Jess ConradDudley Sutton, Tony Garnett, Ronald Lacey and Jess Conrad
Jess Conrad was born in 1936 in Brixton, London. From the late 1950’s until the mid 1960’s he appeared in films that have now become cult classics including “Serious Charge” with Cliff Richard, “The Boys”, “Ragdoll” and “Konga”. He continues to perform as a singer in concerts all over the U.K. Jess Conrad’s website here. Interview in “Mallorca Life & Style” here.
Jess Conrad. Wikipedia.
Jess Conrad was born in 1936 and is an English actor and singer from Brixton, South London. As a boy he was nicknamed “Jesse” after American outlaw Jesse James; as there was already an actor named “Gerald James” in Actors’ Equity, a drama teacher who was a fan of Joseph Conrad suggested the stage name of “Jess Conrad”.
Having started his career as a repertory actor and film extra, Conrad was cast in a television play Bye, Bye Barney as a pop singer.[2] He was noticed by Jack Good who included him in his TV series Oh, Boy,[2] and then was signed to Decca Records and had a number of chart hits, including “Cherry Pie“, “This Pullover”, “Mystery Girl” and “Pretty Jenny”; also recording for Columbia, Pye President and EMI.
Between the late 1950s and mid-1960s Conrad appeared in a number of films such as Serious Charge (uncredited), The Boys, Rag Doll, (filmed in 1960, and released in 1961); K.I.L. 1 and Konga as well as Michael Powell‘s The Queen’s Guards. Conrad played Danny Pace in an episode of The Human Jungle called ‘The Flip Side Man’ in 1963.
During the 1970s he spent some time in the stage shows Godspell and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and also featured in a cameo role in the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. In 1977 no fewer than seven of Conrad’s singles were included in the ‘World’s Worst Record’ list, chosen by listeners to Capital FM DJ Kenny Everett‘s show, and “This Pullover”, voted 6th worst song ever, later featured on The World’s Worst Record Show, a 1978 LP dedicated to the songs voted for, together with two other Conrad recordings “Cherry Pie” and “Why Am I Living?” He also made an appearance in “Are You Being Served” as Mr Walpole head of sporting equipment in episode “Memories Are Made Of This” along with John Inman, Molly Sugden & Wendy Richards.
Conrad also appeared in the 1984 TV series of Miss Marple, in the episode entitled The Body in the Library as Raymond Starr. He also starred in the 1993 film The Punk and the Princess.
In the 1990s Conrad made regular cameo appearances on Jim Davidson‘s revived version of The Generation Game on BBC1. Also in 1992 Conrad appeared in the Christmas Special of Big Break, also presented by Davidson and John Virgo. He was the “booby” prize of the show presented to Hi-de-Hi! actress Ruth Madoc. Contestants who failed to make the final of Big Break were often nearly given a box set of Conrad’s hit singles.
Conrad is married to Renee and has two daughters, Sasha and Natalie.
Robert Newton was born in Dorset, England in 1905. He began acting at 16 with Birmingham Repertory Company. His first film was “Farewell Again” in 1937. His major films include “Jamaica Inn”, “Oliver Twist”, “The High and the Mighty”, “The Beachcomber”, “This Happy Breed” and his last film “Around the World in 8o Days”. His film career and indeed life was cut short by chronic alcoholism which led to his death from a heart attack in 1956 aged just fifty. His best remembered role is as the definite Long John Silver in Walt Disney’s “Treasure Island”.
TCM Profile:
To a generation of moviegoers, English actor Robert Newton is the personification of Long John Silver; he played the pirate in the Disney classic Treasure Island (1950), its sequelLong John Silver (1954) as well as in a 1950s TV series The Adventures of Long John Silver. But Newton’s career wasn’t limited to swashbucklers. He appeared in classic works by Shakespeare and Shaw and Dickens. He co-starred with British acting greats such as Charles Laughton and Laurence Olivier and he worked with a talented list of directors from Alfred Hitchcock to David Lean. For an actor best remembered as a pirate, Newton enjoys an extremely impressive filmography.
