• Genre: Vocal Music
• Active: '60s, '70s
• Instrument: Vocals

Biography

The notion of Richard Harris -- macho, heavy drinking, two-fisted man's man -- as a popular singer would have seemed an absurdity to anyone who knew his work in 1967, ten years into his career. In less than a year from that time, however, Harris would be the most popular actor-singer in the history of popular music, with a gold record to his credit and radio play that rivalled the Beatles.

The son of a miller, Richard Harris was educated at the Sacred Heart Jesuit College, and later studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His stage debut took place in 1956, and he made his first film appearance in 1958 in Alive and Kicking, a British film. He appeared in key supporting roles in big-budget movies like The Guns of Navarone and Mutiny on the Bounty (where he outshone Marlon Brando's Fletcher Christian), but it was his performance in This Sporting Life (1963) propelled him to a major international career. For most of the mid-'60s, Harris was among the most visible of British (or, more properly, Irish) actors in international cinema, alongside the likes of Michael Caine and Sean Connery, although he seldom played starring roles; Cromwell (1970) was such a rarity, but it was A Man Called Horse that same year that turned him into a popular culture icon, and yielded two sequels over the next 13 years.

It was his performance as King Arthur in Warner Bros.' 1967 screen version of Lerner and Loewe's musical Camelot that made people begin to think of Harris as a singer. As directed by Joshua Logan, the movie was monumentally long and sluggish, but Harris proved an electrifying presence and revealed himself as a better actor-singer than Rex Harrison, who had done the role on Broadway and on the original cast album. To a great extent, Harris talked his songs in a manner similar to Harrison, but he also put a lot of an actor's performance into the material, so that one swore it was an attractive singing voice that one was hearing. The soundtrack album on Warner Bros. remained in print for decades, and was more profitable than the movie itself.

A year later, he was approached by his friend, songwriter Jimmy Webb, with a proposed epic-length pop project, and Harris agreed to record it. The recording was eventually placed with Lou Adler's Dunhill label, and the song "MacArthur Park," clocking in at seven-and-a-half minutes, rose to number two on the American charts and shattered AM radio's established prohibition against playing singles of greater than three-and-a-half minutes' length. The accompanying album A Tramp Shining was one of the great pop LPs of the 1960s, a sophisticated and extraordinarily well-produced concept album (which owed a considerable debt to Sgt. Pepper's) to rival any of Sinatra's efforts in that direction.

Harris continued working in movies (although he never did another musical along the lines of Camelot, despite "MacArthur Park's" success), but he also found himself in demand as a recording artist. He did a second album with Webb writing and producing, The Yard Went on Forever, which may have been an even better collection of material (and definitely featured a stronger vocal performance from Harris), even though it didn't sell nearly as well or yield any hits. His subsequent records included My Boy and The Richard Harris Love Album (which pulled some of the best romantic numbers from his previous records), and well into the early '70s, three years after it had been on the charts, Harris was still prevailed upon to perform "MacArthur Park" during his talk-show appearances. The record became so closely associated with Harris that his friend Malachi McCourt was able to satirize it as he performed a mock version on one live show, and it was later parodied on the Canadian satirical revue series SCTV -- in one installment, a Harris impersonator begins a performance of the song on a parody talk-show, and the camera cuts away during the extended instrumental break; the comedy moved on to other subjects and settings, but would cut back every few minutes to "Harris" sitting there waiting for the band to finish the extended break. More recently, Weird Al Yankovic has done an award-winning video, "Jurassic Park," using the lyrics from "MacArthur Park."

In 1970, Harris sang the part of the Doctor in the Lou Adler-produced orchestrated version of Tommy, featuring Roger Daltrey, Rod Stewart, and Ringo Starr; his part was taken over by Peter Sellers for a handful of live benefit performances in London. He also recorded a spoken-word album of his reading of poet Kahil Gibran's The Prophet, which was popular at the time and remains a much sought-after LP (and was also reissued on CD in the mid-'90s).

