Skip to main content

John Fraser - An Obituary

John Fraser – actor, writer

Born March 18, 1931; died November 7, 2020 
 
 John Fraser, who has died aged 89, was an actor who transcended his working class Glasgow roots to become a matinee idol, before taking a sidestep out of the limelight. In a colourful career, he showed star quality in a stream of top-flight films following his breakout role in The Dam Busters (1955), and rubbed shoulders with the showbiz cognoscenti of his day. 
 
At his most famous, Fraser was dubbed the most handsome man in Britain. In truth, he was something of a renaissance man. As well as receiving a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), Fraser published several books, and a brief brush with pop stardom ran parallel with his early acting career.
 
Fraser laid bare the ups and downs of his life with flamboyant abandon in his hugely entertaining memoir, Close Up (2004). It was ‘A Supa-candid-gossip-expo-valid-dose-worth of Dirk, Sophia, Bette and Rudy in the sixties’ according to actor Richard E Grant. ‘Grab and gobble it!’ he enthused.
 
There were richly descriptive tales of Fraser’s brief but intense affair with Soviet ballet star Rudolf Nureyev, and of being invited to Dirk Bogarde’s mansion, where  Bogarde kept a Harley Davidson motorcycle in his loft. Bogarde proceeded to show Fraser how he got his kicks, giving it full throttle as he straddled the bike while watching a film poster of himself clad in black leather. 
 
This followed the pair working together in Ralph Thomas’ World War Two-set prisoner of war drama, The Wind Cannot Read (1958). The film also starred Ronald Lewis, who came to blows with Lewis after taunting him about his sexuality. At a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain, Fraser was never comfortable with the pretence of being forced to live a double life. 
 
John Alexander Fraser was born in Glasgow to John and Christina Fraser. He grew up with his two elder sisters on the Mosspark estate, before being evacuated to Kirkcudbright when the Second World War broke out. He was so homesick, however, that his mother brought him home.
 
At Glasgow High School, he successfully auditioned for BBC Radio’s Children’s Hour, and became a stage manager with the Glasgow-based Park Theatre Company. His onstage debut came in 1947, as a loincloth-clad page in Oscar Wilde’s Salome. Taking to heart a review that mocked his accent, Fraser embarked on elocution lessons.
 
Following National Service with the Royal Corps of Signals in the Rhine, Fraser joined the fledgling Pitlochry Festival Theatre, then based in a large marquee. His TV career began in 1952, playing David Balfour opposite Patrick Troughton’s Alan Breck in Joy Harrington’s six-part adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure yarn, Kidnapped. 
 
This led to a couple of uncredited appearances in Titanic (1953) and The Desert Rats (1953) before being cast in Valley of Song (1953), Cliff Gordon’s big screen adaptation of his play, Choir Practice. He played the male lead in a BBC production of Troilus and Cressida (1954) prior to appearing in The Dam Busters, Touch and Go (1955) and sang with Janette Scott in The Good Companions (1957). This led to appearances on TV pop shows, Cool for Cats and Six-Five Special, and a support slot to Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele at the Royal Albert Hall.
 
Following his BAFTA nominated turn in The Trials of Oscar Wilde as Wilde’s lover, Bosie, Fraser acted alongside Alec Guinness in James Kennaway’s searing adaptation of his novel, Tunes of Glory (1960). Fraser went on to appear in El Cid (1961), and took the title role in an American TV production of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1961). He was cast alongside Peter Sellers in The Waltz of the Toreadors (1962), and acted opposite Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion (1965). 
 
Despite all this, Fraser looked like the nearly man of British cinema. American producer Ross Hunter promised to make him a star, but Fraser chose to return to London. British producer Jimmy Woolf courted him for the title role in Lawrence of Arabia, but gave it to Peter O’Toole instead. Tony Richardson considered him for Jimmy Porter in his film of Look Back in Anger, but cast Richard Burton. In the end, you get the impression that Fraser wasn’t prepared to play the fame game enough to fit in with the film world’s celebrity whirl. Perhaps he was simply too good for it. 
 
As well as Close Up, Fraser penned two novels, Clap Hands If You Believe in Fairies (1969), which helped bring the disaster of the thalidomide drug to a wider public consciousness; and In Place of Reason (1985). He also wrote a play, Cannibal Crackers, and The Bard in the Bush (1978) a memoir of his international travels with his London Shakespeare Company, which toured the world. 
 
Fraser was last seen regularly on British screens as Dr. Lawrence Golding in all forty-seven episodes of local surgery set drama, The Practice (1985). His final appearance came in Truth or Dare (1996), a BBC Scotland produced Screen One feature.
 
Fraser moved to Tuscany, before latterly returning to London, where Close Up’s freewheeling candour raised his profile in a way that drew attention to one of the most charismatic but neglected presences in British cinema.
 
He is survived by his partner of forty-two years, Rodney Pienaar.

The Herald, November 24th 2020
 
ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL