Okay, so Tumblr has its uses...

[lost_spook]

I will explain later (with much waffling no doubt) but an anon on Tumblr directed me to a bunch of James Maxwell stuff from his college days - including his yearbook entry from 1949. Do you want to see a very young James Maxwell? Because you're going to if you look under the cut...

Comments

[persiflage_1]

Ah, the wonders of t'internet!

[lost_spook]

It has its uses. :-D

[liadtbunny]

It's definitely him!

Fake beard addiction: it's time action was taken and a charity set up for it's sufferers.

[lost_spook]

It was so definitely him that when I was going through the thumbnails of the pages trying to find him, I could see it must be him before I magnified it!

I am very ecite! It's embarrassing but true.

(Fake Beard Addiction is a little known malady that gets no real treatment and it is a tragedy. *sighs*)

[a_phoenixdragon]

OMG!! This is so awesome!! And lookit what a BABY he was!!

*HUGS*

[lost_spook]

It is! I was so excited yesterday morning! And he is such a baby - I hadn't realised, but he must have gone to uni when he was sixteen, so this is him at 19/20, all nearly graduated.

[evelyn_b]

That is completely adorable. I don't even know James Maxwell properly, but I know that much. And fake facial hair, a problem with its roots in earliest youth!

[lost_spook]

:lol; yes. And thanks! Earlier on in the week I was just grumbling at the world and myself for getting interested in old actors and being unable to find pics of them when they were young... and now look

[evelyn_b]

There's no need to be sorry! You've posted enough James Maxwell pictures that I have a positive fondness for him, despite never having seen him in any actual TV (yet? I will get to Underworld eventually). Does the theatre he founded still exist?

[lost_spook]

Well, unless you watched the whole of the Raffles pilot, because he's Inspector Mackenzie in it, but, heh, sorry! (Not sorry?)

And, yes, the theatre is Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre. The group believed strongly that theatre should be taken out of London where it could be part of a community and they also wanted to change the physical shape of it, in order to remove the barriers between the actors and the audience - so it is (or certainly was) the largest round theatre in the country & happily seems to still be going strong and living up to all the original ideals. :-)

[dimity_blue]

*squee* Look at how young he looks! ♥ I love that he became addicted to fake facial hair so early. It's rather endearing to know the teenaged him was wandering around on stage with a dodgy beard.

I wish you had enough brain and energy to write JM's biography. I'm sure it would be a fun read.

[lost_spook]

:-D It's a wonderful photo. I'm sure you don't need me to say how pleased I was to find it! And, yes, and given that he was also into drama at his school before that, it was probably around 50 years of dreadful fake hair on his face. And, of course, even if he tried to give it up, the BBC were just terrible enablers of all kinds of fake hair...

Well, I wish someone had the spoons or the whatever to do it while there are still plenty of people around who knew him, but there you are.