Leo McKern

Leo McKern
Born	16 March 1920(1920-03-16) Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died	23 July 2002 (aged 82) Bath, Somerset, England, UK

Reginald "Leo" McKern AO (16 March 1920 – 23 July 2002) was an Australian actor who appeared in numerous British television programs and movies, and more than 200 stage roles.

Early life

McKern was born Reginald McKern in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of Vera (née Martin) and Norman Walton McKern.^[1] He was a direct descendant of a survivor of the Massacre of Glencoe.^{[citation needed]} After an accident at age 15 he lost his left eye. He first worked as an engineering apprentice, then as an artist, followed by serving in the Australian Army during World War II.^[2] During the war, he made his first stage appearance in Sydney in 1944.

The theatre

Having fallen in love with actress Jane Holland, McKern moved to the United Kingdom to be with her and they married in 1946. He soon became a regular performer at London's Old Vic theatre and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (now called the Royal Shakespeare Theatre) in Stratford-upon-Avon, despite the difficulties posed by his glass eye and Australian accent. In 1949, he played Forester in Love's Labours Lost at the Old Vic. His most notable Shakespearean role was as Iago to Anthony Quayle's Othello in 1952. On the West End in London, McKern originated the role of the Common Man for Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons in 1960, but for the show's Broadway production, he was shifted to the role of Thomas Cromwell, the prosecutor of Sir Thomas More, which he would reprise in the film version. He also memorably played Subtle in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist in 1962.

Film

McKern's film debut came in 1952's Murder in the Cathedral. His other notable film appearances included the Beatles film Help! (1965), the Academy Award-winning adaptation of A Man for All Seasons (1966), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), Ryan's Daughter (1970), The Omen (1976), and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). He was given the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Travelling North (1987). In Monsignor Quixote (1989), he co-starred as Sancho Zancas with Alec Guinness as Father Quixote. McKern's final acting appearances came in the film Molokai: The Story of Father Damien (1999) and on stage in 2000.

TV

One of McKern's earliest television roles was in the black and white classic The Adventures of Robin Hood. McKern was one of several Number Twos in the 1960s cult classic television series The Prisoner. Along with Colin Gordon, he was one of only two actors to play Number Two more than once. He first played the character in "The Chimes of Big Ben" and later reprised his role in the final two episodes of the series, "Once Upon a Time" and "Fall Out". Filming "Once Upon a Time" was a particularly intense experience for McKern and according to The Prisoner: The Official Companion to the Classic TV Series by Robert Fairclough, the strain of filming this episode caused McKern to suffer either a nervous breakdown or a heart attack (accounts differ), forcing production to stop for a time.

Rumpole

In 1975, he made his first appearance as his most famous character, Horace Rumpole, whom he played in Rumpole of the Bailey in forty-four episodes for seven series on television until 1992. John Mortimer, the writer and creator of the show, created the part with Alistair Sim in mind, but revised his opinion after seeing McKern in the part. Mortimer was to say "He not only played the character Rumpole, he added to it, brightened it and brought it fully to life."^[3] McKern enjoyed the role but had shown concern regarding the fame and how much his life was becoming intertwined with Rumpole's. "McKern was often unhappy, decrying his television fame as an 'insatiable monster'. He stressed that his Peer Gynt was a greater performance and lamented: 'If I get an obit in any paper, they will say, '. . . of course, known to millions as Rumpole'."^[4] In the later series, his daughter Abigail McKern joined the cast as Liz Probert.

Commercials

In 1987, the investment firm Smith Barney chose McKern to succeed John Houseman as its spokesman. In addition to the change in spokesman, Smith Barney's corporate advertising department decided to tweak the format of the new commercials, the first of which aired in September 1987.^[5] However, the public did not like the new commercials nearly as much as they did the famous Houseman ones, and in 1989, Smith Barney switched to a campaign featuring the voice of American actor George C. Scott.

In the last decade of his life, McKern starred in a series of commercials for Lloyds Bank, widely shown on British television, in which he portrayed a character very like Rumpole.

Personal life

McKern told his daughter Abigail that he suffered from stage fright, which became more difficult to cope with as he grew older. He had also worried that his stout frame would not appeal to audiences. Suffering from diabetes and other health problems, he was moved to a nursing home near Bath, Somerset in 2002. He died there a few weeks later at the age of 82. McKern was survived by his wife Jane, daughters Abigail and Harriet, and a grandchild.

McKern was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1983 for his services to the performing arts.

Acting roles

• Horace Rumpole in the TV series Rumpole of the Bailey
• Cyril in the film A Foreign Field (1993)
• "The Duchess" in a 1966 production of Alice In Wonderland
• One of the versions of Number Two in the TV series The Prisoner. He played the character in "The Chimes of Big Ben", "Once Upon A Time" and "Fall Out".
• Harry Bundage in Candleshoe
• Companion/Voice of Gwent in Space 1999 episode The Infernal Machine
• Ryan in the film Ryan's Daughter
• Thomas Cromwell in the film, A Man for All Seasons (1966) (he had played both Cromwell and the Common Man in the play's stage version)
• High Priest Clang in the Beatles' movie Help!
• A newspaper reporter in the British doomsday film, The Day the Earth Caught Fire. In this film, his character had a line of dialogue referring to his (real-life) glass eye.
• Paddy Button, the old sailor stranded with two children on a lush tropical island in the 1980 remake of The Blue Lagoon
• The Leader of the Opposition in The Mouse that Roared
• Imperius, the reclusive priest in the 1985 movie Ladyhawke
• Several roles in the late 1950s television version of The Adventures of Robin Hood (which starred Richard Greene as Robin)
• Basil Zaharoff in the 1983 television series Reilly, Ace of Spies
• Professor Moriarty in Gene Wilder's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother
• Jurist in the British film "A Tale of Two Cities" (1958)
• McEvoy in Web of Evidence (1959)
• Police Inspector McGill in the 1956 film X the Unknown
• Cardinal Leone in the 1968 film The Shoes of the Fisherman.
• Gloucester in the 1984 TV movie King Lear, opposite Laurence Olivier as King Lear
• Carl Bugenhagen in Richard Donner's The Omen
• Herod the Great in the 1978 TV-film The Nativity

References

External links

• Leo McKern at the Internet Movie Database
• BBC.co.uk: "Rumpole star McKern dies"
• BBC -- Obituary: Leo McKern