Peter Cushing

Peter Wilton Cushing was born in Kenley, a district in the English county of Surrey, on 26 May 1913 to George Edward Cushing (1881–1956) and Nellie Marie (née King) Cushing (1882–1961).[2] His father, a quantity surveyor, was a reserved and uncommunicative man whom Peter said he never got to know very well. His mother was the daughter of a carpet merchant and considered of a lower class than her husband.[3] Cushing's family consisted of several stage actors, including his paternal grandfather Henry William Cushing (who toured with Henry Irving),[4] his paternal aunt Maude Cushing (his father's sister) and his step-uncle Wilton Herriot, after whom Peter Cushing received his middle name.[3]

The Cushing family lived in Dulwich during the First World War, but moved to Purley after the war ended in 1918.[5] Although raised during wartime, Cushing was too young to understand or become greatly affected by it, and was shielded from the horrors of war by his mother, who encouraged him to play games under the kitchen table whenever the threat of possible bombings arose.[3] In his infancy, Cushing twice developed pneumonia and once what was then known as "double pneumonia". Although he survived, the latter was often fatal during that period.[5] During one Christmas in his youth, Cushing saw a stage production of Peter Pan, which served as an early source of inspiration and interest in acting.[6] Cushing loved dressing up and make believe from an early age, and later claimed he always wanted to be an actor, "perhaps without knowing at first."[7] A fan of comics and toy collectibles in his youth, Cushing earned money by staging puppet shows for family members with his glove-puppets and toys.[8]

He began his early education in Dulwich, South London, before attending the Shoreham Grammar School in Shoreham-by-Sea, on the Sussex coast between Brighton and Worthing. Prone to homesickness, he was miserable at the boarding school and spent only one term there before returning home.[9] He attended the Purley County Grammar School, where he swam and played cricket and rugby.[5] With the exception of art, Cushing was a self-proclaimed poor student in most subjects and had little attention span for that which did not interest him. He got fair grades only through the help of his brother, a strong student who did his homework for him.[7] Cushing harboured aspirations for the arts all throughout his youth, especially acting. His childhood inspiration was Tom Mix, an American film actor and star of many Western films.[10] D.J. Davies, the Purley County Grammar School physics teacher who produced all the school's plays, recognised some acting potential in him and encouraged him to participate in the theatre, even allowing Cushing to skip class to paint sets. He played the lead in nearly every school production during his teenage years, including the role of Sir Anthony Absolute in a 1929 staging of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy of manners play, The Rivals.[11]

Cushing wanted to enter the acting profession after school, but his father opposed the idea, despite the theatrical background of several of his family members. Instead, seizing upon Cushing's interest in art and drawing, he got his son a job as a surveyor's assistant in the drawing department of the Coulsdon and Purley Urban District Council's surveyor's office during the summer of 1933.[11] Cushing hated the job, where he remained for three years without promotion or advancement due to his lack of ambition in the profession. The only enjoyment he got out of it was drawing prospectives of proposed buildings, which were almost always rejected because they were too imaginative and expensive and lacked strong foundations, which Cushing disregarded as a "mere detail."

Thanks to his former teacher Davies, Cushing continued to appear in school productions during this time, as well as amateur plays such as W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea,[12] George Kelly's The Torch-Bearers, and The Red Umbrella, by Brenda Girvin and Monica Cosens.[13] Cushing often learned and practised his lines in an attic at work, under the guise that he was putting ordnance survey maps into order. He regularly applied for auditions and openings for roles he found in the arts-oriented newspaper The Stage, but was turned down repeatedly due to his lack of professional experience in the theatre.[12]

Cushing eventually applied for a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.[14] His first audition was before the actor Allan Aynesworth, who was so unimpressed with Cushing's manner of speech that he rejected him outright and insisted he not return until he improved his diction.[13][15] Cushing continued to pursue a scholarship, writing exactly twenty-one letters to the school,[15] until actor and theatre manager Bill Fraser finally agreed to meet Cushing in 1935 simply so he could ask him in person to stop writing. During that meeting, Cushing was given a walk-on part as a courier in that night's production of J.B. Priestley's Cornelius. This marked his professional stage debut, although he had no lines and did little more than stand on stage behind other actors. Afterward, he was granted the scholarship and given odd jobs around the theatre, such as selling refreshments and working as an assistant stage manager.[13]

One of his earliest professional stage performances was in 1935 as Captain Randall in Ian Hay's The Middle Watch at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing.[16][17] By the end of the summer of 1936, Cushing accepted a job with the repertory theatre company Southampton Rep, working as assistant stage manager and performing in bit roles at the Grand Theatre in the Hampshire city.[13] He spent the next three years in an apprenticeship at Southampton Rep.,[10] auditioning for character roles both there and in other surrounding theatres, eventually amassing almost 100 individual parts.[13][18] While he was in Southampton he met an 18 year old fellow actor Doreen Lawrence and they were engaged to be married. Lawrence broke off the engagement citing his frequent crying and bringing his parents on dates.[19]

