Bid To Honour Actor Donald Pleasence With Commemorative Plaque

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Locals apply for listed building status at Strand on the Green property

Local residents at Strand on the Green have applied for Listed Building Consent for a Heritage Foundation plaque to honour actor Donald Pleasence OBE who lived in the area through the 1970s.

If approved they hope to unveil the plaque in October.

Donald Pleasence (1919-1995) was a stage actor (each of his lead roles were Tony nominated in the US) as well as starring in The Great Escape and as a Bond villain. In Tony Richardson's film of Look Back in Anger (1959) he plays a vindictive market inspector opposite Richard Burton. He often played the role of villain in movies.

Pleasence was nominated four times for the Tony Award for best performance by a leading actor in a Broadway play: in 1962 for Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, in 1965 for Jean Anouilh's Poor Bitos, in 1969 for Robert Shaw's The Man in the Glass Booth, and in 1972 for Simon Gray's Wise Child.

Pleasence was appointed OBE in 1994 for services to the acting profession. He was initially a conscientious objector to WW2 but then joined the airforce as bomber crew and was shot down and became a prisoner of war in Germany.

He was married four times, and died in 1995 in France, at the age of 75.

The Foundation which supports Bomber Command as one its charities is supporting the bid for a commemorative plaque.

August 12, 2017