Robert Newton was born June 1, 1905 in Shaftesbury, Dorset, England. His mother was a writer and his father a painter. Newton began acting at an early age and made his stage debut at the age of 15. His first appearance was in Henry IV (Part One) for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Newton stayed with the company for three years, working as an assistant stage manager, and taking roles in Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. He made his London debut at Drury Lane in 1924 in London Life. Newton’s star rose when he was cast in Noel Coward’s Bitter Sweet in 1929. And just two years later, Newton made his Broadway debut, filling some pretty big shoes in the process Newton succeeded Laurence Olivier in another Coward production, Private Lives.
Newton made his first film in 1932 with the small British drama Reunion. He then returned to the stage for several years, appearing in Hamlet at the Old Vic and in other plays like Miss Julie. Newton’s next film came in 1937 when he played the Captain of Caligula’s Guard in I, Claudius. The film, which was never completed due to overwhelming production problems, was directed by Josef von Sternberg and starred Charles Laughton and Merle Oberon. Newton would make two more films with Laughton: Hitchcock’s last British film before immigrating to America, Jamaica Inn (1939), and Vessel of Wrath (AKA The Beachcomber) (1938). The latter film was based on a W. Somerset Maugham novel and, in 1954, Newton would star in a second film version of the story. This time, Newton took the role played by Laughton in the original.
In 1937, Newton had his first lead role in the film The Squeaker where he played a cat burglar. He also took a leading part in the original film version of Gaslight (1940) and he played husband to a pioneer aviatrix in Wings and the Woman (1942). Newton then returned to the theatre for a string of stage adaptations: he appeared in Shaw’s Major Barbara (1941) with Rex Harrison and Wendy Hiller; the family drama This Happy Breed (1944) by Noel Coward; and Shakespeare’s Henry V (1944), directed by and starring Laurence Olivier. Newton followed up his stage run with a turn in Carol Reed’s IRA suspense-drama Odd Man Out (1947).
Newton gave a memorably frightening performance as the villainous Bill Sikes in David Lean’s production ofOliver Twist (1948). He also played the merciless Inspector Javert in Les Miserables (1952) and, as previously noted, sailed under a pirate flag in Treasure Island, the film that marked the peak of his popularity. Newton was one of the top ten moneymakers in British cinema (as voted in the Motion Picture Herald-Fame Poll) from 1947 to 1951. After Treasure Island Newton played another pirate Blackbeard, in Blackbeard the Pirate(1952). In 1954, he returned to Treasure Island in a sequel called Long John Silver.
One of Newton’s last films was the high flying John Wayne suspense-adventure The High and the Mighty(1954). He made his final feature appearance in Around the World in 80 Days (1956); Newton lived just a month after shooting was complete. Officially, the cause of death was a heart attack, but Newton’s excessive drinking was certainly a factor. He died March 25, 1956.
by Stephanie Thames
The above TCM Profile by Stephanie Thames can also be accessed online here.
Terence Longdon was born in Newark-on-Trent in 1922. His film debut was in “Appointment in London” in 1952. In 1958 he had a leading role with Lana Turner, Sean Connery and Glynis Johns in “Another Time, Another Place” . He played Drusus, Messala’s personal aide in “Ben Hur”. He starred in the first Carry On which was “Carry on Sargent” and was featured in three more of the series. His last TV role seems to have been in 2003. He died in 2011.
His obituary in The Guardian” newspaper by Anthony Hayward:
Terence Longdon, who has died of cancer aged 88, was a character actor whose parted hair and thick-set face – though not his name – were familiar for several decades. Only once did he step into the spotlight at the top of the bill, when he starred as the title character in the television series Garry Halliday (1959-62). The almost-forgotten BBC children’s adventure programme, based on books by Justin Blake, perfectly fitted Longdon’s educated, smooth, well-mannered persona – and a man who had flown with the Fleet Air Arm during the second world war. The actor played a Biggles-like commercial airline pilot, with Terence Alexander as his co-pilot, Bill Dodds. Posing a constant threat to the Halliday Charter Company was “The Voice”, an arch-villain who sat behind a two-way mirror and shone a light into the faces of his gang members, keeping his own in darkness.
