Michael Troughton
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Patrick Troughton: The Biography 2 Exemplare
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Testament of Youth [1979 TV Mini-series] — Actor — 4 Exemplare
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This is a biography of the second actor to play the part of Doctor Who on British TV, written by one of his sons. Troughton is my second favourite of the classic Doctors (after Tom Baker) and this book gives adequate coverage to his three years in the role from 1966-69, but also covers his extensive career both before and afterwards, starring in numerous TV shows and films of different genres, comedies, historical dramas, thrillers and horrors. Some of his most famous roles outside Doctor Who were the priest in The Omen, Paul of Tarsus, Mr Quilp in Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop, the Duke of Norfolk in The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and, one of his last roles, a magician in an adaptation of the children's classic novel The Box of Delights. Prior to his professional acting career, he had quite a distinguished war career, being a naval captain stationed in East Anglia, protecting the coast from enemy submarines. This book also recounts his convoluted family life. In 1955 he walked out on his wife and three children (Michael was just 10 months old at the time) to set home with another woman, by whom he had three more children, shuttling between the two homes. This was all kept secret by the family for many years. Eventually he married another wife in the 1970s. Despite all this, he seems to have had a good relationship with all bar one of his six children, the exception being his eldest daughter who never forgave him for abandoning her mother. He worked hard all his life, too hard in fact, as he didn't slow down despite suffering heart attacks, the last of which claimed his life in 1987 at a Doctor Who Convention in the USA. This is an interesting account of his life, though sometimes the long extracts from the memoirs of other family members or fellow actors included in the text made me lose track of who was making a particular point. A worthy tribute to a fine actor.… (mehr)
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2962166.html
Patrick Troughton, possibly the most versatile actor to take on the role as a regular, and certainly the only one to appear in a Oscar-winning film (as the Player King in Olivier's 1948 Hamlet, which also features Peter Cushing as Osric; John Hurt is in A Man for All Seasons which won the Oscar for Best Film in 1966, and of course Peter Capaldi shared the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film in 1994). The author is one of Troughton's many acting descendants, his third child Michael, who actually appeared in the 2014 Christmas special Last Christmas as Dr Albert Smithe.
It must be very difficult to write about a father like Patrick Troughton, who was loving but physically distant. Troughton's own life was full of much human drama, which we must largely infer from Michael's childhood memories and his father's preserved correspondence. Soon after Michael was born in 1955, Patrick left his first wife, Margaret, for another partner with whom he had another three children; at the point that he decided to take on the Doctor Who role, he was in the middle of a brief and ultimately unsuccessful reconciliation with Margaret, played out to a certain extent in front of the children. At the same time there was a third partner in the mix. He married someone else entirely in the mid-1970s. He said to Michael, years after the final split with Margaret,
"‘I needed change. Things have to change all the time for me I’m afraid, that’s the way I am made. I am sorry if I hurt you.’"
Reminiscent of one of his first lines as the Doctor: "Life depends on change and renewal."
He seems to have been a man who broke many hearts, but continued to take his emotional commitments to all his lovers and children very seriously, but always suffered from the pressure of generating enough income to meet his financial obligations to his two families, which eventually ground him down; he had his first heart attack at 58, and died of another at a convention eight years later. (Incidentally the circumstances of his death are clarified here, and are much less exciting than we had been led to believe.)
There is quite a lot here about Troughton's approach to acting, including his early education ain London and New York. He is on record (sometimes contradictory) about his philosophy of theatre, particularly on how it defined his own sense of personhood:
"My father was a complex man but one thing was very clear – he had to act. He once confessed to me, whilst working together on an episode of the seventies TV nursing drama Angels, that acting was part of his being, something he had to do rather than had chosen. He likened the process of inhabiting another character in performance to ‘a drug-like craving that seemed to keep my whole self in order. I can’t imagine my world without it. It sparks me with life.’"
This craving for multiple identities perhaps played out in his complex private life, and even his approach to being an ex-Doctor Who, where he embraced the American convention circuit once he had discovered it, but was much less visible in the UK, where he wanted to avoid typecasting for the sake of future acting work. He would no doubt be pleased that IMDB ranks The Omen as his most notable performance. There's not much on politics here (Troughton fought in the second world war, where he became noted for wearing a tea-cosy; he was contrarian for the sake of it in argument). Interestingly, there is more on religion: Troughton was deeply hostile to organised Christianity, boycotted one son's wedding service and was dismayed when another decided to get ordained.
