Donate


Sunday, January 25, 2009

Happy Burns Night! -and a memory of the late, great Alistair Sim



A very happy Burns Night to all Scottish readers!

Last year on Burns Night I posted a clip of that great Scottish actor John Laurie, so this year, I thought I'd carry on the tradition and post a clip of another great Scottish thespian- the late Alistair Sim, one of my all-time favourite actors.

"He was a charming communist who had a passion for Havana cigars" was how film director Ronald Neame described Sim. Sounds ok to me. You can read more about Sim in Mark Simpson's new biography- a book I can heartily recommend.

In the clip above, from that wonderful comedy 'The Happiest Days of Your Life', Sim appears alongside another great performer- Margaret Rutherford.

Rutherford is probably most remembered today for her roles in the MGM Miss Marple films of the early/mid 1960s, but one little piece of information you might not know is that she was also the auntie of a certain socialist politican named Tony Benn.

Genius clearly does run in families.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They don't make them like that any more - actors today are all six-pack abs and no charm. That clip looks like a lost world - they're as remote from today as characters in a Walter Scott novel - in fact, I would have loved to see Sim play the role of the antiquary in Walter Scott's 'the Antiquary', a film that's unlikely ever to be made, unfortunately. Not much scope for getting a video game out of it.