Longdon was then happy to return to the shadows himself, rejecting the chance to become a regular in the long-running Carry On comedy films. In the first, Carry On Sergeant (1958), he played a woman-chasing layabout among the bunch of reprobates that an army sergeant (played by William Hartnell) tries to turn into a champion platoon. After being cast in Carry On Nurse (1959), Carry On Constable (1960) and Carry On Regardless (1961), he was offered a contract. “I discussed it with my agent for hours but eventually decided to turn it down because I didn’t want to be confined to one particular line of movies,” he said.
He was born Hubert Tuelly Longdon in Newark, Nottinghamshire, where his father owned businesses connected with the wool industry. He boarded at Minster school, Southwell, where he excelled as a choral scholar. On leaving, aged 17, Longdon planned to sit an entrance exam for the civil service, but war intervened, the exam was cancelled and he worked as a bank clerk and in other jobs until joining the Fleet Air Arm in 1940, becoming a pilot protecting Atlantic convoys during hostilities.
Later in the war, he moved to a naval base near Blackpool and was cast in a show that was staged there. Douglas Hurn, an actor, spotted his potential and encouraged him to take it further. Longdon successfully auditioned for Rada (1946-48) and made his first TV appearance with a walk-on part when the BBC screened the drama school’s live production of Stephen Phillips’s play Paolo and Francesca (1947).
He then joined the Lyceum, Sheffield, as an assistant stage manager and made his theatrical debut there as Robin in French for Love (1948), a light comedy by Marguerite Steen and Derek Patmore. After three months, Longdon was heading for London’s West End, taking up a contract with the theatre chain HM Tennent. He played a soldier carrying a spear for John Gielgud in Medea (Globe, 1948), then another Greek soldier, alongside Stanley Baker, and understudied Paul Scofield in Adventure Story (St James’s, 1949), before progressing to the lead juvenile role of Philip Ryall in Treasure Hunt (Apollo, 1949).
Later West End roles included the plotting Peter Marriott in The Sound of Murder (Aldwych, 1959), the illicit lover Colin in The Sacred Flame (Duke of York’s, 1967), more than 1,000 performances as John Brownlow in The Secretary Bird (Savoy, 1968-71) and Charles Straker in The Sack Race (Ambassadors, 1974). Longdon also consolidated his classical credentials during a three-year stint (1951-54) at the New Shakespeare Memorial theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, where his parts included Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part I, Oliver in As You Like It and Cassio in Othello.
By then, film roles were forthcoming and he became a staple of the B-movies that kept up the quota of domestically made productions in British cinemas. Many were war dramas, as was the main feature Angels One Five (1952), in which he played an RAF pilot. Then came the Carry On pictures and the roles of Patroclus, meeting an untimely death in a chariot, in Helen of Troy (1956), and Drusus in the epic Ben-Hur (1959).
Following his exposure in Garry Halliday, Longdon became more in demand on TV, taking character roles in the series No Hiding Place (1963), Danger Man (1964), The Avengers (1968), The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1986) and Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV (1986 and 1987). There was also a short run in Coronation Street (1982) as Wilf Stockwell, a sales rep and business associate of Mike Baldwin who briefly left his wife for Elsie Tanner.
Longdon’s 1953 marriage to the actor Barbara Jefford was dissolved in 1960. He is survived by his second wife, Gillian Conyers, whom he married in 2004, after they had lived together for 16 years.
• Terence Longdon (Hubert Tuelly Longdon), actor, born 14 May 1922; died 23 April 2011
The Guardian obituary can be accessed on-line here.
Richard Warwick was born in 1945 in Kent. Franco Zefferelli cast him as Gregory in his adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” in 1968. He worked for Lindsay Anderson in “If” and subsequently was in Derek Jarman’s “Sebastiane”. On television he starred with Judi Dench and Michael Williams in !A Fine Romance”. His last film was “Jane Eyre” in 1996. He died the following year at the age of 52.
