Aylmers in the performing arts
Go to the cinema, concert hall or theatre long enough and you might encounter an Aylmer.
Take care lest one might be a penis-shaped parasite, but here we're mostly concerned with flesh blood and bones.
Felix Aylmer
In the mid-20th century the wait for a performing Aylmer would have been shorter than now,
thanks to the prolific film and stage actor Felix Aylmer (1889-1979, top picture in sidebar).
Growing up aware that he was the only Aylmer at all well-known - and thus a useful exemplar for spelling -
I was told that in truth his Aylmer was a mere stage name.
That was part right and part wrong: he was an Aylmer-Jones, and that is good enough for us.
Felix wrote too, setting out a possible solution to Charles Dickens's unfinished mystery novel The Case of Edwin Drood
in The Drood Case (1965).
Felix studied drama at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Rada, after completing his studies at Oxford.
His early career was interrupted by World War I, when he served at sea, but he quickly came to prominence thereafter,
making a speciality of the plays of George Bernard Shaw and enjoying a run of 109 performances as Robert E. Lee
in a biographical play of the American Civil War general (with Gielgud playing to him).
This was in 1923, and around now he tried his hand at direction too, although not always with as much success.
He became an early cross-Atlantic commuter, showing up on Broadway from time to time.
His principal stage appearances
are listed here.
The wonderful comic actor Kenneth Williams admitted to pinching from Felix his own 'weighty and august' judge voice,
considering that to be the best judge voice in the business.
'Every word,' he said, 'was judiciously weighted, suggesting clemency and fairness.
Also, the voice came from the side of the mouth.'
He never forsook the stage, but his performances are lost to memory now.
His skill is preserved in many dozens of films, the first in 1930, albeit with barely a leading role amongst them.
He specialised in the second- or third-rank roles, able to make an impression against the star names of his day,
including Rita Hayworth, Ingmar Bergman, Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier.
He was cast by great directors such as Powell/Pressburger (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, 1943),
Otto Preminger (St Joan, 1957 and Exodus, 1960),
and Carol Reed (Night Train to Munich, 1940 and The Running Man, 1963).
He had the range to crop up with George Formby (South American George, 1941) and in Hammer Films' The Mummy (1959).
On a wet afternoon at home there's every chance you will find him in a small screen re-run, probably in black and white.
There's an affectionate biography, centering on his films,
here, although it mis-dates Blimp as 1934,
a mistake not made by the exhaustive listing
of his film and TV appearances here.
By the time television became a mass medium he was a senior figure in Britain's acting establishment,
president of the actor's union Equity for many years from 1950
(indeed, its founder according to Wikipedia) and knighted in 1965.
On television - on which he first appeared in 1938 - he was best known for his role as Father Anselm in the BBC's
monastery-set situation comedy Oh Brother! (1968-70).
That, and earlier film stints as an archbishop in Henry V and Becket, led many to remember him as a typecast player of senior clerics,
but that does no service to a highly varied and successful career.
Other Aylmers of stage and screen
There are more than you might expect.
Star of Italian cinema Mimi Aylmer (1896-1992)
appeared alongside Vittorio de Sica and Marcello Mastroianni during her career.
Not a perfomer, but a historian of the stage, Jennifer Aylmer was curator of the British Theatre Museum in the 1960s.
Her mother was actress Cecily Byrne, who presumably married an Aylmer - Felix?
The web is short of conclusive proof, and I would have planned a trip to the museum to find out,
but it was closed by the V&A a few years ago.
There is however a joint reference to Jennifer and Felix in the papers of Labour politician Hugh Jenkins,
a great friend of theatre and one-time arts minister, and Jennifer donated Felix's papers to the museum in 1980.
There are two David Aylmers. The most notable stage role of the first, brother to Jennifer,
was in the eternally-running London stage hit The Mousetrap, in 1959.
Screen roles included John Ford B-movie (!) Gideon of Scotland Yard, 1958.
He lived from 1929-64, and alas committed suicide.
The second David Aylmer is still, ahem, performing, as a gay porn actor in what may for all I know be classics of the genre
such as Up the Mountain, Down the Shaft.
Denise Aylmer had a bit part in The Last Night of the Titanic (1958).
Ian Aylmer had a lead role in the 1938 British TV drama The Last Voyage of Captain Grant.
Patrick Aylmer (b.1978) played a zombie in the Irish horror spoof Strangers in the Night (2002).
Shortly after I added this entry he contacted me. Playing the zombie was, he told me, "the start and end of my performing arts career."
He now works in the pharmaceutical industry in Dublin.
The youngest of five siblings (one brother, two sisters), his father Pat Aylmer is a Doctor in Carlow, 50 miles south of Dublin.
Patrick went to school at the famous Clongowes Wood college in Kildare, responsible for James Joyce (hooray) and Michael O'Leary (boo);
the college is not far from Donadea Castle.
We won't forget the parasite.
Not as many as the actors perhaps, but more current.
American singer Jennifer Aylmer (picture 2)
is an up-and-coming soprano with a remarkable range from Handel and Mozart to Strauss and Henze.
English composer Bernard Rands wrote the role of Cynthia Reid in his work Bella Donna especially for her.
She's at home too in show music such as Rogers and Hammerstein.
Nothing to do with the (British) museum curator Jennifer, blob two above.
Chris Aylmer was bassist for the British heavy metal band Samson,
which regularly gigged with the likes of Iron Maiden and released several albums in the 70s-80s.
Chris named the band, after lead singer Paul Samson, who died from cancer in 2002, shortly after the group reformed.
Chris himself recently underwent surgery and recently was planning a new band Doctor Ice.
Deeply obscure Michigan garage band Aylmer's Juice was named after the favourite food
of the yet-to-be-profiled parasite named above.
Download tracks here.
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