Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#119382
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Allan Jeayes works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Allan Jeayes appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Allan. Dead of Night is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for horror, thriller, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Alberto Cavalcanti, Carol Reed, Tim Whelan and others, Allan Jeayes helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Dead of Night (1945) as Maurice Olcott (Segment "The Ventriloquist's Dummy") · Night Train to Munich (1940) as KL Prisoner (uncredited) · The Thief of Bagdad (1940) as The Story Teller
Career snapshot
Ranked #119382 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1934–1945
Career length
11 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Dead of Night
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Night Train to Munich
Most frequent director
Tim Whelan
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tim Whelan
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 42m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.4
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1940s
6.8 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Dead of Night, Night Train to Munich, The Thief of Bagdad — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.8
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Four Feathers, Q Planes, Things to Come.
Most productive era
1930s
4 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.63 films | 6.81 film |
| Thriller | 6.21 film | 6.82 films |
| Romance | — | 6.81 film |
| Horror | — | 6.91 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lord Grenville.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
1945Dead of Night
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Maurice Olcott (Segment "The Ventriloquist's Dummy").
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
7 of 7 films
as General Faversham
Directed by Zoltan Korda
as Maurice Olcott (Segment "The Ventriloquist's Dummy")
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti
as KL Prisoner (uncredited)
Directed by Carol Reed
as The Story Teller
Directed by Tim Whelan
as Lord Grenville
Directed by Harold Young
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
General Faversham
The Four Feathers (1939)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. General Faversham gives Allan Jeayes a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Maurice Olcott (Segment "The Ventriloquist's Dummy")
Dead of Night (1945)
Performance score6.8
Dead of Night asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Maurice Olcott (Segment "The Ventriloquist's Dummy") is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
KL Prisoner (uncredited)
Night Train to Munich (1940)
Performance score6.7
Night Train to Munich asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. KL Prisoner (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
The Story Teller
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
Performance score6.7
The Thief of Bagdad asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The Story Teller is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as General Faversham
Start here. The Four Feathers is the clearest statement of what Allan Jeayes does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 6.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Allan at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
Keeps the adventure register of The Four Feathers but asks for a colder reading of it.
Night Train to Munich (1940)
Keeps the drama register of The Scarlet Pimpernel but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
A deliberate change of key after Night Train to Munich — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Dead of Night (1945)
A deliberate change of key after The Thief of Bagdad — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tim Whelan
Director
2 films together
Notably The Thief of Bagdad
Harold Young
Director
1 film together
Notably The Scarlet Pimpernel
William Cameron Menzies
Director
1 film together
Notably Things to Come
Zoltan Korda
Director
1 film together
Notably The Four Feathers
Carol Reed
Director
1 film together
Notably Night Train to Munich
Alberto Cavalcanti
Director
1 film together
Notably Dead of Night
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tim Whelan
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Thief of BagdadAlberto Cavalcanti
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dead of NightCarol Reed
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Night Train to MunichZoltan Korda
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Four FeathersHarold Young
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Scarlet PimpernelWilliam Cameron Menzies
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Things to ComeSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The Four Feathers
as General Faversham
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Thief of Bagdad
as The Story Teller
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dead of Night
as Maurice Olcott (Segment "The Ventriloquist's Dummy")
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Q Planes
as Minor Role
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Four Feathers
as General Faversham
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Allan Jeayes has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
The Thief of Bagdad
as The Story Teller
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dead of Night
as Maurice Olcott (Segment "The Ventriloquist's Dummy")
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Thief of Bagdad
as The Story Teller
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Q Planes
as Minor Role
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Scarlet Pimpernel
as Lord Grenville
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Scarlet Pimpernel
as Lord Grenville
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Night Train to Munich
as KL Prisoner (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Q Planes
as Minor Role
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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