The Black Country Dying Museum

One of my favourite films when growing up was Jason and the Argonauts – I’m sure you can all remember the wonderful battle between Jason, two of his crew and the skeletons that made up the climax to the movie. But did you know that one of Jason’s crew members later became MP for Smethwick?

Death of Phalerus, from the 1963 movie ‘Jason and the Argonauts’, released  by Columbia Pictures in 1963.

Andrew Faulds was born in Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania) in 1923. His parents were both Scottish missionaries, and he always regarded himself as Scottish. After service in the RAF and Fleet Air Arm in World War 2, he embarked on an acting career, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford Upon Avon in 1949. During the 1950s he became famous in the UK as Jet Morgan, leading character in the long running BBC radio series ‘Journey into Space’, in the process becoming the first Scotsman on the moon!

He showed little interest in politics in his early years, but after he and his wife hosted the American actor, singer and political activist Paul Robeson in their home in Stratford during 1959, while he was performing as Othello for the RSC. Mr Faulds often claimed that it was his conversations with Paul Robeson that prompted him to seek a parliamentary career. He first stood (unsuccessfully) for Stratford Upon Avon in 1963, in a by-election most notable as the first occasion that Screaming Lord Sutch sought election as a member of the Monster Raving Looney Party. In 1966 he was selected as the labour candidate for Smethwick in that year’s general election, and won.

He didn’t give up acting though, continuing to appear in major movies, most notably as a frequent performer for film maker Ken Russell, starring opposite Glenda Jackson in Russell’s biography of Russian composer Tchaikovsky. Glenda Jackson, who went on to serve as a Labour MP from 1992 to 2015. Unlike Andrew Faulds she gave up her acting career to concentrate on her responsibilities as an MP.

Andrew Faulds MP, photographed by Godfrey Argent in 1970.  From the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

Andrew Faulds’ most iconic role was as Phalerus in the 1963 release Jason and the Argonauts. He features alongside star Todd Armstrong and Ferdinando Poggi (who played Castor) in the battle between them and the seven skeletons, animated by Ray Harryhausen using his ‘stop-motion’ technique. Both Castor and Phalerus are killed during the battle, whilst Jason escapes by jumping off a cliff.

Andrew Faulds had a less than perfect attendance record as an MP – his acting commitments often taking him away, but he retained a high profile in no small part as a consequence of his booming voice (the Brian Blessed of his day perhaps) describing Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech as ‘unprincipled, unchristian, undemocratic and racialist’. But it is probably for his rather intemperate language, which saw him banned from the house by the speaker on more than one occasion, that he will be remembered as an MP, describing one Tory as a ‘fat arsed twit’, and another as ‘an honourable s**t’.

Andrew Faulds died in 2000 in a Stratford Upon Avon nursing home, three years after resigning from parliament. He died peacefully, and not how he still remains in our memory, clutching his stomach in agony after being stabbed through the guts by a skeleton warrior!