Tony Wright Season: Introduction and The House in Marsh Road (1960)

This is the introduction to another series of posts focusing on the work of one actor, and in this case it is Tony Wright (1925 to 86).

‘Who?’ I hear you ask. And strangely while this actor’s TV output is quite small which will result in a shorter series of posts than often, and he probably isn’t that well known in the TV world, in contrast to the other actors who have had ‘seasons’ dedicated to them, for reasons which will become apparent, I have been able to find out an unusually large amount about this actor’s life. My sources for this are the Wikipedia page, an article about him on filminc.com.au (these two are clearly dependent on each other but I don’t know in which direction) and a wildly unfortunate interview with his first wife in Modern Screen (Vol 53 No 11) of December 1959, which is on the Internet Archive if you want to hear how unhappy his first marriage was.

He was born in London and had a father who was apparently partly or completely French, and as a result Wright grew up bilingual, which is reflected in his IMDb page; although his French work was mostly a single series of films which are on YouTube and favourably reviewed. He tried varous careers before following in his father’s footsteps as an actor: the navy, chicken farming and gold mining in South Africa. His big break came when he was signed up under contract by Rank. This is the main reason there is so much information available online about a minor actor, because of course the studio heavily publicised him. He married Janet Munro, another Rank star, and I can only refer you to her interview for an account of how unhappy she was. She felt that everything he did was for effect, for publicity, and that his career came first. She said he was continually away filming and felt neglected. After leaving Rank he did quite a lot of theatre work and also some TV.

I am going to say it right now that there is a contradiction in everything I have read about Wright. Despite his wife saying that he was continually filming and having had multiple roles in TV, film and theatre, you will read repeatedly online that he couldn’t act. I just don’t think this is completely true. The same people who say he can’t actor also tend to comment that he was hired for his blond hair, good looks, muscular physique, and inability to keep his short on. Since this is almost the exact role I myself play in the TV blogging community, I understand that people can tend to feel jealous of someone so good looking, and I wonder whether this factors in to the at best lukewarn reviews of his acting. It is clear that the roles he was given featured an element of him being a hunk and taking his short off to have sex or for action scenes, but I have seen him in a few things and have no great criticism of his acting ability.

I do suspect, as well, that being signed for Rank raised an expectation that he would be a massive star, so probably this was a disappointment. Certainly of the other stars listed as signed up at the same time as him I have only heard of two, so I wonder whether Rank weren’t that good as picking out stars and he was a victim of a hope that would never happen. I suppose most actors spend quite a lot of their careers doing hack work, and few can expect to be massive stars.

Similarly, the ‘on dit’ online says the later years of his life are shrouded in mystery. This is absolutely not true, in that according to IMDb his last role was in 1984 and he died at the young age of 60 in 1986, caused by some sort of fall or accident at home.

The House in Marsh Road (1960)

It was seeing this film that made me look up Wright on IMDb and find that there was probably enough TV work extant for me to do a Tony Wright season. In fact I can count this film among the TV because even though it had a theatrical release originally in Britain, in the US it went straight onto TV so is sort of a television film.

The film is about a writer (David Linton, played by Wright) and his long-suffering wife Jean (played by Patricia Dainton). They have been living a hand-to-mouth existence continually owing landladies money and moving on, while he is supposedly working on his magnum opus. Then Jean unexpectedly inherits a house, and this provides the security they need and a place for David to work on his writing. Clearly, David is what my mother would have called a ne’er do well, is a drinker, never does actually produce a book, is incapable of the concentration necessary for a book, continually lies, and, not to put too fine a point on it, can’t keep it in his pants. Specifically he is well on the way to a full blown affair with the woman who does his typing.

I wonder whether the dodgy online comments about Wright are influenced by the roles he got as a result of his looks and don’t necessarily reflect his real personality. HIs good looks mean he is absolutely perfect in this role as the sort of husband his wife really should get rid of but just doesn’t. He’s capable of pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes, can be very charming, and obviously the sex must have been absolutely wild. Obviously his wife must have had her reasons for putting up with him! Wright plays the role perfectly, manipulating every woman around him convincingly while also being an absolutely terrible husband and failed author. We even see him attempt to murder his wife more than once, and it’s really quite chilling. I genuinely have no criticism of his ability and on this basis of this film I can’t see why anyone would say he didn’t have much acting ability.

As it happens the house Jean has inherited is haunted by a poltergeist, which is what got me interested in the film. The char they’ve inherited with the house comments that the ghost would never do anything to the blood family, but obviously David isn’t related by blood to the family and I’m not going to tell you what the ghost does to him, but something happens.

My only criticism of the film itself is that once we’re introduced to the characters and the ghost it’s a bit obvious that the ghost is going to do something to David, although we don’t know what. But then this is just a standard B-movie so we shouldn’t expect too much. It also started off as a stage play and I gather from some reviews that some people feel it’s too much like a stage play, but I don’t get that myself.

A fairly suspenseful film with a supernatural theme and I’m looking forwatd to blogging more about Tony Wright’s acting ability. The muscles speak for themselves!

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