- published: 16 Jun 2014
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Tom Oliver (born 12 June 1938) is an English television, film and theatre actor best known today for playing the role of Lou Carpenter in the Australian soap opera Neighbours.
Oliver started in amateur theatricals as an adolescent in England before pursuing a career as a jockey. However, he failed to gain an apprenticeship owing to his size. He joined the Merchant Navy at 16 and travelled the world, eventually settling in Sydney in 1956. In Australia he found work as a stockman, spending three years in this job, working his way around the country. He subsequently returned to England before beginning an overland trek across Asia to return to Australia. However, the journey was halted by illness and he was returned England where Oliver contacted Albert Finney who was then planning to produce the film Ned Kelly in Australia in 1963. Finney gave him a letter of introduction to an agency in Sydney and Oliver emigrated in 1963, later becoming an Australian citizen. Oliver became a busy theatre and television actor in Australia. He had many guest starring roles on Australian drama series, appearing frequently in the top-rated Crawford Productions police dramas Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police, and in Crawford's adventure series Hunter (1967). Oliver was then cast in serial Bellbird, playing the role of Tom Grey from 1969 to 1971. After this he returned to television guest roles for Crawfords, and other companies. He also played two roles in the Gerry Anderson series UFO – A doctor in the episode entitled "Confetti Check A-OK" as well as a SHADO technician in the episode entitled "The Sound of Silence".
Actors: Jack Ogilvie (editor), Tristram Coffin (actor), John Dilson (actor), Frank Faylen (actor), Charlie Hall (actor), I. Stanford Jolley (actor), Paul Maxey (actor), John Maxwell (actor), Frank Melton (actor), George Morrell (actor), Gene O'Donnell (actor), Edward Peil Sr. (actor), Jed Prouty (actor), George Waggner (writer), Jean Yarbrough (director),
Plot: A remake of Monogram's 1934 "City Limits" with practically all of the character role names the same as in the earlier film, and the primary difference here is that the author of the original story, Jack Woodford, receives no mention here. George Waggner (as Joseph West),who adapted the story for the first film, takes an "original screenplay" credit here with no nod in the direction of the man who wrote the story in the first place. A glance at a few Universal B-westerns Waggner "wrote" for Bob Baker will find that the majority of them had also been written before by other writers, mostly in the John Wayne Lone Star westerns. Edmond Kelso's additional dialogue credit must have been for the interplay between Frank Faylen's and Charlie Hall's hobo characters, especially when Faylen starts explaining why the sixty-cent dollar is still worth a dollar in a 40-year precursor to voo-doo economics. Story concerns railroad tycoon J.B. Matthews (Jed Prouty) taking over a rival line, being sent on an R&R; vacation by his doctor, falling off his private train-car and landing in a hobo jungle occupied by Faylen and Hall, and being cured of all his ills, while reporter Jimmy Dugan (Frank Albertson) poses as a doctor in order to get an exclusive story about the railroad takeover.
Keywords: remakeActors: Francis X. Bushman (actor), Francis X. Bushman (actor), Bryant Washburn (actor), Beverly Bayne (actress),
Genres: Romance, Short,