Jerry Stovin; Actor (great obit)
Hyfler/Rosner
Performer from Regina made an early impression in British
film and television but was so dogged by depression that he
became a devotee of a yogi and, along the way, a friend of
the Beatles
By JOHN CHAPUT
Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Special to The Globe and Mail
REGINA -- Jerry Stovin never wanted to be a celebrity, just
an actor -- and, for a couple of decades, he was. Whether
soldier, actor, potter or clerk, however, his most enduring
trait was his ease of manner around all people, from
neighbours in subsidized housing to his friends the Beatles.
In the 1960s, while Mr. Stovin turned up in memorable movies
such as Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and The War Lover with
Steve McQueen and garnered frequent supporting roles in
British television series such as The Saint, The
Troubleshooters and Emergency Ward 10, his overseas
achievements went largely unnoticed in his native Canada.
"We knew that he must be really special because he lived so
far away, but he always sent things that meant he was
thinking of us," says Sandi Philpot, of Calgary, one of Mr.
Stovin's eight nieces and nephews. "I remember receiving a
toy koala bear made of real koala fur, and my sister Gayle
[McNall, of Regina] receiving a rhinestone crown from him.
"He was this eminent person -- and then when he appeared, he
just was a fun uncle. In the '60s, we were doing the twist
in the living room with our Uncle Jerry. Well, our dad
didn't do the twist with us! So he was very cool and, when
he came here, it was always very special.
"When I visited him in London in 1966, we ended up at the
Astor estate through a connection he knew. We swam in the
pool where that whole Profumo affair had taken place five
years earlier. It meant nothing to him; he just wanted to go
for a swim and that was a great pool."
Then came the day in 1968 when Gayle was perusing the latest
periodicals in the library at Sheldon-Williams Collegiate in
Regina. Leafing through Life magazine, she chanced on a
photo of a group of people with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at
his transcendental meditation ashram in Rishikesh, India.
There were the Beatles, Donovan, Mia Farrow and . . . Uncle
Jerry?
"We didn't know anything about it," Mrs. Philpot says. "Even
from there, he was the same Uncle Jerry. He wasn't: 'I know
the Beatles.' He never talked about what he did with them.
He went there for the meditation."
Born in Unity, Sask., and raised in Regina, Mr. Stovin had
an older brother (Bill), a fraternal twin brother (Bob) and
a younger brother (Jim). Their father, Horace, was a
pharmacist who later became owner of several Saskatchewan
radio stations; their mother, Beatrice, was a
college-educated home economist.
Jerry would say that the best investment his father made on
his behalf was for a typing course that he took in addition
to his regular education. Thanks to that, he was able to
obtain clerical work with the Regina Police Service before
enlisting in the Canadian Army in 1942. Inquisitive about
religious and spiritual matters, he volunteered for the
armed forces only as a non-combatant and served as a clerk
in England, receiving his honourable discharge with the rank
of lance corporal in 1946.
While in England, Mr. Stovin's artistic side was drawn to
the theatre. He tried writing a play but, as would become
his habit, he was his own harshest critic.
"Though I call it a comedy, it is astonishingly devoid of
humour," he wrote in a Jan. 4, 1945, letter to his mother.
"I let George Telfer read it. George is very frank. Suddenly
he guffawed. I overturned three bunks getting down to his
end of the hut. It turned out to be a typographical error."
On returning home, Mr. Stovin worked at CJOR Radio in
Orillia, Ont., in 1946 and 1947, then spent four years
studying drama at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. His
first professional experience was from 1951 to 1953 in the
repertory company of the Theatre Under the Stars in
Vancouver. Steady work and a variety of roles seemed to
present a promising beginning for his career, but Mr. Stovin
was bedevilled by depression -- which probably would be
treated today with routine medication.
"Jerry suffered intensely," says Bill Stovin, now a resident
of Saskatoon. "After he'd graduated from Carnegie, our
father asked me to take Jerry to Vancouver because Jerry was
really depressed. I took him to a psychiatrist and Jerry was
given shock treatments -- a barbaric practice -- that he
said wiped out all of his memory.
"It's funny what you remember, though, because when Jerry
was on his deathbed I was reminiscing about moving into our
new house on College Avenue in Regina when we were kids. I
mentioned how everyone rushed into the hallway to look at
the dial telephone and Jerry said, 'Not me, I remember
rushing upstairs to the flush toilet!' "
Gifted with charm, manners, good looks and dancing skills
developed in his teens as an Arthur Murray instructor -- his
smoothness is evident when he leads Shelley Winters around
the dance floor in a scene from Lolita -- insecurity about
his career, his personal life (he never married) and the
breakup of his parents' marriage hounded Mr. Stovin. He left
Vancouver to spend a year with his mother in Toronto, then
left for England, where he figured the prospects for a young
actor were better than in Canada.
After a decade of regular stage and screen work, Mr. Stovin
found himself typecast as an American and parts hard to come
by. He gradually faded from view, making his last notable TV
appearance in 1974 on The Pallisers and his final movie bit
in 1976 as a presidential aide in The Pink Panther Strikes
Again. Intent on a new career path, he made a brief and
unhappy foray into public relations before settling into an
administrative role with the London architectural firm of
Levitt Bernstein. Director David Levitt kept Mr. Stovin
employed for more than 20 years, "not for his computer
skills, although they were impressive, but more because he
set an example of peace and camaraderie among our staff.
They got along better and were more productive."
Mr. Stovin practised meditation daily and became a devotee
of the avatar Meher Baba. He worked tirelessly as a
volunteer for the Henry George Institute that advocates the
theories based on land-value tax espoused by the
19th-century American economist. He was also active in local
London causes to improve bus service and the quality of the
subsidized housing in his Camden borough neighbourhood of
Maiden Lane. (To protest against the non-collection of
household refuse, he organized a rally in which the
highlight was the dumping of rubbish on the town hall
steps.) He revelled in his new artistic outlet of pottery,
at which he produced beautiful work but declined to become
professional.
"Pottery was much calmer for him," says Bob Stovin, a
resident of Calgary. "He would enjoy it more. It didn't have
the hassle of theatre life and wasn't as frustrating to
him."
One day late in his life, while exhibiting his raku pots at
a London gallery, Mr. Stovin recognized an acquaintance from
his past. He asked the man if he remembered their meeting,
and Paul McCartney did, indeed, recall their time at
Rishikesh.
"You were becoming a much-acclaimed actor, and all our wives
and girlfriends seemed to like you better than any of us,"
Mr. McCartney said. (Mrs. Philpot found a painting in Mr.
Stovin's home signed, "Happy Meditation, Cynthia Lennon" --
a souvenir from John Lennon's first wife.) Further in the
conversation, Mr. Stovin discovered that Mr. McCartney had
named his infant daughter Beatrice, a name common to the
ex-Beatle's mother-in-law and the ex-actor's mother.
Finally, at 81, Jerry Stovin dabbled in a bit of celebrity
indulgence. He embellished the story of the meeting to make
it sound like Paul McCartney had named his daughter, at Mr.
Stovin's request, after Beatrice Stovin.
Gerald Riddell Stovin
was born on Oct. 11, 1922,
in Unity, Sask. He died of cancer on Sept. 10, 2005, in
Calgary.
He was 82. He is survived by brothers Bill and Bob.
