Cult Actors #9: Freddie Jones
Stoke-on-Trent, 1955. The world was darker back then, covered in that thick gloom that goes hand-in-hand with industrial prosperity.
Tom Here back with another Cult Actors article for your reading pleasure!
Stoke-on-Trent, 1955. The world was darker back then, covered in that thick gloom that goes hand-in-hand with industrial prosperity. In this Northern city red stone kilns coughed out a black smoke sky and the streets below were slick with greasy rain.
The yellow light of the pub attracted them like moths; a warm place to get in out of the choking grey. Inside, working men huddled together, washing away the dirt with heavy ale and tall tales. At the end of the bar, 27-year old Lab technician Freddie Jones liked to hold court.
With a Guinness in hand he would pour out quotes from Shakespeare and regale poems by Tennyson. His performances were large and gaudy and left hazy barflies hooked on his every word. Acting was inch he couldnt quite scratch.
He tried amateur dramatics and local plays but it wasnt enough and with his 30s fast approaching he quit his job, packed a bag and headed south. Jones went back to school to study drama and before long he was appearing on stage, and soon found himself in the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company.
He was a large man both in manner and stature and one who commanded attention. Freddie was well spoken, yet weird, staccato and offbeat half way between an eccentric 19th century professor and a mad English Earl. He had authority, but no one was quite sure what he was going to do with it.
The theatre was (and is) a fine place to make ones name but it doesnt always pay the bills. TV however
Jones was in Z Cars (1963), The Avenger (1967) and numerous TV dramas. In 1968 he played Claudius in The Caesars and stole the show. At the Monte Carlo Television Festival he was lauded The Worlds Best Television Actor. Freddie Jones was along way from Stoke.
Films were a natural progression for a man of his skill and he gained more attention as the Monster in Hammer Horrors Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969). Here he begins as a pompous surgeon who treats people like specimens, before having the brain of a mad scientist transplanted into his skull by Peter Cushings Frankenstein.
As this abomination he becomes more human, grieving at what he is with sad eyes and a broken spirit. With a red, barbed-wire scar around his bald cranium he goes looking for his beloved wife, but her rejection sends him into a final despair and he sets fire to the world around him.
Do I not deserve revenge? he asks his wife in a voice that is gravely earnest and brimming with mania.
From now on Jones would divide his time between film and TV, while still finding time for the odd play. He became a storyteller again, this time for children in BBC TVs Jackanory (1971). He stared in his first American picture, Sitting Target in 1972 and a year later was recalled by Hammer for The Satanic Rites of Dracula. His weird, twitchy performance fit their lewd gothic style perfectly.
He was in Richard Lesters disaster movie Juggernaut (1974); he was Humpty Dumpty the same year in Alice Through the Looking Glass for television and stared as a stern, yet tender headmaster in Dennis Potters seminal Pennies from Heaven (1978). Then he met David Lynch.
Lynch was only 30-years old when he completed his surreal filmic odyssey Eraserhead (1976) and soon after found himself ready to take on the mainstream. The industry treated him with caution; he clearly had talent, but he was just so strange, fascinated by deformity and industrial hell. But producer Mel Brooks took a chance and hired him to direct The Elephant Man (1980). It was a gamble that paid off.
The Oscar nominated film told the true story of Joseph John Merrick, a severely deformed man who performed in Freak Shows in Victorian England. For the part of Bytes (the sadistic sideshow entrepreneur who owns Merrick) Lynch became obsessed with getting Freddie after seeing him on stage in The Dresser.
Bytes is no better than gutter slime; a grimy, booze-sodden deadbeat who exploits and abuses his freaks. Jones took on the part with relish and his grand, exaggerated acting style was well suited to the sleazy showman. He is unshaven, unwashed and staggers through each scene in a battered top hat and clinging to his cane.
He has a gruff voice that comes from nowhere in particular, strong and intelligent, yet jittering and cruel. It can change from a roar to a whisper in a heartbeat.
Jones has two standout scenes. In the first he leads a curious surgeon (Anthony Hopkins) into the dingy cellar where he hides Merrick. With only gaslight as illumination and surrounded by dripping stone walls and rubble, the showman in Bytes cant help but perform.
