By Patrick F. Cannon

To follow on from my piece last week about the actor Michael Lonsdale, I would encourage you to look up the films of perhaps the greatest English actor of his generation, Paul Scofield (1922-2008). He preferred the stage but managed to appear in several memorable films, including a stark version of Shakespeare’s King Lear in 1971.

            That one may not be easy to find, but others will. Perhaps his best-known film is A Man For all Seasons, the 1966 film version of Robert Bolt’s play about Sir Thomas More. He won both a Tony award for the Broadway stage version and the Academy Award for Best Actor in the film version. As a devout Roman Catholic, More cannot sign a document that acknowledges King Henry VIII as head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, which would enable him to marry Anne Boleyn. It would eventually cost him his own head (and Anne’s too!). His nemesis is Thomas Cromwell, played by Leo McKern. Robert Shaw is wonderful as Henry, and we even have a crimson-berobed and porcine Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey.

            Interestingly, if you saw the recent PBS series covering the same characters, Wolf Hall, Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance, was the main character. More is portrayed as a more nuanced character, even something of a religious fanatic, but he still loses his head, as does Cromwell in the end. In those days, it was better to be king!

            In 1964, he appeared as the Nazi Colonel Franz von Waldheim opposite Burt Lancaster as the  Franch railroad worker Paul Labiche in John Frankenheimer’s The Train. In it, Scofield attempts to steal French Impressionists masterpieces from a Paris museum and ship them to Germany ahead of the Allies arrival in Paris in 1944. The plot is simple – Lancaster tries to stop him. To their credit, neither Scofield nor Lancaster attempts an accent. The rest of the cast is French, so their accents are legit! Scofield is wonderfully arrogant. At one point he tells Lancaster that great art belongs only to those (like him of course) who can appreciate it. Great stuff.

            In 1994s Quiz Show, he plays the American poet, critic and Columbia University professor Mark Van Doren, whose son Charles admitted cheating on the popular late 1950s quiz show, Twenty-One. Those of you old enough will remember the raft of big-money quiz shows of that period. In addition to Twenty-One, there was The $64,000 Question and  the  $100,000 Big Surprise. Most featured the “sound-proof” booth, where the contestant sweated it out as he or  she tried to remember the answer to the question that he had been given beforehand! Although profoundly disappointed in his son’s moral lapse, Scofield as the father stands by him through his ordeal.

            Finally, he played Judge Thomas Danforth in the 1996 film version of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, whose cast included another great British actor, Daniel Day Lewis. Apparently, Miller took liberties with history as Danforth didn’t preside over the witchcraft trials in 17th Century Salem, Massachusetts upon which the play was based. Miller wrote his play as a response to the witch hunts for Communists and their fellow travelers by Senator Joe McCarthy  and others during the 1950s. Scofield is perfect as the stern and even frightening voice of doom.  

            As with most actors, You Tube will provide samples of Scofield’s work. But for the full effect, you should at least search out A Man for All Seasons.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon