Marius Goring
Marius Re Goring, (23 May 191230 September 1998) was an English stage and screen actor. He is best remembered for the four films he made with Powell & Pressburger, particularly as Conductor 71 in "A Matter of Life and Death" and as Julian Craster in "The Red Shoes", and also for the title role in the long-running TV drama series, "The Expert". He regularly performed French and German roles, and was frequently cast in the latter because of his name, coupled with his red-gold hair and blue eyes. However, he explained that he was not of German  descent in a 1965 interview, stating that "Goring is a completely English name." Life and career. Goring was born in Newport, Isle of Wight, the son of the eminent physician and researcher Dr Charles Buckman Goring (1870-1919), the author of "The English Convict", and Kate Winifred (née Macdonald, 1874–1964), a pianist of Scottish descent who was also a suffragette. He had an older brother, Donald, who died in Yemen in 1936 from injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident. After attending The Perse School in Cambridge, where he became a friend of an older boy, the future documentary film  maker Humphrey Jennings, Goring studied modern languages at the universities of Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna and Paris. He made his professional debut in 1927, playing Harlequin, and toured the continent playing classical roles with the Compagnie des Quinze under the directorship of Michel Saint-Denis, whom he would later encourage to come to England and work as a director. He also studied under Harcourt Williams and at the Old Vic dramatic school from 1929 to 1932. His early stage career included appearances at the Old Vic, Sadler's Wells, Stratford and several European tours; he was fluent in French and German . During the 1930s, he played a variety of Shakespearean roles at the Old Vic, including the title role in "Macbeth" and Romeo in "Romeo and Juliet" (1933), Feste in "Twelfth Night" (1937), in addition to Trip in Sheridan's "The School for Scandal". He first worked in the West End in a 1934 revival of Granville-Barker's "The Voysey Inheritance" at the Shaftesbury Theatre. In 1929, he became a founding member of British Equity, the actors' union, served on its council from 1949 and was three times its vice-president from 1963 to 1965, 1975 to 1977 and again  from 1980 to 1982. Goring's relationship with his union was fraught with conflict: he took it to litigation on three occasions. In 1978, regarding the issue of the supremacy of a referendum to decide Equity rules, he took it as far as the House of Lords and won his case. In 1992, he unsuccessfully sought to end the restriction on the sale of radio and television programmes to apartheid South Africa. Stressing that he opposed apartheid and would not perform for segregated audiences, he argued that the ban was depriving actors of work, and stated that he wished to  stage a production of the play "She Stoops to Conquer" with an all-black cast. This particular litigation nearly bankrupted him, due to the heavy amount of court costs. In November 1931, at the age of nineteen, he married twenty-nine year old Mary Westwood Steel (1902-1994) at Gretna Green, Scotland (they had a second marriage ceremony in a London register office in February 1932) and their only child, a daughter Phyllida, was born in March 1932. The marriage did not succeed and he became engaged in 1935 to ballet choreographer and designer, Susan 'Susy' Salaman, older sister of  Merula Salaman, wife of Alec Guinness. Susy contracted acute encephalitis in late 1935 and was left brain-damaged. Goring wanted to go ahead with the wedding but Susy's father, Michel Salaman, would not allow it. In 1935, he co-founded the London Theatre Studio with Michel Saint-Denis, George Devine and Glen Byam Shaw. It trained actors, directors and designers and was a precursor of the Old Vic Theatre School. Marius taught Shakespeare there to the students. It had to close in late 1939 due to the outbreak of war. Goring's film career began with an uncredited role  in "The Amateur Gentleman" (1936) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr and a small speaking role in "Rembrandt" (also 1936). He shared his one scene in this film with the star Charles Laughton, with whom he had previously worked on stage at the Old Vic. He made two further films released in 1939: "Flying Fifty-Five" with Derrick de Marney where he showed off his comedic skills playing an amusing drunkard and co-starred with Conrad Veidt in his first Powell and Pressburger film, "The Spy in Black", an intriguing spy thriller set during World War One, where he played a German  officer for the first of many times in his film career. When war was declared in September 1939, he was back in the West End as Pip in a production of "Great Expectations", adapted for the stage by Alec Guinness. Along with all other plays, it was closed down temporarily by the war but was the first to resume when theatres were reopened in early 1940. He joined the British Army in June 1940, and was seconded in 1941 to the BBC as supervisor of radio productions broadcasting to Germany. He made broadcasts under the name Charles Richardson (using his  father's first name and maternal grandmother's maiden name), because of the association of his name with Hermann Göring. In 1944 he became a member of the intelligence staff of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) where he attained the rank of colonel. Because of the broadcasts he had been making to Germany, set up by the Foreign Office as an antidote to William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), he was put on a Nazi hit-list. In 1941, he married his second wife, the German actress Lucie Mannheim (1899-1976). Mannheim, who was Jewish, had been a principal actress  in the Berlin Theatre but had to leave Germany when the Nazis came to power. She worked with Goring in many stage productions from the 1930s onwards and in seven episodes of "The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel", one of which he wrote especially for her, as well as in several films. Mannheim died in 1976, and the next year Goring married television director/producer Prudence Fitzgerald (1930-2018), who had directed him in many episodes of "The Expert". In the film "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946) Goring played Conductor 71, whose role is to 'conduct' Peter Carter  (David Niven) to the afterlife. In the film "The Red Shoes", he played Julian Craster, a young composer who wins the heart of ballerina Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) and clashes with the imperious ballet impresario, Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook). In the film "Odette" released in the UK in 1950, Goring played the role of Colonel Henri, a German Abwehr (Military Intelligence) officer who deceived and captured Odette. The film is based on the true story of Odette Sansom, the first living woman to be awarded the George Cross. The real Odette Sansom was later a witness at his marriage to  Prudence Fitzgerald in 1977. He played Colonel Günther von Hohensee in "So Little Time" (1952), which also featured Maria Schell, one of his rare romantic leads and frequent roles playing a German officer. He considered the film one of his favourites, alongside the four films he made with Powell and Pressburger. His TV work included starring as Sir Percy Blakeney in "The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel" (ITV, 1955) (a role which he also performed in a 1952-53 radio show), a series which he also co-wrote and produced; Theodore Maxtible in the "Doctor Who" story "The Evil of  the Daleks" (BBC, 1967); Professor John Hardy in "The Expert" (BBC, 1968–1976); Paul von Hindenburg in "Fall of Eagles" (BBC, 1974); King George V in "Edward & Mrs. Simpson" (Thames, 1980) and Emile Englander in "The Old Men at the Zoo" (BBC, 1983). Goring's voice provides the narration of the sound and light show performed regularly in the evening at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1979 and appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1991. He died from stomach cancer in 1998 aged  86 at his home in Rushlake Green, East Sussex, survived by his third wife, Prudence and daughter, Phyllida. He is buried in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin, Warbleton, East Sussex near Rushlake Green with his wife, Prudence, who died in 2018. Complete filmography. <nowiki>*</nowiki> Powell and Pressburger productions