Wednesday, January 14, 2009

R.I.P. Patrick McGoohan


I saw the news at NPR that Patrick McGoohan died yesterday. He was 80. I knew and loved him in The Prisoner, which can be seen online.

obits:

io9 calls him "one of genre television's most innovative voices".
BBC
He died in Los Angeles after a short illness, his film producer son-in-law Cleve Landsberg told Associated Press.

The Guardian

EW:
Number Six's famous cry, "I am not a number, I am a free man!" became both a counterculture catchphrase as well as an anguished plea for freedom.

LATimes
Reason Online
EOnline
CNN
TimesOnline:
He won two Emmy Awards for his work on detective drama Colombo with long-term friend Peter Falk, and appeared in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart as King Edward Longshanks. Fansites across the internet paid tribute to the cult star today.

SFSignal
SFScope
Edward Copeland
The Independent opens with this:
As the star of Danger Man and The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan was the face of British cult television in the 1960s and the highest paid TV actor of his time. Orson Welles once said of McGoohan that he could have been one of the major stars of his generation: he had the looks and the intensity and painted most of the roles he played with a wryness and a satirical edge that made him a compelling actor to watch. Yet this complicated man, highly-strung, unpredictable and irascibly enigmatic, seemingly threw away his career while at the height of his fame and influence and was never again to fully recapture it.


The picture at the top of the post is one I saw at several sites online. None had information on who to credit.

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