Harris' acting career remained strong right into the end of the 1970s, including very well received performances in Juggernaut (1974), Robin and Marion (1976), and The Wild Geese (1978), although these were counterbalanced by starring roles in popular junk movies like Orca (1977), sort of the equivalent of Michael Caine's work in movies like The Island and Blame It on Rio, which make a fortune but make everybody in them look more than a little foolish at the time. Harris' health deteriorated during this period, a result of his well-publicized heavy drinking and other fast-lane activities. He withdrew from most public activities during the early '80s, gave up drinking, and spent years recovering his health on a strict dietary regimen -- he also rediscovered religion in the process, and pursued a writing career, publishing poetry and a novel. Harris re-emerged in movies during the early '90s as the star of an acclaimed drama entitled The Field, directed by Jim Sheridan, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Harris was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 2002 and died of that ailment the same year on October 25 at University College Hospital in London. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

My Boy/Slides Buy this CD

MacArthur Park Buy this CD

The Webb Sessions: 1968-1969 Buy this CD

A Tramp Shining Buy this CD

• Born: Oct 01, 1932 in Limerick, Ireland
• Died: Oct 25, 2002
• Occupation: Actor, Writer, Director
• Active: '60s-2000s
• Major Genres: Drama, Adventure
• Career Highlights: Unforgiven, This Sporting Life, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• First Major Screen Credit: The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)

Biography

Though he once declared, "I hate movies. They're a waste of time," Irish actor Richard Harris built a film career that lasted six decades and withstood a long fallow period in the 1970s and '80s. Often as famous for his offscreen exploits as his acting, Harris nevertheless was lauded for charismatic performances ranging from the tough, inarticulate rugby player in This Sporting Life (1963) to the wry bounty hunter in Unforgiven (1992) and the contemplative emperor in Gladiator (2000). After winning over a new generation of fans with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harris passed away in 2002.

Born in Limerick, Ireland, Harris was the fifth of nine children. More interested in sports than art, Harris became a top rugby player in his teens. His sports career, however, ended after he came down with tuberculosis at age 19. Bed-ridden for two years, Harris read voraciously to pass the time. Calling his illness the "luckiest thing that ever happened to me," Harris was inspired by his volumes of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, and Dylan Thomas to pursue a creative profession. Harris left Ireland to study in London, signing up for acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in 1956 after he failed to find good classes in directing; he also joined the more experimental Theatre Workshop. Harris made his professional stage debut in The Quare Fellow in 1956, earning praise from Method guru Lee Strasberg. Spending the next few years on the stage, Harris appeared in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge and became a theater star with his turn as a drunken Dublin student in The Ginger Man (1959). Branching out to the screen, Harris appeared in the British TV movie The Iron Harp (1958), winning a contract with Associated British Pictures Corp. that lead to his feature debut in Alive and Kicking (1959). Playing Irishmen, Harris appeared alongside Hollywood heavyweights James Cagney in the IRA drama Shake Hands With the Devil (1959), Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston in The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), and Robert Mitchum in A Terrible Beauty (1960). After switching accents to play an Australian pilot in the World War II epic The Guns of Navarone (1961), Harris held his own as one of Marlon Brando's mutineers in The Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

Confirming his status as one of the best of the new generation of British rebel actors that included Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, Harris became an international movie star with This Sporting Life. One of the gritty cycle of "kitchen sink" films, This Sporting Life starred Harris as a miner's son-turned-professional rugby player who achieves success on the field at the expense of his personal life. Along with showcasing Harris' physical prowess, his tough, sensitive performance evoked the tragic anguish of Brando at his 1950s peak. After winning the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Harris received his first Oscar nomination. Rather than be pigeonholed, though, Harris collaborated with This Sporting Life director Lindsay Anderson on the stage production The Diary of a Madman and co-starred as Monica Vitti's lover in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1964 study of upper-middle-class malaise, Red Desert. Harris then (appropriately) co-starred as Charlton Heston's nemesis in Sam Peckinpah's butchered-cavalry epic, Major Dundee (1965). Devoting himself full-time to movies by the mid-'60s, Harris appeared with Kirk Douglas in Anthony Mann's World War II yarn The Heroes of Telemark (1965), joined the cast of island epic Hawaii (1966), raised Cain in The Bible (1966), and co-starred with Doris Day as spies caught up in a mod web of intrigue and romance in Caprice (1967). In still another change of pace, Harris tried his hand at musicals and became a dashing King Arthur in the film version of Camelot (1967). He subsequently scored a hit single in 1968 with his version of "MacArthur Park."

