Patrick Magee (actor)

Not to be confused with Patrick Macnee.

Patrick Magee
Magee in Dementia 13 (1963)
Born	Patrick George McGee (1922-03-31)31 March 1922 Armagh, County Armagh, Northern Ireland
Died	14 August 1982(1982-08-14) (aged 60) London, England
Education	St Patrick's Grammar School, Armagh
Occupations	Actor stage director
Years active	1959–1982
Spouse	Belle Sherry ​ (m. 1958)​
Children	2
Awards	Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play 1966 Marat/Sade

Patrick George Magee (né McGee, 31 March 1922 – 14 August 1982) was an Irish actor. He was noted for his collaborations with playwrights Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, sometimes called "Beckett's favourite actor," as well as creating the role of the Marquis de Sade in the original stage and screen productions of Marat/Sade.

Known for his distinctive voice, he also appeared in numerous horror films and in two Stanley Kubrick films – A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975) – and three Joseph Losey films – The Criminal (1960), The Servant (1963) and Galileo (1975). He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1964 to 1970.

Critic Antonia Quirke posthumously described him as "a presence so full of strangeness and charisma and difference and power," while scholar Conor Carville wrote that Magee was an "avant-garde bad-boy" and "very important and unjustly forgotten figure who represents an important aspect of the cultural ferment of the 1960s and 1970s in Britain."

Biography

McGee (he changed the spelling of his surname to Magee when he began performing, most likely to avoid confusion with another actor) was born into a middle-class Catholic family at 2 Edward Street, Armagh, County Armagh. The eldest of five children, he was educated at St. Patrick's Grammar School.

Stage acting

His first stage experience in Ireland was with Anew McMaster's touring company, performing the works of Shakespeare. It was here that he first worked with Pinter. He was then brought to London by Tyrone Guthrie for a series of Irish plays. He met Beckett in 1957 and soon recorded passages from the novel, Molloy, and the short story, From an Abandoned Work, for BBC radio. Impressed by "the cracked quality of Magee's distinctly Irish voice," Beckett requested copies of the tapes and wrote Krapp's Last Tape especially for the actor. First produced at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 28 October 1958, the play starred Magee directed by Donald McWhinnie. A televised version with Magee directed by McWhinnie was later broadcast by BBC2 on 29 November 1972. Beckett's biographer Anthony Cronin wrote that "there was a sense in which, as an actor, he had been waiting for Beckett as Beckett had been waiting for him."

In 1964, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, after Pinter, directing his own play The Birthday Party, specifically requested him for the role of McCann, and stated he was the strongest in the cast. In 1965 he portrayed the Marquis de Sade in Peter Brook's production of Peter Weiss' Marat/Sade, and when the play transferred to Broadway he won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He also appeared in the 1966 RSC production of Staircase opposite Paul Scofield. In 1969, he played Inspector Hawkins in the RSC's original production of Dutch Uncle. His last play with the company was Battle of Shrivings in 1970, at the Lyric Theatre, under the direction of Peter Hall.

In 1970, he played Daniel Webster in Scratch, a Broadway adaptation of The Devil and Daniel Webster by Archibald MacLean.

Film career

Early film roles included Joseph Losey's The Criminal (1960) Dementia 13 (1963) and The Servant (1963), the latter an adaptation scripted by Pinter. He also appeared as Surgeon-Major Reynolds in Zulu (1964), Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), Anzio (1968), and in the film versions of Marat/Sade (1967; as de Sade) and The Birthday Party (1968). He is perhaps best known for his role as the victimised writer Frank Alexander, who tortures Alex DeLarge with Beethoven's music, in Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange (1971). His other role for Kubrick was as Redmond Barry's mentor, the Chevalier de Balibari, in Barry Lyndon (1975). He reprised his role as the Marquis de Sade in the 1966 film adaptation of Marat/Sade, also directed by Peter Brook.

Magee also appeared in King Lear (1971), Young Winston (1972), The Final Programme (1973), Galileo (1975), Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1980) and Chariots of Fire (1981), but was most often seen in horror films. These included the early Francis Ford Coppola outing Dementia 13 (1963), Roger Corman's The Masque of Red Death (1964), and the Boris Karloff vehicle Die, Monster, Die! (1965) for AIP; The Skull (1965), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972), and And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973) for Amicus Productions; Demons of the Mind (1972) for Hammer Film Productions; Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (1981), and Walerian Borowczyk's Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (1981), which proved his final film role.

