LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Oliver Reed: Mark Lester
built 657 days ago
Reed played the title role in the 1969 Michael Winner comedy Hannibal Brooks, alongside an elephant named Lucy. Reed starred as Athos the musketeer in three films based on Alexandre Dumas's novels. First in 1973's The Three Musketeers, followed by The Four Musketeers in 1974, and fifteen years later with The Return of the Musketeers. He starred in a similarly historical themed film, The Prince And The Pauper aka Crossed Swords 1978, as Miles Hendon alongside Raquel Welch and a grown up Mark Lester who had worked with Reed in Oliver!, 1968, in the title role of the young Victorian orphan boy. In the Hollywood version of the same story Errol Flynn ... played Miles Hendon in "The Prince and The Pauper" 1937. Reed returned to horror as Dr. Hal Raglan in David Cronenberg's 1979 film The Brood.
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As the eponymous Oliver, Mark Lester sings with an androgynous alto and proves to be the original gilded child in a decidedly vicious age. His blonde hair, unselfconscious smile and game attitude make him the story's point and its moral center. Somehow, though, he operates as a cipher for the adult supports, Moody's Fagin especially, and is ... not entirely up to the task of carrying the film on his narrow shoulders.
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The film used a mixture of young unknowns and 'big names': Ron Moody (Fagin), Oliver Reed (Bill Sikes), Harry Secombe (Mr Bumble), Mark Lester (Oliver), Jack Wild (Dodger), Shani Wallis (Nancy) and Joseph O'Conor as Mr. Brownlow. Ron Moody was able to recreate his stage performance, beating out Peter Sellers and Peter O'Toole for the role. However, there was a minor outcry when Shani Wallis was given the role of Nancy in preference to Georgia Brown.
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Mr. Reed is survived by his wife, Josephine, a daughter, Sarah, and a son, Mark. © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Assuming a monochromatic visual design as opposed to the usual Technicolor extravagance, Reed's film is workmanlike and austere. Opening inside an English boy's home for orphans with the first production number, "Food", this austerity is thematically resonant with childhood incarceration but the mood fails to subsequently lift after introducing young Oliver Twist (Mark Lester) and his overlord, the cruel-hearted Mr. Bumble (Harry Secombe).
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Mark Lester