Sue Sue - Alan had many women friends after Gip died, but nobody could replace her. This is what he wrote on the subject: "In a healthy body a broken limb will heal; so will a broken heart in a healthy spirit. Gip had made me whole and it would have been a sorry tribute to her if I had not reco...

Professional Tourist - Alan also appeared in "Pygmalion" on the Lux Radio Theater in 1939. He played Colonel Pickering to Brian Aherne’s Henry Higgins, and created--with just his voice--a tubby, jolly character completely at odds with his actual physical appearance. And again on Lux Radio ...

Professional Tourist - That is the very photo I chose to illustrate "Lady In Waiting" in the book! It is so unlike the Alan Napier that we know from the movies. The only thing that approximates it is a guest part he played in 1963 on the "Lloyd Bridges Show" in which he shows tha...

Jack - Alan started at the Oxford Players in 1924, learning, rehearsing and performing as many as eight plays in an eight week season. He and John Gielgud (almost his exact contemporary) both appeared in The Players' first major success: Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard", which up to th...

Jack - Alan referred to "The Uninvited" as "my first good part, in fact the only good part I've had in movies". I don't agree about it being the only good part, but it definitely was the first movie role that treated Alan as a sexual being. When the handsome doctor winds up with ...

Lzcutter - Alan liked the money he made from "Batman"; he liked the recognition he got from playing Alfred. He enjoyed the comraderie on the set and he was grateful to William Dozier for the opportunity. What he regretted was the fact that it became all he was known for, erasing all that h...

Sue Sue - Well, they don't come taller or more English than Alan! His comments on George Sanders were limited to their off screen friendship and other than noting Sanders' basic laziness and contempt for work in general, he did not have any on-set stories. Neither did he say anything about his Disne...

Lzcutter, it is amazing how many people first met Alan on "Batman"! Despite a hundred films and a hundred episodes of television before Alfred. William Dozier, who produced the show, claims that he never considered anybody other than Alan for the role because "Alan Napier, to me, has ...

Alan was never under contract to a studio and, as far as I am aware, was never offered the opportunity to be. I would venture that, had been offered a contract, he would have taken it. He would have appreciated the security, I think. He never compared the atmospheres of the studios to me, but I thin...

Alan met Orson Welles through John Houseman, who Alan was at school with (although 15 year old Orson was in London with his father overdosing on theater when "Bitter Sweet" opened, and it would lovely to think that he saw Alan in that play). Alan reunited with Houseman, who was by then wor...

Alan's stage memories are a pleasure for me as well. He paints a vivid picture of the life of a working actor in 1930s London's West End. He obviously had an affection for the old men that he was so good at impersonating in youth. When he started at the Oxford Players in 1924, they were looking for ...

The audio in the "Message from Alan Napier" is from the very first interview I did with him in 1975. Practically one of the first things he said to me! You can even hear me saying 'Unhuh" at one point. The video interviews in the other clips are from a videotape interview done in 1986...

As to Alan's height, he felt it was a liability all his life, on stage, screen as well as television. He refers to it in the clip you mentioned as a reason why he wasn't working as much as he would like, but he is being a bit disingenuous. He had appeared in close to 100 episodes of television befor...

Alan writes about Hitchcock in his book as an acquaintance more than a friend. He knew him from his early days in Hollywood but as Alan said to me, "we never really hit it off". Hitchcock offered Alan a small part in the early forties which Alan turned down (he never said what part it was)...

First let me thank you for inviting me to be a part of this forum. It is flattering to be in the company of so many authors whose work I have read and admired. I have always been a fan of old movies, although I don't really know how it started. My parents didn't have a television set for much of my ...