Robert Coote Filmography

Theater of Blood

Actors: Brigid Eric Bates, Stanley Bates, Jack Maguire, Bunny Reed, Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne

Synopsis: The darkly comic and sometimes quite gory Theatre of Blood is a vehicle tailor-made for its star Vincent Price, brilliantly capitalizing on his reputation as a master of period horror drawn from "literary" sources. Price portrays Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart, who becomes enraged after Read More

Up the Front

Synopsis: Zany British comedian Frankie Howerd, who'd previously laid waste to Ancient Rome in Up Pompeii, does same with World War II in Up the Front. Howerd plays a timorous servant who undergoes hypnosis. While thus entranced, he imagines himself a fearless warrior, and makes a beeline to the recruiting Read More

Kenner

Actors: Jim Brown, Madlyn Rhue, Ricky Cordell, Charles Horvath

Synopsis: Kenner (Jim Brown) arrives in India to seek revenge on the people who killed his business associate. An Indian lad Saji (Ricky Cordell) befriends the American adventurer and helps Kenner. The boy's mother Anasuya (Madlyn Rhue) is wary of the situation until she discovers Kenner is a good man and Read More

Prudence and the Pill

Actors: Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Robert Coote, Irina Demick, Judy Geeson, Vickery Turner

Synopsis: Prudence and the Pill gained minor notoriety in 1968 as the first film comedy dealing with the new birth-control pill. David Niven substitutes aspirin for his wife's (Deborah Kerr) birth control medicine, hoping that she will become pregnant by her lover (Keith Mitchell) -- thereby freeing him to Read More

The Whitehall Worrier [TV Series]

Actors: Robert Coote, Moira Lister, Jonathan Cecil, Daphne Anderson, Karl Lanchbury

Synopsis: Created by Alan Melville, the British sitcom The Whitehall Worrier was introduced as "The Mallard Imaginaire," the July 5, 1966 presentation of the BBC anthology Comedy Playhouse. Robert Coote starred as the Right Honourable Mervyn Pugh, an incredibly thickheaded MP. Pugh's stupidities were offset Read More

The Cool Ones

Actors: Roddy McDowall, Debbie Watson, Gil Peterson, Phil Harris, Robert Coote

Synopsis: This musical comedy pokes fun at the music industry as it tells of the romantic travails of two popular singers thrust together by an ingenious promoter/matchmaker as a publicity stunt. The young male needs to revive his flagging career while the female singer is trying to get her big break; so Read More

A Man Could Get Killed

Actors: James Garner, Melina Mercouri, Sandra Dee, Robert Coote

Synopsis: This late-'60s spy spoof also borrows a page from late-'50s Alfred Hitchcock, with its everyday man becoming embroiled in the violent and baffling world of international espionage. When American businessman William Beddoes (James Garner) is traveling in Lisbon, he's mistaken for an English spy Read More

The Swinger

Actors: Ann-Margret, Anthony Franciosa, Robert Coote, Yvonne Romain, Horace McMahon

Synopsis: The most interesting aspect of The Swinger is the name of the character played by Ann-Margret: the former Ann Margaret Olsson essays the role of Kelly Olsson. A naive small-town girl, Kelly aspires to become a writer in the Big City. When her stories are rejected because they aren't exciting and Read More

Alice Through the Looking Glass

Actors: Robert Coote, Jimmy Durante, Nanette Fabray, Ricardo Montalban, Agnes Moorehead, Jack Palance

Synopsis: No TV or movie producer has yet to resist the temptation of turning Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass into an all-star musical. Certainly the folks at ABC were unable to resist turning out the 1966 taped TV special Alice Through the Looking Glass, but the end result Read More

The Golden Head

Actors: George Sanders, Buddy Hackett, Jess Conrad, Robert Coote

Synopsis: In this adventure, two crooks plan to abscond with the rare, priceless Golden Head of Saint Laszlo. Their plans are thwarted by a British detective's children who have come to Budapest for a holiday. When the kids learn about the scheme, they immediately tell their dad. In the end, an exciting Read More

