Rampton Caine: 1933-2009
Rampton Caine (1933-2009)
Legend of stage and screen Rampton Caine quietly passed away in a Sierra Leone field hospital this morning. Adam Lee Davies looks back over his turbulent life and extraordinary career.
To sum up the life of any man is no simple thing, but when it comes to a man as complex and private as actor Rampton Caine then the threads of truth, legend and vicious innuendo become harder to disentangle than a blind fisherman’s tackle-box. Often described as a self-hating racist, devious and manipulative, a liar, braggart and – according to director and friend Roger Ipswich – ‘the sort of man who would call out his own name during sex’, Caine has always remained an enigma, the key to whom his many biographies have consistently failed to conjour.
Born the son of a Bolshevik soux-chef in 1933, Caine’s early life was spent in almost comical poverty above a fishmonger’s on the Goldhawk Road in West London. His only escape from a homelife of tedious left-wing rhetoric and fishy updraft was visiting his uncle Barty who worked as a clapper loader at nearby Ealing Studios. It was here that he took his first steps toward acting, pestering producers into indulging him with parts in such post-war boosters as ‘The Wooden Walls of England’ (’47) and the incomparably mawkish East End wrestling fable ‘The Kid Who Couldn’t’ (’48), helmed by future business partner Grafton Wilde.
By 1950 he was beating out other fresh-faced hopefuls Dirk Parsons and Nicholas Bogard for junior romantic leads in such winsome comedies as ‘Saints Preserve Us!’ (’50) and ‘Pardon My Parson’ (’52). But it was the one-two of doomed bomber-pilot ‘Wonky’ Wilkins in lavish WWII folly ‘Operation: Cummerbund’ (’56) and the lead in pointlessly grim kitchen-sink drama ‘The Lonesome Ballad of Newton Heath’ (’57) which brought him back to the attentions of Grafton Wilde, then prepping his seminal Canadian Western ‘Guns By Suppertime’ (’58).
Caine’s Atlantic crossing began a love affair with Canada, a place to which he would frequently return – often of his own volition – and somewhere he credited with gifting him ‘a renewed sense of wonder, many lifelong friends and a much needed dual passport’. Ironically, the role of grizzled trapper Chip Manners had originally been offered to old rival Dirk Parsons, but after he was killed in a brutal, and apparently motiveless, street attack the part came to Caine. It was an opportunity he took with both hands, pricking the ears of Hollywood and ultimately marrying co-star Verna Palermo.
The relationship would not last. Her fiery temperament and many infidelities dismayed Caine less than ‘her bloody cooking’ and they were divorced months later. By this time he was in Hollywood starring in TV series ‘The Magpie’. As suave English sleuth Simon Magwitch, whose catchphrase ‘I’ve got the negatives!’ would soon enter the national lexicon, Caine’s mediocre thespian chops were abetted by a series of co-stars ranging from old pros like Bettina Kermode to such rising talent as Hunter Boyd. These were the salad days, with Caine slipping in the co-financed spy-caper hit ‘Twelve Minutes to Zurich’ (’61) and ensemble disaster behemoth ‘Timeclock’ (’63) between palling it up with the Rat Pack and campaigning for presidential hopeful Richard Nixon. It was also around this time that he began his own long, bitter and wholly unsuccessful lobbying for the role of James Bond. It would later become an obsession.
The remainder of the Sixties saw him split between the UK and US for a variety of TV shows, films and hotly disputed tax-related issues. Few will now recall the nasty period colonial carry-on of ‘A Town Called Hitler’ (’68) or swinging zombie flick ‘Chelsea Babylon’ (’66), but his fondly remembered ATV series ‘Mine’s a Large One!’ and sweaty, vaguely existential Tex-Mex double-crosser ‘The Eye of the Duck’– which grazed the top ten earners of 1969 – kept him near, if not at, the top.
However, some injudicious remarks about Sean Connery, an open letter to the Washington Post claiming the moon landings were filmed in a seed barn in Vancouver and divorce from his second wife – Peruvian art dealer Llama Paz – meant that the close of the decade couldn’t come quickly enough. Although he had scored a few notable hits, he spoke in his frankly unpublishable diaries of being ‘consumed by doubt and riddled with syphilis. What now for Rampers..?
The answer was to come from the most unexpected source. While Caine was paying the bills with fluff like ‘The Styrofoam Incident’ (’70) and Sino-Italian costume picture ‘The Contessa and the Cobbler’ (’73) a young Californian filmmaker was casting his merchandise-friendly sci-fi saga ‘Battle Beyond Space’ (’76). Its massive success would introduce Caine to a whole new audience and open many doors. Unfortunately, just as he was enjoying this new-found position, his friend – and co-director in their Ginger Palomino production company – Grafton Wilde was killed when a the brake cables of his vintage glider failed. A stoic Caine, who learnt the news on the first day of filming on Euro car chase picture ‘TR-7: The Movie’ (’79), said that he was ‘stirred and confused’ by the tragic accident. By day’s end he had sold the company to Thorn-EMI for a sum infamously reported by the Financial Times to have been ‘well naughty’.
