![]() He returned to the stage quite frequently, notably on Broadway, in such esteemed productions as Edward, My Son (1948), That Lady (1949) and Billy Budd (1951). He also appeared in the Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard 1962 remake of Mutiny on the Bounty. He was constantly in demand, invariably lending his looming figure and baleful countenance to sinister or stern roles in popular costume thrillers such as The Crimson Pirate (1952), Blackbeard the Pirate (1952), The Robe (1953) (as the disapproving father of Richard Burton's character), The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), Helen of Troy (1956), Darby's Rangers (1958), and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Thatcher appeared in classic British films of the late 1930s and 1940s, including Major Barbara (1941) and Great Expectations (1946), in which he played Bentley Drummle. ![]() During the Second World War, he served with the Royal Artillery and was demobilized with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He appeared in the 1937 Old Vic stage production of Hamlet, in which Laurence Olivier made his first appearance in the title role, opposite Vivien Leigh as Ophelia. ![]() He worked as a schoolmaster before first appearing on the London stage in 1927 and then entering British films in 1934. He was educated in England at Bedford School and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He was an imposing, powerfully built figure noted for his flashy portrayals of screen villains. But if none of these existed, and in the days when none of these existed, The Lone Survivor and his account of the sinking still took us to that emotional, breath taking, gut wrenching height from which everything else tumbles away.Torin Thatcher (15 January 1905 - 4 March 1981) was an English actor born in Bombay, British India, India), to English parents. Yes, I love hearing Celine sing “My Heart Will Go On,” and Horner’s “Hymn to the Sea” is one of the great achievements of 20th century music. Especially when he talks about the great cry that precedes the final engulfment, and then the dead calm beneath the cold and indifferent stars. But even from that height, there is an individual height above that, a height that several episodes reach, and the Lone Survivor’s poem reaches that height. The Night Gallery of my adolescence, which I could only see on the rare occasions when my parents would relent on my “bed-time” consisted, “Lone Survivor,” “Green Fingers” (I think that was the name of it, with Elsa Lanchester), and “Fear of Spiders.” I had been fascinated by the Titanic since I first saw it on the series “Time Tunnel.” But the most poetic, I mean heart-wrenching poetic, treatment of the sinking (even including Kate and Leo) is the Lone Survivor’s monolog, “She was going down by the bow.” In my opinion, Night Gallery itself stands on a height that it shares only with its sister, Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits. This makes up for the fact that the budget did not apparently allow for much in the way of sets, but this adds to a sense of claustrophobia that works here. John Colicos, who plays the survivor, really gives it his all, nearly overplaying it, but he seems genuinely terrified of the fate he realizes has befallen him. This is a taut, well-directed (by Gene Levitt) episode, that keeps up the level of stress and anticipation in the viewer. A zoom in on the cap of a crewman reveals the ship’s name: the Andrea Doria (famously sunk off the coast of Massachusetts in 1956). This crew sees that the wrecked ship is the Lusitania, which in their time was sunk 40 years ago. The scene then shifts and we are aboard a different ship, but the action is just like that in the first scene where the Lusitania rescued a lone survivor from the Titanic. Then, just as predicted, a torpedo hits the Lusitania. The survivor says he’s “beginning to understand that I’m a flying Dutchman…damned and doomed…an eternity of lifeboats, rescues, then forever being picked up by doomed ships” as a punishment for his cowardice aboard the Titanic. The doctor is naturally stunned at this prognostication. He tells the ship’s doctor that this ship will be hit by a torpedo and sunk in 18 minutes. He explains that he was terrified and took the cowardly way out by dressing as a woman (the old “women and children first” get to go to the lifeboats was not such a cliché apparently). But this person is not a woman, but rather a man. The crew brings the survivor aboard, who is dressed in women’s clothing. The crew sees, to its astonishment, that the ship in question is the Titanic, wrecked three years earlier. A Halloween post of the chilling Night Gallery story “Lone Survivor” is here.Ī ship at sea in 1915, the Lusitania, comes upon a shipwreck with a lone survivor (let’s just get the meaning of the title out there right away). ![]()
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