Too much information - Rated 
Terry-Thomas is one of the very few actors that, on seeing his name in the cast list, will persuade me watch a film simply because he is in it. School for Scoundrels, the Naked Truth and Privates Progress are just three films from this era that just wouldn't be half the films they are without his presence in them.
In the 50's, which were surely the Golden age of British film comedy, his portrayals of the upper-class bounder enriched most of the films he appeared in. In the 60's he made it big in Hollywood too; the movie goers in the States saw him as the typical English toff and they took him to their hearts. Before his film career took off he became a big name (as well as being a pioneer) in British television comedy through his hard work & his insistance on the high quality of his output.
I was hoping that Graham McCanns biography would do full justice to the man but I was a little disappointed with it. Terry-Thomas brought fun & laughter to people for most of his life and would like that to have been reflected in his biography but instead I found this book to be much too dry and matter of fact. By far and away the best part of the book are the closing chapters which deal with Terry-Thomas's sad decline through Parkinsons Disease and subsequent death. The author makes an excellent job of describing the sadness of that time, when the terrible illness reduced Terry-Thomas from being the well dressed dandy to a man on the brink of destitution. These pages are well written, though upsetting to read.
One last complaint; the book is around 320 pages long. Of these, only 190 are the actual biography. The rest is a list of Terry-Thomas's screen appearances and pages upon pages of notes with references to the text of the book. These pages take up approximately 40% of the book, which is far too much. This left me feeling cheated.
Biography versus autobiography - Rated 
I recently bought two books on characters who could be thought to have significant similarities,including one of their catchphrases, "Hello", and both living and working in roughly the same era. These were the autobiography of Lesley Philips,entitled "Hello" and "Bounder!". Fortunately I read "Hello" first and then "Bounder", so that I finished on a high!
The following are some of the positive aspects of "Bounder!", and possibly of many biographies over autobiographies:
There is a wealth of detail showing meticulous research, culled from a wide range of sources.
Relationships with significant characters who appear in both books, e.g. the Boulting Brothers, are seen and recorded from a detached viewpoint.
The innovative and imaginative contribution to different developing and international media (T-T in radio, fledgling UK TV and film)is much better documented.
Finally, the book is just a delight to read, through reading it T-T will be remembered by me as not just an entertainer that I enjoyed on radio and film (I missed the TV) but as an incredibly talented and creative artist, a true Alpha male, with all of an Alpha's strengths and weaknesses. His illness and death were tragic both for him and his family/friends but even in that he was a pioneer through publicising and raising the profile of Parkinsons.
His irony resounds throughout the book, as he commented he was, after all, Parkinson's first guest on his chat show.
Jolly Good Show! - Rated
Terry-Thomas was one of those actors who seemed not simply to create a public persona for himself but actually BECOME that person in private as well. Although he grew up in an 'ordinary' middle class family in Finchley (Richard Briers was his second cousin), he became someone completely different through a sheer act of will. He dressed like a dandy, acted like a 'toff' and spoke like a character out of PG Wodehouse. And he had a fantastically lush and successful life until, tragically, illness took its toll. In this beauty of a biography, Graham McCann treats "T-T" with great warmth and respect, although he doesn't ignore the flaws, excesses and the odd 'absolute stinker' of a film choice! We get to hear about the pranks, the gambles, the crises and the triumphs, with some truly hilarious anecdotes (and not just in the main body of the text, either - remember to glance through the notes section at the end to see delightful little 'extras' about, for example, Terry's battles with the builders who were renovating his house and the day Peter Jones discovered that his fellow actor was sporting special 'bespoke' underpants!). The great period as one of the Boulting Brothers' key characters, and the 'fun' era as a Hollywood celebrity, are covered with care and good insight, as are the years as a Briton abroad in Ibiza, and then you are moved close to tears by the sensitive account of how Terry-Thomas was broken down by Parkinson's disease. It's all very well-researched but very brightly, engagingly presented, and a fitting tribute to one of the greats of British cinema, TV and comedy.
|
