Finlay Currie

Scottish actor Finlay Currie's pre-theatrical occupations included choirmaster and organist. He entered show business at the turn of the century as a musical performer, billed as "Harry Calvo, the double-voiced vocalist." For ten years, Currie toured Australia as principal comedian in Sir Benjamin Fuller's acting troupe. He returned to the London stage in 1930, where over the next three decades he would appear in such hits as The Last Mile and Death of a Salesman. In films from 1932, Currie's most memorable screen role was as the surly convict Magwitch in Great Expectations (1946). He spent much of the early 1950s in Hollywood, playing such forceful character roles as St. Peter in Quo Vadis (1951) and the mysterious Mr. Shunderson in People Will Talk (1951). Still in harness into the mid-1960s, Finlay Currie was at one juncture the oldest working actor in Great Britain.