Peter Madden

Peter Madden (9 August 1904 – 24 February 1976) was a British actor who was born in Ipoh in the Federated Malay States (now Malaysia).

The son of Frederick Charles Linnet Butler-Madden and Margaret Teresa (née McCabe), Peter Madden's name at birth was Dudley Frederick Peter Butler-Madden.[citation needed ]

Madden was a character actor who made several appearances in Hammer films and was a familiar face in British film and television during the 1950s and 1960s.

He appeared as the innkeeper Bruno in The Kiss of the Vampire (1963) and as the stern Police Chief in Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). His last Hammer role was brief, as a coach driver in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973).

In the cult television series The Prisoner (1967), Madden, uncredited, plays the sinister undertaker in the opening sequence.

On television he was seen in Danger Man, Z-Cars, The Avengers, The Saint and The Champions, Out of the Unknown, Orson Welles Great Mysteries ("The Ingenious Reporter" episode), and Steptoe and Son ( episode "Live Now P.A.Y.E. Later"). He played Inspector Lestrade opposite Douglas Wilmer’s Sherlock Holmes in the 1965 BBC series.

In 1940, he married actress Mary Jordan (1913–1973). They subsequently divorced. In 1955, he married Marion Snelling, a singer with The Mike Sammes Singers. They had a daughter, Martine (born 1956).[citation needed ]

Madden died from a ruptured aortic aneurysm at his home in Felpham in 1976.[citation needed ]