In an obituary, The Daily Telegraph quoted If… director Lindsay Anderson: “I never met a young actor like Richard! Without a touch of vanity, completely natural yet always concentrated, he illumines every frame of the film in which he appears.
An observation on a film forum on Derek Jarman:
RICHARD WARWICK: What about his working with Derek? I know they worked together first in “Sebastiane”, then in “The Tempest”. Why they wanted to work together? Are they also close friends or was their relationship only professional? He was a nice good actor indeed, sweet and beautiful man, too much soon disappeared at 52 in 1997. I don’t knew he was dead, I found out that only later. In four decades, he made a lot of movies, with great directors. I’m glad he started his career in Italy, with “Romeo and Juliet”, in 1968. Then, he returned to play “Sebastiane” in Sardinia in 1976 (as a Latin soldier, Justin)!!! How curious, he played another Italian character, Antonio, in Jarman’s “The Tempest”. But, it doesn’t matter. I like him even if he was never been related with Italy… of course!
Finally, I wonder what Richard had thought interpreting gay roles in “If…”, “Sebastiane” and “The lost language of cranes”. Who knows…? Warwick was a friend of Ian Charleson. I was touched by his contribution in book “For Ian Charleson: A Tribute”, where RW said how he loved Ian friendship and talent. I like specially the words: “Ian never had a partner…”, because he referred to gay couples. Such sensitiveness make me think he was gay, too.
Jaye Davidson was born in 1968 in Riverside, California. From the age of two he grew up in Britain. He is best known for his performance as Dil in the superb “The Crying Game” in 1992 with Stephen Rea directed by Neil Jordan. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. He went to Hollywood to make “Stargate” with Kurt Russell and James Spader. However he returned to the U.K. and abandoned his acting career and returned to his previous occupation in fashion.
TCM Overview:
Poised, photogenic performer with strikingly delicate features, of British-African ancestry. Davidson was born in California but raised in the white middle-class surroundings of Hertfordshire, England. After being discovered at a London wrap party for Derek Jarman’s “Edward II”, this androgynous, light-complexioned beauty made a big splash with a screen debut in Neil Jordan’s “The Crying Game” (1992). Though untrained in acting, Davidson was riveting and fascinating as Dil, a mysterious London singer and hairdresser who confounded many a spectator’s expectations. His remarkable achievement was acknowledged with an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Davidson next landed a starring role in the science fiction epic, “Stargate” (1994) playing the sun god Ra, a villainous force who rules a parallel universe that echoes the Egypt of Hollywood biblical movies. Though Janet Maslin of THE NEW YORK TIMES noted that the part didn’t involve much acting, she added that Davidson “makes the perfect Ra mannequin”.
The above TCM Ovewview can also be accessed online here.
Daragh O’Malley hails from Limerick city. He was born in 1954. His father was Donagh O’Malley a Minister of Education in the Irish Government who died suddenly in 1968. His mother Dr Hilda Moriarty was from Kerry and while in university had met the port Patrick Kavanah who wrote the famous “Raglan Road” about her. Daragh O’Malley’s most famous role is as Patrick Harper the loyal and tough ally of Sean Bean in the hughly popular TV series “Sharpe”. His first film role was in the terrific thriller “The Long Good Friday” in 1980. His other films include “Cal”, “Whitnail and I” and “Shaughnessy”. He has guest starred in most of the popular UK crime TV series such as “Wire in the Blood”, “Silent Witness” and “Waking the Dead”. His website here.
Martin Benson was born in London in 1918. His appearacnes on film stretched over fifty years from “The Blind Goddess” in 1948 to “Angela’s Ashes” in 1999. Best remembered roles were as Karalholme in the Hollywood production of “The King and I” in 1956 and as the gangster Solo in “Goldfinger” in 1964. Martin Benson died in 2010 at the age of 92.
