Sir William Stanley Baker

 Sir William Stanley Baker (February 28, 1928 – June 28, 1976)

Baker worked for a time as an apprentice electrician, then through Morse's influence, he managed to secure a position with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1944. He was there for three years when he had to do his national service. He served in the Royal Army Service Corps from 1946 until 1948, attaining the rank of sergeant. He began appearing in films and on television, as well as performing on stage for the Middlesex Repertory Company. He had small roles in All Over the Town (1949), Obsession (1949), Your Witness (1950), Lilli Marlene (1950), Something in the City (1950), The Rossiter Case (1951), Cloudburst (1951), Home to Danger (1951) and Whispering Smith Hits London (1952).
His TV roles included The Tragedy of Pompey the Great (1950) and Rush Job (1951). Baker attracted attention when cast as the bosun's mate in the Hollywood-financed Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951). He had his biggest role in a purely British film to date with The Good Die Young (1954), directed by Lewis Gilbert, playing a boxer who commits a robbery. Most of Baker's film roles until this stage had been playing villains. His career received another boost when Laurence Olivier selected him to play Henry Tudor in Richard III (1955).

He also made the Hollywood-financed The Angry Hills (1959) in Greece with Robert Aldrich opposite Robert Mitchum. Baker later formed his own company, 'Diamond Films' with Cy Endfield. They developed a script about the Battle of Rorke's Drift written by Endfield and John Prebble. While making Sodom and Gomorrah Baker struck up a relationship with that film's producer, Joseph E. Levine which enabled him to raise the $3 million budget for Zulu (1964), directed by Endfield, shot partly on location in South Africa. Zulu was a big hit at the box office and made a star of Michael Caine. Baker played the lead part of Lieutenant John Chard VC in what remains his best-remembered-role. Towards the end of his life Baker pulled back on his business activities and worked mostly as an actor, taking roles in television including two of the BBC's Play of the Month series: The Changeling and Robinson Crusoe (both 1974), plus Who Killed Lamb? (1974) and Graceless Go I (1974). Baker was a heavy cigarette and cigar smoker, and was diagnosed with lung cancer on February 13, 1976. He underwent surgery later that month. However, the cancer had spread to his bones and he died that same year from pneumonia in Málaga, Spain, at the age of 48.