Clifford Evans

Clifford George Evans (17 February 1912 – 9 June 1985) was a Welsh actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television across five decades. Born in 1912, Evans established himself as a working performer on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1930s, appearing on Broadway between 1934 and 1936 in productions of Hamlet and The Distaff Side. During the summer of 1934 he also took the stage in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Open Air Theatre in London.

Evans accumulated numerous film credits in Britain throughout the 1930s. When the Second World War began, he registered as a conscientious objector and served in the Non-Combatant Corps, though he continued acting during this period. His wartime film work included The Foreman Went to France in 1942 and The Flemish Farm in 1943.

In the postwar decades, Evans became particularly associated with Hammer Studios, where he took on two notable genre roles. In The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) he portrayed Don Alfredo Carledo, and two years later he played Professor Zimmer, a frequently inebriated vampire hunter, in Kiss of the Vampire (1963).

Television occupied much of Evans's later career. He appeared in the 15-episode series Stryker of the Yard (1957) alongside George Woodbridge and Tim Turner, and from 1965 to 1969 played building tycoon Caswell Bligh in the boardroom drama The Power Game. He portrayed Number Two in the 1967 episode of The Prisoner titled "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling," and made appearances in The Avengers, The Champions, The Saint, and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). In 1970 he played Sir Iain Dalzell in the BBC series Codename. His final screen appearance came in Granada Television's A Land of Ice Cream in 1985, the year of his death.

In 1943 Evans married actress and wartime radio announcer Hermione Hannen, who died in 1983, two years before Evans himself passed away on 9 June 1985.