Raymond Huntley, a Birmingham-born thespian, was a master of playing instantly recognisable, mannered types that populated classic British films of the 1940s and 1950s. Standing tall and austere, he possessed a somewhat mean-sour-faced look, accentuated by his icy disdain behind horn-rimmed spectacles. This, combined with his trademark dry delivery, made him a perfect fit for an extensive array of ever-so-superior, humourless civil servants, mean-spirited bank managers, dullish clubroom snobs, smug business types, dour undertakers, or sinister cold war spooks.
Early in his career, Huntley essayed rather more overtly menacing characters, effectively typecast during the war years as Nazi officers or German spies. It is challenging to pinpoint two outstanding performances above all others, but he arguably shone brightest as the local bank manager Wix in Passport to Pimlico, emphatic in his greed to reap benefits from the Burgundian declaration of independence; as the irascible boffin Laxton-Jones in Secret Flight; and as Henry Chester, made resentful by his illness, in the Sanatorium segment of Trio.
Towards the end of his career, Huntley achieved his greatest popularity when cast as the grumpy family solicitor, Sir Geoffrey Dillon, in the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs in 1971.
Educated at King Edward's School, Huntley made his theatrical debut with the Birmingham Repertory Company in 1922. By the age of twenty-one, he played a septuagenarian farm labourer and was subsequently hired as a comedian by a North Country revue for a starting salary of ten pounds a week.
Huntley was reputedly the first actor to play Dracula on stage, in Hamilton Deane's hit 1927 London adaptation of the original novel. Although an earlier reading of the play took place on May 18th, 1897, at the Lyceum Theatre, arranged by none other than the author Bram Stoker himself, Huntley's superb handling of the character established the direction his future career would take.