Soon, he felt the urge to pursue a film career in the United States. In 1939, his father bought him a one-way ticket to Hollywood, where he moved with only £50 to his name.[10] Cushing met a Columbia Pictures employee named Larry Goodkind, who wrote him a letter of recommendation and directed him to acquaintances Goodkind knew at the company Edward Small Productions. Cushing visited the company, which was only a few days away from shooting The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), the James Whale-directed adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas tale based on the French legend of a prisoner during the reign of Louis XIV of France.[20] Cushing was hired as a stand-in for scenes that featured both characters played by Louis Hayward, who had the dual lead roles of King Louis XIV and Philippe of Gascony. Cushing played one part against Hayward in one scene, then the opposite part in another, and ultimately the scenes were spliced together in a split screen process that featured Hayward in both parts and left Cushing's work cut from the film altogether.[18] Although the job meant Cushing received no actual screen time, he was eventually cast in a bit part as the king's messenger, which made The Man in the Iron Mask his official film debut.[21] The small role involved sword-fighting and, although Cushing had no experience with fencing, he told Whale he was an excellent fencer to ensure he got the part. Cushing later said his unscreened scenes alongside Hayward were terrible performances, but that his experience on the film provided an excellent opportunity to learn and observe how filming on a studio set worked.[20]

Only a few days after filming on The Man in the Iron Mask was completed, Cushing was in the Schwab's Drug Store, a famous Sunset Boulevard hangout spot for actors, when he learned producer Hal Roach was seeking an English actor for a comedy film starring Laurel and Hardy. Cushing sought and was cast in the role. Cushing appeared only briefly in A Chump at Oxford (1940) and his scenes took just one week to film, but he was proud to work with whom he called "two of the greatest comedians the cinema has ever produced."[22] Around this time actor Robert Coote, who met Cushing during a cricket game, recommended to director George Stevens that Cushing might be good for a part in Stevens' upcoming film Vigil in the Night (1940). Adapted from a serial novella of the same name, it was a drama film about a nurse played by Carole Lombard working in a poorly-equipped country hospital. Stevens cast Cushing in the second male lead role of Joe Shand, the husband of the Lombard character's sister. Shooting ran from September to November 1939,[23] and the film was released in 1940, drawing Cushing's first semblance of attention and critical praise.[10]

Cushing continued to work in a few Hollywood engagements, including an uncredited role in the war film They Dare Not Love (1941), which reunited him with director James Whale. Cushing was cast (again uncredited) in one of a series of short films in an entry in the MGM series The Passing Parade, which focused on strange-but-true historical events. He appeared in the episode The Hidden Master (1940) as a young Clive of India, well before the soldier established the military and political supremacy of the East India Company. In the film, Clive tries to shoot himself twice but the gun misfires, then he fires a third time at a pitcher of water and the gun works perfectly. Clive takes this to be an omen that he should live, and he goes on to perform great feats in his life. Studio executives were pleased with Cushing's performance, and there was talk among Hollywood insiders grooming him for stardom.[24] Despite the promise, however, Cushing grew homesick and decided he wished to return to England. He moved to New York City in anticipation of his eventual return home, during which time he voiced a few radio commercials and joined a summer stock theatre company to raise money for his voyage back to England. He performed in such plays as Robert E. Sherwood's The Petrified Forest, Arnold Ridley's The Ghost Train, S. N. Behrman's Biography and a modern dress version of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. He was eventually noticed by a Broadway theatre talent scout,[25] and in 1941 he made his Broadway debut in the religious wartime drama The Seventh Trumpet. It received poor reviews, however, and ran for only eleven days.[18]

Cushing returned to England during the Second World War. Although some childhood injuries prevented him from serving on active duty,[10] a friend suggested he entertain the troops by performing as part of the Entertainments National Service Association.[15][26] In 1942, the Noël Coward play Private Lives was touring the military stations and hospitals in the British Isles, and the actor playing the lead role of Elyot Chase was called to service. Cushing agreed to take his place with very little notice or time to prepare, and earned a salary of ten pounds a week for the job.[27] During this tour he met Violet Hélène "Helen" Beck, a former dancer who was starring in the lead female role of Amanda Prynne.[14][28] They fell in love and were married on 10 April 1943.[29] Cushing eventually had to leave ENSA due to lung congestion, an ailment his wife helped him recover from.[15] The two had little money around this time, and Cushing had to collect from both National Assistance and the Actors' Benevolent Fund. Cushing struggled to find work during this period, with some plays he was cast in failing to even make it past rehearsals into theatres. Others closed after a few showings, like an ambitious five-hour stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace that opened and closed in 1943 in London's Phoenix Theatre.[29]

Cushing recorded occasional radio spots and appeared in week-long stints as a featured player in London's Q Theatre, but otherwise work was difficult to come by.[18] He found a modest success in a 1945 production of Sheridan's The Rivals at Westminster's Criterion Theatre, which earned him enough money to pay off some growing debts.[30] The war years continued to prove difficult for him, however, and at one point he was forced to work designing ladies head-scarves at a Macclesfield-based silk manufacturer to make ends meet.[18] In the autumn of 1946, after the war ended, Cushing unsuccessfully auditioned for the part of Paul Verrall in a stage production of the play Born Yesterday that was being staged by famed actor and director Laurence Olivier. He was not cast because he insisted he could not perform in an American accent.[18] After Cushing attempted the accent and failed, Olivier replied, "Well, I appreciate you not wasting my time. I shall remember you."[31] Nearing middle age and finding it increasingly harder to make a living in acting, Cushing began to consider himself a failure.[10]

