Aubrey Morris made courtesy feel faintly unsafe, using stretched vowels, a broad smile and sideways looks to make small parts memorable. We value that precision, though his brief appearances are not always reason enough to recommend the films.
Fi1m perspective
Aubrey Morris could make a broad smile seem a reason to keep a little distance. The stretched vowels and sideways looks made his officials and eccentrics suspect before they had done much at all. As Alex’s probation officer Deltoid in A Clockwork Orange (1971), he makes professional concern feel unpleasantly intimate. We were unsettled by the performance because the precise speech and toothy smile made the threatening behaviour seem almost companionable. Kubrick gets comedy and menace from the same small part.
The early film parts already suggest where he would be useful: an inmate in The Quare Fellow (1962), an oddball pornographer in The Night Caller (1965). By The Wicker Man (1973), his gravedigger was contributing to a whole community of unsettling locals. He could make eccentricity funny, too. The bath-loving captain in the television The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981) gives that pleasure a less threatening setting.
Lifeforce (1985) puts him in office as Home Secretary Sir Percy Heseltine, an apt job for an actor whose civility could feel suspect. Tobe Hooper’s space-vampire horror is worth considering for its extravagance, but we recommend it with reservations rather than as an essential stop in Morris’s work. Mathilda May’s poise and Henry Mancini’s imposing score give it much of its appeal. The dialogue is clumsy and the mystery falters, faults that matter when deciding how much time to give a film for one supporting player. Casting Morris as an official makes sense; it does not settle whether the whole film deserves an evening.
The practical reservation is the size of the parts. His precise vocal and facial effects give us something to notice quickly, but following him through a filmography means accepting that he may not be around for long. Start with Deltoid; save Lifeforce for an evening when space vampires are already part of the appeal.
Biography
Aubrey Morris (born Aubrey Steinberg) was a British character actor. Born on 1 June 1926 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, he was one of nine children and the brother of actor Wolfe Morris. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on a scholarship and made his professional stage debut in 1944 in The Winter's Tale at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park. He later worked at the Old Vic and appeared on Broadway.
Morris appeared in over fifty films. He is known for his role as the probation officer Deltoid in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) and as the gravedigger in The Wicker Man (1973). Other film credits include Love and Death (1975) and Lifeforce (1985). His television work included appearances in The Avengers, Columbo, Deadwood and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005). He moved to the United States in the mid-1980s and continued working until his death on 15 July 2015 in Los Angeles, aged 89.
