Sir William Stanley Baker was a Welsh actor and film producer.
71 Facts About Stanley Baker
2.
Stanley Baker played the lead role in Hell Drivers and supporting role in The Guns of Navarone.
3.
Stanley Baker was producer and lead actor in the 1964 film Zulu, in which he portrayed John Chard.
4.
Stanley Baker was awarded a knighthood in 1976, although he died before the investiture ceremony: a heavy smoker, he developed lung cancer and he died in 1976.
5.
Stanley Baker was born in Ferndale, Glamorgan, Wales, the youngest of three children.
6.
Stanley Baker's father was a coal miner who lost a leg in a pit accident but continued working as a lift operator at the mine until his death.
7.
Stanley Baker grew up a self-proclaimed "wild kid" interested in only "football and boxing".
8.
Six months later Stanley Baker appeared with Emlyn Williams in a play in the West End called The Druid's Rest, appearing alongside Richard Burton.
9.
Stanley Baker worked for a time as an apprentice electrician, then through Morse's influence, he managed to secure a position with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1944.
10.
Stanley Baker was there for three years when he had to do his national service.
11.
Stanley Baker served in the Royal Army Service Corps from 1946 until 1948, attaining the rank of sergeant.
12.
Stanley Baker was recommended by Richard Burton for casting in a small role in Terence Rattigan's West End play, Adventure Story.
13.
Stanley Baker began appearing in films and on television, as well as performing on stage for the Middlesex Repertory Company.
14.
Stanley Baker had small roles in All Over the Town, Obsession, Your Witness, Lilli Marlene, Something in the City, The Rossiter Case, Cloudburst, Home to Danger and Whispering Smith Hits London.
15.
The Cruel Sea was the most successful film at the British box office in 1953 and Stanley Baker was now established in films.
16.
Stanley Baker had a small role in a British-US co-production for Warwick Films, The Red Beret, with Alan Ladd, another big hit in Britain.
17.
Warwick liked his work so much they promptly reteamed him with Ladd in Hell Below Zero, with Stanley Baker billed fourth as the main villain.
18.
Stanley Baker stepped in and got excellent reviews; the movie was very popular.
19.
Stanley Baker had his biggest role in a purely British film with The Good Die Young, directed by Lewis Gilbert, playing a boxer who commits a robbery.
20.
Stanley Baker was cast in Twist of Fate opposite Ginger Rogers, replacing Walter Rilla, who quit the production ten days into filming.
21.
Stanley Baker's career received another boost when Laurence Olivier selected him to play Henry Tudor in Richard III.
22.
Stanley Baker was in another epic, playing Attalus in Alexander the Great, which starred Burton in the title role and was shot in Spain for Robert Rossen.
23.
Stanley Baker portrayed Rochester in a British TV adaptation of Jane Eyre.
24.
Stanley Baker's first leading role in a feature film came with Child in the House, written and directed by Cy Endfield.
25.
Stanley Baker had a support role as a psychotic corporal in A Hill in Korea, a Korean War film that featured early performances from Michael Caine, Stephen Boyd and Robert Shaw.
26.
Stanley Baker was the villain in a racing car drama, Checkpoint, opposite Anthony Steel.
27.
Stanley Baker finally broke away from supporting parts when cast as the lead in Hell Drivers, a truck driving drama directed by Endfield.
28.
Until the early 1960s, Stanley Baker was the only male lead in the British cinema who managed to suggest contempt, aggression and the working class.
29.
Stanley Baker is the first hint of proletarian male vigor against the grain of Leslie Howard, James Mason, Stewart Granger, John Mills, Dirk Bogarde and the theatrical knights.
30.
Stanley Baker was a detective in Violent Playground, a drama about juvenile delinquency from the director-producer team Basil Dearden and Michael Relph.
31.
Stanley Baker was reunited with Endfield for Sea Fury, an action drama, playing a tugboat captain.
32.
Stanley Baker was voted the tenth biggest British star in Britain at the end of the year.
33.
Stanley Baker made the Hollywood-financed The Angry Hills in Greece with Robert Aldrich opposite Robert Mitchum.
34.
Stanley Baker said Aldrich offered to engage him in a 28-part series about an Englishman in New York, but he had turned it down to stay in Britain.
35.
Stanley Baker had the lead in Yesterday's Enemy, a World War II drama set in Burma for Hammer Films, directed by Val Guest.