Always a fancier of the pubs, Harris descended into alcoholism after his first marriage ended in divorce in 1969. Rebounding professionally from the disappointing biopic Cromwell (1970) and the intermittently engaging The Molly Maguires (1970), Harris scored a box-office hit with the sleeper Western A Man Called Horse (1970). Starring Harris as a British aristocrat captured and then embraced by the Sioux after a then-notably gory initiation, A Man Called Horse found a large audience for its pro-Indian sympathies and macho rituals, spawning two less-popular sequels The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976) and Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983). Returning to his original career goals, Harris stepped behind the camera to direct and write, as well as star as an aging soccer player in, The Hero (1971). As the 1970s went on, however, Harris' well-publicized hell-raising with famous drinking buddies Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton became more entertaining than his movies. Summing up the period as "drifting from one piece of crap to another," Harris funded his offscreen antics with such works as The Deadly Trackers (1973), Ransom (1974), Orca: The Killer Whale (1977), The Ravagers (1979), and The Bloody Avengers (1980). The Wild Geese (1978), at least, featured Burton as Harris' onscreen co-star, while Juggernaut (1974) and The Cassandra Crossing (1976) were mildly engaging disaster thrillers. Plunging to his career low in the early '80s with his appearance as Bo Derek's father in the risible Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981), and experiencing personal lows with his divorce from second wife Ann Turkel and dire warnings about his health, Harris quit drinking and took a sabbatical from movies. He published the novel Honor Bound in 1982.

Still, Harris continued to perform during the 1980s, reprising his role as King Arthur in the touring company of Camelot. After he showed that he still had his serious acting chops in a 1989 production of Pirandello's play Henry IV, Harris recovered his film actor credentials with The Field (1990). Though the film received a limited release, Harris' commanding performance as tenant farmer Bull McCabe earned the actor his second Oscar nomination. Harris was back for good with his lively turn as an IRA gunman in the summer blockbuster Patriot Games (1992) and his self-mythologizing bounty hunter English Bob in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Western Unforgiven. Harris garnered still more positive reviews for his performances opposite Robert Duvall in the amiable character study Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993), and as a South African landowner in the remake of Cry, the Beloved Country (1995). Though his stint with Camelot had made him a fortune and he preferred hanging out at the local pub (imbibing his Guinness in moderation) to going Hollywood, Harris refused to retire as the 1990s went on, appearing in the adaptation of Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997) and To Walk With Lions (1999). Bringing a majestic gravitas to a cameo role, Harris earned Oscar buzz (though unfulfilled) for his Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator. Acquiescing to his granddaughter's wishes, Harris subsequently accepted another blockbuster project and agreed to play Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. After shooting the Potter movies, Harris delivered a final superb performance as a gangster King Lear in My Kingdom (2001).

Though he predicted that he'd recover in time to begin the third Potter movie, Harris passed away from Hodgkin's disease in October 2002. He was survived by his three sons, actors Jared Harris and Jamie Harris, and director Damian Harris. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The Count of Monte Cristo Buy this Movie	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Buy this Movie	The Apocalypse Buy this Movie	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Buy this Movie
Gladiator Buy this Movie	To Walk With Lions Buy this Movie	Grizzly Falls Buy this Movie	Smilla's Sense of Snow Buy this Movie

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