Hugh Griffith (1912-80)
Film trade cartoonists must have delighted in any opportunity to sketch Hugh Griffith, that outsize personality with the outsize bibulous appetite, who enlivened so many movies with his colourful cameos.
Brief but unforgettable appearances were the forte of the Anglesey-born actor with the predatory proboscis (or a schnozzle to rival Jimmy Durante's), and an infinite capacity for mischief off and on set.
Griffith, a former RADA student, was chiefly lauded in his early days for his fine performances on stage, at Stratford at the Old Vic and on Broadway where he landed a Tony award for Look 91Èȱ¬ward Angel (1948).
He's now perhaps best remembered for two film roles and a much loved part as the twinkle-eyed undertaker seeking an exotic old flame in the most enduringly popular Welsh TV comedy single-drama of all, John Hefin's Grand Slam (91Èȱ¬, 1978). Griffith was among a bevy of Welsh rugby union fans off to Paris for the climactic international game of the season, but only too willing to be seduced, or prone to stumble, into humorous diversions.
Griffith had long been a stage and TV favourite, since at least 1951 when in Mario Zampi's comedy Laughter in Paradise he played a dying eccentric who, for one last jape, forces relatives into acts alien to their natures to secure a share of his legacy. Never has a bedridden incipient corpse rolled his eyes more to convey sheer devilry, and rarely has so little screen time been put to such use by a class performer.
The Welsh actor was always in his roistering element in comedies bursting with life, and many enjoyed the burlesque relish of his Oscar-nominated supporting role as the eccentric Squire Western in Tony Richardson's ebullient Tom Jones (1963), from Henry Fielding's classic. Griffith conveys superbly the cant, hypocrisy and devil-may-care qualities of a man delighting in getting his own way, but gives Tom Jones (Albert Finney) unforgettably uncomfortable moments in the hero's sexual odyssey.
In William Wyler's Ben Hur (1959) Griffith - incongruously cast, you might think, as the extrovert Sheik Ilderim - characteristically purloins most scenes from his fellow cast members with his boisterous excesses.
Occasionally the Welshman appeared in a big screen film set in Wales. We should, charitably, turn a blind eye to the sheer wretchedness of Dan Birt's Three Weird Sisters (1948), a half-baked Poverty Row British black comedy. Written by Dylan Thomas, the script seemed to have been knocked up in one of the author's toping lunch hours.
Griffith was much better served by The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949) - and impressive, in lugubrious vein as a conscientious minister cautioning villagers not to accept too readily the blandishments of Emlyn Williams as a villain trying to trick them out of their homes. He also offers lively support to Ian Carmichael in Lucky Jim (1957) from the Kingsley Amis novel.
