Bill Kerr
Also Known As: William Henry Kerr, Willie Kerr
Biography: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. William Henry Kerr (10 June 1922 – 28 August 2014) was a British and Australian film and television actor. He was born into a performing arts family in Cape Town, South Africa, but grew up in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. He began working as a child actor in depression era Australia, taking his first major role in The Silence of Dean Maitland, one of Australia's first talking films. After serving in the Second World War, Kerr moved to England to further his acting career, and during the 1940s he was regularly featured in the BBC radio series Variety Bandbox. His trademark was his catch phrase "I'm only here for 4 minutes..." In the 1950s, he had a recurring role as an Australian lodger in the BBC radio comedy series Hancock's Half Hour. Initially sharper than Hancock's characterisation, it was developed into a more dim-witted character who became the butt of Hancock's jokes. His television appearances in Britain include a 1968 Doctor Who story called The Enemy of the World, with Patrick Troughton, and a long running part in the early 1960s BBC-TV soap, Compact. Bill Kerr had much theatrical success in Britain, playing The Devil in the original West End production of Damn Yankees, directed by Bob Fosse, and Cole. He also worked with Spike Milligan. He appeared in Milligan and John Antrobus's stage play The Bed-Sitting Room, which opened at the Mermaid Theatre on 31 January 1963. A subsequent production opened on 3 May 1967 at the Saville Theatre, and "a cast containing an unusually high proportion of Australian actors including Bill Kerr and David Nettheim." Then in 1972 he co-starred with Anthony Newley in the long running Newley/Bricusse musical, The Good Old Bad Old Days. In 1975, Kerr took the part of Bluey Notts, described as "an Australian bookie's clerk, a crude racialist", in The Melting Pot. This was a sitcom written by Spike Milligan and Neil Shand, which was cancelled by the BBC after just one episode had been broadcast. He also appeared in several British films, including The Dam Busters and The Wrong Arm of the Law, before moving back to Australia. Although probably best known as a comic actor, and especially for his appearances in Hancock's Half Hour, he has since played a number of serious roles, notably in Peter Weir's films Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). He also worked on the Australian stage in the 1980s, in musicals such as My Fair Lady, where he received excellent reviews as Alfred Doolittle. In 2001, he appeared in the Australian comedy Let's Get Skase. Kerr also appeared in Glenview High and the 1998 television comedy series Minty. Kerr has also been involved in documentaries, providing the narration for No Survivor - The Mysterious Loss of HMAS Sydney Nine Network Australia (1995), Malice or Mutiny for the ABC Australia 2003 and Animal X Natural Mystery Unit series for Discovery in the US, TV2 Norway and many others. Description above from the Wikipedia article Bill Kerr, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Birthday: June 10, 1922
Deathday: August 28, 2014
Adult: No
Gender: Male
Popularity:
Known For:
Gallipoli
Overview: As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank—both agile runners—become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.
Genres: War History Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-08-13
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The Pirate Movie
Overview: A comedy/musical utilizing both new songs and parodies from the original (Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance), as well as references to popular films of the time, including Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In your typical boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy fights girl with swords plot, the story revolves around Mabel ...
Genres: Action Comedy Drama Family Music Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1982-08-06
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Razorback
Overview: In the Australian outback a vicious wild boar kills and causes havoc to a small community.
Genres: Horror
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-04-19
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Vigil
Overview: Toss lives on a sheep farm with her father in New Zealand. When Toss's father dies in an accident, Ethan, an itinerant hunter, wanders onto the family farm and is given a job by her grandfather. Toss's fairly innocent relationship with Ethan is severed when he forms a relationship with her mother.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-10-01
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The Wrong Arm of the Law
Overview: The crooks in London know how it works. No one carries guns and no one resists the police. Then a new gang appears that go one better. They dress as police and steal from the crooks. This upsets the natural order of the police/criminal relationship and the police and the crooks join forces to catch the IPOs (Impersonating Police Officers), including an armoured car robbery in which the police must help the gangs to set a trap.
Genres: Crime Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-03-17
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Save the Lady
Overview: A ragtag group of kids set out to save derelict steam ferry Lady Hope from destruction.