It's a more lively book than Jessica Carney's biography of her grandfather, William Hartnell, because Troughton had a more lively life, and Doctor Who came in the middle of his career rather than at the end (chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 out of fifteen total). It scratches one's itch of curiosity about its subject, while inevitably leaving you wishing you knew more.… (mehr)
Patrick Troughton, possibly the most versatile actor to take on the role as a regular, and certainly the only one to appear in a Oscar-winning film (as the Player King in Olivier's 1948 Hamlet, which also features Peter Cushing as Osric; John Hurt is in A Man for All Seasons which won the Oscar for Best Film in 1966, and of course Peter Capaldi shared the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film in 1994). The author is one of Troughton's many acting descendants, his third child Michael, who actually appeared in the 2014 Christmas special Last Christmas as Dr Albert Smithe.
It must be very difficult to write about a father like Patrick Troughton, who was loving but physically distant. Troughton's own life was full of much human drama, which we must largely infer from Michael's childhood memories and his father's preserved correspondence. Soon after Michael was born in 1955, Patrick left his first wife, Margaret, for another partner with whom he had another three children; at the point that he decided to take on the Doctor Who role, he was in the middle of a brief and ultimately unsuccessful reconciliation with Margaret, played out to a certain extent in front of the children. At the same time there was a third partner in the mix. He married someone else entirely in the mid-1970s. He said to Michael, years after the final split with Margaret,
"‘I needed change. Things have to change all the time for me I’m afraid, that’s the way I am made. I am sorry if I hurt you.’"
Reminiscent of one of his first lines as the Doctor: "Life depends on change and renewal."
He seems to have been a man who broke many hearts, but continued to take his emotional commitments to all his lovers and children very seriously, but always suffered from the pressure of generating enough income to meet his financial obligations to his two families, which eventually ground him down; he had his first heart attack at 58, and died of another at a convention eight years later. (Incidentally the circumstances of his death are clarified here, and are much less exciting than we had been led to believe.)
There is quite a lot here about Troughton's approach to acting, including his early education ain London and New York. He is on record (sometimes contradictory) about his philosophy of theatre, particularly on how it defined his own sense of personhood:
"My father was a complex man but one thing was very clear – he had to act. He once confessed to me, whilst working together on an episode of the seventies TV nursing drama Angels, that acting was part of his being, something he had to do rather than had chosen. He likened the process of inhabiting another character in performance to ‘a drug-like craving that seemed to keep my whole self in order. I can’t imagine my world without it. It sparks me with life.’"
This craving for multiple identities perhaps played out in his complex private life, and even his approach to being an ex-Doctor Who, where he embraced the American convention circuit once he had discovered it, but was much less visible in the UK, where he wanted to avoid typecasting for the sake of future acting work. He would no doubt be pleased that IMDB ranks The Omen as his most notable performance. There's not much on politics here (Troughton fought in the second world war, where he became noted for wearing a tea-cosy; he was contrarian for the sake of it in argument). Interestingly, there is more on religion: Troughton was deeply hostile to organised Christianity, boycotted one son's wedding service and was dismayed when another decided to get ordained.
It's a more lively book than Jessica Carney's biography of her grandfather, William Hartnell, because Troughton had a more lively life, and Doctor Who came in the middle of his career rather than at the end (chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 out of fifteen total). It scratches one's itch of curiosity about its subject, while inevitably leaving you wishing you knew more.… (mehr)
I'm not entirely sure what I expected from a biography of Patrick Troughton, a great character actor, my personal favorite Doctor Who, and until recently, almost a total enigma. He hated giving interviews and when he did, he talked about very little outside his immediate job. When I heard the announcement of a biography - by his son, no less - I was pretty excited, and unconsciously, I probably expected something like Who's There?, the biography of William Hartnell by his granddaughter, Jessica Carney, almost 20 years ago. That had the benefit of two things Michael Troughton did not, however; one was the space Carney had to examine her grandfather's life at least reasonably objectively (he having died when she was a teenager), and the other was a reputable publishing house with a credible editing staff. Without both of these elements, Troughton's book is fairly shapeless - not a bad book, not at all, but also not a very satisfying one.