Martin Benson’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
The actor Martin Benson, who has died aged 91, occupied a screen category filled in its time by Herbert Lom, with whom he acted on several occasions, and previously Conrad Veidt – that of the worldly, sophisticated, foreign villain. With jet-black hair, dark colouring and pronounced eyebrows on a thin face, he never seemed properly dressed without a tuxedo. As well as remaining furiously busy during six decades as an actor, he pursued several artistic disciplines.
Born into a Jewish family in London, he seemed briefly destined to become a pharmacist. As a gunner in the army during the seond world war, he organised entertainment for the troops, and produced a tour of Gaslight in aid of a fund to replace HMS Dorsetshire. By 1944, he had been promoted to captain and was posted to Alexandria, Egypt, where he built a theatre from scratch, assisted by his sergeant-major, another aspiring actor – Arthur Lowe.
Among Benson’s earliest screen roles was an unbilled part for Alfred Hitchcock in Under Capricorn (1949). The King and I had its British stage premiere at Drury Lane in October 1953, with Lom as the King, and Benson as his court chancellor, Kralahome. Benson played the part again opposite Yul Brynner in the Hollywood film version in 1956. He also played the King himself in February 1955, when Lom was ill. Benson later asserted that “despite the reputation which Yul Brynner continues to enjoy, the more intelligent as well as intelligible performance came from Herbert Lom, notwithstanding a good deal less swagger”.
Back in Britain and in modestly budgeted monochrome thrillers, he was on characteristic form in Soho Incident (1956) as a “big boss” running crooked boxing and horse-racing schemes. Venturing into television, Benson was among a repertory company of actors in the half-hour anthology Douglas Fairbanks Presents (1953-57), aimed at US television, shown in Britain as cinema shorts and as schedule-fillers in ITV’s early days. Benson also worked on the scripts, where as many foreign settings were included as possible. Another rep company member was Christopher Lee, who called it a valuable training ground. He and Benson made up a comic double act for one segment, The Death of Michael Turbin (1953), as slow-witted east Europeans.
He was a regular, as the villainous Duke de Medici, in Sword of Freedom (1957-58). In 1958 and 1959, he played a barrister in the unscripted courtroom series The Verdict Is Yours and, in On Trial (1960), which recreated celebrated cases, Micheal MacLiammoir played Oscar Wilde, with Benson as his prosecutor, Edward Carson.
After a role in Cleopatra (1963), he was an American gangster coerced into taking a doomed car ride with the henchman Oddjob, in Goldfinger(1964). He was among a houseful of suspects in Peter Sellers’s second outing as Clouseau, A Shot in the Dark (1964).
From 1960 to 1985, Martin Benson Films, based in Radlett in Hertfordshire, made more then 100 educational and training films, which Benson directed, wrote and occasionally narrated. Some were for Save the Children.
For Lew Grade’s ITC series, the logical successors to the Fairbanks shows, he variously played corrupt South American ministers, Algerian majors, ruthless Turkish policemen and cigar-smoking gamblers. Submerged under green makeup, Benson played the Vogon Captain, an excruciatingly bad poet, in Douglas Adams’s The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981).
Benson began painting in his stage dressing room, and in 1993 he staged an exhibition of his Shakespearean paintings at the Shakespeare Globe Centre, the subjects including Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness.
His later credits included Alan Parker’s adaptation of Angela’s Ashes (1999) and a 2005 episode of Casualty.
His wife Joy, son and three daughters, two stepdaughters and one stepson survive him.
• Martin Benson, actor, born 10 August 1918; died 28 February 2010
This “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Julian Sands was born in West Otley, West Yorkshire in 1958. He began appearing in supporting roles on film in 1984 with “Oxford Blues” and “The Killing Fields”. The following year he was in “A Room With A View” with a steller cast including Denholm Elliott as his father, Daniel Day-Lewis, Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith an Judi Dench. He went Stateside and his other films include “Arachnophobia”.
TCM Overview:
Tall, blond and striking, with angular features and an unmistakable European air, British actor Julian Sands looked right at home in the tasteful historical dramas, gothic horror films, and international espionage roles he became known for. This veteran actor started out charming audiences in the 1985 film “A Room With A View,” but darker roles in “Warlock” (1989), “Boxing Helena” (1993), and a string of films with director Mike Figgis always suggested a powerful talent with the potential to become a household name if the right role came along.