Genres: Adventure Family Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-12-28
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The Night My Number Came Up
Overview: British Air Marshal Hardie is attending a party in Hong Kong when he hears of a dream, told by a pilot, in which Hardie's flight to Tokyo on a small Dakota propeller plane crashes on a Japanese beach. Hardie dismisses the dream as pure fantasy, but while he is flying to Tokyo the next day, circumstances start changing to align with the pilot's vivid vision, and it looks like the dream disaster may become a reality.
Genres: Thriller Drama Mystery Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1955-03-22
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Bushfire Moon
Overview: In the Australian outback, a small boy determines to see that a nasty, curmudgeonly miser gets the Christmas spirit.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1987-12-10
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Let's Get Skase
Overview: Christopher Skase. He ruled Australia and stole a fortune, fleeing to the coast of Spain. No one could touch him. No one could stop him. Until Peter Dellasandro and a small force of men swore they'd bring him down.
Genres: Comedy Action Adventure
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2001-10-18
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Dusty
Overview: The eponymous Dusty is an appropriately named dingo, or wild dog. Roaming the fertile fields of Australia, Dusty is captured as a puppy. Though dingoes are normally averse to human companionship, Dusty attaches himself to an old, worn-out shepherd, played by Bill Kerr. The dog gives Kerr a reason for living, and vice versa. Be sure to have plenty of Kleenex handy for some of the mistier passages of Dusty.
Genres: Drama Family
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1983-04-21
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Rob Roy
Overview: The tale of Scottish legend Rob Roy MacGregor is retold in beautiful animation. Rob Roy borrows money from the local nobility to buy cattle to increase his status in life. When the money is stolen, he must use the fighting skills he's tried to avoid in order to escape the powerful men who believe he stole the money. Rob Roy begins by fighting for his own survival, as well as his family's, but pretty soon he is fighting for the people of Scotland. Heroism, courage, and sacrifice are at the center of this stirring tale. Rob Roy is a worthy addition to any film library.
Genres: Animation
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1987-01-01
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A Pair of Briefs
Overview: She's new in chambers, and he's a troublemaker. But what 'is' the true status of the old lady's wartime marriage, and can the two young legal minds find the answer?
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1962-03-01
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Sweet Talker
Overview: When scam artist Harry Reynolds gets out of jail, he makes his way to the depressed coastal village of Beachport, where according to local myth, an old Portuguese treasure ship lies buried in the sand. Harry is an old pro at manipulating this situation to his best advantage, but never anticipates how deeply he will be affected by the relationship he develops with a young boy and his mother. A delightful tale of greed, gullibility and grandiose schemes, "Sweet Talker" is a romantic comedy for everyone in the family.
Genres: Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1991-05-10
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The Settlement
Overview: Down-on-their-luck drifters Kearney and Martin wander into the small town of Cedar Creek looking to swindle a few pounds from the locals. After a not-too-friendly reception, the pair decide to move into an abandoned shack on the outskirts of town. They are soon joined in their new home by Joycie, another town outcast with a shady past. While the three manage to start a rather happy life together, they soon find that others in the town strongly disapprove of their living arrangements.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-07-19
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Kokoda Crescent
Overview: The grandson of a war veteran is found dead from an overdose of heroin. He and his old army buddies swing into action and stake out the drug dealer, only to discover a web of police corruption surrounding the drug dealing. Given police complicity in the matter, they take the law into their own hands.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1989-06-01
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Ghost in the Noonday Sun
Overview: A pirate crewman kills his captain after learning where he has hidden his buried treasure. However, as he begins to lose his memory, he relies more and more on the ghost of the man he just murdered to help him find the loot.
Genres: Adventure Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1973-01-01
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The Captain's Table
Overview: A captain is promoted by his company from tramp steamers to their flagship passenger liner. Although he is a thoroughly competent sailor ready to take charge of such a ship, he is less prepared for the social duties his new position involves, not least the way he in which becomes the target for all the unattached women on board.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1959-01-06
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The Coca-Cola Kid
Overview: An eccentric marketing guru visits a Coca-Cola subsidiary in Australia to try and increase market penetration. He finds zero penetration in a valley owned by an old man who makes his own soft drinks, and visits the valley to see why. After "the Kid's" persistence is tested he's given a tour of the man's plant, and they begin talking of a joint venture. Things get more complicated when the Coca-Cola man begins falling in love with his temporary secretary, who seems to have connections to the valley.
