Stars & Players · Biography
Denis Shaw
1921–1971 · Actor
Biography
Douglas "Denis" Findlay Shaw (7 February 1921 – 28 February 1971) was a British character actor who specialized in portraying villains.
Shaw was born in Dulwich on 7 February 1921. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was frequently cast as villains in films and television shows, most notably as the German guard Priem in The Colditz Story (1955), as well as a number of British horror films including Jack the Ripper (1959), The Mummy (1959) and The Curse of the Werewolf (1961). He was cast in the leading role of The Great Van Robbery (1959) as the judo-throwing Interpol detective Caesar Smith.
Shaw's television credits include The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Avengers, Danger Man, Dixon of Dock Green, The Prisoner, Sherlock Holmes and Z-Cars.
Shaw died from a heart attack in London on 28 February 1971, at the age of 50. A familiar face around the bars of Soho in London, he is mentioned in Keith Waterhouse's play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell.
Notable Noir Roles
A boy accidentally shoots a friend with a gun he found in the rubble of a destroyed building. The gun turns out to be a clue in a ten-year-old murder case.
Fed up with her wealthy but abusive husband, Tom (Basil Dignam), young English homemaker Laura Wilton (Anne Heywood) conspires with her lover, American Army captain Dave Dillon (Robert Arden), to have…
A serial killer is murdering women in the Whitechapel district of London. An American policeman is brought in to help Scotland Yard solve the case.
