Enigmatic and Dynamic

Books and documentaries that treat the careers of actors without offering intimate glimpses into their personal lives often run the risk of becoming stale and dimensionally tame. Not so for the latest literary effort of Robert Shail, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wales, who has managed to neatly and captivatingly distill the essence of the enigmatic and dynamic actor Stanley Baker in this, his second book.

Tightly packed within 147 lively and well-written pages, Stanley Baker: A Life in Film offers a critical examination of the actor's substantial contributions to popular culture via the large and small screens. In a career that began in childhood and spanned three-plus decades, Baker—who was knighted in 1976 just prior to his death from lung cancer—struck out on his own in 1959, taking charge of his destiny as an actor rather than suffering the vagaries of production studios in finding interesting and financially rewarding projects, both of which, according to Shail, were Baker's personal criteria for accepting screen work.

A swaggering, working class hero who drew himself out of what most would consider an impoverished upbringing while eschewing a career similar to that of his disabled mine laborer father, Baker never lost sight of his Welsh roots, returning often to his childhood home in the Rhondda valley to reconnect with "his people." It is from within this social context that Baker's trademark bold and unassuming demeanor, both off and on the screen, was forged. Baker's absence of affectations and disarming straightforwardness resonated with Americans in the 1960s, but, as Shail aptly comments, "he was also able to suggest a vulnerability and complexity which made [his] masculinity more compelling and revealing." Paving the way forward for actors such as Sean Connery and Michael Cain, Baker used his status as an outsider to garner the critical acclaim of the movie going public in the U.K., especially those from the working class, who viewed Baker as their filmic hero and, undoubtedly, saw a little bit of themselves in his on-screen personas.

Stanley Baker started his film career at the tender age of 15, during a chance meeting with director Sergei Nolbandov, who was scouting locations in Wales for a remote village in which to shoot Undercover, a 1943 war film. Though his schoolmates found their career in the local mines, Baker became an actor after several auditions, having been hired for the film by Michael Balcon's Ealing production company. Traveling to London by train and living in a hotel during filming, Baker fell asleep to the sonorous sounds of the blitz storming just outside his room. Though Undercover played to chilly reviews, Baker's career nonetheless took flight.

Following a two and a half year stint in military service, he was selected for the role of Lieutenant Bennett in The Cruel Sea (1953) allowing Baker to apply his wartime experience to his craft. Several films were followed in quick succession, most notably The Tell-Tale Heart, (1953) Hell Below Zero, (1954) and his villainous role in Helen of Troy (1956). Shail lends his acute sense of detail to critical analyses of Baker's diverse talents, noting his early typecasting as a tough, merciless, and driven character, an image cultivated by the popular press that would ultimately provide him with the means to support "a wife, twins, a large house in Wimbledon, and a Jaguar" according to a vintage interview with Baker from the London Evening Standard.

An in-depth treatment of the historic challenges issued to the movie industry by the relatively new medium of television offers a nod to the introduction of Warnercolor and Cinemascope, two format changes made by the cinema industry to enhance the movie going public's experience while simultaneously attempting to stave off the negative effects that television brought to bear on box office receipts, a real concern to all in the film industry during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Baker's critical transition from actor to producer/actor is thoroughly...