John Stone (actor)
Encyclopedia
Career
Born in Cardiff, Wales as John Hailstone, Stone was educated at Brighton CollegeBrighton College
Brighton College is an institution divided between a Senior School known simply as Brighton College, the Prep School and the Pre-Prep School. All of these schools are co-educational independent schools in Brighton, England, sited immediately next to each another. The Senior School caters for...
. He made his first West End appearance in One Wild Oat by Vernon Sylvaine, 1948. Subsequent appearances include the London premiere of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge
A View from the Bridge
A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller that was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play was unsuccessful and Miller subsequently revised the play to contain two acts; this...
, Comedy Theatre, 1956; And Suddenly it's Spring, Duke of York's Theatre, 1959; Signpost to Murder, Cambridge Theatre, 1962; and the role of Crestwell, the laconic butler, in Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's Relative Values, Westminster Theatre, 1973.
Under contract to Rank
Rank Organisation
The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company formed during 1937 and absorbed in 1996 by The Rank Group Plc. It was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities....
, as one of the Sydney Box
Sydney Box
Sydney Box was a British film producer and screenwriter, brother of another prominent British filmmaker, Betty Box. He produced the postwar screenplay, The Seventh Veil, which earned him the 1946 Oscar for best original screenplay with his then wife Muriel Box after which the couple were hired by...
Company of Youth ("Charm School") in the late 1940s. Film credits include The Weaker Sex (dir. Roy Baker
Roy Baker
Roy Baker may refer to:* Bullet Baker, Roy "Bullet" Baker, , American football player* Roy Thomas Baker , British music producer* Roy Ward Baker , British film director, also credited as Roy Baker...
), 1948; The Frightened City
The Frightened City
The Frightened City is a 1961 British film about extortion rackets and gang warfare in the West End of London. It stars Sean Connery, who plays a burglar called Paddy Damion. He is lured into a protection racket by oily mobster Harry Foulcher , in order to support his partner in crime , who is...
, 1961; Masque of the Red Death
The Masque of the Red Death (film)
The Masque of the Red Death is a 1964 British horror film starring Vincent Price in a tale about a prince who terrorizes a plague-ridden peasantry while merrymaking in a lonely castle with his jaded courtiers. The film was directed by Roger Corman; the screenplay by Charles Beaumont and R...
(dir. Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
), 1964; Deadlier Than the Male
Deadlier Than the Male
Deadlier Than the Male is a 1967 British action film featuring the character of Bulldog Drummond. It is one of the many take-offs of James Bond produced during the 1960s but based on an established detective fiction hero...
(1967); and You Only Live Twice
You Only Live Twice (film)
You Only Live Twice is the fifth spy film in the James Bond series, and the fifth to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film's screenplay was written by Roald Dahl, and loosely based on Ian Fleming's 1964 novel of the same name...
(1967).
Stone was a familiar face on British television from the 1950s-1980s, and featured as Captain John Dillon in Quatermass II
Quatermass II
Quatermass II is a British science-fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the Quatermass series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the first of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives...
(1955). In 1957, he starred as special agent, Mike Anson, in an early ITV thriller series, Destination Downing Street (Associated Rediffusion), which ran for 26 weeks. From 1971 to 1974 Stone played Dr Ian Moody in the Yorkshire Television series, Justice
Justice (British TV series)
Justice is a British drama television series which originally aired on ITV in 39 hour-long episodes between 8 August 1971 and 16 October 1974. Margaret Lockwood stars as Harriet Peterson a female barrister in the North of England...
, opposite Margaret Lockwood, his offscreen partner of seventeen years. Subsequently, he appeared in the BBC series, Flesh and Blood (1980–82) and Strike it Rich (1986/87).
Under his birth name of John Hailstone, he authored A Present for the Past, a play premiered at the Royal Lyceum Theatre
Royal Lyceum Theatre
The Royal Lyceum Theatre is a 658 seat theatre in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, named after the Theatre Royal Lyceum and English Opera House, the residence at the time of legendary Shakespearean actor Henry Irving. It was built in 1883 by architect C. J. Phipps at a cost of UK£17,000 on behalf...
, Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...
of 1966. It starred Wendy Hiller
Wendy Hiller
Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller DBE was an Academy Award-winning English film and stage actress, who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly sixty years. The writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took...
, Renee Asherson
Renee Asherson
Renée Asherson , born Dorothy Renée Ascherson, is an English actress of stage, film and television.Much of Asherson's theatrical career was spent in Shakespearean plays, appearing at such venues as the Old Vic, the Liverpool Playhouse and the Westminster Theatre...
, and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies
Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies
Dame Gwen Lucy Ffrangcon-Davies, DBE was a British actress and centenarian. She was born in London of a Welsh family; the name "Ffrangcon" originates from a valley in Snowdonia...
, and was produced by Michael Codron
Michael Codron
Michael Victor Codron is a British film and theatre producer, known for his productions of the early work of Harold Pinter, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Simon Gray and Tom Stoppard...
.