McKern, Leo

▪ 2003

Reginald McKern 

      Australian-born character actor (b. March 16, 1920, Sydney, Australia—d. July 23, 2002, Bath, Eng.), gained international recognition as the irascible henpecked, claret-swilling, deceptively crafty English barrister Horace P. Rumpole in Rumpole of the Bailey, a series of 44 television dramas written by British barrister-writer John Mortimer that were originally broadcast between 1975 and 1992. McKern, a stout man with a bulbous nose and a glass eye (acquired after an accident when he was a 15-year-old engineering apprentice), was initially discouraged from acting. He moved to England in 1946 and soon joined the Old Vic Theatre in London and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. His distinctive appearance and resonant voice were assets in a tremendous variety of roles, including Iago in Othello, Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Toad in Toad of Toad Hall, the high priest Clang in the Beatles movie Help!, and Number 2 in the TV cult hit The Prisoner. In 1960 McKern played the Common Man in the West End staging of A Man for All Seasons; he was recast as the menacing Thomas Cromwell for the 1966 movie version. His last screen appearance was as Bishop Maigret in Molokai: The Story of Father Damien (1999). McKern's autobiography, Just Resting, was published in 1983, the same year he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.

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