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Frederick Treves (actor)
Encyclopedia
Frederick William Treves BEM
, (born 29 March 1925 in Margate
, Kent
) is an English
character actor
with an extensive repertoire, specialising in avuncular military and titled types.
During World War II
he served in the Merchant Navy. On his first voyage his ship, the freighter Waimarama, was involved in the Operation Pedestal
Convoy to Malta
. The Waimarama was sunk on August 13, 1942, and Treves helped save several of his shipmates, including the only ships' officer to survive the sinking, 3rd Wireless Operator John Jackson. Treves, then 17 years old, received the British Empire Medal
and the Lloyd's War Medal for his actions. After the War he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
.
Treves is the great nephew of Frederick Treves
, the surgeon who became famous for discovering Joseph Merrick
, the "Elephant Man". In the David Lynch
film The Elephant Man
, the surgeon is played by Anthony Hopkins
and Treves himself appeared in the character of 'Alderman'.
His over a hundred television credits include roles in The Cazalets, The Jewel in the Crown, A Dance to the Music of Time
, The Politician's Wife, To Play the King
, Lipstick on Your Collar
, Bomber Harris
, Trevor Griffiths
' version of The Cherry Orchard
, David Edgar
's Destiny, The Naked Civil Servant
and The Railway Children
.
Treves has also guested in many continuing dramas, such as Rosemary & Thyme
, Monarch of the Glen, The Bill
, The New Adventures of Black Beauty, Silent Witness
, Kavanagh QC
, Jeeves and Wooster
, Inspector Morse
, Agatha Christie's Poirot
, Lovejoy
, Yes, Prime Minister, Bergerac
, Midsomer Murders
, Follyfoot
, Miss Marple
, Minder
, Z-Cars
, The Avengers
, Doomwatch
and in the Doctor Who
story Meglos
.
His films include: Paper Mask, Defence of the Realm
, Sunshine
, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Afraid of the Dark, A Flame to the Phoenix, Nighthawks
, The Elephant Man
and Sweeney 2
.
As well as screen appearances, he also has had a wide stage and radio career, and appeared with the National Theatre
from the late-70s in David Hare
's Plenty
, Bernard Shaw
's The Philanderer
, Arnold Wesker
's Caritas, Eugene O'Neill
's The Iceman Cometh
, and two Shakespeares - Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing
(1981) and Menenius in Coriolanus
(1984).
His eldest son is the actor Simon Treves
.
British Empire Medal
The Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Meritorious Service, usually known as the British Empire Medal , is a British medal awarded for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown...
, (born 29 March 1925 in Margate
Margate
-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
) is an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
character actor
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...
with an extensive repertoire, specialising in avuncular military and titled types.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he served in the Merchant Navy. On his first voyage his ship, the freighter Waimarama, was involved in the Operation Pedestal
Operation Pedestal
Operation Pedestal was a British operation to get desperately needed supplies to the island of Malta in August 1942, during the Second World War. Malta was the base from which surface ships, submarines and aircraft attacked Axis convoys carrying essential supplies to the Italian and German armies...
Convoy to Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
. The Waimarama was sunk on August 13, 1942, and Treves helped save several of his shipmates, including the only ships' officer to survive the sinking, 3rd Wireless Operator John Jackson. Treves, then 17 years old, received the British Empire Medal
British Empire Medal
The Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Meritorious Service, usually known as the British Empire Medal , is a British medal awarded for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown...
and the Lloyd's War Medal for his actions. After the War he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
.
Treves is the great nephew of Frederick Treves
Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet
Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet, GCVO, CH, CB was a prominent British surgeon of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, now most famous for his friendship with Joseph Merrick, "the Elephant Man".-Eminent surgeon:...
, the surgeon who became famous for discovering Joseph Merrick
Joseph Merrick
Joseph Carey Merrick , sometimes incorrectly referred to as John Merrick, was an English man with severe deformities who was exhibited as a human curiosity named the Elephant Man. He became well known in London society after he went to live at the London Hospital...
