In my mind or memory, the great Michel Hordern enjoyed four career highlights — (a) the howling Jacob Marley in Brian Desmond Hurst’s A Christmas Carol (’51 — aka Scrooge), (b) Ashe, the effete, seemingly gay British fellow who first approaches Richard Burton on behalf of the East Germans in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (’65), (c) the absurd British officer who gave the “wily pathan” speech in How I Won The War (’67) and (d) the narrator of Barry Lyndon (’75).
Marley is the high-water mark because Hordern plays him so broadly and flamboyantly, and especially because of his banshee wail when Alistair Sim‘s Ebenezer Scrooge tells Marley he’s not an actual presence. I’ve never believed that Hordern did the actual wailing — the scream is too high-pitched for an actor with such a deep, smooth voice — but it’s wonderful all the same.
