Tod Slaughter
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Tod Slaughter (19 March 1885 - 19 February 1956) was an English actor, best known for playing over-the-top maniacs in macabre film adaptations of Victorian melodramas.
Born as Norman Carter Slaughter in Newcastle, the eldest surviving son of twelve children, he made his way onto the stage in 1905 at West Hartlepool. In 1913, he became a lessee of the Hippodrome theatres at Richmond and Croydon. After a brief interruption to serve during the war in the Royal Flying Corps, Slaughter resumed his career and returned to the stage.
During this period, his stage name was Carter Slaughter and he primarily played the conventional leading man or character roles - seldom the villain. After the war, he ran the Theatre Royal, Chatham before taking over the Elephant and Castle theatre in South London for a memorable few years from 1924 onwards that have since passed into British theatrical legend. Tod's company revived Victorian "blood-and-thunder" melodramas such as Maria Marten, Sweeney Todd, Jack Shepherd and the Silver King to enthusiastic audiences - not just locals but also sophisticated theatre-goers from the West End who might have initially come for a cheap laugh but ended up enthralled by the power of the fare on offer. Tod also staged other types of production such as the annual Christmas pantomime where he would cast prominent local personalities in bit-parts for audience recognition. Despite a local protest, the Elephant and Castle theatre was closed down in 1927 and Tod's company vacated it several months before the end. It was in 1925 that he adopted the stage name "Tod Slaughter", but his primary roles were still character and heroic leads - not the evildoers. He played the young hero in "Face at the Window" and the village idiot Tim Winterbottom in "Maria Marten". He also played Sherlock Holmes and D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers. At the start of the 30's, it is said he briefly retired from acting to become a chicken farmer but it proved a short-lived venture and he was soon back managing his company touring the provinces and outlying London theatres with a repertoire of Victorian melodramas.
He finally found his true calling when, in 1931 at the New Theatre, London he played "Long John Silver" in "Treasure Island" during the day and the body snatcher "William Hare" in "The Crimes Of Burke And Hare" at night. Publicised as "Mr Murder", he lapped up his new-found notoriety by boasting he committed 15 murders each day for the duration of the run. Shortly afterwards, he played "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" for the first of 2,000 times on stage. Actor and role had found each other much in the same way as Bela Lugosi and "Dracula" and the seal was set on Slaughter's subsequent career.
In 1934 at age 49, he debuted into motion pictures. Usually cast as a villain, his first film was Maria Marten or Murder in the Red Barn (1935) a Victorian melodrama filmed cheaply with Slaughter as the obvious bad-guy. Slaughter’s next film role was as Sweeney Todd in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936 film) directed and produced by George King, whose partnership with Slaughter was continued in the subsequent shockers: The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936); The Ticket of Leave Man (1938); The Face at the Window (1939) and Crimes at the Dark House (1940).
There were, however, some non-melodramatic roles in his career. He was a supporting player in 1937's The Song of the Road and Darby and Joan. In 1938's Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror he played the head of an international gang of super-villains.
Macabre films were banned from production in Britain during the war - although rumours suggest Tod appeared in a "lost" film entitled "Soldiers Without Uniforms" - perhaps a compendium of stage scenes to entertain the troops? Tod was otherwise busy on the stage performing "Jack the Ripper" "Landru" and "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". There were also one-act sketches such as "The Touch of a Child".
After the war Slaughter resumed melodramatic roles and starred in The Curse of the Wraydons (1946), in which he played the legendary Victorian bogeyman Spring-Heeled Jack, and The Greed of William Hart (1948) based on the murderous career of Burke and Hare. These were produced by Ambassador films at Bushey studios who had made a healthy profit rereleasing Tod's 30's films during the war years. The publics appetite for melodrama seemed to have abated somewhat by the 50's and he went bankrupt in 1953[1] owing to a downturn in his touring income. He continued to act in stage productions however, such as Moliere's "The Gay Invalid" opposite future horror star Peter Cushing, and acting as the Master of Ceremonies at an evening of old-fashioned music hall. His last two films were each three episodes of the television series Inspector Morley cobbled together for theatrical release. A version of "Spring-heeled Jack" starring Tod was one of the first live TV plays mounted by the BBC after the war.
Still performing on the stage almost to the very end, Slaughter died of coronary thrombosis. After his death following a performance of Maria Marten in Derby, his work slipped almost completely into obscurity. He was survived by his actress wife Jenny Lynn.
