Begin­nings: Peter Cushing’s Purley

It’s fair to say that if Peter Cush­ing was asso­ci­at­ed with a place out­side of the fic­tion­al cas­tles and lab­o­ra­to­ries he inhab­it­ed in his many film roles, the first to come to mind would like­ly be the actor’s final res­i­dence of Whit­stable on the Kent coast.

The con­nec­tion is under­stand­able giv­en the pub­lic bench there named Cushing’s View in his hon­our, as well as the local muse­um hous­ing a per­ma­nent exhib­it about him and even the local branch of Wether­spoons bear­ing his name. Yet Cush­ing was not a Kent man first and fore­most. Instead, his ear­ly life unfold­ed in one of the most south­ern parts of Lon­don, and was arguably piv­otal to the life of this most gen­teel and respect­ed of horror’s lead­ing men.

Cush­ing was born at home on 26 May, 1913 in God­stone Road in Ken­ley, where Lon­don final­ly dips and recedes into the green­ery of Sur­rey. He was the son of George and Nel­lie Cush­ing, the for­mer a suc­cess­ful quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or from a respectable fam­i­ly, the lat­ter from a work­ing-class back­ground of mer­chants. The fam­i­ly moved to Dul­wich Vil­lage for a time, along with Cushing’s old­er broth­er George, as World War One enveloped Europe; Desen­fans Road was a qui­et, leafy street just beyond Dul­wich Park.

The fam­i­ly would soon move south again to Pur­ley. The main house they would even­tu­al­ly live in, how­ev­er, was not a nor­mal build­ing by any means: 32 St James’ Road was a project under­tak­en by George Cush­ing, a build­ing designed in line with the very lat­est Art Deco fash­ions emerg­ing at the time. With its white gleam­ing walls and thin win­dows, the house must have looked like some­thing from the future sur­round­ed by its more typ­i­cal wood-beam neigh­bours. The house was fin­ished in 1926 and Cush­ing spent the remain­der of his child­hood and school years there, though all was not as neat and pre­cise in the life of the actor as his father’s building.

Cush­ing was sent to a respect­ed board­ing school in Shore­ham-by-Sea, but he was irre­deemably home­sick and so returned to Pur­ley after just one term. Through­out his time at Pur­ley Coun­ty Sec­ondary School, where he even­tu­al­ly found him­self, Cush­ing was gen­er­al­ly ambiva­lent about his aca­d­e­m­ic learn­ing, with the excep­tion of the arts which he loved. He even enlist­ed the help of his more aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly inclined broth­er with home­work. Encour­aged by the school’s physics teacher who ran the dra­mat­ic soci­ety and organ­ised the school plays, Cush­ing soon found him­self lead­ing most pro­duc­tions, much to the detri­ment of his wider work. His father was not pleased.

Hop­ing he would work a stead­ier job than act­ing, Cush­ing Sr helped his son attain a job in the sur­vey­ors’ office at Could­son and Pur­ley Urban Dis­trict Coun­cil. He hoped his son’s cre­ative urges could be sati­at­ed by time spent in the draw­ing depart­ment. After all, Cush­ing had often skipped class­es in order to paint and make the sets for the school plays. He spent three years plod­ding along, his lit­tle enthu­si­asm fur­ther con­strained by a con­stant reluc­tance of the depart­ment to engage with any of his, like­ly imprac­ti­cal, ideas for planning.

In the mean­time, in a telling­ly deter­mined move, he con­tin­ued act­ing in the school plays in spite of no longer being a pupil, still at the encour­age­ment of his physics teacher who saw promise in his tal­ents. His life as a drafts­man for the coun­cil was sim­ply not to be and Cush­ing soon ven­tured fur­ther into the act­ing world.

It was not to be an easy ride by any means and would have been under­stand­able if he had giv­en up and con­tin­ued in his father’s line of work. He began apply­ing for audi­tions for plays but was more often than not reject­ed due to a lack of pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence. His first audi­tion for a schol­ar­ship at the Guild­hall School of Music and Dra­ma went bad­ly and it required Cushing’s writ­ing an absurd num­ber of let­ters to the the­atre man­ag­er in order to be recognised.

Even then, the even­tu­al meet­ing that led to him being giv­en his first walk-on part and the schol­ar­ship was ini­tial­ly organ­ised sim­ply to ask him to stop pes­ter­ing them. He soon appeared in rep, tour­ing with the Southamp­ton Reper­to­ry Com­pa­ny before final­ly accept­ing that Hol­ly­wood and films were real­ly his aim. For all of his reser­va­tions and attempts to steer Cush­ing towards work for the coun­cil, his father did even­tu­al­ly pro­vide one par­tic­u­lar­ly vital aid: he paid for his son’s one-way tick­et to Amer­i­ca. Even if his roles were slim and his star would not prop­er­ly align until well into his for­ties when he returned to work­ing in Eng­land, it must have seemed an aston­ish­ing ges­ture at the time.

In spite of the macabre roles, Cush­ing has always seemed child­like in his awe of fan­ta­sy. Liv­ing with his par­ents, I can imag­ine him with an array of toys con­jur­ing up worlds and learn­ing lines in the futur­is­tic house his father built. His first fiancé, the actor and even­tu­al wife of Jack Hawkins, Doreen Lawrence, broke off their engage­ment due to his gen­tle emo­tion­al char­ac­ter and his reg­u­lar inclu­sion of his par­ents on their dates.

Many years after his suc­cess, the child still remained. A won­der­ful Pathé film shot when Cush­ing lived in 9 Hill­sleigh Road, Kens­ing­ton with his wife Helen, looks at the actor’s con­tin­ued war-gam­ing hob­by, the old­er Cush­ing still build­ing worlds in which to explore. His explo­ration of the fan­tas­ti­cal was always car­ried out with child­like enthu­si­asm, whether on a bed­room floor in Pur­ley or – thank­ful­ly for hor­ror and film fans alike – in film stu­dios around the world.