Julian Sands, a versatile British actor whose film roles included the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Louis XIV, a warlock, Superman’s father and a Latvian pimp, was pronounced dead on Tuesday, more than five months after disappearing while hiking alone on a trail on Mount Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California. He was 65.
On Sunday, authorities recovered human remains near the mountain where search crews had been looking for Mr. Sands. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said it had been contacted by hikers who had found human remains in the Mount Baldy wilderness. Dangerous conditions, including a series of severe storms, had complicated search efforts.
The coroner’s office identified the remains as Mr. Sands on Tuesday. It added that the cause of his death remained under investigation.
With his shock of blond hair and his occasionally icy demeanor, Mr. Sands was instantly recognizable. He could slip easily from a costume drama like James Ivory’s “A Room With a View” (1985), in which he played an idealistic romantic around the turn of the 20th century, to an occult movie like “Warlock” (1989), in which, as the title character, he flees a 17th-century witch hunter to 20th-century Los Angeles.
“He was always good, always gallant and dignified,” Janet Maslin, a former New York Times film critic, said in a phone interview. “I don’t remember a false move from him.”
Mr. Sands played Shelley in Ken Russell’s horror film “Gothic” (1987), which recreates a true story: a gathering on a stormy night in 1816 in a Swiss villa where Shelley; his future wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who would soon write “Frankenstein”; her stepsister, Claire Clairmont; Lord Byron; and Byron’s doctor, John William Polidori, wrote ghost stories.
Mr. Sands’s Shelley suffered from drug-fueled hallucinations and was tormented by fears and devils. Gabriel Byrne’s Byron was nearly demonic.
“I think these portraits are rooted in reality,” Mr. Sands told The Times in 1987. “If people think otherwise, it’s because of the later Victorian whitewash of them. These were not simply beautiful Romantic poets. They were subversive, anarchic hedonists pursuing a particular line of amorality.”
Within two years, Mr. Sands had worked with Mr. Ivory and Mr. Russell, two directors with wildly different styles.
“James Ivory is like an Indian miniaturist, and Ken Russell is a graffiti artist,” Mr. Sands told The Times. “James Ivory is like an ornithologist watching his subjects from afar, whereas Ken Russell is a big-game hunter filming in the middle of a rhino charge.”
Mr. Sands also worked on several films with the British director Mike Figgis, among them “Leaving Las Vegas” (1996), in which he played a pimp, and “The Loss of Sexual Innocence” (1999), in which Mr. Figgis fused the story of Adam and Eve with that of a filmmaker (Mr. Sands) drifting in and out of his sexual memories.
“Since this is a film of images rather than words, it requires a great deal of presence and expressiveness on the part of the actors,” Kevin Thomas wrote in his review of “The Loss of Sexual Innocence” in The Los Angeles Times. “Happily, Figgis has chosen well, with Sands effortlessly carrying by far the most demanding role of a man of isolating self-absorption.”
Julian Richard Morley Sands was born on Jan. 4, 1958, in Otley, England, to Richard and Brenda Sands and grew up in nearby Gargrave. He began acting as a child, inspired in part by his mother’s work in amateur theater. When he was 6, he told The Yorkshire Post in 2013, he appeared in a play; his first line was “My master, the great Aladdin.”
He studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London but left in 1979 to form a youth theater that performed at schools and clubs. His screen career began in the early 1980s, with small roles in movies like “Oxford Blues” and “The Killing Fields,” and in “The Sun Also Rises,” a mini-series based on Ernest Hemingway’s novel.
Mr. Sands’s other roles included a photographer in “The Killing Fields” (1985), an entomologist in “Arachnophobia” (1990), Louis XIV in “Vatel” (2000), Jor-El, Superman’s father, in two episodes of the television series “Smallville” (in 2009 and 2010), and a sadistic farmer in the Czech film “The Painted Bird” (2019), an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel about a homeless and abused boy during World War II.