Personal life

Magee married Belle Sherry, also a native of County Armagh, in 1958. The couple had two children, twins Mark and Caroline (b. February 1961), and remained together until Magee's death.

He was known as something of a "hellraiser." He often struggled with bouts of alcoholism and gambling that adversely affected his finances, and his professional relationships.

He was a staunch Irish republican, and an active campaigner for left-wing social and political causes. In 1976, he played an instrumental role in persuading his trade union Equity to boycott South Africa over the country's apartheid laws.

Death

A heavy drinker, Magee died from a heart attack at his flat in Fulham, southwest London, on 14 August 1982, at the age of 60, according to obituaries in The Glasgow Herald and The New York Times. His final role was in an episode of Play for Today which aired on 14 December 1982, three months after his death.

Legacy

Conor Carville, of the University of Reading, wrote of Magee:

"[Magee] is a very important and unjustly forgotten figure who represents an important aspect of the cultural ferment of the 1960s and 1970s in Britain. The persona he had off-stage was that of a hell raiser, and this blended into the roles he was cast in. He was at the forefront of theatrical and cinematic experiment of the time, and yet, as a BBC stalwart on both radio and TV and a West End actor, he was also ensconced in the mainstream. As well as this, his immersion in the new British horror genre meant he moved in underground circles. My research has revealed an undercurrent of desperation in his career, as he took on such roles for the income they provided. It is this multifaced character that makes Magee a lightning rod for the tensions and contradictions of his era."

On 29 July 2017, actor Stephen Rea, who appeared alongside Patrick Magee in a production of Samuel Beckett's play Endgame, unveiled a blue plaque commemorating Magee's birthplace at 2 Edward Street, Armagh.

In a retrospective written on the actor's 100th birthday in 2022 on Senses of Cinema, Mark Lager particularly praised Patrick Magee as the character Krapp in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and as the character McCann in Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party as the best performances of his career, while also considering his character of the blind patient George Carter in Freddie Francis's Tales from the Crypt as his most memorable of many performances in horror films.

Partial stage credits

Year	Title	Role	Director	Original venue	Notes	Ref.
1948	Mountain Post	Maton	R.H. MacCandless	Ulster Group Theatre, Belfast
1949	Bannister's Cafe	Walter Bannister	Himself		Also director
1950	The Square Peg	Reverend Alexander McCrea	Himself
1951	The Passing Day	Hind	Tyrone Guthrie	Ambassadors Theatre, London	Credited as 'Pat Magee'
1955-56	The Queen and the Rebels	Peasant	Frank Hauser	Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
1956	The Shadow of a Gunman	Adolphus Gregson	John Gibson	New Lindsey Theatre Club, London
1958	Krapp's Last Tape	Krapp	Donald McWhinnie	Royal Court Theatre, London
1959	The Buskers	Max	Toby Robertson	Arts Theatre, London
1959-60	Rosmersholm		George Devine	Royal Court Theatre, London
1961	Progress to the Park	Mr. Laughlin	Ted Kotcheff	Grand Theatre, Blackpool
	A Whistle in the Dark	Michael Carney Sr.	Edward Burnham	Theatre Royal Stratford East, London	For Theatre Workshop
1964	The Birthday Party	McCann	Harold Pinter	Aldwych Theatre, London	For Royal Shakespeare Company
	Afore Night Come	Roche	Clifford Williams
	Endgame	Hamm	Donald McWhinnie
	Marat/Sade	Marquis de Sade	Peter Brook
1965	Mr Puntila and his Man Matti	Matti Altonen	Michel Saint-Denis
	Hamlet	Ghost of Old Denmark	Peter Hall	Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
	Marat/Sade	Marquis de Sade	Peter Brook	Aldwych Theatre, London
1965-66				Martin Beck Theatre, New York City	Won Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play
1966	The Meteor	Wolfgang Schwitter	Clifford Williams	Aldwych Theatre, London	For Royal Shakespeare Company
	Staircase	Harry Leeds	Peter Hall	Theatre Royal, Brighton
				Aldwych Theatre, London
1966-67	Marat/Sade	Marquis de Sade	Donald Driver	Majestic Theatre, Broadway
1967	Keep It in the Family	Frank Brady	Allan Davis	Plymouth Theatre, Broadway
1969	Dutch Uncle	Inspector Hawkins	Peter Hall	Theatre Royal, Brighton	For Royal Shakespeare Company
				Aldwych Theatre, London
1970	Battle of Shrivings	Mark		Lyric Theatre, London
1971	Scratch	Daniel Webster	Peter Hunt	St. James Theatre, Broadway
1974	The Master Builder	Halvard Solness	Himself	Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead	Also director
1975-76	The White Devil	Monticelso	Michael Lindsay-Hogg	The Old Vic, London
1976	That Time		Donald McWhinnie	Royal Court Theatre, London
1980	Doctor Faustus	Mephistopheles	Christopher Fettes	Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London
				Fortune Theatre, London

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1960	The Criminal	Barrows	aka Concrete Jungle
1961	Rag Doll	Flynn	aka Young, Willing and Eager
	Never Back Losers	Ben Black
1962	The Boys	Mr Lee
	A Prize of Arms	RSM Hicks
1963	Ricochet	Inspector Cummins
	The Young Racers	Sir William Dragonet
	The Very Edge	Simmonds
	The Servant	Bishop
	Dementia 13	Justin Caleb
	Operacija Ticijan	Dr. Morisijus	aka Operation Titian
1964	Zulu	Surgeon James Henry Reynolds
	Séance on a Wet Afternoon	Walsh
	The Masque of the Red Death	Alfredo
1965	The Skull	Police Surgeon
	Die, Monster, Die!	Dr Henderson	Alternative title: Monster of Terror
	Portrait in Terror	Mauricio Zaroni
1967	Marat/Sade	Marquis de Sade
1968	Anzio	General Starkey
	Decline and Fall... of a Birdwatcher	Maniac
	The Birthday Party	Shamus McCann
1969	Hard Contract	Alexi
1970	Cromwell	Hugh Peters
	You Can't Win 'Em All	The General – Atatürk
1971	King Lear	Cornwall
	The Trojan Women	Menelaus
	A Clockwork Orange	Mr Alexander
1972	Tales from the Crypt	George Carter	(segment 5 "Blind Alleys")
	The Fiend	Minister	aka Beware My Brethren
	Asylum	Dr Rutherford
	Young Winston	General Bindon Blood
	Pope Joan	Elder monk
	Demons of the Mind	Falkenberg
1973	And Now the Screaming Starts!	Dr Whittle
	Lady Ice	Paul Booth
	The Final Programme	Dr Baxter	aka The Last Days of Man on Earth
1974	Luther	Hans
	Simona	Le père
1975	Galileo	Cardinal Bellarmin
	Barry Lyndon	The Chevalier du Balibari
1977	Telefon	General Strelsky
1979	The Brontë Sisters	Reverend Bronte
1980	Rough Cut	Ernst Mueller
	The Sleep of Death	Marquis
	Hawk the Slayer	Priest
	Sir Henry at Rawlinson End	Reverend Slodden
1981	Chariots of Fire	Lord Cadogan
	The Monster Club	Innkeeper – Luna's Father
	The Black Cat	Professor Robert Miles
	Blood of Dr. Jekyll	General William Danvers Carew	aka The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne

Television

• 1965 Doctor Finlay's Casebook (episode: Beware of the Dog)
• 1973 The Protectors (Chase) as Garder
• 1974 King Lear as King Lear for six-part Thames Television series.
• Thriller (1975) as Professor Carnaby
• The Flipside of Dominick Hide and Another Flip for Dominick (1979–82) as Caleb Line (final television appearance)
• Who Pays The Ferryman episode 6, the Well (1977) as Duncan Neve

Radio

• From an Abandoned Work (radio play by Samuel Beckett) Monologue first broadcast in 1957 by the BBC.
• Hordes of the Things (radio series) 1980 as The Narrator.

External links

• Patrick Magee at the Internet Broadway Database
• Patrick Magee at IMDb
• Patrick Magee at the BFI's Screenonline
• Patrick Magee BFI