 |
|
|
|||
|
News
|
|||
|
News
|
Dateline: 14th January, 2009
Patrick McGoohan (1928 - 2009) Actor Patrick McGoohan died yesterday, 13th January, after a short illness. He was born in Queen's, New York, but his parents returned to Ireland - to Mullaghmore, County Leitrim - not long afterwards and then seven years later they moved to Sheffield. On the outbreak of the second world war he was evacuated to Loughborough. After leaving school at 16, he returned to Sheffield and worked in a number of jobs, including as a bank clerk and a lorry driver, and then became stage manager at Sheffield Rep. He moved into acting and also got married: he and Joan Drummond, an actress, were actually married between a matinee and evening performance of The Taming of the Shrew in May 1951. In 1955 he appeared in Orson Welles' play Moby Dick Rehearsed alongside Gordon Jackson, Chrostopher Lee, Joan Plowright and Kenneth Williams, alongside Welles himself, and in 1956 in a production of Philip King's Serious Charge (later made into a film starring Anthony Quayle and Andrew Ray). He was signed by the Rank Organisation but was unhappy with the parts and the kind of films he had to do and the contract was dissolved, after which he returned to the stage to appear in Brand. In 1959 he won a Bafta for best television actor for his role in The Greatest Man In The World, a one-off drama in ITV's Armchair Theatre series. From 1960 to 1962 and then later from 1964 to 1968 he played the first TV roile for which he became famous, John Drake in Danger Man. When he decided to stop doing the series, Lew Grade asked him if he would do something else and McGooham offered the idea of the series which made him a cult star, The Prisoner, in which he appeared and for which he wrote or directed a number of episodes under pseudonyms. As writer he was "Paddy Fitz" and as director "Joseph Serf". He was also producer for the series. There were seventeen episodes which ran from 1st October, 1967, to 4th February, 1968. After the success of The Prisoner, he went on to appear in films such as Ice Station Zebra and Sliver Streak, but his work in TV still continued and he not only appeared in Columbo (for which he won two Emmys) but also directed five episodes and wrote and produced two. More recently he played Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart. In 2000 he voiced his Prisoner role in an episode of The Simpsons and his last role, in 2002, was also voicing an animated character, this time in the film Treasure Planet.
Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
|
||
|
|