, the "Elephant Man". In the David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
film The Elephant Man
The Elephant Man (film)
The Elephant Man is a 1980 American drama film based on the true story of Joseph Merrick , a severely deformed man in 19th century London...
, the surgeon is played by Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
and Treves himself appeared in the character of 'Alderman'.
His over a hundred television credits include roles in The Cazalets, The Jewel in the Crown, A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim...
, The Politician's Wife, To Play the King
To Play the King
To Play The King is a 1993 BBC television serial, the second part of the House of Cards trilogy. Directed by Paul Seed, the serial was based on the Michael Dobbs novel of the same name and adapted for television by Andrew Davies...
, Lipstick on Your Collar
Lipstick on Your Collar
Lipstick on Your Collar is a 1993 British television serial written by Dennis Potter, originally broadcast on Channel 4 expanded from Potter's earlier play Lay Down Your Arms...
, Bomber Harris
Bomber Harris (television film)
Bomber Harris is a 1989 television drama based on the life of Arthur Harris. It was directed by Michael Darlow and written by Don Shaw.-Cast:*John Thaw - Arthur Travers Harris*Robert Hardy - Winston Churchill*Frederick Treves - Sir Charles Portal...
, Trevor Griffiths
Trevor Griffiths
Trevor Griffiths is an English dramatist.Raised as a Roman Catholic, he attended Saint Bede's College, before being accepted into Manchester University in 1952 to read English...
' version of The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...
, David Edgar
David Edgar (playwright)
David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham...
's Destiny, The Naked Civil Servant
The Naked Civil Servant (film)
The Naked Civil Servant is a 1975 TV film based on the 1968 autobiography by the gay icon Quentin Crisp, also titled The Naked Civil Servant. It stars John Hurt in the title role....
and The Railway Children
The Railway Children
The Railway Children is a children's book by Edith Nesbit, originally serialised in The London Magazine during 1905 and first published in book form in 1906...
.
Treves has also guested in many continuing dramas, such as Rosemary & Thyme
Rosemary & Thyme
Rosemary & Thyme is a British television mystery series that starred Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris as gardening detectives Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme. The show began on ITV in 2003, and the third series ended in August 2007...
, Monarch of the Glen, The Bill
The Bill
The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...
, The New Adventures of Black Beauty, Silent Witness
Silent Witness
Silent Witness is a BBC crime thriller series focusing on a team of forensic pathology experts and their investigations into various crimes. First broadcast in February 1996, the series is still airing to the present day, with a fifteenth series expected to air in January 2012. The series was...
, Kavanagh QC
Kavanagh QC
Kavanagh QC is a British television series made by Carlton Television for ITV between 1995 and 2001. It has been shown on ITV3 as recently as August 2011; series 1–6 are available on Region 2 DVDs....
, Jeeves and Wooster
Jeeves and Wooster
-External links:*—An episode guide to the series, including information about which episodes were adapted from which Wodehouse stories.*—Episode guides, screenshots and quotes from the four series....
, Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse (TV series)
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis. Dexter makes a cameo appearance in all but three of the episodes....
, Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
, Lovejoy
Lovejoy
Lovejoy is a TV series about the adventures of Lovejoy, a British antiques dealer and faker based in East Anglia, a less than scrupulous yet likeable rogue. The episodes were based on a series of picaresque novels by John Grant...
, Yes, Prime Minister, Bergerac
Bergerac (TV series)
Bergerac was a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and screened on BBC1, it starred John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in "Le Bureau des Étrangers" Bergerac was a British television show...
, Midsomer Murders
Midsomer Murders
Midsomer Murders is a British television detective drama that has aired on ITV since 1997. The show is based on the books by Caroline Graham, as originally adapted by Anthony Horowitz. The lead character is DCI Tom Barnaby who works for Causton CID. When Nettles left the show in 2011 he was...
