George Rose

British actor George Rose studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He briefly worked as a farmer and secretary, then decided to have another go at acting. After wartime service and a round of studies at Oxford, Rose made his Old Vic stage debut in 1946. He spent most of the 1950s in such broad comedy roles as Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing; in 1952 he appeared in his first film, The Pickwick Papers. In 1961, Rose co-starred in the original production of Robert Bolts A Man For All Seasons, playing the ubiquitous Common Man (a character excised from the 1966 film version). From 1966 onward, Rose appeared primarily in American plays and films. He was also one of the stars of the expensive 1975 TV series Beacon Hill, an ill-advised attempt to mimic the success of Upstairs Downstairs; he played the "Bridges" counterpart, a head butler named Hacker. Rose won the coveted Tony Award for his work in the 1975 revival of My Fair Lady and the 1985 musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood. American talk-show fans of the 1970s and 1980s came to know and love Rose as one of the foremost Gilbert and Sullivan purveyors in the English-speaking world. For a person who brought so much pleasure to so many people, George Rose came to a tragic and deplorable end; in 1988, he was savagely beaten to death by his adopted son and three other men just outside his summer home in the Dominican Republic. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide