Am I the only one who can see a physical resemblance between the sublime British actor and this wrestler? Doctor Adolf must be smart it’s quite psychological you dislike him before you even see him! Doctor ( probably bogus) Adolf ( reference to Hitler this only a decade after the Second World War) Kaiser ( again another Germanic name from history Kaiser Wilhelm who was a main perpetrator of WW1)When he steps in the ring there is a physical likeness to Leonard Rossiter the narrow face and features the hawk like nose the shifty ( but always intelligent)darting eyes . I smile as soon as I see him. Then his crouched furtive wrestling stance creepy and sly to watch! When under attack by his wrestling opponent who may be reigning down blows on him his expressions are comical both facially and hands raised in supplication Almost begging his opponent to stop.....but as soon as their guard his down he is on attack striking like a cobra going for the jugular. And more often than not I imagine he is successful and wins a lot of his bouts. It is no surprise to me that after his wrestling career finished he became an actor he would have made a terrific Captain Hook. Leonard Rossiter was an outstanding actor who died in his fifties if he had lived to a good age would no doubt have won many awards probably a knighthood. Very adept at comedy he also pulled lots of comedic faces Doctor Adolf would have been proud of. Interestingly he was not first choice for his most famous role of Rigsby in the comedy RISING DAMP. It was first offered to Wilfred Brambell ( Steptoe senior the dirty old man character) And he turned it down because he did not want to play another seedy character. The rest of course is history. Leonard was also brilliant at straight drama and he played to rave reviews a Hitler type character in the Brecht play THE RESITABLE RISE OF ARTURO UI and died on stage playing to packed out audiences in the farce LOOT which was completely sold out for its full run. I see Doctor Kaiser off some wrestling posters did come to the uk did anyone see him live?
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Scary or what? 😁 but a terrific gimmick for a wrestler
Here he is
When I look at Adolf Kaisers physique he looks lean or rather solid muscle there does not appear to be surplus flesh( fat) which you get on some wrestlers of this period and he appears overall to have had an excellent career with lots of victories. Leonard Rossiter was surprising in this respect too! He was physically very fit. Do you know he played SQUASH quite a demanding sport and was beating premier football players like Dennis Tuert of Manchester City this was around the time he was filming RISING DAMPand in his forties the footballers were at least a decade younger you would not think it possible would you?
Adolf Kaiser used this name in France at a time when most of the fans would remember the occupation.Then again there were a large number of collaborator's.
‘Ah Miss Jones, I could have been a contender’, lines from an episode of ‘Damp’ whilst talking about boxing. Poolstead might have stumbled on Leonard ‘moonlighting’!
One of the characters in 'Rising Damp', Spooner, was a wrestler who worked as "The Animal". The actor was Derek Newark.
He only used that name in the UK, as far as I can see, and I never saw him as he was way before my time.
I did see Rising Damp of course, which was the jewel in ITV's comedy crown, at the time, because the vast majority of good comedy shows were on the BBC.
I also remember seeing the Arturo Ui play on ITV, which was about a gangster who looked like Hitler, or something like that.