Stanley Baker was unusual star material to emerge during the Fifties - when impossibly handsome and engagingly romantic leading men were almost de rigueur. Baker was forged from a rougher mould. His was good-looking, but his features were angular, taut, austere and unwelcoming. His screen persona was taciturn, even surly, and the young actor displayed a predilection for introspection and blunt speaking, and was almost wilfully unromantic. For the times a potential leading actor cast heavily against the grain. Baker immediately proved a unique screen presence - tough, gritty, combustible - and possessing an aura of dark, even menacing power. Stanley Baker came from rugged Welsh mining stock - and as a lad was unruly, quick to flare, and first to fight. But like his compatriot and friend 'Richard Burton . Knighted in 1976 it was evident that Stanley Baker may well have continued to greater heights, both as an actor and a producer, but he succumbed to lung cancer and died at the early age of forty-eight. But his legacy is unquestioned. He was a unique force on screen, championing characterizations that were not clichéd or compromised. He established his own niche as an actor content to be admired for peerlessly portraying the disreputable and the unsympathetic. In that he was a dark mirror, more accurately reflecting human frailty and the vagaries of life than many of his more romantically or heroically inclined contemporaries. There have forever been legions of seemingly interchangeable charming and virile leading men populating the movies - but Stanley Baker stood almost alone in his determination to be characterized and judged by portraying the bleaker aspects of the human condition. Consequently, more than twenty-five years after his death, his sombre, potent personality still illuminates the screen in a way few others have achieved.
Awarded a knighthood in Harold Wilson s resignation Honours List in June 1976. At the time his knighthood was announced, Baker thought he had beaten his lung cancer following surgery in February of that year. However, although the tumour in his lung had been removed, it had spread into his chest and attached itself to his heart. Since no further surgery was possible, he had only a maximum of nine weeks to live anyway. Three weeks after the announcement of his knighthood, Baker was hospitalized in Spain with pneumonia. As he had died without making the journey to be formally knighted at Buckingham Palace, he cannot be referred to as Sir Stanley, but Queen Elizabeth II agreed that his widow Ellen Martin could use the title "Lady Baker".
A dedicated socialist, he made political broadcasts for Harold Wilson s Labour Party in Wales and was active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
He was warned not to address a CND rally prior to the release of Zulu , in case his left-wing political activism hurt the films performance in the United States.
At the beginning of his career he was typecast as villains until Laurence Olivier invited him to play Henry Tudor in Richard III .
In November 2006 a Lounge dedicated to his life and work was opened by his widow, Lady Ellen Baker and his sons at Ferndale Rugby club in the village of his birth.
At the beginning of his career he struggled to break into films, but a few days before his 22nd birthday he was given the role of the bosun in Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. .
At the time of his death he had been planning to play a rapist in a film, with his Zulu co-star Michael Caine playing a detective.
At his peak he earned 120,000 for each film he made, at a time when the average house cost just 3,000. He owned a large house in London and a holiday villa in Spain, while his children attended private schools in England.
His wife Ellen and Richard Burton believed Bakers performance in "How Green Was My Valley" was so good because he was playing his own father.
In May 1972 he was one of the co-organisers of the Great Western Bardney Pop Festival in Lincoln.
He formed Diamond Films for the making of Zulu . And later Oakhurst Productions.
He was a close friend of Richard Burton from childhood until they fell out in 1967.
With the success of The Criminal , Baker all but displaced his polar opposite Dirk Bogarde to become Britains most popular star. However, Zulu was his last huge success. His career was damaged by the commercial failure of Sands of the Kalahari and Robbery , although the latter received favourable reviews.
His breakthrough as an actor came in 1950 in Christopher Fry s anti-war play "A Sleep of Prisoners" alongside Denholm Elliott and Leonard White. The production later toured the United States.
His father lost a leg in an accident in the mine and was thereafter unemployed until the Second World War took men away into the services. His elder brother Freddie, a miner, died of pneumoconiosis early in 1976 after many years of debilitation and sickness.
He was awarded the freedom of Ferndale, and in a ceremony which he attended in 1970, the local council placed a plaque on the house where he was born.
He had intended to produce Zulu Dawn .
He was offered the role of James Bond in Dr. No , but turned it down because he was unwilling to commit to a three-picture contract. Baker may have regretted this decision, since a few years later he asked producer Albert R. Broccoli about the possibility of playing a villain in a Bond movie.
Turned down many Hollywood offers during the 1950s because he wanted to keep the British film industry going. Nevertheless he was much in demand for American films. The producers of Helen of Troy were so desperate to cast him that they did not mind which part he played.
Although born in Wales, Baker spent most of his formative years in England since his parents moved to London in the mid-1930s.
In a floral tribute sent to Stanley Bakers funeral, Zulu leader Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi who had worked with him in Zulu described him as "the most decent white man I have ever met".
Baker served in the Royal Army Service Corps from 1946-1948.
Although he regretted not accepting the part of James Bond himself, Baker was a friend of and outspoken admirer of Sir Sean Connery s work in the role.
Bore a striking resemblance to his contemporary fellow actor, Australian Rod Taylor.
The part that would have been played by Baker in 1979s "Zulu Dawn" was enacted by Burt Lancaster.
He was considered for the role of James Bond in Dr. No before his Hell Drivers co-star Sean Connery was cast.
His favorite director (and close friend) was Joseph Losey , who, in turn, claimed that Baker was one of his two favorite leading men, the other being Dirk Bogarde. Bogarde worked with him on five films, Baker on four. However, when Losey cast both of them in Accident , the last film he did with either one, he insisted that they had greatly disliked each other. (After Bakers death, Bogarde insisted that he had, in fact, been "very fond of him"; the two actors had worked together previously in Campbells Kingdom .
That sort of existence must stay in your mind.
I was a complete dud at school. I hated school. I got into awful,trouble. Before I met Welsh school teacher Glyn Morse every teacher,thought of me as a good-for-nothing.
