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(1901–1989). British/American actor.
Evans was not enormously successful in his youth, although
in the early days of talking pictures, he was able, like almost any reasonably
articulate British actor, to find parts on motion pictures, including a small
role in a forgotten adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
But he was wise enough to realize that a man with a British accent might do
better in the Colonies, so he crossed the Atlantic and soon established himself
as a leading Shakespearian actor. He so enjoyed his new surroundings that he
became an American citizen in 1941 and worked for the Army Entertainment
Section during World War II. After the war, some additional triumphs on the
Broadway stage led naturally, in the 1950s, to a series of jobs for the
irregular series Hallmark Hall of Fame as performer, host, and/or
producer of some televised Shakespeare plays and adaptations of fairy tales. Up
until the 1960s, then, his aura of dignity was completely uncompromised. Soon, however, whether due to boredom, greed, or a genuine
interest in new challenges, Evan began slumming in a big way. He first
distinguished himself, if that is the proper word, with several appearances in
the inane comedy series Bewitched as the grumpy warlock father—named
"Maurice" in his honor—of suburban witch Samantha. When the refusal of Frank
Gorshwin to continue playing the Riddler left the producers of Batman
with an unusable script, they eagerly recruited Evans to portray a
transparently similar villain named the Puzzler and reworked the script to make
the character a compulsive dispenser of Shakespearian quotations. When the
character didn't catch on, he sought occasional employment in another
disreputable venue, the television series Tarzan. Still, while all of this work was competent enough, Evans's
greatest year came in 1968, with conspicuous appearances in two major films. He
was appropriately sensitive in the background as Rosemary's friend in Roman
POLANSKI's Rosemary's Mary, but he commanded more attention in Planet
of the Apes. As the script marginalized the actor who would later be the
series' mainstay, Roddy MCDOWALL,
the film was driven entirely by the conflict between a scenery-chewing Charlton
HESTON and Evans's implacably villainous Dr. Zaius. Since he also contrived to
give a nuanced performance, suggesting at times that his fierce determination
to suppress all knowledge of humanity's true past is motivated by a sincere
desire to preserve his ape civilization, Evans stands with McDowall and Tim
Roth as the three greatest actors who excelled while buried under layers of ape
makeup. He was equally good in the sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes,
though somewhat upstaged by a new crew of bomb-worshipping mutant villains, and
he is the only reason why anyone would ever want to watch that wretched film. Evans continued to work sporadically in the 1970s and 1980s,
including an obligatory visit to the risible rest home for has-been actors, Fantasy
Island, until failing health drove him back to England to die in 1989. As
the Puzzler would have summed up his career, he long endured the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune, and proved himself a serviceable villain in tales
told by idiots.
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