In 1947, when Laurence Olivier sought him out for his film adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Cushing's wife Helen pushed him to pursue a role.[10] Far from being deterred by Cushing's unsuccessful audition the year before, Olivier remembered the actor well and was happy to cast him,[10][18] but the only character left unfilled was the relatively small part of the foppish courtier Osric.[10] Cushing accepted the role, and Hamlet (1948) marked his British film debut.[21] One of Cushing's primary scenes involved Osric talking to Hamlet and Horatio while walking down a wide stone spiral stairway. The set provided technical difficulties, and all of Cushing's lines had to be post-synched. Cushing had recently undergone dental surgery and he was trying not to open his mouth widely for fear of spitting. When this hindered the post-synching process, Olivier leaned in close to Cushing's face and said, "Now drown me. It'll be a glorious death, so long as I can hear what you're saying."[32]

Hamlet won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and earned Cushing praise for his performance.[14] Also appearing in the film was Christopher Lee, who eventually became a close friend and frequent co-star with Cushing.[33] Cushing designed custom hand-scarves in honour of the Hamlet film, and as it was being exhibited across England, the scarves were eventually accepted as gifts by the Queen and her daughter Princess Elizabeth.[15] After Hamlet, both Peter and Helen Cushing accepted a personal invitation from Olivier to join Old Vic, Olivier's repertory theatre company, which embarked on a year-long tour of Australasia.[18] The tour, which lasted until February 1949, took them to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Tasmania, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, and included performances of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal, Shakespeare's Richard III, Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, Jean Anouilh's Antigone and Anton Chekhov's The Proposal.[34]

Cushing struggled greatly to find work over the next few years, and became so stressed that he felt he was suffering from an extended nervous breakdown.[34] Nevertheless, he continued to appear in several small roles in radio, theatre and film.[10][35] Among them was the John Huston film Moulin Rouge (1952) in which he played a racing spectator named Marcel de la Voisier appearing with José Ferrer, who played the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.[21] During this discouraging period for Cushing, his wife encouraged him to seek roles in television, which was beginning to develop in England.[10] She suggested he write to all the producers listed in the Radio Times magazine seeking work in the medium. The move proved to be a wise one, as Cushing was hired to complement the cast of a string of major theatre successes that were being adapted to live television. The first was J.B. Priestley's Eden End, which was televised in December 1951. Over the next three years, he became one of the most active and favoured names in British television,[10][15][35] and was considered a pioneer in British television drama.[21][28]

He earned praise for playing the lead male role of Mr. Darcy in an early BBC Television serialisation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1952).[36] Other successful television ventures during this time included Epitaph for a Spy, The Noble Spaniard, Beau Brummell,[35] Portrait by Peko,[37] and Anastasia, the latter of which won Cushing the Daily Mail National Television Award for Best Actor of 1953–54.[35] His largest television success from this period was the leading role of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, (1954) an adaptation by Nigel Kneale of George Orwell's novel of the same name about a totalitarian regime. The production proved to be controversial, resulting in death threats for director Rudolph Cartier and causing Cushing to be vilified for appearing in such "filth."[35] Parliament even considered a motion immediately after the first screening to ban the play's live repeat.[28][35] Nevertheless, a second televised production was filmed and aired, and Cushing eventually drew both critical praise and acting awards, further cementing his reputation as one of Britain's biggest television stars.[10] Cushing felt his first performance was much stronger than the second, but the second production is the only known surviving version.[38]

In the two years following Nineteen Eighty-Four, Cushing appeared in thirty-one television plays and two serials, and won Best Television Actor of the Year from the Evening Chronicle. He also won best actor awards from the Guild of Television Producers in 1955,[39] and from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1956.[40] Among the plays he appeared in during this time were Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version, Gordon Daviot's Richard of Bordeaux, and the production of Nigel Kneale's The Creature (1955),[35] the latter of which Cushing starred in film adaptation released in 1957.[41] Despite this continued success in live television, Cushing found the medium too stressful and wished to return to film.[10] Cinematic roles proved somewhat difficult to find, however, as film producers were often resentful of television stars for drawing audiences away from the cinema.[42]

Nevertheless, he continued to work in some film roles during this period, including the adventure film The Black Knight (1954) opposite Alan Ladd.[39] For that film, he travelled to Spain and filmed scenes on location in the castles of Manzanares el Real and El Escorial.[43] He also starred in the film adaptation of the Graham Greene novel The End of the Affair (1955) as Henry Miles, an important civil servant and the cuckolded husband of Sarah Miles, played by Deborah Kerr.[21] Also around the same time, he appeared in Magic Fire (also 1955), an autobiographical film about the German composer Richard Wagner. Filmed on location in Munich, Cushing played Otto Wesendonck, the husband of poet Mathilde Wesendonck, who in the film is portrayed as having an affair with Wagner.[44]

Cushing as Victor Frankenstein in The Curse of Frankenstein

During a brief quiet period following Cushing's television work, he read in trade publications about Hammer, a low-budget production company seeking to adapt Mary Shelley's horror novel Frankenstein into a new film.[39] Cushing, who enjoyed the tale as a child,[10] had his agent John Redway inform the company of Cushing's interest in playing the protagonist, Baron Victor Frankenstein. The studio executives were anxious to have Cushing; in fact, Hammer co-founder James Carreras had been unsuccessfully courting Cushing for film roles in other projects even before his major success with Nineteen Eighty-Four. Cushing was about twenty years older than Baron Frankenstein as he appeared in the original novel, but that did not deter the filmmakers.[39] Cushing was cast in the lead role of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), marking the first of twenty-two films he made for Hammer.[45] He later said that his career decisions entailed selecting roles where he knew that he would be accepted by the audience. "Who wants to see me as Hamlet? Very few. But millions want to see me as [Baron] Frankenstein, so that's the one I do."[46] The film critic Roger Ebert described Cushing's work in the Hammer films: "[Cushing is] the one in all those British horror films, standing between Vincent Price and Christopher Lee. His dialog usually runs along the lines of, 'But good heavens, man! The person you saw has been dead for more than two centuries!'"[47]