“I was drawn to ‘The Painted Bird’ because of its unflinching, stark but ultimately redemptive consideration of human endurance,” Mr. Sands told the website Moviemaker in 2020. “The bleak hinterland of war-torn Eastern Europe is as beautiful and moving as it is disturbing and grotesque.”
Mr. Sands appeared onstage occasionally and earned a Drama Desk nomination in 2013 for his one-man show, “A Celebration of Harold Pinter,” Mr. Sands performed the show, which was directed by John Malkovich, at the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan in 2012 (and again in 2016) and took it to Houston; Sarasota, Fla.; East Lansing, Mich.; and other cities over the course of several years.
The focus was not on Pinter’s plays but his poetry. Mr. Sands, who had known Pinter since 1987, stepped in for the ailing playwright at a reading of his verse in England in 2005; they remained close until Pinter’s death three years later.
“I’ve called it in the past a ‘Homeric evening of theater,’” Mr. Sands told The Washington Post in 2015, “because it’s me, in a pool of firelight, with the audience gathered around the fire, at a shamanic level.”
Mr. Sands’s survivors include his wife, Evgenia Citkowitz; his daughters, Natalya and Imogen; and his son, Henry. His marriage to Sarah Harvey ended in divorce.
Mr. Sands loved hiking in the Los Angeles area, especially on Mount Baldy.
“I must have been up Mount Baldy about 200 times, so I think this is a real favorite,” he was quoted as saying in “My City, My Los Angeles: Famous People Share Their Favorite Places” (2013), by Jeryl Brunner. “And I like it in winter. Winter conditions make it a bit more interesting
Leo McKern is firmly associated with “Rumpole of the Bailey” but he was a terrific character actor on film and on reflection it is a pity that Rumpole took up so much of his time, that it deprived us of him from the cinema. He was born in Sydney, Australia in 1920. He lost an eye at the age of 15 in an accident. During World War Two he made his stage debut in this home city. He came to England in 1976 and soon became a regular with the Old Vic company. His film debut was in 1952 with “Murder in the Cathedral”. His many appearance thereafter included “Help”, “A Man For All Seasons”, “Ryan’s Daughter”, “The Omen” and “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”. His first episode as Rumpole began in 1975 and in all he starred in 44 episodes. He died in 2002 at the age of 82.
“The Guardian” obituary:
Leo McKern, who has died aged 82, was best known and admired for his most famous character, the crumpled, combative defence barrister Horace Rumpole in John Mortimer’s television series, Rumpole Of The Bailey. But he was also one of the finest and most resourceful actors in Britain, with a long and distinguished career in the theatre and films.
Short and stocky, he was not built for romantic leads, but he was capable of playing – and playing well – a wide range of parts, from Peer Gynt to Toad of Toad Hall, Lear’s Fool to the Common Man, and, later, Thomas Cromwell, both on stage and in the film A Man For All Seasons (1966).
He took on Rumpole for the first time in 1975, in a television play based on the Mortimer novels. His portrayal was a hit with viewers, and his references to his wife Hilda as “she who must be obeyed” became part of the nation’s vocabulary. The ITV series which followed ran for 15 years.
McKern was happy to continue portraying the same character for so long – “With Rumpole,” he once said, “one comes to be reconciled to the fact that it isn’t half a bad thing to be stuck with.” However, in an interview with Vanity Fair in 1995, he also made the point that “I consider my best performance ever was as Peer Gynt, though if I get an obituary, they will say, of course, ‘known to millions as Rumpole’.”
Born into a family of engineers in Sydney, McKern left school – where his English master had instilled a hatred of Shakespeare – at 15, and joined his father and brothers working in a refrigerator factory. While there, a piece of metal flew into his left eye; though the injury was not, at first, considered serious, the sight deteriorated and eventually the eye had to be removed. With his portion of the compensation – his parents sued the surgeon who had first attended him – McKern bought an old boat, the first of several he owned, and wrecked it in Sydney harbour.