Genres: Comedy Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1985-07-14
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Tony Hancock: From East Cheam to Earls Court
Overview: Ex-colleagues reflect on the comic genius and sometimes difficult character of Tony Hancock.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1985-04-26
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Deadline
Overview: A journalist sets out to report on a minor earthquake in the Australian outback, and finds that the tremor was a result of a small nuclear explosion - part of an extortion threat that has the government fearing nuclear blackmail. With the help of local reporters, and despite the harassment of the security agencies, he sets out to avert the crisis.
Genres: Thriller
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1982-01-01
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Platypus Cove
Overview: After saving a drowning boy's life, a fifteen-year-old orphan is taken aboard by the family as a deckhand.
Genres: Family Adventure
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1986-01-01
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Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World
Overview: On Earth in 2018, the Doctor and his companions are enmeshed in a deadly web of intrigue thanks to his uncanny resemblance to the scientist/politician Salamander. He is hailed as the "shopkeeper of the world" for his efforts to relieve global famine, but why do his rivals keep disappearing? How can he predict so many natural disasters? The Doctor must expose Salamander's schemes before he takes over the world.
Genres: Adventure Drama Science Fiction TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-27
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Harmony Row
Overview: George enlists in the police force and is assigned to Harmony Row, a haunt of criminals such as Slogger Lee.
Genres: Music Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-02-11
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House of Mortal Sin
Overview: Also known as 'The Confessional', another of Pete Walkers's critiques of institutional hypocrisy, in which a troubled young girl goes to confession at the local church. Unfortunately, the sexually frustrated priest she confesses to becomes obsessed with her. At first, the priest stalks the girl, but later it is revealed that he will stop at nothing, including blackmail and murder, just to get close to her.
Genres: Horror
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1976-02-03
Popularity:
House of Mortal Sin
Overview: Also known as 'The Confessional', another of Pete Walkers's critiques of institutional hypocrisy, in which a troubled young girl goes to confession at the local church. Unfortunately, the sexually frustrated priest she confesses to becomes obsessed with her. At first, the priest stalks the girl, but later it is revealed that he will stop at nothing, including blackmail and murder, just to get close to her.
Genres: Horror
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1976-02-03
Popularity:
The Year of Living Dangerously
Overview: Australian journalist Guy Hamilton travels to Indonesia to cover civil strife in 1965. There—on the eve of an attempted coup—he befriends a Chinese Australian photographer with a deep connection to and vast knowledge of the Indonesian people, and also falls in love with a British national.
Genres: Romance Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1982-12-17
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Doctor in Distress
Overview: "Doctor in Distress" is the fifth of the seven films in the "Doctor" series, and focuses on Sir Lancelot Spratt, Simon Sparrow's old teacher and sometimes nemesis. When the eternal bachelor Sir Lancelot injures his back and falls in love with his physiotherapist Iris Marchant, he becomes very distressed and turns to Simon for help. Simon, who now is a senior doctor at fictional Hampden Cross Hospital and hopelessly in love with aspiring actress Delia, sends him to a nature cure clinic in a vain attempt to help him lose weight, but Sir Lancelot can't get Iris off his mind and has her followed, first by a private investigator and eventually by himself. When he finally proposes, she rejects him and marries an old army major, which distresses Sir Lancelot even more.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1963-07-30
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Mortuary Academy
Overview: "Police Academy" clone, about some nerds who inherit an academy for morticians, which is run by a corrupt closet necropheliac. Of course, the most incompetent students possible are accepted, so that the academy will fail, and all sorts of wacky hijinks ensue.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1988-05-08
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Girls Come First
Overview: Up and coming portrait artist Alan Street is employed by the owner of a Soho Swingers Club to paint the nude hostesses. Whilst Alan relishes his new job his beautiful girlfriend is less than impressed.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1975-06-06
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Port of Escape
Overview: Two sailors dock in London in search of a good time. But when one of them fatally stabs a man during a scuffle in a bar, the pair flee the scene, commandeer a boat and take the three women on board hostage as they try to outrun the law.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1956-05-01
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Appointment in London
Overview: Wing-commander Tim Mason leads a squadron of Lancaster bombers on almost nightly raids from England. Having flown eighty-seven missions he will shortly be retiring from flying, but the strain is showing. He tries to make sure his men concentrate only on their job and so keeps women away from the base, but then he himself meets naval officer Eve Canyon.