Unlike Frankenstein (1931) produced by Universal, the Hammer films revolved mainly around Victor Frankenstein, rather than his monster.[48] Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster wrote the protagonist as an ambitious, egotistical and coldly intellectual scientist who despised his contemporaries.[39] Unlike the character from the novel and past film versions, Cushing's Baron Frankenstein commits vicious crimes to attain his goals, including the murder of a colleague to obtain a brain for his creature.[48] The Curse of Frankenstein also featured Christopher Lee, who played Frankenstein's monster.[21] Cushing and Lee became extremely close friends, and remained so for the rest of Cushing's life. They first met on the set of the film, where Lee was still wearing the monster make-up prepared by Phil Leakey. Hammer Studios' publicity department put out a story that when Cushing first encountered Lee without the make-up on, he screamed in terror.[49]

Cushing so valued preparation for his role that he insisted on being trained by a surgeon to learn how to wield a scalpel authentically.[28] Shot in dynamic colour with a £65,000-budget, the film became known for its heavy usage of gore and sexual content.[10] As a result, while the film did well at the box-office with its target audience, it drew mixed to negative reviews from the critics. Most, however, were complimentary of Cushing's performance,[50] claiming it added a layer of distinction and credibility to the film.[51] Many felt Cushing's performance helped create the archetypal mad scientist character.[28] Picturegoer writer Margaret Hinxman, who was not complimentary of Lee's performance, praised Cushing and wrote of the film: "Although this shocker may not have created much of a monster, it may well have created something more lasting: a star!"[50] Donald F. Glut, a writer and filmmaker who wrote a book about the portrayals of Frankenstein, said the inner warmth of Cushing's off-screen personality was apparent on-screen even despite the horrific elements of Frankenstein, which helped add a layer of likability to the character.[52]

The Curse of Frankenstein was an overnight success, bringing both Cushing and Lee worldwide fame.[21][53] The two men continued to work together in many films for Hammer, and their names became synonymous with the company. Cushing reprised the role of Baron Victor Frankenstein in five sequels.[21] In the first, The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), his protagonist is sentenced to death by guillotine, but he flees and hides under the alias Doctor Victor Stein.[21] He returned for The Evil of Frankenstein (1963), where the Baron has a carnival hypnotist resurrect his monster's inactive brain,[54] and Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), in which the Frankenstein's monster is a woman played by Playboy magazine centrefold model Susan Denberg. Cushing played the lead role twice more in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974).[21] The former film portrays Frankenstein as a far more ruthless character than had been seen before, and features a scene in which Cushing's Frankenstein rapes the character played by Veronica Carlson. Neither Carlson nor Cushing wanted to do the scene, filmed despite director Terence Fisher's objections, and the controversial sequence was edited out of the film for its American release.[55] In Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Cushing portrayed Frankenstein as having gone completely mad, in a fitting coda to the earlier films.[56][57]

Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing in The Brides of Dracula

When Hammer sought to adapt Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel Dracula, they cast Cushing to play the vampire's adversary Doctor Van Helsing. Cushing envisioned the character as an idealist warrior for the greater good, and studied the original book carefully and adapted several of Van Helsing's characteristics from the books into his performance, including the repeated gesture of raising his index finger to emphasise an important point.[58] Cushing said one of the biggest challenges during filming was not missing whenever he struck a prop stake with a mallet and drove it into a vampire's heart.[59] Dracula was released in 1958, with Cushing once again starring opposite Lee, who played the title character, although Cushing was given top billing.[60] During filming, Cushing himself suggested the staging for the final confrontation scene, in which Van Helsing leaps onto a large library table, opens window curtains to weaken Dracula with sunlight, then uses two candlesticks as a makeshift crucifix to drive the vampire into the sunlight.[10] As with the Frankenstein film, critics largely disliked Dracula because of its violence and sexual content, deeming it inferior to the 1931 Universal version.[61]

In 1959, Cushing agreed to reprise the role of Van Helsing in the sequel, The Brides of Dracula (1960). Before filming began, however, Cushing said he had reservations about the screenplay written by Jimmy Sangster and Peter Bryan. As a result, playwright Edward Percy was brought in to make modifications to the script, though the rewrites pushed filming into early 1960 and brought additional costs to the production.[62] For the sequel, Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), which marked Lee's return to the title role for the first time since 1958, Cushing granted permission for archival footage featuring him to be used in the opening scene, a reprisal of the climax from the first Dracula film. In exchange, Hammer's James Carreras thanked Cushing by paying for extensive roofing repair work that had recently been done on Cushing's recently purchased Whitstable home.[63] Cushing appeared in Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), a Hammer modernisation of the Dracula story set in the then-present day. Lee once again starred as Dracula. In the opening scene, Cushing portrays the nineteenth century Van Helsing as he did in the previous films, and the character is killed after battling Dracula. Thereafter the action jumps ahead to 1972, and Cushing plays the original character's grandson for the bulk of the movie.[21] Cushing performed many of his own stunts in Dracula A.D. 1972, which included tumbling off a haywagon during a fight with Dracula. Christopher Neame, who also starred in the film, said he was particularly impressed with Cushing's agility and fitness, considering his age.[64] Cushing and Lee both reprised their respective roles in the sequel The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974), which was known in the United States as Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride.[21] Around the same time, Cushing played the original nineteenth century Van Helsing in The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (also 1974), a co-production between Hammer Studios and the Shaw Brothers Studio, which brought Chinese martial arts into the Dracula story.[21] In that film, Cushing's Van Helsing travels to the Chinese city Chungking, where Count Dracula is heading a vampire cult.[65]

