SEAT AT THE BACK: I Want To Tell You, a Screenplay! '...you'd think Max Bygraves would live forever, but not even he could do that..'

Saturday, 1 September 2012

I Want To Tell You, a Screenplay! '...you'd think Max Bygraves would live forever, but not even he could do that..'

What a shame, you'd think Max Bygraves would live forever, but not even he could do that, and he has died, yesterday aged 89. He appeared in a few movies of their time, from the sublime; 1961's 'Spare the Rod' in which Max plays a schoolmaster bringing fresh life to a deprived inner-city school (the film he considered his best) to the ridiculous; talking toddler comedy 'Bobbikins' (1959). There were appearances in unneglected kids flick 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' (1961) to the heavier social realism of neglected kids flick 'A Cry from the Streets' (1958), directed by Lewis Gilbert - later to find fame as a Bond director. Max Bygraves may be better known as the man forever smiling, as if at some joke that we didn't quite catch the punchline to, but in his mostly quite downbeat movie roles, he was equally as good with the straightest of face.