James Donald
Known For
Acting
Born
1917-05-18 in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK
Died
1993-08-03
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia James Donald (18 May 1917 - 3 August 1993) was a Scottish actor. Tall and gaunt, he specialised in playing authority figures; military officers, doctors or scientists. Donald was born in Aberdeen, and made his first professional stage appearance sometime in the late-1930s, having been educated at Rossall School on Lancashire's Fylde coast. During World War II he appeared in minor roles in such propaganda classics as In Which We Serve (1942), Went the Day Well? (1942) and The Way Ahead (1944), and he played Mr. Winkle in the 1952 film version of The Pickwick Papers. However, leading roles eluded him until Lust for Life (1956), in which he played Theo Van Gogh. His work in the theatre included Noël Coward's Present Laughter (1943) which starred Coward himself, and The Eagle with Two Heads (1947), You Never Can Tell (1948), and The Heiress (1949) with Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft and Donald Sinden. He memorably portrayed Major Clipton, the doctor who expresses grave doubts about the sanity of Col. Nicholson's (Alec Guinness) efforts to build the bridge in order to show up his Japanese captors, in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). The final words are his: "Madness!, Madness!" He also played Group Captain Ramsey, the Senior British Officer in The Great Escape (1963), as well as supporting roles in other notable films both in Britain and the United States, including The Vikings (1958), King Rat (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), and Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Donald starred in a 1960 television adaptation of A. J. Cronin's The Citadel and appeared regularly in many other television dramas in the UK and USA, as well as on stage. In 1961, he played Prince Albert opposite Julie Harris's Queen Victoria, in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina. Description above from the Wikipedia article James Donald, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Most Known For
Ben Casey
Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
as Harry Pope
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
as Mark Cavendish
The Great Escape
as Ramsey 'The SBO'
DuPont Show of the Month
as Sydney Carton
The Vikings
as Lord Egbert
The Bridge on the River Kwai
as Maj. Clipton
Play of the Week
as Priest
The Citadel
as Dr. Andrew Manson
Hallmark Hall of Fame
as Prince Albert
Hallmark Hall of Fame
as Henry Higgins
Hallmark Hall of Fame
as Warwick
Quatermass and the Pit
as Dr. Mathew Roney
Lust for Life
as Theo van Gogh
Cast a Giant Shadow
as Maj. Safir
The Big Sleep
as Inspector Gregory
King Rat
as Dr. Kennedy
Conduct Unbecoming
as The Doctor
Third Man on the Mountain
as Franz Lerner