Although most well known for his roles in the Frankenstein and Dracula films, Cushing appeared in a wide variety of other Hammer productions during this time. Both he and his wife feared Cushing would become typecast into horror roles, but he continued to take them because they guaranteed regular work.[42][66] He appeared in the horror film The Abominable Snowman (1957), a Hammer adaptation of a BBC Nigel Kneale television play The Creature (1955) which Cushing had also starred in. He portrayed an English botanist searching the Himalayas for the legendary Yeti.[41] Director Val Guest said he was particularly impressed with Cushing's preparation and ability to plan which props to best use to enhance his performance, so much so that Cushing started to become known as "Props Peter".[67] Cushing and Lee appeared together in the Hammer horror The Mummy (1959), with Cushing as the archaeologist John Banning and Lee as the antagonist Kharis.[10] Cushing saw a promotional poster for The Mummy that showed Lee's character with a large hole in his chest, allowing a beam of light to pass through his body. There was no reference to such an injury in the film script, and when he asked the publicity department why it was on the poster, they said it was simply meant to serve as a shocking image to promote the movie. During filming he asked director Terence Fisher for permission to drive a harpoon through the mummy's body during a fight scene, to explain the poster image. Fisher agreed, and the scene was used in the film.[68]

Around the same time, he portrayed the detective Sherlock Holmes in the Hammer production of The Hound of the Baskervilles (also 1959), an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of the same name.[21] He once again co-starred opposite Lee, who portrayed the aristocratic Sir Henry Baskerville.[33] A huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, Cushing was highly anxious to play the character,[69] and reread the novels in anticipation of the role.[70] Hammer decided to heighten the source novel's horror elements, which upset the estate of Conan Doyle, but Cushing himself voiced no objection to the creative licence because he felt the character of Holmes himself remained intact. However, when producer Anthony Hinds proposed removing the character's deerstalker, Cushing insisted they remain because audiences associated Holmes with his headgear and pipes.[71] Cushing prepared extensively for the role, studying the novel and taking notes in his script. He scrutinised the costumes and screenwriter Peter Bryan's script, often altering words or phrases.[72] Lee later claimed to be awestruck by Cushing's ability to incorporate many different props and actions into his performance simultaneously, whether reading, smoking a pipe, drinking whiskey, filing through papers or other things while portraying Holmes.[73] In later years, Cushing considered his Holmes performance one of the finest accomplishments of his career.[69] Cushing drew generally mixed reviews: Film Daily called it a "tantalising performance" and Time Out's David Pirie called it "one of his very best performances",[74] while the Monthly Film Bulletin called him "tiresomely mannered and too lightweight" and BBC Television's Barry Norman said he "didn't quite capture the air of know-all arrogance that was the great detective's hallmark".[75] The Hound of the Baskervilles was originally conceived as the first in a series of Sherlock Holmes films, but eventually no sequels were made.[68]

Cushing in Cash On Demand (1961)

Immediately upon completion of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Cushing was offered the lead role in the Hammer film The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), a remake of The Man in Half Moon Street (1945). Cushing turned it down, in part because he did not like the script by Jimmy Sangster, and the lead role was taken instead by Anton Diffring. Cushing next appeared for Hammer when he played the Sheriff of Nottingham in the adventure film Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), which starred Richard Greene as the outlaw Robin Hood.[21] It was filmed on location in County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland.[76] The next year, Cushing starred as an Ebenezer Scrooge-like manager of a bank being robbed in the Hammer thriller film Cash on Demand (1961). Cushing considered this among the favourites of his films,[21] and some critics believed it to be among his best performances, although it was one of the least seen films from his career.[10] He appeared in the Hammer film Captain Clegg (1962), known in the United States as Night Creatures. Cushing starred as Parson Blyss, the local reverend of an 18th-century English coastal town believed to be hiding his smuggling activities with reports of ghosts.[21] The film was roughly based on the Doctor Syn novels by Russell Thorndike. Cushing read Thorndike to prepare for the role, and made suggestions to make-up artist Roy Ashton about Blyss' costume and hairstyle.[77] Cushing and director Peter Graham Scott did not get along well during filming and at one point, when the two were having a disagreement on set, Cushing turned to cameraman Len Harris and said, "Take no notice Len. We've done enough of these now to know what we're doing."[77]

Cushing and Lee appeared together in the horror film The Gorgon (1964), about the female snake-haired Gorgon character from Greek mythology and in She (1965), about a lost realm ruled by the immortal queen Ayesha, played by Ursula Andress. Cushing later appeared in The Vampire Lovers (1970), an erotic Hammer horror film about a lesbian vampire, adapted in part from the Sheridan Le Fanu novella Carmilla.[10] The next year he was set to star in a sequel, Lust for a Vampire (1971), but had to drop out because his wife was ill and Ralph Bates substituted.[68] However, Cushing was able to star in Twins of Evil (also 1971), a prequel of sorts to The Vampire Lovers, as Gustav Weil, the leader of a group of religious puritans trying to stamp out witchcraft and satanism.[78] Among his final Hammer roles was Fear in the Night (1972), where he played a one-armed school headmaster apparently terrorising the protagonist, played by Judy Geeson.[79]

