Alan Cassell

Alan Louis Cassell (16 February 1932 – 30 August 2017) was an English Australian actor, on stage, film and television.^[1]

Alan Cassell was born in Manchester, England but grew up in Birmingham.^[2] Cassell was of a young age when his mother was admitted to the Rubery Lunatic Asylum after she suffered brain damage following a visit to a dentist.^[2] It is believed the dentist had left the gas on for too long which caused the brain damage.^[2]

Cassell worked as a motor trimmer in an Austin Motor Company car factory in Birmingham during the 1950s. He also performed national service, although a senior officer convinced him not to volunteer for service in the Korean War.^[2] After meeting a woman called Rosina, they married and in 1957 emigrated to Perth in Western Australia as 'Ten Pound Poms', where he continued his work as a motor trimmer before moving to the sales department.^[2]

Cassell began working as an actor, when he and his friend signed up for acting classes hosted by the Patch Theatre Company in Western Australia, effectively kicking off his stage career.^[2] His first role was a doctor with a two-word speaking part, but he was soon playing the lead in subsequent productions.^[2] Cassell became heavily involved with promoting theatre in Perth and helped establish a theatre called The Hole in the Wall.^[2] When Edgar Metcalfe was brought out to Australia to run The Playhouse Theatre, he began casting Cassell and the two became good friends.^[2]

He won a Best Actor of the Year award for his role in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. He later worked for the Sydney Theatre Company and the Melbourne Theatre Company. Cassell also played Boss Finlay in a 1986 production of Sweet Bird of Youth alongside Lauren Bacall,^[3] accepting the role after the actor originally cast in it, Frank Wilson, suffered a heart attack.^[1] He was in the original cast of Away, which toured to New York in 1988, together with a production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.^[4]

Cassell was one of the actors who worked in Bruce Beresford’s early Australian films after moving to the eastern states to audition for Beresford and Hector Crawford.^[2] His film credits included Money Movers,^[5] Cathy's Child, Squizzy Taylor, Breaker Morant, Puberty Blues, The Club, The Honourable Wally Norman and Strange Bedfellows.^[1][6]

After appearing in the short-lived soap opera Taurus Rising as Ben Drysdale and Network Ten's crime drama Special Squad in 1984, Cassell swore off joining any further long-running series following a run of bad luck with several projects.^[7] However, he signed up to play the recurring role of George Young in Neighbours, shortly before learning it too had been cancelled,^[7] albeit temporarily. Cassell believed he would have joined the show anyway, as the character was unlike any he had portrayed before.^[7] He had become known for his 'tough guy' image from working on Beresford's films, and he hoped the Neighbours role would show producers a different side to him.^[7]

Other television roles included The Drifter, Falcon Island, The Flying Doctors, The Power, The Passion, Blue Heelers, SeaChange, Stingers and MDA.^[1]

Cassell was recognised with a win at the 1979 Sammy Awards for his role in the film Cathy's Child.^[8] He was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role at the 1979 Australian Film Institute Awards.^[9]

Cassell was married to wife Rosina and together they emigrated to Perth, Western Australia in 1957^[2] and had two sons.^[6]

From 1983, Cassell lived in Victoria.^[2] He was a prominent member of the Save Albert Park movement, after it was first proposed the Australian Grand Prix would relocate to the area where Cassell would walk his dogs.^[2]

In his later years, Cassell was diagnosed with dementia and lived in an aged care facility at Kyneton where he died on 30 August 2017 at the age of 85.^[1][10] After Cassell's death, Australian film director Bruce Beresford placed an obituary in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in which he described Cassell as "one of the most gifted actors I have had the privilege to work with – and one of the most charming."^[2]

Source:^[11]

• Alan Cassell at IMDb