Peter Cushing

Born on May 26, 1913 in Kenley, Surrey (England), Peter Wilton Cushing was the son of a surveyor and a housewife. From a very young age he was drawn to the profession of his paternal aunt Maude Ashton, a stage actress, as had been his grandfather, Henry William Cushing, and another uncle of his. Already at school he had his first experiences in acting, and he also discovered that he was extraordinarily good at drawing.

When he was very young, his father got him a job as an assistant government surveyor in Surrey, but the boy soon won a scholarship to London to study acting at the Municipal School of Music and Drama. After participating in some theatrical productions in the British capital, he decides to go to Hollywood to try his luck in the movies. He soon made his big screen debut there, in a very minor role, as a military man, in James Whale ‘s The Iron Mask .

After several very episodic roles in films such as Oxford Students , starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy , the young Cushing despairs, and leaves the movie mecca to return to the theater in England, New York and Canada. Although he did not fight in World War II, he lent his support to the Military Entertainment Services Association. During this hard stage, in 1943, he married Helene Beck, with whom he was united until she died in 1971 from emphysema.

After the war, Laurence Olivier offers him his big chance, to play Osric, a courtier with a brief but crucial role in his film version of Hamlet (1948) , which helped him to make himself known. Also working in a minor role in the film was Christopher Lee , later his co-star in successful horror films. Both would coincide again as secondary in Moulin Rouge (1952) , by John Huston .

During the 1950s, Cushing became a popular face for British television viewers for his work on series such as Pride and Prejudice (1952) , which starred him. He did some of his best work as the husband of Deborah Kerr , who is unfaithful to her with a writer (Van Johnson) in Edward Dmytryk ‘s Living with Great Love .

But his real launching springboard came in 1957, when director Terence Fisher recruited him as the leading doctor in The Curse of Frankenstein , which he shot for the then-emerging production company Hammer. The monster was played by an old acquaintance, Christopher Lee . The film was so successful that it significantly influenced Hammer to specialize in low-budget horror, almost always based on literary classics of the genre. Cushing immediately reprized on another home tape , Val Guest ‘s The Abominable Snowman , where he was a botanist doctor who in search of a strange plant joins an expedition to the Himalayas that encounters the legendary Yeti.

Fisher had been so enthralled with the work of Cushing and Lee that he paired them up again in Dracula (1958) , where they respectively played Dr. Abraham Van Helsing – turned scholar-turned-man-of-action – and the legendary vampire. Also repeating were the main technicians, such as cinematographer Jack Asher , screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and musician James Bernard . Cushing himself offered many ideas, especially for the final confrontation sequence with his antagonist.

Although the reviews were dire at the time, it was so successful that it ushered in the golden age of Hammer cinema. The aftermath was not long in coming. Sangster writes a new script with the working title “Disciple of Dracula”, where Christopher Lee reappeared in the role of the count. But he was busy with other projects and he resisted reincarnating the character, so finally the project became The Brides of Dracula , again by Fisher, where despite the title there was no trace of Lee, and he only appeared Cushing as Van Helsing, who returns to Transylvania to confront Baron Meinster, another bloodsucker.

Fisher shot a third title, Dracula, Prince of Darkness , in which he finally convinced Lee, but Cushing only appears at the beginning in a repeat of the ending of the first part. There were more tapes of the saga with Lee under the orders of other filmmakers, but it would be many years until he met Cushing again, in Dracula 73 , who adapted the saga to the time in which it was shot. This was Lorrimer Van Helsing, a descendant of his previous character. The plot of this tape continued in The satanic rites of Dracula , of more than doubtful quality.

Technically, the last installment of the saga would be Kung Fu against the seven golden vampires , where the production company mixed its characteristic gothic cinema with martial arts films, in full bloom with Bruce Lee and the like. It was the last incarnation of Van Helsing by the interpreter, although Lee was opposed to playing Dracula because he only appears at the beginning and at the end. Over time it has become a cult film for fans of series B.

Outside of the saga of the fangs and the stakes, Terence Fisher continued to trust his two favorite actors. He cast Cushing in the role of an archaeologist, pitted against an ancient Egyptian priest (Christopher Lee, of course), in The Mummy (1959) . Fisher also got a lot out of the series that began with the adaptation of the novel by Mary Shelley , since he returned to Cushing, now without Lee in Frankenstein’s Revenge , Frankenstein Created Woman and Frankenstein’s Brain . Another filmmaker from the company, Freddie Francis , directed the actor in The Evil of Frankenstein .

Fisher chose Cushing to play Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of Baskervilles , where Lee was Sir Henry, the last descendant of a line of noblemen who are killed by a hellhound. It would not be the only time that Cushing was the famous detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , as he would repeat in a series of 16 BBC episodes, from 1968, and in the telefilm Sherlock Holmes and the masks of death , where he was already an age advanced.

In addition, Cushing starred in other Hammer titles such as Dracula and the Twins and The Vampire Mistresses . And he worked for the competition, Amicus (another English company focused on terror), on The Beast Must Die (a werewolf) and Tales from Beyond the Grave , made up of short stories. He was also the iconic British science fiction character Dr. Who in The Martians Invade Earth and Dr. Who and the Daleks .

A Spanish filmmaker, Eugenio Martín , managed the presence of Cushing and Lee in Panic on the Trans-Siberian , where both are scientists traveling on the famous train, where an anthropoid creature that was in a frozen state has been resurrected. Unusual tape shot in Madrid and Navacerrada, its technical invoice is much higher than the average for Spanish cinema of the time.

When he was at the end of his career, the then very young George Lucas , who had a reverence for the actor, recruited him to play the evil Moff Tarkin, in Star Wars . where he was the most prestigious name along with the legendary Alec Guinness . Since when he put on the imperial officer costume he discovered that the boots were so tight that he couldn’t put them on, he got Lucas to give him permission to shoot in slippers, which is why he always appears filmed above the knees or behind a table. In her autobiography, Carrie Fisher(Princess Leia) recalled that it was very difficult for her to feign hatred for Cushing’s character in their joint scenes, because off-shot, the actor was extremely chivalrous and charming.

At the end of his life, Cushing appeared in films such as Mystery on the Island of Monsters , by another Spaniard, Juan Piquer Simón , and Top Secret , where in a clear parody of Holmes he appeared as a bookseller with a magnifying glass that seems to increase the size of his eye, although when he removes it it turns out that it is actually huge.

The forgotten science fiction film Biggles. The time traveler was his last job. Later he retired and devoted himself to painting, his hobby, and to writing two autobiographies. In 1989 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his long career. He passed away on August 11, 1994, as a result of prostate cancer.