A handy man to have around in a crime film, British actor Sydney Tafler specialized in tough gang-member and tipster types in the '50s. On stage from 1936 and in films from 1942 (The Young Mr. Pitt), Tafler's busiest screen years were 1949 through 1960, when virtually every other British film took place at night on a seedy, rainswept side street. The actor smoked cigarettes and talked from the side of his mouth through in such films as Passport to Pimlico (1949), Mystery Junction (1951) and The Saint's Girl Friday (1954), enjoying the occasional larger, subtler role in films like Carve Her Name with Pride (1955). In 1969 Tafler was still menacing any and all by saying nary a word in the filmization of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (1969). Sydney Tafler's final film role was in a captain's uniform (could it have been a disguise to elude the coppers?) in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).
by Hal Erickson
biography