My Fair Lady

Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper

Synopsis: At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic Read More

Personal Touch

Day They Gave Diamonds Away

The V.I.P.'s

Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Elsa Martinelli, Margaret Rutherford, Maggie Smith

Synopsis: Terrence Rattigan, the playwright who brought us the multicharactered, multistoried Separate Tables, again offers us an episodic cross-section of humanity in The V.I.P.'s. When a heavy London fog paralyzes all air traffic, the lives of several people are profoundly affected. As indicated by the Read More

The League of Gentlemen

Actors: Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes

Synopsis: An engrossing suspenser with dashes of comedy, League of Gentlemen is about a daring group of highly trained army men, turned bank robbers. When Hyde (Jack Hawkins) is drummed out of the army after years of devoted service, he decides to get back at society in general. One by one, he finds seven Read More

The Horse's Mouth

Actors: Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh, Mike Morgan, Renee Houston, Robert Coote

Synopsis: The Horse's Mouth is an acting and a writing tour de force for Alec Guinness, who authored the screenplay in addition to starring in the film. Gulley Jimson (Alec Guinness) is an aging artist with a reputation as a genius, though he lives an impoverished life. Jimson has reached the point Read More

Merry Andrew

Actors: Danny Kaye, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, Salvatore Baccaloni, Noel Purcell, Robert Coote

Synopsis: Though Merry Andrew is more subdued than earlier Danny Kaye efforts, it's still a lot of fun. Kaye is cast as Andrew Larabee, a mild-mannered but highly unorthodox archeology professor at a British boy's school. While on an expedition in Italy, Andrew allows a traveling circus to pitch camp on his Read More

Hello London

Synopsis: Long, long, after her days of filmic glory in the 1930s and 1940s, skating star Sonja Henie made her last movie appearance in the British Hello, London. Henie plays herself, a rich-as-Croesus ice-show celebrity making a tour of Europe. Michael Wilding and Eunice Gayson contrive to keep Sonja in Read More

The Swan

Actors: Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness, Louis Jourdan, Agnes Moorehead, Jesse Royce Landis

Synopsis: Frances Howard starred as Princess Alexandria in the 1925 silent version of Ferenc Molnar's play The Swan; Lillian Gish assumed the role in the 1930 talkie version. The third and final adaptation starred Grace Kelly, who had one slight advantage over her predecessors; she would soon become a real Read More

The Constant Husband

Actors: Rex Harrison, Margaret Leighton, Kay Kendall, Cecil Parker, Nicole Maurey

Synopsis: Rex Harrison is The Constant Husband in this delightful British comedy. It all begins when amnesia victim Charles Hathaway (Harrison) tries to reconstruct his past with the aid of psychiatrist Llewellyn (Cecil Parker). Our hero would have been better off had his memory remained lost: Llewellyn Read More

Studio One: The Man They Acquitted

Othello

Actors: Orson Welles, Michael MacLiammoir, Michael Laurence, Suzanne Cloutier, Robert Coote

Synopsis: Anyone interested in making a low-budget movie ought to see Orson Welles' screen adaptation of William Shakespeare's Othello, a striking example of how much can be achieved with very little money. For years, stories about this singularly troubled movie circulated more widely than the film itself; Welles Read More

The Merry Widow

Actors: Lana Turner, Fernando Lamas, Una Merkel, Richard Haydn, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Based on an operetta by Franz Lehar, this remake of the 1934 original finds a wealthy widow (Lana Turner) returning to her husband's native land to dedicate a memorial to him. The king (Thomas Gomez) of the country, deep in debt, tries to convince her to stay by offering a young count (Fernando Lamas Read More

The Prisoner of Zenda

Actors: Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, James Mason, Louis Calhern, Jane Greer, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: Mistaken identity and underhanded dealings set the stage for this adventure story based on Anthony Hope's classic novel. Rudolph Rassendyll (Stewart Granger) is a British tourist visiting the nation of Ruritania in the Balkans. A number of people comment upon Rassendyll's remarkable resemblance to Read More

