Raymond Huntley, a Birmingham-born thespian, was a master of playing instantly recognizable, mannered characters in classic British films of the 1940s and 1950s. Standing tall and austere, with a somewhat mean, sour-faced look, accentuated by his icy stare behind horn-rimmed spectacles, Huntley's dry delivery and piercing gaze made him perfect for a wide range of superior, humourless civil servants, mean-spirited bank managers, dullish clubroom snobs, smug business types, dour undertakers, or sinister cold war spooks.
Throughout his career, Huntley essayed a diverse array of characters, including menacing Nazi officers and German spies during the war years. He was typecast in these roles, but it is difficult to pinpoint two outstanding performances above all others. However, he arguably shone as the local bank manager Wix in Passport to Pimlico (1949),emphasizing his greed to reap benefits from the Burgundian declaration of independence; as the irascible boffin Laxton-Jones in Secret Flight (1946); and as Henry Chester, made resentful by his illness, in the Sanatorium segment of Trio (1950).
Toward the end of his career, Huntley achieved his greatest popularity when cast as the grumpy family solicitor, Sir Geoffrey Dillon, in the television series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971).
Raymond Huntley was educated at King Edward's School and 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 reportedly the first actor to play Dracula on stage, in Hamilton Deane's 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 author Bram Stoker himself, Huntley's superb handling of the character established the direction his future career would take.
