Thursday, May 24, 2012

DEVILISHLY SMOOTH AND FIENDISHLY DRY


Quite at home playing the villain, actor Henry Daniell had a face made for horror films. Able to crack a wry, sinister countenance seemingly at will, Daniell played all sorts of bad guys during his long film career.

To genre fans, he is best remembered as "Toddy" MacFarlane alongside Karloff's John Gray in the film adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's THE BODY SNATCHER. He also played the ancient, head-shrinking Jivaro witch doctor in THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE. He even had the distinction of playing Dr. Moriarity in one of his numerous film roles in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series of films.

His evil-looking visage was the perfect image for a series of Bacardi Rum magazine spreads with a "devilishly smooth and fiendishly dry" ad copy theme. The examples shown here are from the March 1965 issue of PLAYBOY. A devilishly strange and fiendishly morbid fact about his appearance here is that Mr. Daniell had been already dead for two years.



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