘damn the expense’!) to guest star in the third season episode “The Changing of the Guard”. He was given a mere five days to immerse himself in the part of a gentle school teacher, Professor Ellis Fowler, who, on the eve of Christmas is forcibly retired after fifty-one years of teaching. Devastated, and believing himself a failure who has made no mark on the world, he is about to commit suicide when the school’s bell summons him to his classroom. There, he is confronted by the spirits of deceased students who exhort him to consider that his lessons have had fundamental effects on their lives, even leading to acts of great heroism. Upon hearing this, Fowler is now content to graciously accept his retirement. Managing to avoid maudlin sentimentality, Donald’s performance was intuitive and, arguably, one of the most poignant ever accomplished in a thirty-minute television episode.

He was an unrelenting prosecutor in Jean Anouilh’s “Poor Bitos” and made his theatrical reputation in the title role of the seedy, scheming tramp in Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker” (1960).

He was only really noticed once having found his métier as dastardly, sneaky Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955).

In 1952, Donald began his screen career, rather unobtrusively, in small parts.

Once repatriated, Donald returned to the stage in Peter Brook’s 1946 London production of “The Brothers Karamazov” with Alec Guinness although he missed the opening due to measles, followed by a stint on Broadway with Laurence Olivier’s touring company in “Caesar and Cleopatra” and “Anthony and Cleopatra”. Upon his return to England, he won critical plaudits for his performance in “Hobson’s Choice”.

He was initially a conscientous objector during World War II, but later changed his mind and joined the British Royal Air Force. His plane was shot down and was taken prisoner of war by the Nazis until his release in 1945.

He was flying in a Lancaster NE112 “AS-M” when it was shot down on September 9, 1944.

In 1942, he played Curio in “Twelfth Night”, but his career was then interrupted by military service in the RAF. He was shot down over France, incarcerated and tortured in a German POW camp.

While there he wrote letters to theatre companies eventually being accepted by one on the island of Jersey in Spring 1939 as an assistant stage manager. On the eve of World War II, he made his theatrical debut in “Wuthering Heights”.

Donald Henry Pleasence was born on October 5, 1919 in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England, to Alice (Armitage) and Thomas Stanley Pleasence. His family worked on the railway; his grandfather had been a signal man and both his brother and father were station masters. When Donald failed to get a scholarship at RADA, he joined the family occupation working as a clerk at his father’s station before becoming station master at Swinton, Yorkshire.