The QUATERMASS scriptbooks are notable for Kneale’s forewords, in which he does a little score-settling, particularly over the film adaptations of EXPERIMENT and II. There were two issues. Firstly, Hammer Films, who made them, cast the American actor Brian Donlevy as Professor Bernard Quatermass. Kneale’s troubled, emotional English scientist became a squat, high-volume bawling New Yorker.
I don’t have the book immediately to hand, but I recall the kindest thing Kneale said about Donlevy was that he was “once an excellent comic heavy, now quite gone to pieces.” He fingered Donlevy (real first name Waldo) as a drunk who has no idea what he was doing.
Brian Donlevy was an Oscar-nominated actor who did a lot of films noir, a lot of radio and early television, and was the lead in the Fritz Lang film HANGMEN ALSO DIE! that was co-written by Bertolt Brecht. After the first two QUATERMASS films, Donlevy went back to the States, did the American localisation shoots for GAMERA THE INVINCIBLE, and married Bela Lugosi’s fourth wife, Lillian. He died in 1972 at the age of 71.