Saturday 10 March 2012

JOHN MORRIS - Dave

John Morris (born 17th February, 1934 in Shepherds Bush, London, England). John will probably be best known as Michael Caine's stunt double and stand in. John first worked with Caine on the Ipcress File (1965), and then went onto work with him on Alfie (1966), Funeral In Berlin (1966), Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Play Dirty (1968), Deadfall (1968), The Magus (1968) and of course The Italian Job (1969) as Dave, then worked on Get Carter (1971) as Stunt Director, Sleuth (1972) and The Wilby Conspiracy (1975), he was uncredited in almost every film.
A quote from the book Raising Caine by William Hall states "Caine's 'own man' had in fact been with Michael since the Ipcress File days, as stand-in, stunt-double, adviser, bodyguard, fixer and general sorter-out of problems. John Morris was tall and good looking, with a ready smile that disguised just how tough he could be when necessary. He was ten months younger than Caine, and stayed with the actor for fourteen years, smoothing his path, and whisking him out of trouble when the going got rough."
Before all this, John had worked on the British Hammer Horror The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), starring Peter Cushing as Baron Victor Frankenstein. John played the uncredited Wood Chopper. He then worked on the British Comedy Classic Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1964) where he met some of the movie legends Terry Thomas, Robert Morley amongst others. Then he doubled The Beatles' John Lennon in
A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965).
He has also stunt doubled for Roger Moore, George Segal and the late Stephen Boyd who appeared in Ben Hur (1959).
Later, he owned a Producing Company for about 12 years, and opened a sports shop with then QPR goalkeeper Phil Parkes.
Today, John is semi-retired and spends time as a member of The Vauderville Golf Society.
My John Morris autograph display.

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