Colin Tapley - Post World War II Film Career

Post World War II Film Career

After demobilisation in 1945 Colin married, Patricia Hambro Lyon, whom he had met during the war, and returned to his native New Zealand for the first time since 1933. He soon tired of life in New Zealand and returned to Hollywood to re-establish his film career. Legendary American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer Cecil B. DeMille personally gave him a role in his new film, Samson and Delilah, which Colin accepted, playing the part of a prince. Shortly after finishing Samson and Delilah Colin and Patsy, finding that Hollywood had changed for the worse, returned to England. Due to Colin's upper class accent he found no trouble finding work in the film industry; it was also the boom period of British war films in the '50s and '60s and he landed the role of a lifetime, the revered war epic The Dam Busters film of 1955 where along side Michael Redgrave he played William Glanville who helped to develop the famous bouncing bomb. From 1954 to 1958, he appeared as a police inspector named Parker, working with his good friend Donald Gray, in the detective television series The Vise (later known as Saber of London). He was subsequently typecast and would play a police officer in many of his later films. His acting career ended in 1983, at the age of 74, and he retired to Coates, Gloucestershire with his wife Patsie.