Richard Harris has died
Steve Newport
has died at a London hospital, a family spokesman said Friday. Harris
was ill with cancer. He had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and
was undergoing chemotherapy.
The 72 year old Irish actor was hospitalized in August after complaining
of a severe chest infection. It was then that doctors discovered the
Hodgkin's, a cancer which attacks the body's lymph nodes. Harris'
condition was serious enough to warrant the filmmakers of "Harry Potter
and the Chamber of Secrets," to use a double to complete some of the
actor's final scenes.
A tall, sturdy figure with a hellraiser's reputation and a lived-in
face, and once described as looking like "five miles of bad country
road," Harris was never cut out to join contemporaries as a smooth
matinee idol. The critic Clive Barnes called him one of a new breed of
British actors, who are "rougher, tougher, fiercer, angrier and more
passionately articulate than their well-groomed predecessors ... roaring
boys, sometimes with highly colored private lives and lurid public
images."
He caught the eye of critic Kenneth Tynan who once bracketed him with
Albert Finney and Peter O'Toole as one of the three best young actors on
the British stage. Inspired by the writings of the Russian director
Konstantin Stanislavsky, the young Harris set his heart on directing,
but acting soon claimed him and he enjoyed his first stage success with
Joan Littlewood's pioneering Theatre Workshop.
Born Oct. 1, 1930, in Limerick, southern Ireland, Harris suffered a bout
of tuberculosis in adolescence, which friends say fostered the brooding,
introspective quality of his acting. Harris moved to London to study,
but when he couldn't find a suitable directing course, he joined an
acting course at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, in 1956.
While still a student, he hired the tiny "off-West End" Irving Theatre
and directed his own production of Clifford Odets' "Winter Journey (The
Country Girl). The critics approved, but the production used up all his
savings, and he was forced to sleep in a coal cellar for six weeks.
Harris left LAMDA in the summer of 1956 to join the Theatre Workshop,
which helped lead the advance toward realism and experiment in British
theater.
His first professional appearance was on July 24, 1956, as Mickser in
the Littlewood production of Brendan Behan's "The Quare Fellow" at the
Theatre Royal, Stratford. It was a small part, but Lee Strasburg,
director of the New York Actors Studio, said it had the "sharpest
impact" of any performance he had seen by an actor in Britain.
A variety of roles followed: Louis in Arthur Miller's "A View From the
Bridge" and Paulino in Pirandello's "Man, Beast and Virtue." Harris also
toured Russia and Eastern Europe with a Theatre Workshop production of
Shakespeare's "Macbeth."
Harris' first lead role in London's West End came when he opened as
Sebastian Dangerfield in J. P. Donleavy's 'The Ginger Man' at the
Fortune Theatre, a study of the life of a drunken Dublin student.
His role as violent, inarticulate Yorkshire miner Frank Machin in
Lindsay Anderson's "This Sporting Life" — his first film lead — took
London and New York by storm and established him as an actor of the
first rank. New York Post critic Archer Winsten called it "a great,
indelibly memorable performance," and William Peper in the New York
World-Telegram wrote that Harris "reminds one fleetingly of Marlon
Brando. He also has his own kind of raging power and startling
sensitivity."
Typically, Harris turned his back on the plaudits to produce a
financially unrewarding but artistically acclaimed presentation of "The
Diary of a Madman," which he and Lindsay Anderson adapted from Gogol's
short story about a Russian clerk's decline into insanity. Barnes, the
critic, described Harris' performance as the clerk, Aksenti Ivanovitch,
as a "tour de force" that "struck me as one of the greatest things I
have ever seen in the theater."
One of Harris's more dubious achievements was his hit recording of the
legendarily awful song "MacArthur Park" in 1968.
He earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for 1990's "The Field" and
followed with a key supporting role in Clint Eastwood's 1992 western
"Unforgiven." He played Marcus Aurelius in "Gladiator".
After his funeral, his family will take the ashes back to his home in
the Bahamas. Memorial services are to be staged later in London and
Dublin.
Bushwhacker
Steve Newport wrote:
>
> One of Harris's more dubious achievements was his hit recording of the
> legendarily awful song "MacArthur Park" in 1968.
>
I'll probably be sorry for admitting this, but this song is one of my
guilty pleasures (maybe it has to do with chemical enhancement)...
"Someone left a cake out in the rain.
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it..."
Classic. Thank you, Richard Harris and Jim Webb.
Steve Newport
much prefer Howard Keel's rendition. (He approaches it rather like
CAROUSEL's "Soliloquy.")
Re: Richard Harris has died
Group: rec.arts.theatre.musicals Date: Sun, Oct 27, 2002, 6:51am (EST+5)
From: ro...@thetop.org (Bushwhacker)
<<< his hit recording of the legendarily awful song "MacArthur Park" in
1968>>>
-----------------
I'll probably be sorry for admitting this, but this song is one of my
guilty pleasures (maybe it has to do with chemical enhancement)...
=====================================
Stephen Ross (Roberts) Newport
" A swallow in Tasmania is sitting on her eggs, and suddenly those eggs
have wings, and eyes, and beaks, and legs......."
Larry Rekow
>I'll probably be sorry for admitting this, but this song is one of my
>guilty pleasures (maybe it has to do with chemical enhancement)...
>
>"Someone left a cake out in the rain.
> I don't think that I can take it
> 'cause it took so long to bake it..."
>
>Classic. Thank you, Richard Harris and Jim Webb.
I'm not at all ashamed to admit that one of their follow-up songs:
"The Yard Went On Forever" is on my all-time favorite list. It's sort
of a requiem for ordinary people from all eras, from Pompeii to Kansas
City, who've met their doom through natural disasters. It's a
concept song that's all at once simple, pompous, chaotic, and
wonderful.
It's from their album of the same name and it's well worth it if you
can find it.
Larry Rekow
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
Bushwhacker
IIRC, Harris did "MacArthur Park" on Johnny Carson, then said he joked
with Webb that, if any of the songs on the album made the top ten, he'd
buy Webb a Rolls. He said he did.
Theat...@webtv.net
performance! So different from Richard Burton in New York & much more
enjoyable too.Richard Harris will definately be missed.
Steve Newport
King born to greatness, I play him as a King who had greatness thrust
upon him."
Re: Richard Harris has died
Theat...@webtv.net
performance! So different from Richard Burton in New York & much more
Steve Newport
Lindsay Anderson's "This Sporting Life" — his first film lead — took
London and New York by storm and established him as an actor of the
first rank.
He received his first Oscar nomination for this I believe. Okay td, were
Redgrave and Hemmings also Oscar nominated before CAMELOT?