, Follyfoot
Follyfoot
Follyfoot was a children's television series co-produced by the majority-partner British television company Yorkshire Television and the independent West German company TV Munich...
, Miss Marple
Miss Marple (TV series)
Miss Marple is a British television series based on the Miss Marple murder mystery novels by Agatha Christie. It starred Joan Hickson in the title role, and aired from 1984 to 1992. All twelve original Miss Marple Christie novels have been dramatised. The screenplays were written by T. R...
, Minder
Minder (TV series)
Minder is a British comedy-drama about the London criminal underworld. Initially produced by Verity Lambert, it was made by Euston Films, a subsidiary of Thames Television and shown on ITV...
, Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
, The Avengers
The Avengers (TV series)
The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...
, Doomwatch
Doomwatch
Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC One between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist , responsible for investigating and combating various...
and in the Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
story Meglos
Meglos
* Working titles for this story included The Golden Pentangle and The Last Zolfa-Thuran.* This is one of only two multi-part stories to feature all credited cast members in all episodes, the other being The Edge of Destruction....
.
His films include: Paper Mask, Defence of the Realm
Defence of the Realm
Defence of the Realm is a 1985 political thriller directed by David Drury. Starring Gabriel Byrne, Greta Scacchi and Denholm Elliott...
, Sunshine
Sunshine (1999 film)
Sunshine is a 1999 historical film written by Israel Horovitz and István Szabó, directed and produced by István Szabó. It follows three generations of a Jewish family during the changes in Hungary from the beginning of the 20th century to the...
, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Afraid of the Dark, A Flame to the Phoenix, Nighthawks
Nighthawks (film)
Nighthawks is a 1981 thriller film starring Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams, Rutger Hauer, Lindsay Wagner, Persis Khambatta, and Nigel Davenport. It was directed by Bruce Malmuth. The original music score was composed by Keith Emerson.-Storyline:...
, The Elephant Man
The Elephant Man (film)
The Elephant Man is a 1980 American drama film based on the true story of Joseph Merrick , a severely deformed man in 19th century London...
and Sweeney 2
Sweeney 2
Sweeney 2 is a 1978 film that is a sequel to the 1977 film Sweeney! which was itself a spin-off from the popular British TV show The Sweeney. Some of the action was transferred from the usual London setting to Malta. Denholm Elliot appears as a corrupt ex-officer, who asks his former subordinates...
.
As well as screen appearances, he also has had a wide stage and radio career, and appeared with the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
from the late-70s in David Hare
David Hare (dramatist)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...
's Plenty
Plenty (play)
Plenty is a play by David Hare, first performed in 1978, about British post-war disillusion. Susan Traherne, a former secret agent, is a woman conflicted by the contrast between her past, exciting triumphs—she had worked behind enemy lines as a Special Operations Executive courier in Nazi-occupied...
, Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's The Philanderer
The Philanderer
The Philanderer is a play by George Bernard Shaw.It was written in 1893 but the strict British Censorship laws at the time meant that it was not produced on stage until 1902....
, Arnold Wesker
Arnold Wesker
Sir Arnold Wesker is a prolific British dramatist known for his contributions to kitchen sink drama. He is the author of 42 plays, 4 volumes of short stories, 2 volumes of essays, a book on journalism, a children's book, extensive journalism, poetry and other assorted writings...
's Caritas, Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
's The Iceman Cometh
The Iceman Cometh
The Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939. First published in 1940 the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on 9 October 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling where it ran for 136 performances to close on 15 March 1947.-Characters:* Night Hawk-...
, and two Shakespeares - Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....
(1981) and Menenius in Coriolanus
Coriolanus (play)
Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.-Characters:*Caius Martius, later surnamed Coriolanus...
(1984).
His eldest son is the actor Simon Treves
Simon Treves
Frederick Simon Treves, known as Simon Treves, is an English actor, director and writer probably best known for playing Harold 'Stinker' Pinker in three series of ITV's Jeeves and Wooster.-Biography:...
.