36.
Stanley Baker was a detective in Blind Date for director Joseph Losey, one of Baker's favourite roles.
37.
Stanley Baker made a fourth film with Endfield, Jet Storm playing an airline captain.
38.
None of these films were particularly huge at the box office but at the end of the year Stanley Baker was voted the fourth most popular British star.
39.
Stanley Baker was reunited with Losey for The Criminal, playing an ex-con, and Baker's favourite role.
40.
Stanley Baker played the relatively small role of "Butcher Brown", a war-weary commando, in the Hollywood blockbuster war epic The Guns of Navarone shot in Greece.
41.
Stanley Baker was a tough army officer committing a robbery in A Prize of Arms but the film failed at the box office and it seemed the market for the tough action films in which Baker had specialised might be drying up.
42.
Stanley Baker appeared opposite Jean Seberg in In the French Style, a French-American romance produced by Irwin Shaw.
43.
Stanley Baker was in The Man Who Finally Died for British TV.
44.
Stanley Baker says he was going to star in This Sporting Life but had to drop out when Guns of Navarone went over schedule.
45.
Stanley Baker says Baker never regretted losing the part of Bond to Sean Connery but regretted not making This Sporting Life.
46.
Stanley Baker formed his own company, 'Diamond Films' with Cy Endfield.
47.
Stanley Baker played the lead part of Lieutenant John Chard VC in what remains his best-remembered role.
48.
Stanley Baker later owned Chard's Victoria Cross and Zulu War Medal from 1972 until his death in 1976.
49.
Stanley Baker made two more films in South Africa: Dingaka, on which he worked as an actor only but which was distributed by Levine, and Sands of the Kalahari, which he starred in and produced, directed by Endfield and financed by Levine.
50.
Stanley Baker had plans to film Wilbur Smith's debut novel When the Lion Feeds and The Coral Strand by John Masters.
51.
Stanley Baker made a final film with Losey, Accident, cast against type as an academic.
52.
Stanley Baker formed the production company Oakhurst Productions with Michael Deeley.
53.
Stanley Baker announced he would make another film for Levine, A Nice Girl Like Me acting opposite Hayley Mills who would play a girl who constantly gets pregnant.
54.
Stanley Baker was going to film the John Roeburt novel The Climate of Hell with James Goldstone.
55.
Stanley Baker appeared in The Girl with the Pistol, an Italian comedy, then worked as a producer only on two films for Oakhurst: The Other People, which was never released, and The Italian Job a heist comedy with Michael Caine, a big hit.
56.
Stanley Baker was part of the consortium which set up Harlech Television.
57.
Stanley Baker appeared in two films for producer Dimitri de Grunwald: The Last Grenade, playing a mercenary, and Perfect Friday, a heist movie directed by Peter Hall which Baker helped produce.
58.
Stanley Baker was one of the founder members of Harlech Television, and was a director of it until his death.
59.
Stanley Baker was forced to keep acting to pay the bills, often accepting roles in poor films which adversely affected his status as a star.
60.
At the slowest period, Stanley Baker still had a payroll of at least 100 in his employ.
61.
Stanley Baker made a series of films in Spain: Zorro, starring Alain Delon, where Baker played the main villain; Bride to Be, with Sarah Miles.
62.
Stanley Baker was a heavy cigarette and cigar smoker, and was diagnosed with lung cancer on 13 February 1976.
63.
Stanley Baker's body was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium; his ashes being scattered on a hillside overlooking his childhood home.
64.
In 1950 Stanley Baker married the actress Ellen Martin, who had been introduced to him by Burton.
65.
Stanley Baker was a friend and drinking companion of Richard Burton.
66.
Stanley Baker was politically a socialist, and an acquaintance of Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
67.
Stanley Baker was an opponent of Welsh nationalism and recorded television broadcasts in support of the Welsh Labour Party.
68.
Stanley Baker considered becoming a tax exile in the 1960s but ultimately decided he would miss Britain too much.
69.
Many of his friends believed Stanley Baker had damaged his acting career through his attempts to transform himself into a businessman.
70.
The afternoon featured a BBC Radio Wales tribute to Sir Stanley Baker, hosted by Owen Money and recorded live in Ferndale RFC itself.
71.
Stanley Baker featured several times in the annual poll of British exhibitors for Motion Picture Annual listing the most popular stars at the local box office:.