Raymond Huntley

Raymond Huntley
Raymond Huntley as Sir Geoffrey Dillon

Raymond Huntley (23 April 1904 – 19 October 1990) was an English actor who appeared in dozens of British films from the 1930s through to the 1970s. Huntley, also appeared in the ITV period drama Upstairs, Downstairs as the family solicitor Sir Geoffrey Dillon.

Born in Birmingham in 1904, Huntley was often cast as supercilious bureaucrats or other authority figures, and his many film appearances included The Way Ahead, I See a Dark Stranger, Passport to Pimlico and The Dam Busters.

Huntley has been credited as the first actor to portray Dracula, but that is incorrect. Huntley was first to play the role in Hamilton Deane's stage adaptation, later revised by John L. Balderston and now the most successful stage version of Bram Stoker's novel. The very first stage performance of Dracula occurred in 1897, shortly after the novel was published; Stoker himself mounted a one-off dramatization of the novel at Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London, where Stoker was manager.

In Huntley's later years, he became well known on television as Sir Geoffery Dillon, the family solicitor to the Bellamys in LWT's popular 1970s drama series Upstairs, Downstairs.

Huntley died in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1990.

Selected filmography

• Rembrandt (1937)
• Dinner at the Ritz (1937)
• Night Train to Munich (1940)
• The Ghost of St. Michael's (1941)
• Pimpernel Smith (1941)
• The Ghost Train (1941)
• Once a Crook (1941)
• The Day Will Dawn (1942)
• The New Lot (1943)
• When We Are Married (1943)
• The Way Ahead (1944)
• They Came to a City (1945)
• School for Secrets (1946)
• I See a Dark Stranger (1946)
• Mr Perrin & Mr Traill (1948)
• Broken Journey (1948)
• Passport to Pimlico (1949)
• Trio (1950)
• Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953)
• Laxdale Hall (1953)
• Orders Are Orders (1954)
• Doctor at Sea (1955)
• The Dam Busters (1955)
• The Constant Husband (1955)
• Brothers in Law (1957)
• Room at the Top (1959)
• Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959)
• Our Man in Havana (1959)
• I'm Alright Jack (1959)
• Follow That Horse! (1960)
• A French Mistress (1960)
• Only Two Can Play (1962)
• Crooks Anonymous (1962)
• Waltz of the Toreadors (1962)
• Rotten to the Core (1965)
• Hostile Witness (1968)
• Hot Millions (1968)
• The Adding Machine (1969)
• Arthur! Arthur! (1969)
• That's Your Funeral (1972)
• Young Winston (1972)
• Symptoms (1974)

External links

• Raymond Huntley at IMDb
• The Four Word Film review - Films linked with 'Raymond Huntley'