I keep tripping over silly little details about The Lost Mine, ranging from “oops… didn’t notice” to “OH MY GRACIOUS HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT I’M A TRIPLE IMBECILE!!!”
Take, for example, Mrs. Charles Lester. I will be honest: this performance by Barbara Barnes from The Lost Mine is one of my least favorite in the entire Poirot series. Her voice (sorry) makes me want to rip my hair out. I don’t care for the delivery and don’t find it particularly convincing. So maybe that’s why I was blocking her out and didn’t even recognize, until quite recently, the same actress when she appeared as “Lovely Louise” Leidner in Murder in Mesopotamia (giving, I think, a much better performance).
Generally speaking, I’m not the most astute at recognizing actors from one project to another. When I first watched through the Poirot series, which I did all in one shot, I had been thoroughly convinced that I’d NEVER seen Philip Jackson on screen before. But there was a character in The Lost Mine I knew I’d seen before: Anthony Bate, who played Lord Pearson. I recognized him from another “banker” role he played in the mid-80s in this weird little cult film by Paul McCartney, Give My Regards to Broad Street. And crikey, I SHOULD recognize him, having seen GMRTBS countless times since I was about 16 (though it’s admittedly an awful film in almost every respect, but of interest to big McCartney fans and containing good music). Yay, I’ve recognized someone! Only…
Well, here’s another shot from GMRTBS, with Bate on the right and… this other guy… on the left…
Yeah, this guy…
Yes, that is Philip. Freaking. Jackson. Who was one of the MAIN CHARACTERS in GMRTBS. Which I’ve been watching for half of my life. And who I didn’t recognize once when watching him play a main character throughout the ENTIRE Poirot series, though I recognized a single lesser role played by Anthony Bate from the same film.
“I am an imbecile.”
Speaking of Give My Regards to Broad Street and its Poirot connections, here’s something I did notice. In that film, the infamous Ralph Richardson makes an appearance as a batty pub proprietor who owns a little pet monkey. It was his second-to-last film credit, and the project was released posthumously. His last film, also a posthumous release, was Greystoke, a re-telling of the Tarzan story. Guess who else features in that last film with Richardson… in the role of a seedy inn proprietor… and who has a friend who owns a little pet monkey…
This guy.
And in this scene, Suchet is playing opposite Ian Holm, whose character (Capitaine Phillippe D’Arnot) is a normally dapper little Belgian gent.
Did I mention that Ian Holm has also portrayed Poirot on screen?
Holy crumb. Say it with me, friends…
Seven Storeys High 