Security, however, brought its own problems. Wilde had always advised his partner on career choices, but without his guidance Caine embarked on bizarre series of projects. With the distasteful mercenary romp ‘The Carrion Crows’ (’80) already in the can, he made sleazy drug-peddling thriller ‘The Union Square Shuffle’ (’81), bawdy modern-day pirate guff ‘The Treasure Chest’ (’83) and an ongoing series of threatening phonecalls to Roger Moore before withdrawing from the limelight.
It was around this time that myths started to circulate pertaining to both Caine’s state of mind and whereabouts… Had he holed up in a dojo in the foothills of Mount Fuji, or become a mountain man in the wilds of his beloved Canada? Had he undergone experimental reconstructive surgery in Panama or lost his mind on bad acid in a teepee in Wiltshire? Rumours also abounded that he had in fact appeared under numerous guises and aliases in art-house navel gazer ‘The Oceanographer’s Niece’ (‘86), DTV schlocker ‘Deathbarge’ (’87) and as the masked killer in ‘Something About the Way You… Die!’ (’88). Upon his shock return to the public eye in 1990 he refused to confirm or deny any of these stories, but looked every inch the elder statesman in an eye-catching cameo role as a retired astronaut in Brandon A. Spelling’s Oscar-baiting autumnal romance ‘The Ineffable Wind’ (’92).
A return to TV in primetime PI applesauce ‘The Sayonara Boys’ opposite old mate Nicholas Bogard kept him busy through much of the Nineties, though he did find time to camp it up in student comedy ‘Bakersfield Rocks!’ (‘96) and serial killer hokum ‘Johnny Serious’ (‘99). But a mixture of what, in an interview with Time Out in 2001, he called ‘swathes of Shakespearean guilt and debilitating jealousy’ caused him to turn his back on the film world and retreat to his first love of crossbreeding waterfowl on his tumbledown Norfolk estate.
He surfaced now and again in the odd BBC adaptation – most memorably as the Duke of Croydon in 2005’s ‘A Catered Affair’ – and in dictionary corner on Channel Four’s teatime workhorse ‘Countdown’, but his most well-known and lucrative appearance was as the Green Arrow’s sagacious valet in Colin Sawyer’s comic book adaptation ‘Arrow Arrow’ (’07). He took the role, he said, mainly to please his grandchildren, to whom, at the time, he owed a great deal of money, but it also served to remind millions of cinemagoers of his precise comic timing, considerable physical presence and freakishly high-pitched voice.
In an untransmitted television interview with Tony Milton in 1974, Caine was asked how he would describe himself, ‘Oh, balls to all that! I’ll leave it to the obituary writers ifI may, old stick.’ It is the reply of a man who never looked back, who esteemed 
his brittle muse above all else and who point-blank refused to answer a simple bloody question. So, with your permission, Mr Caine, might we say that there’s a new star in celluloid heaven tonight, and everything it touches… is its kingdom.
Rampton Caine, 1933-2009
By Adam Lee Davies
Please feel free to leave your memories of Rampton Caine below…
What's on your mind?
-
March 31st 2009 | 1
the reconnoiter says:
First jade now rampton, sad days indeed
-
Paul Pensom says:
I remember him well. How could you fail to mention Bodkin Argent? The children’s series which ran for two series on ATV in 1967 is a treasured memory in this household. Rampton’s unearthly leer made a lasting impression on me, and I viewed most episodes of BA from behind the sofa. To this day, if I close my eyes I can see that bedraggled, Mephistophelian figure, chuckling to himself as once again, he gets the better of the Childwites. Thank you Rampton!
-
Heston Sawyer says:
Little known fact ‘TR7:The Movie’ was named ‘Sports Car Europe’ for the American market after early showings had audiences demanding TR1 to 6, those crazy Yanks!
And rumour has it the urine in a bottle scene was one take and Rampton wasn’t faking it.
What sad news. -
Portly MacFarlane says:
Sad news, my friends, sad news indeed. Rampton, wrathful old bucket that he was, could teach today’s sadfaced turks a thing or two about raising cain, hell, the titanic, whatever.
Perhaps my favourite recollection of the devious old scrote was when we were out shopping for brothel creepers on the King’s Road, sometime after that whole Suez business. Ramps had a show that evening, and I suppose I must have done as well, which didn’t stop us rattling into the Lord Kitchener for a bucket of slop, a few flagons of Best and one of Rampton’s hoary rants on God, girls, and of course ‘the craft’. But come curtain call he was right where he was supposed to be, bellowing the eternal sadistic poetry of theatrical romance at another crowd of enthralled, spit-flecked punters. A friend, a radical, a godless bastard and a genuine goddamn professional, he will be missed.
-
The Hussy says:
so rampton died of the rare karma-induced bullying/racism cancer?
-
Lesley, milkman says:
Not a bean in twenty five years. Gentleman.
-
ballroom dancing instructional dvd says:
Thanks for publishing regarding this. There’s a size associated with strong tech information on the actual internet. You associated with that info right on your own internet site. I’m impressed – We try to maintain a couple blogs pretty up-to-date, but it’s a struggle occasionally. You’ve done the strong job with this one. How do you this?
-
Black African American Movies says:
Good weblog, just looking around some blogs, seems a pretty nice platform you’re using. I’m presently using Wordpress for a few of my sites but looking to alter one of them over to a platform similar to yours as a trial operate. Anything in specific you’d recommend about it?