Genres: War Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1953-02-17
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Spike Milligan: A Series of Unrelated Incidents at Current Market Value
Overview: Spike stars with Bob Todd, Bill Kerr, Graham Stark, Valentine Dyall, and Sheree Winton & a final TV outing for moustachioed 'token Italian' comedy actor Mario Fabrizi, who died 18 months later, aged just 38.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1961-09-05
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Overview: A wily slave must unite a virgin courtesan and his young smitten master to earn his freedom.
Genres: Music Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-10-16
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Peter Pan
Overview: In stifling Edwardian London, Wendy Darling mesmerizes her brothers every night with bedtime tales of swordplay, swashbuckling and the fearsome Captain Hook. But the children become the heroes of an even greater story, when Peter Pan flies into their nursery one night and leads them over moonlit rooftops through a galaxy of stars and to the lush jungles of Neverland.
Genres: Adventure Fantasy Family
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2003-12-18
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The Dam Busters
Overview: The story of the conception of a new British weapon for smashing the German dams in the Ruhr industrial complex and the execution of the raid by 617 Squadron 'The Dam Busters'.
Genres: Drama Action History Thriller War
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1955-05-16
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My Death Is a Mockery
Overview: A fisherman cannot make a decent living from his trawler so he decides to turn his hand to smuggling.
Genres: Crime Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1952-08-01
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Double Sculls
Overview: A man tries to rehabilitate his alcoholic friend by entering them both into the Australian national rowing championships.
Genres: Drama TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1986-10-09
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Penny Points to Paradise
Overview: When Harry and Spike visit Bristol to spend the winnings from Harry's latest Pools win, the boys are soon targeted by a gang of local counterfeiters.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1951-04-25
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Over the Hill
Overview: Alma can't stand to have one more birthday without seeing her estranged daughter, Elizabeth, who lives in Sydney, Australia.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1992-06-30
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A Pair of Briefs
Overview: She's new in chambers, and he's a troublemaker. But what 'is' the true status of the old lady's wartime marriage, and can the two young legal minds find the answer?
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1962-03-01
Popularity:
The Lighthorsemen
Overview: In 1917 when the British forces are bogged down in front of the Turkish and German lines in Palestine they rely on the Australian light horse regiment to break the deadlock.
Genres: War Drama History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1987-09-10
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The Shiralee
Overview: An Australian "swagman" finds his wife with another man, so he takes the daughter, Buster, with him. On the road together, going from town to town and from farm to farm, father and daughter explore new depths of understanding and bonding.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1957-07-11
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Doctor in Clover
Overview: Doctor in Clover is another 'Doctor' movie, but this time Leslie Phillips is the main doctor in the story, looking for love and romance from the hospital nurses, much to the annoyance of the main Administrator (James Robertson Justice) who wants his doctors to be 100% focussed on the job. Numerous antics follow, with Phillips getting Justice fixed up with the new prim-and-proper Matron (Joan Sims) and his attempted failures to lure the hospital's beauty, the physiotherapist.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-03-08
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Great Expectations
Overview: The classic tale of the helpless orphan Pip and his anonymous benefactor is brought to life in this high quality entertaining animated feature for your kids and family. These legendary characters have stirred the imaginations of the young and old from the moment Dickens created them.
Genres: Animation Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1983-03-31
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Running from the Guns
Overview: Dave (Jon Blake) and his buddy Peter (Mark Hembrow) are chased by a gang of thugs when they pick up the wrong box from a Melbourne warehouse in this comedy thriller. Instead of toys, the box contains a substantial amount of cash intended to be used in a money-laundering operation.
Genres: Action
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1987-09-16
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