Celebrity Smelly Brother - James Mason

Welcome to 'Celebrity Smelly Brother'.
In 2004 Oasis Fm introduced the concept of Smelly Brother to the world - this time it's the turn of celebrities, can they stand the stench!
The concept is simple....there's 5 celebrities, in one caravan, with one bucket - and the last one out wins....

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Michael Parkinson
Sir David Frost
Marge Simpson
Jonathan Ross

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James Mason
Actor

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Born the son of a wool merchant in Huddersfield , Mason excelled in school and earned a degree in architecture from Cambridge in 1931. Having acted in several school plays, he thought he had a better shot at earning a living as an actor rather than an architect during the Great Depression. Mason won his first professional role in The Rascal and made his debut in London 's West End theater world in 1933 with Gallows Glorious . A year after he joined London 's Old Vic theater, he made his screen debut in Late Extra in 1935.

Mason , who was just under six feet tall, became Britain 's biggest screen star a few years later with his performance as the sadistic title character in the Gainsborough Studios melodrama The Man in Grey (1943). He cemented his fame as the cruel romantic leads women loved in the critically weak, but highly popular, Gainsborough costume dramas Fanny by Gaslight (1944) and The Wicked Lady (1945), finally achieving international stardom for his charismatic performance as Ann Todd 's cane-wielding mentor in the well-received The Seventh Veil (1946).

Rather than immediately going to Hollywood , Mason remained in England . Revealing that he could be more than just brutal leading men in weepy potboilers, he added an artistic as well as popular triumph to his credits with Carol Reed 's Odd Man Out (1947). Starring Mason as a doomed IRA leader hunted by the police, Odd Man Out garnered international raves, and he often cited it as his favorite among his many films.

After co-starring in the British drama The Upturned Glass (1947), the Masons and their 12 cats finally headed to Hollywood (via a stint on Broadway in Bathsheba ) in 1947. Spurning a long-term studio contract, Mason became one of Hollywood 's busiest free agents. Mason 's American career was firmly established by his late-'40s successes, and his elegant range helped him remain a Hollywood fixture throughout the '50s. Along with two superb turns as wily, disillusioned German Field Marshal Rommel in The Desert Fox (1951) and The Desert Rats (1953), Mason also engaged in a glorious Technicolor romance with Ava Gardner in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and played the villain in the swashbuckler The Prisoner of Zenda (1952). Calling on his suave intelligence, Mason starred as cool butler-turned-spy Cicero in what he considered his best Hollywood film, Joseph L. Mankiewicz 's smart espionage thriller 5 Fingers (1952). The actor quickly reunited with Mankiewicz to play the treasonous Brutus in the director's excellent Shakespeare -adaptation Julius Caesar in 1953.

Taking a brief break from Hollywood, Mason returned to Europe to write and produce the British drama The Lady Possessed (1952), co-starring his wife, and star as a Harry Lime-esque black marketer in Carol Reed 's The Man Between (1953). Mason stepped behind the camera as director for the first and only time with the subsequent short film The Child (1954), featuring his wife and daughter Portland Mason .

Returning to Hollywood acting, Mason garnered numerous accolades for George Cukor 's lavish 1954 remake of A Star Is Born . Though the drama of his co-star Judy Garland 's "comeback" and the studio's decision to re-cut the film after its debut threatened to overshadow its content, Mason 's sublimely controlled fury and anguish as doomed falling star Norman Maine still brought him high praise and earned him his only Best Actor Academy Award nomination. Whether because he never particularly liked the film or because he wasn't a great fan of the Hollywood system, Mason dismissed the Oscar hoopla, noting:

"They don't mean anything unless you win one; then your salary goes up."

Following an acrimonious divorce from Pamela and an expensive settlement in 1964, Mason started working non-stop, segueing into mostly supporting roles in British, American, and European productions. Despite appearing in such dubious fare as Genghis Khan (1965) and The Yin and Yang of Dr. Go (1971), Mason continued to resist typecasting with his strong turn as a lecherous friend in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), and distinguished himself in such films as Anthony Mann 's sword-and-sandal epic The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and the adaptation of Lord Jim in 1965.

Rarely turning down jobs even as he approached age 70, Mason joined fellow éminence grises Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck in the Nazi cloning thriller The Boys From Brazil (1978), was Dr. Watson to Christopher Plummer 's Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), and played a sinister antiquarian in the TV vampire yarn Salem's Lot the same year.

Mason managed to find the time to write and publish his autobiography Before I Forget in 1981. The following year, he earned some of the best reviews of his career -- and his final Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor -- for his subtle, nuanced performance as Paul Newman 's harsh courtroom adversary in Lumet 's sterling legal drama The Verdict . His attitude toward the Academy mellowed with age, and Mason attended the Oscar ceremony for the first time. He did not, however, live to witness the praise for what turned out to be his final major feature role, the appropriately dignified host of The Shooting Party (1984). Mason suffered a fatal heart attack at his Swiss home in July 1984 at the age of 75. He was survived by his wife and two children from his first marriage.

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