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Douglas Wilmer’s Memoirs – buy a copy and support the fight against COVID-19
Stage Whispers, The Memoirs, by Douglas Wilmer A Deliciously Honest Memoir Recalling the Golden Age of Stage & Screen
Stage Whispers is the deliciously honest memoirs of Douglas Wilmer, one of Britain’s leading post-war character actors and a treasured Honorary Member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. His book was launched at the Society’s Spring meeting in 2009.
The publisher, Porter Press International, offers the remaining copies of the Classic Edition at £14.95 each – of which 75% will be donated to the World Health Organisation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
During a career that embraced the theatre (Hamlet), TV (Sherlock Holmes) and film (El Cid, Octopussy, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Cleopatra) Douglas Wilmer worked alongside a host of acting greats including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Gene Wilder and Marilyn Monroe.
He witnessed first-hand the breakdown of Richard Burton’s first marriage and the development of his relationship with Elizabeth Taylor, worked with the mercurial Laurence Olivier, was great friends with Charlton Heston, fell out with the BBC, partied with Sophia Loren and was told by the director Anthony Mann that he would never work again!
Wilmer also gave what is considered by many to be the definitive portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the 1960s BBC TV series. He was the first to play Holmes faithfully, warts and all: impatient with lesser mortals, incisive and mercurial.
Written with sharp wit and candour, Stage Whispers presents the dramas of Wilmer’s life, his stage and screen roles and the characters he met along the way, many of them Hollywood stars and household names, in vivid ‘Technicolor’. Wilmer does not pull any punches or spare any reputations, he tells it “like it was” and the cast list is extraordinary: Alan Bates, Peter Cushing, Edith Evans, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Tyrone Guthrie, Richard Harris, Celia Johnson, Christopher Lee, Marilyn Monroe, Joe Orton, Christopher Plummer, George C. Scott, Sybil Thorndike, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Williams, Donald Wolfit – over 80 great names.
Stage Whispers, the Memoirs of Douglas Wilmer is fascinating, amusing, controversial, thought-provoking, informative and compelling.
“I am so glad that Douglas Wilmer’s memoir is still available and that proceeds will go to such a fine cause in these trying times. Do buy!
Douglas was, of course, the Holmes for many – but he was a rare actor with a splendid back-catalogue. He was also a wonderful raconteur and his puckish wit springs off every page.”
Nicholas Utechin, BSI Honorary Member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London
