Patrick Magee (actor)

Patrick Magee
Patrick Magee (on left) and William Campbell in Dementia 13 (1963)
Born	Patrick George McGee (1922-03-31)31 March 1922[1] Armagh, County Armagh, Northern Ireland
Died	14 August 1982(1982-08-14) (aged 60) Fulham, London, England
Education	St Patrick's Grammar School, Armagh
Occupation	Actor and director
Years active	1959–1982
Spouse(s)	Belle Sherry ​ (m. 1958)​
Children	2

Patrick George McGee (31 March 1922 – 14 August 1982), known professionally as Patrick Magee, was a Northern Irish actor and director of stage and screen, with a very distinctive voice. He was known for his collaborations with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as well as creating the role of the Marquis de Sade in the original stage and screen productions of Marat/Sade. He also appeared in numerous horror films and in two Stanley Kubrick films, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.^[2]

Early life[]

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 family at 2 Edward Street, Armagh, County Armagh.^[3] The eldest of five children, he was educated at St. Patrick's Grammar School, Armagh.

Stage career[]

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.^[4] 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.^[5] 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."^[6]

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 appeared in Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, and when the play transferred to Broadway he won a Tony Award.^[2] He also appeared in the 1966 RSC production of Staircase opposite Paul Scofield.

Film career[]

Early film roles included Joseph Losey's The Criminal (1960) 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).

Magee also appeared in Young Winston (1972), The Final Programme (1973), Galileo (1975), Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1980), The Monster Club and Chariots of Fire (1981), but was most often seen in horror films. These included 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; and Walerian Borowczyk's Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (1981).

Personal life[]

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

Magee 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 union Equity to boycott South Africa over the country's apartheid legislation.^[7]

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.^[8]

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.^[9][10]

Filmography[]

Film[]

Television[]

• 1973 The Protectors (Chase) as Garder
• Thriller (1975) as Professor Carnaby
• The Flipside of Dominick Hide and Another Flip for Dominick (1979–82) as Caleb Line (final television appearance)

Radio[]

• Monologue first broadcast in 1957 by the BBC.
• Hordes of the Things (radio series) 1980 as The Narrator.

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Patrick Magee (actor).

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