Sadly the well known character actor William Simons, who played P.C. Alf Ventress in the long running TV series Heartbeat died last week. As a boy William had two unusual links with the 1950s EAGLE. He was the subject of the article Schoolboy in the African Bush in Eagle Vol.2 No.39 (dated 4th January 1952) when as an eleven year old he featured in the film Where No Vultures Fly. The article describes his experiences of filming on location for four months in Kenya. His other link with EAGLE was that he played Alfie Cutforth in the B.B.C. TV adaptation of Anthony Buckeridge's Rex Milligan stories, which had been specially created for EAGLE.
Where No Vultures Fly was the second most successful
film at the box office in Britain in 1952 and led to a sequel West of Zanzibar, released in 1954 in
which William also featured.
I directed Bill in a short film called A FUTURE IN FISH back in the early 1990s, he was a lovely chap. In 2008 I made strenuous efforts to produce & direct a biopic of Frank Hampson for BBC4 but the project was sadly put into turnaround when the commissioner who had initially expressed an interest and funded development was replaced by another individual with zero interest in FH’s story. A sad but all too common story in a TV world where development can take so long yet the execs driving that also are playing a fast moving game of musical chairs.
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