I am not a number
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanI see that Patrick McGoohan has died in Los Angeles, aged 80.
The actor, who was born in New York and raised in England and Ireland, came to screen prominence in TV series Danger Man, in which he played a secret service agent.
He was later considered for the role of James Bond for the movie Dr No.
But McGoohan was chiefly associated with cult ITV drama The Prisoner, writing some of the episodes himself under a different name.
The actor, who was born in New York and raised in England and Ireland, came to screen prominence in TV series Danger Man, in which he played a secret service agent.
He was later considered for the role of James Bond for the movie Dr No.
But McGoohan was chiefly associated with cult ITV drama The Prisoner, writing some of the episodes himself under a different name.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-14 06:36 pm (UTC)I believe he was to have a cameo in the new film.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-14 07:52 pm (UTC)Like everyone else, I am only moved to post on death when the lost figure was desperately and personally important - Kubrick and Thompson were the last two I think, although I was so very maudlin when Cash died.
However, McGoohan was responsible for the single greatest TV series of all time (as writer, producer, actor and heart) which had, and continues to have, an enormous effect on me. It is now often hideously of its time, often pretentious and/or incomprehensible... and yet rises and falls like mercury in every episode. The most amazing final episode of all time, save perhaps for Twin Peaks. And the character of The Prisoner (I can't call him Six, or even One - respect the struggle of the individual) is typically English, weird, mock-and-truly heroic, masochistic in the finest possible way, and at the very core a hopeful, warm figure who is constantly disappointed.
Missed sorely. I'm glad he was never Bond. I'm glad he never appeared in any remake. I'm glad he's dead before some fucking horrible remake is made. I'm glad he pushed his son's lover out of window in an otherwise terrible movie, that he took LSD and never disappeared up his own lack of talent, that he loved Portmerion like I do, that he was always prepared to shun limelight and turn it into moonshine. I'm glad he liked blazers and refused to comment. I'm glad that he preferred mystery to the obvious.
Individual freedom, however unattractive, rules.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-15 06:14 am (UTC)When I'm all old & wrinkly I have vowed to own only two sets of clothes: A Cambridge don tweed suit and a Prisoner outfit.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-15 02:52 pm (UTC)