Although best known for his Hammer performances from the 1950s to the 1970s, Cushing worked in a variety of other roles during this time, and actively sought roles outside the horror genre to diversify his work.[10] In an interview published in ABC Film Review in November 1964, Cushing stated, "People look at me as if I were some sort of monster, but I can't think why. In my macabre pictures, I have either been a monster-maker or a monster-destroyer, but never a monster. Actually, I'm a gentle fellow. Never harmed a fly. I love animals, and when I'm in the country I'm a keen bird-watcher." In an interview published in 1966, he added, "I do get terribly tired with the neighbourhood kids telling me 'My mum says she wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley'." He continued to perform in occasional stage productions, such as Robert E. MacEnroe's The Silver Whistle at Westminster's Duchess Theatre in 1956.[80] Around the same time, he appeared in the film Alexander the Great (1956) as the Athenian General Memnon of Rhodes.[44] In 1959, Cushing originally planned to appear in the lead role of William Fairchild's play The Sound of Murder, while shooting a film at the same time. The hectic schedule became overbearing for Cushing, who had to drop out of the play and resolved to never again attempt a film and play simultaneously.[81]

He appeared in the biographical epic film John Paul Jones (1959), in which Robert Stack played the title role of the American naval fighter in the American Revolutionary War.[21] Cushing became very ill with dysentery during filming and lost a considerable amount of weight as a result.[82] Cushing played Robert Knox in The Flesh and the Fiends (1960), based on the true story of the doctor who purchased human corpses for research from the serial killer duo Burke and Hare.[21] Cushing had previously stated Knox was one of his role models in developing his portrayal of Baron Frankenstein.[83] The film was called Mania in its American release. Cushing appeared in several films released in 1961, including Fury at Smugglers' Bay, an adventure film about pirates scavenging ships off the English coastline;[84] The Hellfire Club, where he played a lawyer helping a young man expose a cult;[85] and The Naked Edge, a British-American thriller about a woman who suspects her husband framed another man for murder. The latter film starred Deborah Kerr, Cushing's co-star from The End of the Affair, and Gary Cooper, one of Cushing's favourite actors.[84] In 1965, Cushing appeared in the Ben Travers farce play Thark at Westminster's Garrick Theatre. It was his final stage performance for a decade, but he continued to stay active in film and television during this period.[86]

Cushing took the lead role in two science fiction films by AARU Productions based on the British television series, Doctor Who. Although Cushing's protagonist was derived from television scripts used for First Doctor serials, his portrayal of the character differed in the fact that Cushing's Dr. Who was a human being, whereas the original Doctor as portrayed on TV by William Hartnell was extraterrestrial.[87] Cushing played the role in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966).[21]

Cushing later starred in the fifteen-episode BBC television series Sherlock Holmes, once again reprising his role as the title character with Nigel Stock as Watson, though only six episodes now survive. The episodes aired in 1968. Douglas Wilmer had previously played Holmes for the BBC,[88] but he turned down the part in this series due to the extremely demanding filming schedule. Fourteen days of rehearsal was originally scheduled for each episode, but they were cut down to ten days for economic reasons. Many actors turned down the role as a result, but Cushing accepted,[89] and the BBC believed his Hammer Studios persona would bring what they called a sense of "lurking horror and callous savagery" to the series.[88] Production lasted from May to December,[90] and Cushing adopted a strict regimen of training, preparation and exercise.[91] He tried to keep his performance identical to his portrayal of Holmes from The Hound of the Baskervilles.[92] Although the series proved popular, Cushing felt he could not give his best performance under the hectic schedule, and he was not pleased with the final result.[90][93]

Cushing appeared in a handful of horror films by the independent Amicus Productions, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), as a man who could see into the future using Tarot cards;[94] The Skull (1965), as a professor who became possessed by a spiritual force embodied within a skull;[95] and Torture Garden (1967), as a collector of Edgar Allan Poe relics who is robbed and murdered by a rival.[96] Cushing also appeared in non-Amicus horror films like Island of Terror (1966) and The Blood Beast Terror (1968), in both of which he investigates a series of mysterious deaths. He appeared in Corruption (1968), a film that was billed as so horrific that "no woman will be admitted alone" into theatres to see it.[97] Cushing played a surgeon who attempts to restore the beauty of his wife (played by Sue Lloyd), whose face is horribly scarred in an accident.[98]

In July 1969, Cushing appeared as the straight man in The Morecambe & Wise Show, the British comedy series. In the skit, Cushing portrayed King Arthur, while the other two gave comedic portrayals of characters like Merlin and the knights of the Round Table. Cushing continued to make occasional cameos in the series over the next decade, portraying himself desperately attempting to collect a payment for his previous acting appearance on the show.[99] Cushing and Lee made cameos as their old roles of Frankenstein and Dracula in the comedy One More Time (1970), which starred Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr.[100] The single scene took only one morning of filming, which Cushing agreed to after Davis asked him to do it as a favour.[63] The next year, Cushing appeared in I, Monster (1971),[10] which was adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, alongside Lee as the Jekyll/Hyde figure. Later that year he was set to appear in Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971), an adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel The Jewel of Seven Stars. He was forced to withdraw from the film to care for his wife, and was ultimately replaced by Andrew Keir.[101]

In 1971, Cushing contacted the Royal National Institute for the Blind and offered to provide voice acting for some of their audiobooks. They immediately accepted, and among the works Cushing recorded was The Return of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of thirteen one-hour stories.[102] He appeared alongside Vincent Price in Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1972), a sequel to The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and then co-starred with Price again in the film Madhouse (1974).[14] Cushing continued to appear in several Amicus Productions films during this period, including Tales from the Crypt (1972), From Beyond the Grave (1973),[103] And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973),[65] and The Beast Must Die (1974).[104]

