A rare piece of film history has been found featuring Huddersfield-born actor Roy Castle.
It’s in a Mr Bean-style comedy role where he doesn’t utter a word.
In 1968 the Scholes-born entertainer starred in a 40-minute silent film, The Intrepid Mr Twigg, a farce centred around an accident-prone man and his elderly motor car.
Almost 50 years on, two original film reels which were recently discovered in Liverpool have been handed over to a Yorkshire film archive.
Mike Taylor, of the Projected Picture Trust, rescued the reels from a friend’s house after a fire and handed them to Reel Solutions, based at Dean Clough, Halifax, one of the biggest private archives in the country.
Tony Earnshaw, programming and festivals director at Reel Solutions, said many old format films were being lost.
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“This Roy Castle film is now in our archive and is safeguarded for the future. So many of these films are lost.
“We hope to be able to present it to an audience at some point but the most important thing is that this film isn’t lost.”
The comedy was directed by Freddie Francis who also directed Roy Castle in horror films Dr Terror’s House of Horrors and Legend of the Werewolf.
Mr Francis’ widow Pam said her late husband and Roy Castle were good friends.
“Freddie was a great friend of Roy. We used to go to Gerrards Cross (Buckinghamshire), where Roy lived, all the time.”
Mrs Francis said her husband regretted making The Intrepid Mr Twigg.
“He forever regretted making the film. I don’t think it did Roy any good and it didn’t do Freddie any good.”
Roy, who shot to fame as a trombonist and dancer and through his appearances presenting Record Breakers, was born in Scholes in August 1932.
He died in September 1994 after a battle with lung cancer. The non-smoker was a talented musician who blamed playing in smoky clubs during the early part of his career for his illness.
Francis, who died in 2007, achieved great success as a cinematographer, winning Academy Awards for Sons and Lovers (1960) and Glory (1989).