Scaramouche

Actors: Stewart Granger, Eleanor Parker, Janet Leigh, Mel Ferrer, Henry Wilcoxon

Synopsis: This delightful adaptation of Rafael Sabatini's swashbuckling novel stars Stewart Granger as Andre Moreau, an 18th-century French nobleman who is publicly humiliated by the Marquis de Maynes (Mel Ferrer). Challenged to a sword duel by the Marquis, Andre, who knows nothing about fencing, runs away Read More

Soldiers Three

Actors: Stewart Granger, Walter Pidgeon, David Niven, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack

Synopsis: Allegedly based on a Rudyard Kipling novel, this draws most of its inspiration from the 1939 film made of Kipling's narrative poem Gunga Din. Stewart Granger, Robert Newton and Cyril Cusack play three boisterous English soldiers stationed on the Northern India frontier. Walter Pidgeon and David Niven Read More

The Desert Fox

Actors: James Mason, Cedric Hardwicke, Jessica Tandy, Luther Adler, Everett Sloane

Synopsis: The Desert Fox is a superb filmed biography of German general Erwin Rommel, concentrating on the period between his retreat from North Africa and his government-decreed death. A brilliant tactician, Rommel earns the respect not only of his own men but of the enemy. Unfortunately, Adolph Hitler (Luther Adler Read More

The Elusive Pimpernel

Actors: David Niven, Margaret Leighton, Jack Hawkins, Cyril Cusack, Robert Coote, David Hutcheson

Synopsis: In this costume adventure set in France during the Reign of Terror, a mysterious man known only as the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues noblemen from the guillotine and leads them to safety across the English Channel. Chauvelin (Cyril Cusack) is determined to unmask the Pimpernel and bring him to Read More

The Red Danube

Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Ethel Barrymore, Peter Lawford, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh

Synopsis: One of the more palatable of Hollywood's anti-communist tracts of the late 1940s-early 1950s was MGM's The Red Danube. Janet Leigh plays Maria Buhlen, an Eastern Bloc ballerina who seeks political asylum in the British-occupied zone of Vienna. Maria's plight turns into a political tug-of-war Read More

The Three Musketeers

Actors: Gene Kelly, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Van Heflin, Angela Lansbury

Synopsis: The third talkie version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, this splashy MGM adaptation is also the first version in Technicolor. Gene Kelly romps his way through the role of D'Artagnan, the upstart cadet who joins veteran Musketeers Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote) Read More

Berlin Express

Actors: Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Charles Korvin, Paul Lukas, Robert Coote

Synopsis: On a trip from France to Allied-occupied Berlin, a group of travelers -- a mysterious and very secretive European woman (Merle Oberon), an American agricultural expert (Robert Ryan), a British educator (Robert Coote), a Soviet Army officer (Roman Toporow), and a French official (Charles Korvin) Read More

Macbeth

Actors: Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O'Herlihy, Roddy McDowall, Edgar Barrier

Synopsis: Shakespeare's tragic tale of the rise and fall of ambitious 12th-century Scottish warrior MacBeth has proven irresistible to filmmakers. Orson Welles was so anxious to transfer the play to the screen that he acceded to the demands of his parent studio, Republic pictures, that he shoot his version Read More

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Actors: Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders, Isobel Elsom, Edna Best, Vanessa Brown, Helen Freeman, Natalie Wood, Robert Coote

Synopsis: Like its TV-sitcom counterpart of the 1960s, the original film version of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was based on the novel by R.A. Dick. Gene Tierney plays turn-of-the-century widow Lucy Muir, who escapes her impossible in-laws by moving into an old house on the English seacoast. Despite the Read More

Lured

Actors: George Sanders, Lucille Ball, Charles Coburn, Alan Mowbray, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Lucille Ball is an American taxi-dancer living in London whose roommate has disappeared. The missing girl had left to answer a job offer in the "personal" column of the Times...just like several other women who've vanished without a trace. Scotland Yard detective George Zucco suggests that Ball Read More

