Mr Williams & Mr. Lom

A sad day yesterday as the death of two big names from my past were announced to the world….

Andy Williams (born 1927) was the voice of almost all my childhood Christmases. This album was one of the few records that my parents owned when were growing up and my sister and I knew every song word perfect well before we were teenagers…

His deep, soft tones transport me back every time I hear them, and a later CD version of this record is the only Christmas record I have ever bought…

I don’t know much about him as a person, but the obituaries I’ve read over the last couple of days paint a picture of a popular man, who started life in Showbiz very young and was universally held in high regard.

Herbert Lom was born in Prague in 1917 and as he was christened Herbert Karel Angelo Kuchačevič ze Schluderpacheru, it’s maybe no surprise that he chose a more simple surname for his equity card.

Lom was of course most famous for his role as Chief Inspector Dreyfuss in the Pink Panther films, a character who became more and more exaggerated as his relationship with Peter Sellers’s hapless Inspector Clouseau developed over the 7 or 8 films they starred in together.

But it’s his vaguely foreign gangster Louis, in one of my favourite films of all time, The Ladykillers (1955) that will always give me a warm feeling. His first role acting alongside Peter Sellers (here playing a Cockney Spiv) Lom brought a sinister and dark edge to one of the best of the post war Ealing Comedies…