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Yes, Don - Tod played Scrooge at least once, on BBC-Radio National Programme Friday December 27, 1935.
The 75mns radio play was announced as starring Robert Loraine as Scrooge in A CHRISTMAS CAROL, adapted by Max Kester from Dickens, but Loraine died suddenly and Slaughter replaced him at the last minute...
As for so many TV or radio programmes of the period, it must be lost forever now but I found the informations in BBC files years ago.
I'm not sure if Tod played the character on the stage, however. I'll look in my files this evening.

The illustrations below have a link with the Sweeney Todd legend. More on them later - I must leave now !

The two illustrations in the previous post are taken from a book published in France in the late 1890s, written by Jules Beaujoint.
It's in fact a series of several novels by the same author under the generic title "Les auberges sanglantes" (lit: "The Bloody Inns"). It was sold originally in fascicules every week, then it was possible, when the series were complete, to regroup these fascicules under a binding, in one or several volumes. My own copy has three volumes and a total of 3756 pages (!). Every 8 pages you have a full-page illustration like the ones above.

The first story narrated by Beaujoint is the (authentic, but more or less "romanced") famous case of the Peyrebeilhe Inn. In the early 1810, Martin and his wife, aubergists in an isolated area in Ardèche, killed wealthy travellers for their money. With their servant, they were finally arrested and guillotined in front of their inn. This one still exists and can be visited. The story was the basis for Claude Autant-Lara's L'AUBERGE ROUGE, starring Fernandel, Françoise Rosay and Julien Carette.

When I first heard of the Sweeney Todd story - or legend - in the late Sixties, it made a "tilt" in my memory as I was certain to have heard a similar story many years ago, but I couldn't remember where.

But about the Peyrebeilhe story, I remembered very well this part of the Jules Beaujoint book as a neighbor owned it when I was 14 or 15, and I was able to read the tragic story. After that, for years I tried to find this book - and only found it four years ago. And I was thrilled to find that the second novel in "Les auberges sanglantes", called "L'auberge des Trois Rois" (lit: The Inn of the Three Kings) was simply a variant of the Sweeney Todd tale.

In this version, the barber is named Barnabé Cabard. He kills some of his wealthy clients for their money, and the corpses are used by his neighbor, the aubergist of "Les Trois Rois", for his recipes... This time, Barnabé's accomplice is a man, but they are also helped by a sordid old woman, so in a way the character of Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd" is a mixing of the aubergist and the old woman.

Of course, "Sweeney Todd" or more exactly "A String of Pearls" was published in 1846 and the Jules Beaujoint version many years later in the 1890s... But remember, "Sweeney Todd", according to some sources, was inspired by a much older French story / legend. So, the problem is as follows - where Jules Beaujoint found the elements for his own version. From "Sweeney Todd" - or from a much older French source ??? in the older French sources Sweeney Todd's shop is located rue des Marmousets in the Gobelins quarter in Paris - and it's the same location in the Beaujoint adaptation...
Another mystery... even if not directly related to good old Tod Slaughter...