After training and working as a commercial artist, he decided to try acting, and duly appeared in theatre in Sydney. In 1944, he sailed away in pursuit of Jane Holland, who was well known on the Australian stage and wanted to try her luck in England. They married, and lived for a time in a Hampstead bedsitter, taking various jobs. McKern was a meat porter, and drew slides for the cinema, though he was also sacked for selling under-the-counter goods to pensioners. As assistant stage manager, he went on a combined services entertainments tour of Germany; back in London, he became a jeweller’s stone-setter, while Jane was a cinema usherette.
In repertory at Bangor, McKern worked long hours painting scenery, stage managing and acting, before going on an Arts Council tour of Welsh mining villages in The Miser, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, a contact which eventually resulted in his joining the Old Vic Company in 1949. In the first of three seasons there, he played small parts, and, as an understudy, went on as Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops To Conquer. His best part the following season was Feste in Twelfth Night.
In Guthrie’s production of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine The Great – the first for 300 years – McKern played Bazajeth, Emperor of the Turks and Tamburlaine’s chief adversary. This was a part in which he could show his physical skill and energy, but also an unnerving experience as Donald Wolfit (Tamburlaine) was given to distracting the audience’s attention from everyone except himself. Before the end of the season, in which he was due to play Lear, Wolfit left – and McKern shone as the Fool.
Many years later, he appeared in the play again, this time on television, as Gloucester, with Laurence Olivier as Lear, and, having progressed to leading parts, he went back to Australia with the Stratford company, as Iago to Anthony Quayle’s Othello.
Back in England at Christmas 1954, McKern enjoyed playing Toad to large audiences of children at the Prince’s theatre (now the Shaftesbury). His first strong West End part was as Big Daddy in Peter Hall’s production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958); two years later, he took the title part in Marcel Achard’s Rollo. His next outstanding performance was as the Common Man, in A Man For All Seasons, which created a mild sensation as a Brechtian experiment. Grabbing costumes from a basket on stage, McKern was both commentator and storyteller, though in New York, and in the film, he played Thomas Cromwell.
For Peer Gynt, one of his most taxing – but also most satisfying – roles, McKern returned to the Old Vic in 1962. Although he knew he was too old for the part, he comforted himself in the knowledge that Ibsen never intended the play to be staged. Some years later, he discovered that Guthrie had described it as “brilliant”.
In Guthrie’s modern dress production of The Alchemist (Old Vic, 1962), he had to make an entrance three feet above the ground. The following year, he was back with Iago, as well as playing the garrulous elder statesman Menenius, in Coriolanus, at the opening of the Nottingham Playhouse. At the Oxford Playhouse and later in London, he was an explosive Volpone – his second Jonson character in the 1960s. He was also part of the swinging 60s to the extent of appearing with the Beatles in Help (1965), and in the cult TV series The Prisoner.
In 1970, McKern returned to Australia to play Bligh in The Man Who Shot The Albatross and Rollo. Back at the Oxford Playhouse, he was Shylock, and Kelemen in Molnar’s The Wolf, opposite Judi Dench. There were also film ventures, including Ryan’s Daughter (1970), which involved almost a year’s stay on the west coast of Ireland – he took along his wife and daughters, and his 32ft sloop.
McKern returned to the theatre in 1995, as Old Hobson in Hobson’s Choice at Chichester, giving a performance that was a nice blend of pathos and northern humour (his last West End performance was in the same play two years ago). Also at Chichester, in 1996, he played the press photographer Henry Ormonroyd, in a revival of Priestley’s When We Are Married, with, wrote the Guardian critic Michael Billington, “the stately dignity of a tipsy porpoise”. His last film role was as a bishop in a period drama, The Story Of Father Damien (1999).
In later life, McKern suffered health problems. He had diabetes and became deaf in one ear. As well as boats, he was fond of fast cars, of which he had many. He is survived by Jane, and their daughters Harriet and the actor Abigail McKern.
· Leo (Reginald) McKern, actor, born March 16 1920; died July 23 2002
“The Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