Forever Amber

Actors: Jane Ball, Linda Darnell, Edmund Breon, Cornel Wilde, Leo G. Carroll, Richard Greene, George Sanders, Robert Coote, Jessica Tandy

Synopsis: They said it couldn't be done, but they did it: Kathleen Winsor's "notorious", bestselling bodice-ripper Forever Amber actually made it to the screen in 1947 with full censorial approval. Of course, it was necessary to tone down the more erotic passages of Winsor's novel, but the end result Read More

The Exile

Actors: Nigel Bruce, Fred Cavens, Gordon B. Clark, Robert Coote

Synopsis: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is the title character, a young king exiled by evil conspirators. Forced to live far from his homeland, Fairbanks is harassed by the wicked Henry Daniell, who has been appointed to keep the young monarch from reclaiming his throne. After falling in love with commoner Paula Croset Read More

Cloak and Dagger

Actors: Gary Cooper, Lilli Palmer, Robert Alda, Vladimir Sokoloff, J. Edward Bromberg, Marjorie Hoshelle

Synopsis: Inspired by actual events, Cloak and Dagger was first major "atomic power" melodrama of the postwar era. Gary Cooper stars as bookish physics professor Alvah Jesper, a character obviously based on A-bomb codeveloper J. Robert Oppenheimer. Pressed into service by the OSS in the last months of WW2 Read More

A Matter of Life and Death

Actors: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Richard Attenborough

Synopsis: Also known as Stairway to Heaven, A Matter of Life and Death is the remarkable British fantasy film that became the surprise hit of 1946. David Niven stars as Peter Carter, a World War II RAF pilot who is forced to bail out of his crippled plane without a parachute. He wakes up to find he has Read More

Forever and a Day

Actors: Merle Oberon, Brian Aherne, Gladys Cooper, Ida Lupino, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Cummings, Claude Rains, Anna Neagle, Roland Young

Synopsis: The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old Read More

The Commandos Strike at Dawn

Actors: Paul Muni, Anna Lee, Lillian Gish, Cedric Hardwicke, Robert Coote, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Scripted by Irwin Shaw from a story by C. S. Forester (of "Captain Horatio Hornblower" fame), Commandos Strike at Dawn is a wartime morale-booster, largely set in coastal Norway. Paul Muni stars as Eric Toresen, an apolitical and basically pacifistic Norwegian fisherman who is galvanized into Read More

You Can't Fool Your Wife

Actors: Lucille Ball, James Ellison, Robert Coote, Virginia Vale, Emma Dunn

Synopsis: In the RKO programmer You Can't Fool Your Wife, Lucille Ball gets mixed up in a storyline that would have been right at home on her future TV series I Love Lucy. Feeling neglected by her husband Andrew (James Ellison), drab housewife Clara Hinklin (Ball) walks out on him, much to the delight of Read More

Vigil in the Night

Actors: Carole Lombard, Brian Aherne, Anne Shirley, Julien Mitchell, Robert Coote

Synopsis: A dedicated nurse in a British hospital takes a nervous rookie under her wing. When the new nurse messes up and causes a patient's death, she protects her and loses her job. She eventually finds work at another bigger and more rundown hospital and there falls in love with a handsome young doctor. Read More

Gunga Din

Actors: Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Sam Jaffe, Eduardo Ciannelli, Joan Fontaine

Synopsis: Though Rudyard Kipling's poem Gunga Din makes a swell recital piece, it cannot be said to have much of a plot. It's simply a crude cockney soldier's tribute to a native Indian water boy who remains at his job even after being mortally wounded. Hardly the sort of material upon which to build 118 Read More

The House of Fear

Actors: William Gargan, Irene Hervey, Dorothy Arnold, Alan Dinehart, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: A remake of Paul Leni's The Last Warning (1929), this "Crime Club" series entry once again presents the spectacle of an actor murdered in mid-performance and in front of a sellout crowd. This time the unfortunate thespian is John Wofford (Don Douglas), whose body subsequently disappears. To solve Read More