For Tales from the Crypt, an anthology film made up of several horror segments, Cushing was offered the part of a ruthless businessman but did not like the part and turned down the role. Instead, Cushing asked to play Arthur Grymsdyke,[105] a kind, working-class widower who gets along well with the local children, but falls subject to a smear campaign by his snobbish neighbours. Eventually, the character is driven to commit suicide, but returns from the grave to seek revenge against his tormentors.[106] After Cushing was cast in the role, several changes were made to the script at his suggestion. Originally, all of the character's lines were spoken aloud to himself, but Cushing suggested he speak to a framed photo of his deceased wife instead, and director Freddie Francis agreed.[105] Cushing used the emotions from the recent loss of his wife to add authenticity to the widower character's grieving.[106] Make-up artist Roy Ashton designed the costume and make-up Cushing wore when he rose from the dead,[106] but the actor helped Ashton develop the costume, and donned a pair of false teeth that he previously used in a disguise during the Sherlock Holmes television series.[107] His performance in Tales from the Crypt won him the Best Male Actor award at the 1971 French Convention of Fantasy Cinema in France.[105]

In 1975, Cushing was anxious to return to the stage, where he had not performed in ten years. Around this time he learned that Helen Ryan, an actress who impressed him in a televised play about King Edward VII, was planning to run the Horseshoe Theatre in Basingstoke with her husband, Guy Slater. Cushing wrote to the couple and suggested they stage The Heiress, a play by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, with Cushing himself in the lead role. Ryan and Slater agreed, and Cushing later said performing the part was his most pleasant experience since his wife had died four years earlier.[86] Cushing also starred in several horror films released in 1975. Among them were Land of the Minotaur, where he played Baron Corofax, the evil leader of a Satanic cult opposed by a priest played by Donald Pleasence.[108] Another was The Ghoul, where he played a former priest hiding his cannibalistic son in an attic. That film marked the first Cushing worked for producer Kevin Francis, who worked in minor jobs at Hammer and had long aspired to work with Cushing, whom he admired deeply. They went on to make two other films together, Legend of the Werewolf (1975) and The Masks of Death (1984) with the actor playing Sherlock Holmes once more.[109] Cushing appeared in the television film The Great Houdini (1976) as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.[87][102] Cushing wrote the forewords to two books about the detective: Peter Haining's Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook (1974) and Holmes of the Movies: The Screen Career of Sherlock Holmes (1976), by David Stuart Davies.[110] Cushing also appeared in the horror film The Uncanny (1977).[111]

Film director George Lucas approached Cushing with the hopes of casting the actor in his upcoming space fantasy film, Star Wars. Since the film's primary antagonist Darth Vader wore a mask throughout the entire film and his face was never visible, Lucas felt a strong human villain character was necessary. This led Lucas to write the character of Grand Moff Tarkin: a high-ranking Imperial governor and commander of the planet-destroying battlestation, the Death Star. Lucas felt a talented actor was needed to play the role and said Cushing was his first choice for the part.[112] However, Cushing has claimed that Lucas originally approached him to play the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and only decided to cast him as Tarkin instead after the two met each other. Cushing said he would have preferred to play Kenobi rather than Tarkin, but could not have done so because he was to be filming other movie roles when Star Wars was shooting, and Tarkin's scenes took less time to film than those of the larger Kenobi role. Although not a particular fan of science fiction, Cushing accepted the part because he believed his audience would love Star Wars and enjoy seeing him in the film.[10]

Cushing joined the cast in May 1976, and his scenes were filmed at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood.[10] Along with Alec Guinness, who was ultimately cast as Kenobi, Cushing was among the best known actors at the time to appear in Star Wars, as the rest of the cast were then relatively unknown.[113] As a result, Cushing was paid a larger daily salary than most of his fellow cast, earning £2,000 per day compared to weekly salaries of $1,000 for Mark Hamill, $850 for Carrie Fisher and $750 for Harrison Ford, who played protagonists Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa and Han Solo, respectively.[112] When Cushing smoked between shots, he wore a white glove so the make-up artists would not have to deal with nicotine stains on his fingers. Like Guinness, Cushing had difficulty with some of the technical jargon in his dialogue, and claimed he did not understand all of the words he was speaking. Nevertheless, he worked hard to master the lines so they sounded natural and that his character appeared intelligent and confident.[114]

Cushing got along well with the entire cast, especially his old co-star David Prowse who played Darth Vader and Carrie Fisher, who was appearing in her first major role as Princess Leia Organa.[10] The scene in which Tarkin and Organa appear together on the Death Star, just before the destruction of the planet Alderaan, was the first scene with major dialogue that Fisher filmed for Star Wars.[114] Cushing consciously attempted to define their characters as opposite representations of good and evil, and the actor purposely stood in the shadows so the light shone on Fisher's face. Fisher said she liked Cushing so much that it was difficult to act as though she hated Tarkin,[10] and she had to substitute somebody else in her mind to muster the feelings. Although one of her lines referred to Tarkin's "foul stench," she said the actual actor smelled like "linen and lavender," something Cushing attributed to his tendency to wash and brush his teeth thoroughly before filming because of his self-consciousness about bad breath.[114]

