The Cast of 'Aces High': Where are they Now?

[Pete Hill]

The Cast of Aces High: Where are they now?

‘Aces High’ was a British-made WW1 aerial film released in 1976 and directed by Jack Gold. It was loosely based on the 1930s play & novel ‘Journeys End’ written by real-life WW1 veteran R C Sherriff and the air-war memoir ‘ Sagittarius Rising’ by veteran RFC pilot Cecil Lewis. The original ‘Journey’s End’ was set in a British Infantry Battalion but this film transported the characters to a fictional RFC squadron in 1917. However the film essentially follows the plot of Sherriff’s book quite closely.
The film was not released in the USA until late 1977, over a year after it was released in the UK.
The RFC unit portrayed in the film flew SE5s and the film’s producers used the converted Stampes that had been featured in both The Blue Max, Darling Lili and Von Richthofen & Brown. A real Avro 504 also features in the film. The German planes used include a replica Fokker EIV (not accurate for the year in which the film is set) and modern biplanes (Boeing Stearmans?) portrayed German IAF biplanes. Aerial footage from The Blue Max and Von Richthofen & Brown was also used in the film, partially due to Aces High having a limited budget. The US WW2 drama Midway, released the following year in 1977, also resorted to the same practice by borrowing footage from previous war movies.

THE CAST

Those who have sadly departed:

John Gielgud who had a small role as the Public-School Headmaster at the start of the film, was a legendary figure of the British Stage and Screen and he is the only British actor to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. He will always be best remembered for his Shakespearian Work which included playing the title role of Hamlet some 500 times. His film roles included the Butler Hobson in the 1981 comedy Arthur (for which he won an Oscar) and that of Lord Raglan in the 1968 epic Charge of the Light Brigade and the music teacher in the Australian 1996 film Shine. His final film was playing the part of Pope Paul IV in the 1998 film Elizabeth. He was arrested in 1953 for his homosexuality back when so-called ‘buggery’ was considered a criminal offence in the UK. He died in 2000 at the age of 96. Gielgud would have been 13 years-old in 1917.

Trevor Howard, who played the role of Lt-Colonel Silkin, was another major performer of British theatre and film. Howard served in the military during WW2 and became a Second-Lieutenant in the Royal Signals Corps of the Airborne Forces. However he was invalided out in 1943 after less than 3 years of service and records reveal that it was due to ‘mental instability’. Post-war stories that circulated amongst the public of his courageous deeds in combat were pure fiction, partially fabricated by the film studios to promote their movie star and partially invented by Howard himself who claimed (falsely) that he had fought in both Norway and Sicily. However, Howard was a veteran of many war movies such as Battle of Britain, Von Ryan’s Express, The Third Man & The Charge of the Light Brigade. Frank Sinatra, who starred in Von Ryan’s Express alongside Howard, commented that he had finally met some-one who drank more impressively than Dean Martin! Howard died in 1988 at the age of 74.

Christopher Blake, who played one of the squadron’s pilots- Lieutenant Roberts, was an English actor who had a steady career, working mainly in TV. His most successful venture was the British TV-sitcom That’s my Boy which ran from 1981-86. Blake’s real (birth) name was Peter Gray. He died in December 2004 of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma at the age of 55.

Ray Milland, who played Brigadier-General Whale, was a Welsh-born actor who spent most of his life in the USA and who appeared in numerous films between 1929 and 1985. Milland served in the British Household Cavalry for 4 years during the late 1920s and he attempted to enlist in the US Army air-force during WW2 but instead was employed as a civilian flight-instructor for the Army. Milland appeared in many Hollywood films and he had some serious mishaps during his career. In 1939, he appeared in Hotel Imperial and whilst filming a Cavalry charge, he fell from his horse and suffered multiple fractures which required weeks of hospitalisation. Then in 1941 he appeared in I Wanted Wings alongside a young William Holden. During filming, he went up for a test-flight as a passenger and he told the pilot that he wished to do a parachute jump (Milland had been a keen amateur parachutist before the war). Before the plane could reach the desired altitude, it suffered engine-trouble and the pilot was forced to land immediately. Back on the ground, Milland remarked to an employee from the film’s costume-department that he had been disappointed about not being able to jump. Whereupon the shocked man told Milland that the parachute-pack that the latter had been wearing had only been a film-prop and had not even contained a real chute! The following year he filmed Reap the Wild Wind where he had to change his hair-style from straight to curly and the hot curling irons caused Milland to suffer premature-baldness, risking his film-career. But in 1945 he reached a career-high when he won an Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend. His acceptance speech remains the shortest ever as he merely bowed to the audience and left the stage without a word. Other notable films he starred in included Close to My Heart (1951) and Dial M for Murder (1954). Milland died in 1986 at the age of 79 after a lengthy battle with Lung Cancer.

