Walter Gotell

This is to commemorate the 100th anniversary last year of the birth of Walter Gotell. He had 172 screen credits as an actor but for our club was Morzeny in From Russia With Love 1963, then the recurring role of General Gogol in The Spy Who Loved Me 1977, Moonraker 1979, For Your Eyes Only 1981, Octopussy 1983, A View to a Kill 1985 & The Living Daylights 1987, so was opposite three Bond actors and he is one of the few to have portrayed both a Bond ally and villain in the series; he was chosen for Gogol because of his likeness to former head of Russian secret services Beria. Born Walter Jacques Goettel in Bonn, Rhenish Prussia, North Rhine-Westphalia in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region in Germany to Jewish parents, he was raised mainly in Berlin and was a refugee from Nazi Germany with his family emigrating to England in 1938, living in Forres Gardens, Golders Green, Barnet, London NW11 and he was naturalised 1948. He began acting in repertory theatre as a teenager and started on film in 1942, with the advantage of speaking five languages. Memorable films/roles – The Wooden Horse 1950; The African Queen 1951; Above Us the Waves 1955; Ice Cold in Alex 1958; The Third Man 1959; The Guns of Navarone 1961; 55 Days at Peking 1963; Lord Jim 1965; was a regular in Softly Softly; Task Force 1969-75 over 54 episodes; Black Sunday & March or Die 1977; The Stud & The Boys from Brazil 1978; even episodes of Miami Vice in 1986 & Star Trek: The Next Generation 1988 & The X-Files 1995. He used acting funds to finance business interests and was business manager for several engineering companies. He lived on his farm in Gort, County Galway, west of Ireland, but died aged 73 in London of cancer.