I think the absolutely critical problem is that Michael Troughton didn't have a firm idea of what he wanted to write, and - perhaps even more importantly - he didn't have a good editor to guide him. Celebrity memoirs are often co-written, not just because the celebrities may not be natural writers, but because someone skilled in the medium can bring shape and form to the work. Otherwise they are often chatty and highly anecdotal, which can also work if the celebrity has a strong enough personality. Michael Troughton, though, seems to be caught between wanting to write a straight-up biography of "Pat," a remembrance of the absent father he loved but often missed, and some more anecdotal material about seeing his father on TV or visiting Doctor Who sets. Apparently, the suggestion of a book came out of some articles Michael wrote for Doctor Who Magazine, and that's not too surprising; it is even less surprising to know that this book was first published by a Who-oriented fan publisher, which really amounts to little more than vanity publishing with slightly better publicity. It's clear that no editor spent time helping Michael craft this book - or even proofread it (the original edition has a staggering number of typos). Crucially, there are at least a couple of different stories vying for attention here: first, up until around 1960, the story of a young actor learning the craft and getting embroiled in some complex personal relationships; and two, after about 1960, the story of a family - and particularly one son - struggling to understand why they have been abandoned. Those stories aren't mutually exclusive, but they do have significantly different viewpoints, and the addition of lots of material about recording Doctor Who stories just seems like a massive, massive distraction.
The book is really at its best in the early chapters, when you get a picture of the young Patrick learning his art and making his first moves in both theatre and television. It helps that this section - the '40s and '50s, basically - contains numerous excerpts from his own diaries, which are brimming with character. In the '60s, the perspective shifts almost totally to Michael, with the only contribution from Patrick being his occasional, rather sadly disappointing, letters home to the family who felt like they weren't good enough. It's heartbreaking - and it's also uncomfortable. Rightly or wrongly, I ended up feeling like Michael was just too close to these events to talk about them like a biographer. They are clearly hurtful memories, and Michael seems unwilling to either fully explore that pain (which is his right!) or make some significant assumptions about his father's decisions. The result feels like a second half of a book that keeps you completely at arm's distance, with - as I said - the distraction of a lot of Doctor Who. Patrick's credits post-Who are practically rushed through, as if Michael realizes that the major selling point of the book is over and the potential moment of catharsis has simply passed.
It is, then, a terribly unsatisfying book. I'm glad I read it; Patrick Troughton remains my favorite Doctor, and I enjoy his performance in practically everything I've seen him in. That much hasn't changed. I really don't feel any closer to understanding him - he remains an enigma - and that's okay. I do, however, feel tremendously sympathetic toward Michael. I am saddened to know how thoroughly his father betrayed his "first" family. And I can't help but wonder, with those wounds being so deep, if this book was really a good idea.… (mehr)
I think the absolutely critical problem is that Michael Troughton didn't have a firm idea of what he wanted to write, and - perhaps even more importantly - he didn't have a good editor to guide him. Celebrity memoirs are often co-written, not just because the celebrities may not be natural writers, but because someone skilled in the medium can bring shape and form to the work. Otherwise they are often chatty and highly anecdotal, which can also work if the celebrity has a strong enough personality. Michael Troughton, though, seems to be caught between wanting to write a straight-up biography of "Pat," a remembrance of the absent father he loved but often missed, and some more anecdotal material about seeing his father on TV or visiting Doctor Who sets. Apparently, the suggestion of a book came out of some articles Michael wrote for Doctor Who Magazine, and that's not too surprising; it is even less surprising to know that this book was first published by a Who-oriented fan publisher, which really amounts to little more than vanity publishing with slightly better publicity. It's clear that no editor spent time helping Michael craft this book - or even proofread it (the original edition has a staggering number of typos). Crucially, there are at least a couple of different stories vying for attention here: first, up until around 1960, the story of a young actor learning the craft and getting embroiled in some complex personal relationships; and two, after about 1960, the story of a family - and particularly one son - struggling to understand why they have been abandoned. Those stories aren't mutually exclusive, but they do have significantly different viewpoints, and the addition of lots of material about recording Doctor Who stories just seems like a massive, massive distraction.