On a happier note:-

Malcolm McDowell, who starred as Major John Gresham, turned 64 in June. He has had a busy and very prolific career and he described himself as a ‘working actor’, meaning that he has not always been choosey about his roles. He will always be most-remembered for his starring roles in the controversial films If…(1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). McDowell’s career has gone through highs and lows but he has always been busy. He has appeared in sci-fi films such as Star Trek: Generations, Tank Girl and Moon-44, he guest-starred as ‘A British Person’ in an episode of South Park and appeared in the intros for several video games. McDowell angrily cut short an interview on Australian radio in 2005 when the announcer cheekily commented ‘you’ve been in some real crap, haven’t you?!’ Despite such a putdown, McDowell’s important film-roles in the 1960s-70s have made their mark on modern cinema.

Christopher Plummer, who played Captain ‘Uncle’ Sinclair, is a Canadian-born actor who has had a very successful career and who is 79 years of age. He will always be best-known for playing the role of Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music which is ironic as Plummer allegedly despised the film’s sugary sweetness. He had his film debut in 1958 in the film Stage Struck. His career had a late resurgence in the 1990s with roles in important films such as Malcolm X, A Beautiful Mind, The Insider and Syriana. Historical roles included playing the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo (1970) and Aristotle in Alexander (2004). Aces High was his second aerial war film, having already played a Canadian Spitfire pilot in The Battle of Britain (1968).

Simon Ward, who played Lieutenant Crawford, is an English actor and he is 69 years-old. He began his acting career in 1967 and he will be probably best-remembered for playing the title role in the 1972 historical film Young Winston. Other war films he appeared in included Zulu Dawn (1979) and Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973). More recently, he took over the lead role in the West-End Play Cell Mates in 1995 after original star Stephen Fry abruptly left, having suffered a nervous breakdown following poor reviews. Currently, he is a regular cast-member on the BBC TV series Judge John Deed. His daughter Sophie Ward is a successful actor.

[Pete Hill]

Part 2

Peter Firth, who played Lieutenant Stephan Croft, is a British actor who has had a successful career in film, TV and stage and is 54 years-old. He began his career as a child-actor in the early 1970s and had his first mature-role in the 1976 BBC TV-play The Picture of Dorian Gray. He appeared as the KGB-man who is murdered by Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October (1987) and as a US Navy Battleship Captain in Pearl Harbor (2001) He is currently starring as MI5 officer Harry Pearce in the successful BBC TV series Spooks which started in 2002.

Richard Johnson, who played Major Lyle, is an English actor who recently turned 82. He has been actively working on stage, screen and TV since the 1960s and is still acting today, having appeared this year in the Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. During the 1960s, he had major roles in The Haunting (1963), Khartoum (1966) and Danger Route (1969). Johnson was first choice to play James Bond but he turned the role down as he did not wished to be locked into a lengthy contract and the role instead went to Sean Connery. He has been married 4 times, including a one year-long marriage to Kim Novak in 1965 and he has 4 children to three different mothers.

David Wood, who played Lieutenant Tommy Thompson, is an English actor and is 65 years-old. In addition to acting roles on stage and screen, Wood is an accomplished writer, director, playwright, musician, composer, producer and children’s author. He has written and produced many plays and musicals for children, including The Gingerbread Man which has played globally since its debut in 1977.

Barry Jackson, who played the mechanic Corporal Joyce, is a veteran character-actor of film and TV in Britain. He is 71 years-old and still actively working. Films he appeared in included Ryan’s Daughter, Barry Lyndon and, more recently, Wimbledon. TV credits include Dr Who, Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green (alongside real-life RFC veteran Jack Warner), Heartbeat and Minder.

Jack Gold, the Director of Aces High, is 79 years-old and is an English director who has helmed films since the 1950s in addition to producing numerous documentaries. His films include The Naked Civil Servant (1975), Man Friday (1975), The Medusa Touch (1978) and A Deadly Game (1979). In 1987, he directed the TV-film Escape from Sobibor which Holocaust historians have praised as one of the most realistic depictions of a Nazi death-camp. And more recently, he directed the final of the Inspector Morse TV-movies which featured the death of Morse, shortly before the real-life death of actor John Thaw who played the role.


Pete.

[Major Larabee]

A couple of points on the aircraft Indeed footage from the earlier Darling Lili and Richtofen and Brown is used, particularly in the final dog fight. The Aircraft used for filming were not those used in the earlier films. The stamps were converted specially for the film by Personal Plane Services at Booker in England to resemble SE5's
The German aircraft were portrayed by an Eindecker replica belonging to PPS, a Viima, a Jungmiester and several Tiger Moths. The rest of the German Aircraft were from the footage pinched from the earlier films.