Cecil Parker

Cecil Parker is a British actor who, over the course of his career, made the transition between leading man to character actor, playing a series of stuffy, pompous upper crust Englishmen. Parker served in World War I, receiving an injury that left his head positioned in a rightward tilt. He began pursuing a career on the stage after his discharge, making his theatrical debut in 1922 and his on-screen debut in 1933. In the 1930s, Parker appeared mainly in supporting roles, frequently working with comic actor/director Tom Walls, and he had a small but memorable role as an adulterer in the Alfred Hitchcock mystery "The Lady Vanishes." In the late 1940s, Parker played a small number of roles, including the lead character in 1947's "Captain Boycott." As the '50s wore on, Parker gained weight and lost hair, consigning him to the character roles for which he would become known. Parker appeared in two of the best-loved Alec Guinness comedies directed by Alexander Mackendrick for Ealing Studios: 1951's "The Man in the White Suit" and 1955's "The Ladykillers." He occasionally appeared in Hollywood films, but he's probably best-recognized by American audiences for his role as the doomed captain whose shipwreck strands the family in the 1960 Disney film, "Swiss Family Robinson." His final role was in "Oh! What a Lovely War," Richard Attenborough's anti-war satire of the conflict in which Parker himself had served 50 years before.