 An intense, enigmatic performer, Patrick McGoohan seldom revealed what was
going on beneath the surface of the characters he played, his fleeting sideways
smile never quite reaching the eyes. It was a quality that defined his most
famous roles, the first as an international agent intent on discovering secrets,
the second as a very unwilling captive determined to preserve his own.
Born in New York on 19 March 1928, he was moved just months later to his
parents' farm in Ireland, relocating again to Sheffield seven years later.
Evacuated to Loughborough during WWII, he attended Ratcliffe College, where he
developed an interest in boxing. He left school at 16 and took a series of jobs,
dabbling in amateur dramatics before becoming stage manager at Sheffield
Repertory in 1947; his professional acting career began when he stood in for an
ailing company member at the eleventh hour.
More stage work followed at the Bristol Old Vic and in the West End, and in
1955 he signed a contract with the Rank Organisation - a decision he later
bitterly regretted. This period saw him typically cast as heavies, notably as
the corrupt, bullying Red in the very macho haulage melodrama Hell Drivers (d.
Cy Enfield, 1957). Eventually breaking free of Rank, he enjoyed further
theatrical success as Ibsen's 'Brand' in 1959; a performance he reprised on the
small screen (BBC, tx 11/8/1959).
His first defining television role followed soon after, as NATO
troubleshooter John Drake in Danger Man (ITV, 1960-61: 1964-67). His tough but
cerebral performance won him new admirers when the series was transmitted in the
US as Secret Agent. McGoohan insisted that the character would not typically
carry a gun or seduce women, which marked Danger Man out from its contemporaries
in the 1960s TV spy boom and evidently irritated the series' American backers,
while also explaining why around this time he reportedly turned down offers to
play both James Bond and Simon Templer, aka The Saint. Instead, McGoohan himself
pitched the idea for The Prisoner (ITV, 1967-8) - about a former agent who wakes
to find himself trapped in a mysterious Village - to ITC mogul Lew Grade, who
approved the project based on his faith in McGoohan alone.
The Prisoner was driven by the non-conformist McGoohan's belief in
individualism; and the actor scripted three episodes and directed four, as well
as starring as Number Six, the otherwise nameless protagonist. His weekly
mantra, "I am not a number, I am a free man," was the curtain-raiser to a series
of often surreal adventures which delighted and baffled audience in equal
measure. The series' vision, striking design and sense of playful experiment
chimed with the politics and aesthetics of the emerging counterculture with its
preoccupation with rebellion, personal liberty and the mutability of identity.
Today, The Prisoner retains a loyal, sometimes obsessive fan base and stands
alongside its contemporary The Avengers (ITV, 1961-69) among the most stylish
and iconic television series of the 1960s.
Running parallel to his television career was a continued presence on the big
screen, with successes in Dublin prison drama The Quare Fellow (d. Arthur
Dreifuss, 1962) and period adventure Dr Syn Alias the Scarecrow (d. James
Neilson, 1963), although the Cold War potboiler Ice Station Zebra (d. John
Sturges, 1968) was less well received. Work on the last was completed between
episodes of The Prisoner, and the series' bizarre finale prompted such national
outcry that he decided to decamp to America. He maintained his profile in films
such as The Silver Streak (US, 1976) and Escape from Alcatraz (US, 1978), which
saw him cast once again in villainous mould, while on television he made a
record four appearances as the guest killer in Columbo (US, 1974-98), also
directing several episodes. He was a more ambivalent figure in David
Cronenberg's Scanners (Canada, 1981), which exploited both his cult image and
aura of inscrutable authority.
In the 1990s he returned to British screens to play George Bernard Shaw in The
Best of Friends (d. Alvin Rakoff, 1991), and was a memorable 'Longshanks' - King
Edward I - in Mel Gibson's Braveheart (1995). By the time of his death in 2009
he had long resigned himself to the fact that he would be remembered primarily
for The Prisoner - he even reprised the role for a 2000 episode of The Simpsons (US,
1989-) in which Homer thwarts Six's ultimate escape attempt by stealing his
home-made raft. But he had already built up a formidable body of work prior to
entering the Village, and his obituaries paid tribute to one of the screen's
most original talents.
Richard Hewitt
|
FILM & TV CREDITS