During the filming of Star Wars, Cushing was provided with a pair of boots far too small to accommodate the actor's size twelve feet. This caused a great deal of pain for him during shooting, but the costume designers did not have enough time to get him another pair. As a result, he asked Lucas to film more close-up shots of him from the waist up and, after the director agreed, Cushing wore slippers during the scenes where his feet were not visible.[115][116][117][118][119] During rehearsals, Lucas originally planned for Tarkin and Vader to use a giant screen filled with computerised architectural representations of hallways to monitor the whereabouts of Skywalker, Solo and Organa. Although the idea was ultimately abandoned before filming began, Cushing and Prowse rehearsed those scenes in a set built by computer animation artist Larry Cuba.[120] The close-up shots of Cushing aboard the Death Star, shown right before the battlestation is destroyed, were actually extra footage taken from previously-shot scenes with Cushing that did not make the final film. During production, Lucas decided to add those shots, along with second unit footage of the Death Star gunners preparing to fire, to add more suspense to the film's space battle scenes.[121]

When Star Wars was first released in 1977, most preliminary advertisements touted Cushing's Tarkin as the primary antagonist of the film, not Vader;[122] Cushing was extremely pleased with the final film, and he claimed his only disappointment was that Tarkin was killed and could not appear in the subsequent sequels. The film gave Cushing the highest amount of visibility of his entire career, and helped inspire younger audiences to watch his older films.[10][123][124]

For the film Rogue One (2016), CGI and digitally-repurposed-archive footage[125][126] were used to insert Cushing's likeness from the original movie over the face of actor Guy Henry.[127] Henry provided the on-set capture and voice work with the reference material augmented and mapped over his performance like a digital body-mask. Cushing's estate owners were heavily involved with the creation which took place more than twenty years after Cushing died.[128] This extensive use of CGI to "resurrect" an actor who had died many years earlier created a great deal of controversy about the ethics of using a deceased actor's likeness.[129][130][131] Joyce Broughton, Cushing's former secretary, had approved recreating Cushing in the film. After attending the London premiere, she was reportedly "taken aback" and "dazzled" with the effect of seeing Cushing on screen again.[132]

Toward the end of his career, Cushing performed in films and roles critics widely considered below his talent.[10] Director John Carpenter approached him to appear in the horror film Halloween (1978) as Samuel Loomis, the psychiatrist of murderer Michael Myers, but Cushing turned down the role. It was also turned down by Christopher Lee, and eventually went to Donald Pleasence, another of Cushing's former co-stars.[133] Cushing appeared alongside his old co-stars Christopher Lee and Vincent Price in House of the Long Shadows (1983), a horror-parody film featuring Desi Arnaz, Jr. as an author trying to write a gothic novel in a deserted Welsh mansion.[41]

Cushing appeared in the television film The Masks of Death (1984), marking both the last time he played detective Sherlock Holmes and the final performance for which he received top billing.[10] He appeared alongside actor John Mills as Watson, and the two were noted by critics for their strong chemistry and camaraderie. As both actors were in their seventies, screenwriter N.J. Crisp and executive producer Kevin Francis both in turn sought to portray them as two old-fashioned men in a rapidly changing world. Cushing's biographer Tony Earnshaw said Cushing's performance in The Masks of Death was arguably the actor's best interpretation of the role, calling it "the culmination of a life-time as a Holmes fan, and more than a quarter of a century of preparation to play the most complex of characters".[134] The final notable roles of Cushing's career were in the comedy Top Secret! (1984), the fantasy film Sword of the Valiant (also 1984) and the adventure film Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986).[10] In 1986, he appeared on the British television show Jim'll Fix It, hosted by Jimmy Savile, in which it was arranged for the wishes of guests to be granted. Cushing wished for a strain of rose to be named after his wife, and it was arranged for the Helen Cushing Rose to be grown at the Wheatcroft Rose Garden in Edwalton, Nottinghamshire.[118]

During this period, Cushing was honoured by the British Film Institute, which invited him in 1986 to give a lecture at the National Film Theatre. He also staged An Evening with Peter Cushing at St. Edmund's Public School in Canterbury to raise money for the local Cancer Care Unit. In 1987, a watercolour painting Cushing painted was accepted by Prince Edward and auctioned at a charity event he organised to raise funds for The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme.[135] Also that year, a sketch Cushing drew of Sherlock Holmes was accepted as the official logo of the Northern Musgraves Sherlock Holmes Society.[136]

Cushing wrote two autobiographies, Peter Cushing: An Autobiography (1986) and Past Forgetting: Memoirs of the Hammer Years (1988).[21] Cushing wrote the books as what he called "a form of therapy to stop me going stark, raving mad" following the loss of his wife. His old friend and co-star John Mills encouraged him to publish his memoirs as a way of overcoming the reclusive state Cushing had placed himself into following her death.[123] In 1989 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to the British film industry.[137] Cushing also wrote a children's book called The Bois Saga, a story based on the history of England. Published in 1994, it was originally written specifically for the daughter of Cushing's long-time secretary and friend Joyce Broughton, to help her overcome reading problems resulting from her dyslexia. It was Broughton who encouraged Cushing to have the book published.[138] His final acting job was narrating, along with Christopher Lee, the Hammer Films documentary Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994), which was recorded only a few weeks before his death.[45] Produced by American writer and director Ted Newsom, his contribution was recorded in Canterbury, near his home. Lee recognised Cushing's health was fading and did his best to keep his friend's spirits up, but Lee later claimed he had a premonition that it would be the last time he saw Cushing alive, which proved to be true.[73]