The book is really at its best in the early chapters, when you get a picture of the young Patrick learning his art and making his first moves in both theatre and television. It helps that this section - the '40s and '50s, basically - contains numerous excerpts from his own diaries, which are brimming with character. In the '60s, the perspective shifts almost totally to Michael, with the only contribution from Patrick being his occasional, rather sadly disappointing, letters home to the family who felt like they weren't good enough. It's heartbreaking - and it's also uncomfortable. Rightly or wrongly, I ended up feeling like Michael was just too close to these events to talk about them like a biographer. They are clearly hurtful memories, and Michael seems unwilling to either fully explore that pain (which is his right!) or make some significant assumptions about his father's decisions. The result feels like a second half of a book that keeps you completely at arm's distance, with - as I said - the distraction of a lot of Doctor Who. Patrick's credits post-Who are practically rushed through, as if Michael realizes that the major selling point of the book is over and the potential moment of catharsis has simply passed.
It is, then, a terribly unsatisfying book. I'm glad I read it; Patrick Troughton remains my favorite Doctor, and I enjoy his performance in practically everything I've seen him in. That much hasn't changed. I really don't feel any closer to understanding him - he remains an enigma - and that's okay. I do, however, feel tremendously sympathetic toward Michael. I am saddened to know how thoroughly his father betrayed his "first" family. And I can't help but wonder, with those wounds being so deep, if this book was really a good idea.… (mehr)
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For example, Patrick Troughton was in the first-ever science-fiction program on the BBC: a 1948 adaptation of Karel Čapek’s R.U.R., the 1920 play that introduced the word “robot” to the English language. The BBC condensed the material to 90 minutes and made changes to reflect advances in technology since 1920, such as the importance of radio, while moving the setting from the 1960s to the 1990s to make it seem more futuristic (pg. 77). Many of Troughton’s early roles were historical adventures like The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and The Count of Monte Cristo (pg. 136). One of his most well-received television roles was in Paul of Tarsus. Michael writes, “It is perhaps a little ironic that Dad made such a success out of religious drama series and would later become famously associated with the part of a priest in The Omen. His opinion on formal Christianity was pretty clear – he detested it!” (pg. 146).
Michael Troughton does not shy away from more personal information, particularly his father’s separation from his mother and the fact that Patrick had a second family. At the time, divorce carried such a stigma that Michael’s parents never divorced and kept their private lives private (pg. 138). Despite these differences, Patrick remained close with both families and consulted his children’s opinion both in accepting the role on Doctor Who and in trying to figure out how he would approach the character. Troughton felt he needed to distinguish his portrayal of the Doctor from William Hartnell’s tenure as fans were not going to accept him simply copying the First Doctor’s personality. He similarly worried about being typecast and thought of elaborate costumes and disguises so that he wouldn’t become too linked to the character (pgs. 174-176). Michael describes his father’s approach to the role, writing, “Pat’s portrayal was brave, complex and departed absolutely from his predecessor. Only on the surface did he appear to be a clown, tramp, hobo, drawing on child-like qualities, dressing in scruffy clothes, playing his recorder when all around him was in chaos, delving excitedly into a bag of jelly babies and acting the fool to confuse his dangerous enemies. This was just a veneer. Concealed within and plain to see was a powerful intellect, a great thinker, a solver of puzzles, a doer of good, a wild wizard who could calmly play a hand of cards when faced with danger” (pg. 197). From there, Michael details his father’s experiences filming certain episodes, his feelings on what worked and what didn’t, and changes in casting over time ultimately leading to Patrick Troughton’s own decision to depart the role (pgs. 183-256). Troughton need not have feared, as he found plenty of roles after departing Doctor Who and even returned for the “Three Doctors” (pgs. 264-267), “The Five Doctors” (pgs. 287-289), and “The Two Doctors” (pgs. 293-294), discovering along the way the joy of embracing the show’s legacy and attending fan conventions.
Michael closes with his father’s death at a Doctor Who convention as well as a study of the conventions Patrick attended and the joy they brought him. This volume concludes with an afterward from sixth Doctor Colin Baker reflecting on Troughton’s legacy. The overall impact of the biography is a touching tribute to a great character actor.… (mehr)