Michael Caine by Steve Newman
Michael Caine comes in for a bit of stick at times, and usually because he’s made one or two ropey films where he’s the only asset and the money was good. But not always. He’ll often defer his fee, or take a chance on a percentage if it means a film project he likes the look of gets made. You only have to think of the stunning Little Voice to get the point. But it wasn’t always like that.
Between 1956 and 1963, the year he came to fame in Zulu, Michael Caine made 125 TV appearances, which included several in Dixon of Dock Green - invariably as a young crook - plus Knight Errant and William Tell (remember those?), where he played rebellious peasants.
A young Michael Caine
During the same period he also appeared in over 30 films, invariably uncredited, as in the 1956 Sailor Beware, starring Peggy Mount, although, in the same year he did manage to land the much more substantial part of Private Lockyer in Julian Amyes’ hard hitting 1956 war film A Hill in Korea, which featured George Baker, and a certain Stanley Baker, who of course went on to co-produce and star in Zulu.
Stanley Baker
After that it was back to uncredited stuff for Caine, most notably in Lewis Gilbert’s 1958 Carve Her Name with Pride, a very moving piece of work starring Virginia McKenna, where Caine can be spotted, very briefly, in the back of a truck.
In the early 1960s Caine appeared in several of the hugely popular Edgar Wallace Mysteries, a series of British B movies that was staple acting fare for such as Bernard Lee, Sam Kydd, Patrick Cargill, Patrick Barr, Lee Montague, Harry H.Corbett, Paul Daneman, Nigel Green, and Patrick Magee - with those last three also creating very memorable parts for themselves in Zulu.
For Caine the Edgar Wallace series was an excellent training ground where he was able to mix with some of Britain’s most popular film actors of the day, and a few writers and directors of note too, namely Gerard Glaister who later went on to direct the BBC TV series Howards’ Way; and writer Philip Mackie, who is now probably best remembered for his script of The Naked Civil Servant.
Then came something of a breakthrough when Caine was cast in a television play as William Hall describes in his biography of the actor, Arise, Sir Michael Caine…
“It was a ‘two-hander’ by Johnny Speight called The Compartment, and was screened on BBC TV on 22 August 1961. Caine, in suede jacket, black shirt and light coloured slacks, without glasses, played a loquacious youth trying to engage a stuffy businessman (Frank Finlay) in friendly conversation before producing a gun. The BBC referred to it as a ‘gentle comedy’. Caine, typically concise, sums up his part thus: ‘I did a forty-five minute monologue about a guy who goes nuts on a train trying to talk to a very posh businessman.’
“The play received good notices. But more important, in the next post Michael received a letter from Dennis Selinger suggesting an appointment.”
Selinger was then as now, one of the UK’s top agents, and, after seeing Caine in the Speight play wrote to the actor telling him how much he’d enjoyed his performance and that if he wasn’t already signed-up he’d like to represent him. Caine - along with Sean Connery and Roger Moore - has been one of Selinger’s top clients ever since.
And it was after Selinger signed him that Caine was cast in Dixon of Dock Green, and then in the failing ATV series Mark Saber (which featured Honor Blackman and that old matinee idol, Donald Gray) where he played another young rogue.
Dixon of Dock Green
In 1961 Caine was cast as a policeman (again uncredited) in veteran director Val Guest’s very influential British movie The Day the Earth Caught Fire, starring an old friend of Caine’s, Edward Judd. This was followed by another uncredited part (his last) in The Wrong Arm of the Law, which I think was Peter Sellers first venture into films.
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