In the recent release (by Odeon, in UK) of "The Face at the Window", "The Crimes of Stephen Hawke" and "It's Never Too Late to Mend", there is a booklet, whose the author writes that some of Slaughter's other movies are unavailable. This is true of course (see this thread), the problem being that ALL the titles mentioned in the booklet ARE available from different companies in UK - except one which was never made ("The Vengeance of Magnus Vann") ... I wrote to Odeon to give them the sources for these movies, in 35mm prints.
The negative comments about the previous releases by Odeon was perhaps due to the fact that their DVD of "Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn" had a defect near the end. Happily enough, they made a new edition of this movie, with a slightly different box, but it's a single edition, not in a box ot three films. However, as each one (the two others being "Sweeney Todd" and "Crimes at the Dark House") was also made available separately by the same company, the best way is to get these separate editions, NOT the box of three.
The planned book (from my part anyway) isn't specially on Sweeney Todd, but on Tod himself. His life and works, on the stage, and on radio, TV, records, and movies, "Sweeney Todd" being of course a developped chapter as he took the role five times in movies if you count his appearances in newsreels and featurettes... and hundreds times on the stage, radio and records in different adaptations. I got personnal documents such as a color still of Tod's house, official records of his birth, marriage with Jenny Lynn, and death (as well as death of Jenny Lynn in 1965 in London), etc. I'm still trying to find additional stills of Tod in life and on the stage...
"The Ticket of Leave Man" was made available on VHS by Video Yesteryear and the quality was good if not exceptional. To date the best-looking version was the one shown on Channel Four in UK several times in past years... To my knowledge the Video Yesteryear VHS is complete, in any case it's the same version than the one they shown on British TV.
There are many other versions of "Sweeney Todd" than the George King and Tim Burton movies. Two silents were made, and several TV adaptations. One of the best being John Schlesinger's THE LEGEND OF SWEENEY TODD, with Ben Kingsley as the Demon Barber and Joanna Lumley as Mrs. Lovatt. They also made a Canadian version, still existing in their vaults. Another adaptation with Freddie Jones recently made available with the DVD box of "Mystery and Imagination" - the six episodes still in existence, the other being "lost" (= destroyed by the producers). And still another one, more recent, with Ray Winstone as the barber.
If the on-screen title of "Strangler's Morgue" is really "The Curse of the Wraydons", it must be the complete version at 95 or 99 mns (despending of the video system, Pal or Ntsc. If the DVD is in Ntsc but made from a Pal source, however, it must be 95 mns). The quality on British TV was near-perfect, I think this US DVD was made from a TV recording from Channel Four - as no other source was available apparently. The version originally released in America by Hoffberg was in a triple-bill and very shortened... and its title wasn't "Wraydons", anyway.

Doctor Kiss - thank you very much for the precisions and comments. Finally I think that the only possible way to get some additional informations and perhaps some stills or/and a movie ad for "Darby and Joan" would be to look at the collection of "The Daily Film Renter" as each release, generally, was announced in this daily magazine, sometimes with giant color ads. "Darby and Joan" being a MGM-British release, I imagine that something was published about it, even if it wasn't one of their productions. Similarly, it could be possible to have a most complete list of the episodes of the "Inspector Morley" series in the "currently shooting" sections of similar magazines... But only somebody living in London could make this.

From "The Daily Film Renter" I got the color ad (a full page) for CRIMES AT THE DARK HOUSE and the credited director is David Macdonald (who also made "It's Never Too Late to Mend"). On the print itself, NO director is credited, and even the production credits go to "Odette King", not to her husband. According to King's nephew that I contacted some years ago, it was a way to avoid to pay too much taxes or something like it...

On the still below, arch-criminal Terence Reilly (Tod - who else ?) prepares a bath of acid for his captive, Eileen Trotter (Tucker McGuire), Inspector Morley's secretary. It's the last sequence of the "Inspector Morley Investigates" episode originally shot as "The Case of the Wise Monkey", which was recycled as the last story in the first "feature" made of three episodes, KING OF THE UNDERWORLD, released in 1952.




Below : butler "Clarence Beacham" - in fact, Patrick Reilly, Terence Reilly's brother - finally arrested at the end of MURDER AT THE GRANGE (formerly, "Death at the Festival"). From left to right : Patrick Barr, TS, John Sanger (NOT the Johnny Singer of "Sweeney Todd" and "It's Never Too Late to Mend"), Frank Hawkins.

Yes, I noticed the mistake. It's not the first one, as in their first edition of "Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn", none of the stills shown in the jacket was from the Tod Slaughter version ! in the new edition (without the video defect I mentioned earlier, this time...), the front cover is still a wrong still, but at least the two ones on the back are really from the movie...
And the guy who wrotes the booklet is wrong about the "rarity" of the other Tod Slaughter movies he mentions. One of them, "The Vengeance of Magnus Vann", was never made - but ALL the others still exist.

jplibby wrote:

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Apologies if I missed an answer, but I didn't see one to the question regarding Ian Fleming in Soldiers Without Uniforms: this is surely the same Ian Fleming who played Watson to Arthur Wonter's Sherlock Holmes and not the James Bond author.

You're certainly right. Unfortunately, the movie itself is untraceable and was perhaps even never distributed. According to an old issue of the US magazine BILLBOARD, Margaret Yarde (who was also in "The Face at the Window" and "Crimes at the Dark House", was also in the cast of this short movie.