LIFE he bellows in front of a makeshift stage, is full of surprises. Consider the fate of this creatures poor mother, STRUCK down in the fourth month of her maternal condition by an elephant a wild elephant. STRUCK down on an uncharted African isle. The result -- is plain to see. Ladies and Gentlemen -- the terrible -- Elephant Man.
Later, having stolen Merrick back from those who sought to help him, Bytes becomes vindictive about the betrayal. He stabs at him with his cane and drunkenly locks him in with caged baboons. Somehow, Freddies eyes show a bittersweet love for his captive, but also suggest a man so twisted by lifes horrors than he can not help but be a part of them. As night falls, alone in his caravan, Bytes weeps. It is as much for himself as for the tortured Merrick.
Lynch would go onto work with Jones repeatedly in film and TV.
I Love the way he talks and I love his worries and compulsions, said Lynch of Freddie. Hes an actors actor. His whole life is that.
He cast him in 1984s sci-fi epic Dune as an advisor to royalty (the light reflection of Brad Dourifs twisted evil). Here he looks like an owl, rotund and wise with wild grey hair and mutinous eyebrows that threaten to overthrow his entire face. His movements are twitchy and birdlike and he pronounces dialogue in a blooming, plumy voice.
The first step in avoid a trap, is knowing of its existence, he muses.
In Lynchs Wild at Heart (1990) he had only one line as a barroom drunk. He speaks like a Munchkin from Oz.
Pigeons spread disease and mess up the place. Youve seen that. Yeah! he screeches.
Jones work with Lynch showed a tendency towards the absurd and a complete lack of pretension. He is without fear, a drunken poet, and a man of the world. His face is ruddy, mischevious and amused he would have made an exquisite Long John Silver.
Outside of his work with Lynch, Hollywood had also taken notice. He stared in Clint Eastwoods Firefox in 1982 and played an Obi Wan Kenobish wise man in the sci-fi fantasy Krull (1983).
In 1982 he was cast as the lead in Fellinis And the Ship Sailed On where he played Orlando, a reporter on a steamship full of Opera stars in 1914. In the film he watches the bourgeois passengers with interest and delights at their various peculiarities.
Here he is again the storyteller, speaking directly to us and introducing the various characters as they float by. He has a Puckish glee to events as they unfold, and the film ends with the ship sinking and him rowing away with just a sick rhino for company.
Did you know Rhinos produce excellent milk? he asks us with a smirk.
Freddie never seems to stop working and has admitted that he will die before he ever retires. Acting is in his blood. He was in Disneys Black Cauldron in 1985, Terry Jones Erik the Viking (1989), The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1993) for TV, Neil Gaimans Neverwhere (1995), cult favourite The League of Gentlemen (2000) and the most recent film version of The Count of Monte Cristo (2002).
In 2004 he had a minute part in the Judi Dench/Maggie Smith vehicle Ladies in Lavender and did it in a perfect Cornish accent. The part of a local fisherman never appealed to him, but he had other reasons for accepting the role:
Piss poor part but Im in love with Judi Dench, he told director Charles Dance.
Recently he has settled down to guest starring in innumerable TV shows and had an extended stint in the English soap opera Emmerdale (2006). On the big screen it appears his son Toby has taken over his mantle of Britains most interesting character actor with roles as Truman Capote in Infamous (2006) and in Frank Darabonts The Mist (2007).
Freddie Jones started late to professional acting. It was as if he tried ordinary life but found it too small to contain him. He therefore thundered onto our screens as a magnificent and giddy presence; one who could liven up even the drabbest of films with just a gesture. And even now, at 80-years old, hes still at it. Not bad, for an eccentric lab technician from the dark days of Stoke-on-Trent.
Tom Fallows is a well respected writer and soon to be published author when the pocket essential guide to George A. Romeros work hits stands in October. This article is the ninth in the marvellous Cult Actors SeriesCult Actors #8 -Ron PerlmanCult Actors #7 - Pam GrierCult Actors #6 - Lee Van Cleef