Behind the mask of Sir Gerald Merle

William Devlin

by Harry Dobermann

Watching the 1957 horror film Blood of the Vampire recently, it was a surprise to recognise John Wilder's antagonist Sir Gerald Merle as hero Vincent Ball's cellmate Kurt Urach. One of the first attempts to cash in on Hammer's Curse of Frankenstein, Blood of the Vampire was actually written by Jimmy Sangster and featured plot elements which would resurface in Hammer's own Revenge of Frankenstein. David Pirie in A New Heritage of Horror thought Blood of the Vampire, directed by Henry Cass, "lacking Hammer's gusto and grace while never quite replacing it with the vulgar energy of the later copies."

The hardened prison inmate of Blood of the Vampire is a far cry from the sanctimonious Labour MP, Sir Gerald Merle in "The Plane Makers". Merle was played by Scottish actor William Devlin who was born in Aberdeen on 5th December 1911.

Devlin made his stage debut as a refugee in "Nurse Cavell", but by the age of 22 stunned audiences in 1934 when he became one of the youngest actors to play King Lear. Critic James Agate wrote of his performance at the Westminster Theatre that, "His understanding of the text and his sense of beauty are everywhere apparent"

In September 1936, William Devlin played French statesman Georges Clemenceau in Ronald Adam's Embassy Theatre Production of 'The Tiger' by Reginald Berkeley. The challenging role for twenty-five year old Devlin started with Clemenceau aged thirty and ended in 1919, when the 'strong man' of France was nearly eighty. On 23 November 1936 a shortened adaptation of "The Tiger" became one of the first plays to be broadcast on BBC TV.

Devlin appeared in several plays directed by Henry Cass at the Old Vic Theatre in London including "The Three Sisters", "Peer Gynt", "Richard III", "Macbeth", "Julius Caesar",and "King Lear". Henry Cass had arrived at the Old Vic from the Croydon Repertory Theatre and left after only two seasons. Despite Winston Churchil praising his 1936 production of "St Helena" (a new RC Sherriff play about Napoleon) Cass blamed a restricted budget for several loss-making productions which he felt ruined his career as a director.

William Devlin had married Mary Casson, the daughter of Sibyl Thorndike and Lewis Casson in 1936 and appeared in several more productions at the Old Vic. When the London Old Vic was damaged by wartime bombs, Devlin led the company performing at the Bristol Old Vic.

Paul Hopkins recalls a Bristol production of Much Ado About Nothing in which William Devlin as Dogberry, "wearing a Civil Defence uniform and arriving on a bicycle, was greeted with gleeful recognition as a type of official known to the spectators, rather than as just a bit of Elizabethan burlesque."

(Devlin was a strong presence in the Bristol Old Vic. In 1946, then-unknown "Carry On" actor Kenneth Connor was waiting to be demobbed when he received a telegram from Devlin asking him to join the Bristol Old Vic. It was the start of a long and diverse career.) Devlin returned to the re-opening of the rebuilt London Old Vic on November 14, 1950, appearing with Peggy Ashcroft and Roger Livesey in "Twelfth Night". In the same year, Devlin appeared in Disney's "Treasure Island

In 1954 he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon and took part in the Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh production of MacBeth, which featured Patrick Wymark as the Porter. William Devlin also played arch villain Cardinal Richlieu in 1954 BBC production of The Three Musketeers starring Laurence Payne as D'Artagnan, and Roger Delagado as Aramis.

In May 1958, William Devlin starred in the BBCTV series "The Common Room" as the headmaster of the Richard Pater Secondary Modern School. His last screen appearance was in David Greene's adaptation of August Derleth's The Shuttered Room 1967 as Zebulon Whately with Oliver Reed and Carol Lynley. Devlin is said to have come into an inheritance which allowed him to live the life of a "minor country squire" in Devon.

In 1963, William Devlin appeared in nine episodes of "The Plane Makers" as MP Sir Gerald Merle. It's ironic that his first episode, "The Thing About Aunty" saw him prying into the private life of test pilot Henry Forbes. Henry was, of course, played by Richard Urquhart, who had played the second lead in "Curse of Frankenstein" and had something of a parallel role to that of Devlin in "Blood of the Vampire". In "The Plane Makers" Devlin had the role of a self-serving politician and company director, whereas in "Blood of the Vampire" he plays a man who has had his life torn away by a politician, condemned to a living death in the prison controlled by the psychopathic Doctor Callistratus (Donald Wolfit).

It's interesting to see the contrast in style in "The Plane Makers" between the younger actors such as Wymark and the previous generation represented by William Devlin. Similarly, despite both being written by Jimmy Sangster, "Blood of the Vampire" takes a different approach from "Curse of Frankenstein". Cass appears to have surrounded himself with theatre colleagues such as Wolfit and Devlin and opted for theatrical makeup (Wolfit's false nose, Victor Maddern's stricken henchman) which harks back to Grand Guignol. Neither could be said to be "better", but the world view is distinctly different.

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