Bad Lands

Actors: Robert H. Barrat, Noah Beery, Jr., Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Douglas Walton, Andy Clyde

Synopsis: Bad Lands is a remake of John Ford's The Lost Patrol, with the locale changed from the Mesopotamian to the Arizona desert. The year is 1875: A posse headed by sheriff Robert Barrat is held at bay by Apache warriors. Following the pattern established by the Ford film, the posse members are Read More

Nurse Edith Cavell

Actors: Anna Neagle, Edna May Oliver, George Sanders, May Robson, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: Many of the "preparedness" films of the years just prior to World War II sidestepped censorship by depicting past outrages of the Germans. Such a film was British producer Herbert Wilcox's Hollywood production Nurse Edith Cavell, in which Wilcox's future wife Anna Neagle portrayed the titular Read More

Mr. Moto's Last Warning

Actors: Peter Lorre, Ricardo Cortez, Virginia Field, John Carradine, George Sanders

Synopsis: Japanese detective Mr. Moto finds himself hip-deep in international espionage in this adventure tale. In Port Said, a pair of rogues -- French-born Fabian (Ricardo Cortez) and Englishman Norvel (George Sanders) -- are working for a nameless foreign government and devise a scheme to sabotage French Read More

The Girl Downstairs

Actors: Franziska Gaal, Franchot Tone, Walter Connolly, Reginald Gardiner, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: "Discovered" for American films by Cecil B. DeMille, popular Hungarian actress Franceska Gaal made the last of her three Hollywood screen appearances in MGM's The Girl Downstairs. A Cinderella yarn, the film stars Gaal as scullery maid Katerina Linz, who is romanced by callous playboy Paul Wagner Read More

A Yank at Oxford

Actors: Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Vivien Leigh, Edmund Gwenn

Synopsis: A Yank at Oxford was filmed in England at MGM's "sister studio", Elstree. Robert Taylor plays Lee Sheridan, an arrogant young American scholar/athlete who intends to show the "Brits" a thing or two while attending Oxford University. His abrasive attitude grates against the Oxonian students, who Read More

Blond Cheat

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy a millionaire must somehow dissuade his daughter from marrying a money-grubbing social-climber. In desperation he offers to back the show of a beautiful starlet--provided she break his daughter's heart. Things don't go exactly as planned, but a lot of fun is had along the Read More

Rangle River

Actors: Victor Jory, Margaret Dare, Robert Coote, Rita Pauncefort

Synopsis: In this Australian western, a rancher's daughter goes out on a long-distance lark unaware that her father is facing financial dire straits. A new foreman finally contacts the girl so she will come home. The young woman finally comes home, but encounters constant disagreements with foreman. In Read More

The Thirteenth Chair

Actors: Dame May Whitty, Madge Evans, Elissa Landi, Thomas Beck

Synopsis: The 1937 Thirteenth Chair was the third film version of the 1919 stage melodrama by Bayard Veiller. Dame Mae Whitty dominates the proceedings as Mme. La Grange, a phony mystic who is on hand when a man is killed during one of her seances. The killing takes place in the home of a provincial British Read More

The Sheik Steps Out

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Lola Lane, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Burke, Stanley Fields

Synopsis: In this romantic adventure, a wealthy Arab sheik has a reputation for breeding some of the fastest horses in the world. Meanwhile, the spoiled daughter of a corkscrew magnate bets her British betrothed that she can find a horse that can beat any nag in his stable. She and her father then set out Read More

Loyalties

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Heather Thatcher, Miles Mander, Joan Wyndham, Philip Strange

Synopsis: In this British drama, based on a popular play, a wealthy young Jew goes to a weekend house party and finds himself victimized by anti-Semitic guests. To add insult to injury, his wallet is then stolen. The fellow exposes the pilferer and threatens to take him to court until the other guests Read More