Warren peace: Violent film put actor on map
Looking back on the varied career of Oldham actor Warren Clarke – and the debt he owed to a prominent Manchester writer
AUTHOR Anthony Burgess had a big hand in launching the career of Oldham actor Warren Clarke – the star of TV crime drama Dalziel and Pascoe. For Clarke’s first major movie appearance was in the controversial film A Clockwork Orange – based entirely on a novel written by Harpurhey-born Burgess and adapted for the big screen by director Stanley Kubrick.
Clarke – a former M.E.N. copy boy – played Dim, one of a band of violent delinquents called Droogs roaming a dystopian world in the near future in the 1971 movie.
It was a far cry from his later lawenforcing role as Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel or even Elsie Tanner’s nephew Gary Bailey in Coronation Street.
But Clarke was renowned for his versatility. He played parts as diverse as Russian dissident Pavel Upensky in Clint Eastwood’s Cold War drama Firefox and the overtly homosexual ‘Sophie’ Dixon in The
Jewel in the Crown.
Clarke portrayed brusque football club chairman Martin Fisher in The Manageress, starring Cherie Lunghi, and was Bradley Headstone in the 1976 series Our Mutual Friend.
He played John Lacey in the BBC drama Call the Midwife in 2011, and made his final TV appearance as patriarch Charles Poldark in 2014.
Born in Oldham in April 1947, Clarke attended Barlow Hall Secondary Modern School in Chorlton-cum-Hardy until the age of 15, when he joined the M.E.N.
Clarke’s original Christian name was Alan. He changed it to Warren as his girlfriend of the time had a crush on movie star Warren Beatty.
In 1965, Clarke appeared in the military drama The Long and the Short and the Tall at Liverpool Playhouse, and was forced to take marching lessons at the Alamein Barracks in Huyton.
Our photo shows the cast, with Clarke second right, being drilled by despairing Sergeant Bill Davies of the Scots Guards. Also on parade are Stephen Berkoff, William Ellis and William Kendrick.
After Coronation Street in 1968, Clarke appeared in a range of film and TV productions including the psychological drama Home in 1970 as well as Charlton Heston’s movie adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra.
In 1971, he played a lead role in Anthony Shaffer’s play Murderer about a painter obsessed with famous murders of the past. His co-stars were Pat Quinn, later of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Robert Stephens.
But Clarke’s breakthrough was undoubtedly A Clockwork Orange in 1971. Fellow Droog Alex was portrayed by Malcolm McDowell who appeared alongside Clarke again in 1973’s O Lucky Man!
Burgess said his novel A Clockwork Orange was inspired by an incident in World War II in which his wife Lynne was robbed by deserters during the blackout in London.
Kubrick’s film version, which
premiered in New York in December 1971, received mixed reviews from the critics – mainly due to its graphic violence.
After its UK premiere in January 1972, the movie was blamed for copycat acts of violence and was later withdrawn from British cinemas at Kubrick’s own request.
Nevertheless, it was nominated for four Oscars in the 1972 and gained a cult following. In 2020, it was selected for preservation in America’s National Film Registry for being ‘culturally, historically and aesthetically’ significant.
Burgess actually sold the film rights for A Clockwork Orange for $500 in 1962 and did not make a further cent out of Kubrick’s movie. He praised McDowell’s performance, however, and thought the use of music, an original electronic score by composer Wendy Carlos, was brilliant.
In his own 1984 stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, Burgess made a direct reference to Kubrick in the final moments of the play. He asked for a man ‘bearded like Stanley Kubrick’ to come on playing Singin’ in the Rain on a trumpet!
In 1991, Clarke portrayed one of two KGB agents in Sleepers alongside Nigel Havers and appeared as Oliver Cromwell with Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder: The Cavalier Years.
From 1996 to 2007, Clarke starred as DS Andy Dalziel alongside Colin Buchanan as DI Peter Pascoe in the BBC drama Dalziel and Pascoe.
A lifelong Manchester City supporter, Clarke died in November 2014 at the age of 67. His final TV scene was Charles Poldark on his deathbed, filmed when Clarke himself was very ill.
The first episode of the popular series was dedicated to his memory.
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