Marne Maitland

Maitland was born in Calcutta, to Anglo-Indian parents. He was educated at Bedales School in Hampshire before going up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he took a BA in 1936. He acted in repertory companies before the outbreak of the Second World War led him to enlist in the British Army. He served in the Royal Artillery, commissioned as a second lieutenant on 20 November 1941.

After his military discharge, Maitland joined the Old Vic Company. He made his film debut in Cairo Road (1950). His sharp, dark features and small stature saw him typecast as villains from the Middle and Far East, particularly for Hammer Film Productions. These include The Camp on Blood Island (1958), The Stranglers of Bombay (1960), The Terror of the Tongs (1961), and The Reptile (1966). For a time, he was one of the more prolific Asian actors in the British film industry.

His other film roles include Father Brown (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959), I'm All Right Jack (1959), Cleopatra (1963), Lord Jim (1965), Khartoum (1966), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), and Man of La Mancha (1972). He played the shady gunsmith Lazar in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun.

He made numerous television appearances in programmes such as The Buccaneers, Danger Man, The Avengers (as a sinister Eastern delegate in the 1967 episode "Death's Door"), The Saint, The Champions, Department S, and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), and the Granada series The Jewel in the Crown (1984, as Pandit Baba, a scholar agitating for an end to British rule in India).

In the early 1970s, Maitland moved to Italy and established residence in Rome, whereupon he appeared in many Italian productions, including in Federico Fellini's Roma and Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect. Like several of his fellow UK actors relocated to Italy, like Cyril Cusack and Edmund Purdom, Maitland moonlighted as an English-language dubber. He was the English dubbing voice of Piero Lulli, Claudio Gora, Luis Dávila, George Rigaud and Venantino Venantini; among others.

Maitland was married to actress Bettine Milne, whom he met working at the Bristol Old Vic. The two often worked alongside each other as dubbers.

Death:

Maitland died on 24 August 1991 in Terracina, Lazio, at the age of 76.