BILL DYCKES: ERSTWHILE ACTOR

AS AN ACTOR

As I wandered through Europe in the sixties, several film opportunities came my way. All were underpaid, even for an actor of my talents.

1962 The Great Escape Stand-in and extra (Canadian prisoner of war). Look for the tall guy behind the other guy way at the back (in half a dozen scenes). My roommate got to stand-in and double for Richard Attenborough. I stood-in for an unknown German, the only other really tall, skinny guy in the film. Shot in Munich.

Bill sitting in a chair, Gonzalo behind him.

1965 Doctor Zhivago Extra in the café scene. (I was the guy in the rumpled uniform with his back to the camera.) My walk-on with Christie and Steiger was cut, probably because of my unmilitary posture. Shot in Madrid.

1965 Two lines as a German tank commander in Battle of the Bulge, lost on the cutting-room floor. Shot in Madrid.

1966 Ditirambo vela por nosotros (Ditirambo Watches Out for Us), Gonzalo Suarez’s first short film. I played a man who kept his dead wife’s spirit trapped in an apartment. That’s Gonzalo (Ditirambo) watching.

1967 Ditirambo
Gonzalo Suarez’s first feature film took the character of Ditirambo out into the world. This time I got to play a hired killer. I also got to die. It was a life-altering experience (the making of the film, not the dying). Shot in Barcelona.

Bill Dyckes photo in Nuestro Cine magazine.

1968 Bit part as a tour guide in Miguel Picazo’s Oscuros sueños de agosto (Dark Dreams of August), which starred Viveca Lindfors.

Sometime in the late sixties, Conchita Montes asked me to play a German exchange student on a TV series she was doing. I had no lines and was listed (to avoid union problems) as a special effect. Later, she asked me to take the role of a Dutch dentist in Graham Greene's play The Complaisant Lover. It was a speaking role—but entirely in Dutch. At that time, Spanish theater companies performed two shows, seven nights a week (except Monday, when there was only one show). Unfortunately, it conflicted with my schedule, which at that time involved editing three magazines, eating, and sleeping.

1969 Aoom Gonzalo Suarez’s third feature. I played an incompetent detective. The comedy was originally going to be shot in France with French actors. When that fell through, he decided to shoot an experimental version in Spain (that is, he did not show us the script). In this particular scene, I am sinking in quicksand.
Parts of this film were repurposed in a film called El Genio Tranquilo in 2005.

(According to the Database, I played myself in an Australian film, although I don't recall going there. Probably another example of my lousy memory.)