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World of Westfahl |
Encyclopedia Introduction |
All Entries |
Acknowledgements
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(1922– ). British actor.
Acted on television: Macbeth (tv
movie) (George More O'Farrell 1949); "Night of April 14,"
episode of One Step Beyond (1959); "Judgment
Night" (1959), episode of The
Twilight Zone; "Arthur," "The Crystal Trench" (1959),
episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents;
"The Tintype" (1960), episode of The
Unforeseen; The Avengers (tv series) (1961-1969); "Logoda's
Heads," episode of Night Gallery
(1971); Matt Helm (tv movie) (Buzz Kulik 1975);
Sherlock Holmes in New York (tv movie) (Boris SAGAL 1976); The New Avengers (tv series) (1976-1977);
Dead of Night (tv
movie) (Dan CURTIS 1977); "Assault on
the Tower" (1978), episode of The Hardy
Boys Mysteries; "War of the Gods" (1978) (two-part episode),
"Take the Celestra" (1979) (voice, uncredited), episodes of Battlestar Galactica; The
Billion Dollar Threat (tv movie) (Barry Shear
1979); The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair
(tv movie) (Ray Austin 1983); Automan (tv
movie) (Lee Katzin 1983); "Survival of the Fittest"
(1988), episode of Alfred Hitchcock
Presents; "Epiphany" (1989), episode of War of the Worlds;
Around the World in Eighty Days (tv miniseries) (1989); Scrooge:
A Christmas Carol (host of tv presentation of
colorized version of Scrooge [1951])
(David McKenzie 1989); "Usher II" (1990), episode of Ray Bradbury Theater; Sherlock
Holmes and the Leading Lady (tv movie) (Peter Sasdy 1992); The
Hound of London (tv movie) (Peter Reynolds-Long
1993); "Dragonswing" (1993), "Dragonswing
II" (1994), episodes of Kung Fu: The
Legend Continues; "NightMan," "Chrome" (1997),
"Do You Believe in Magic," "Bad to the Bone," "Devil in Disguise" (1998),
episodes of NightMan.
Macnee began working in Great
Britain, with assignments including a brief appearance as young Jacob Marley in
Scrooge, but he wasn't satisfied with
the roles he was getting, and so he traveled to that magical land where a
responsible actor with a British accent will never be underemployed, the United
States of America, becoming so fond of the place that he actually became an
American citizen. An ironic demonstration of his gift for placidity came in his
episode of One Step Beyond, "Night of
April 14th," in which he cheerfully informs his wife, who is terrified of
drowning, that he has just bought them tickets for the maiden voyage of the
Titanic. He showed a little more passion
when he was observed actually on board a sinking ship in an episode of
The Twilight Zone, "Judgment Night."
Still, guest appearances on American television shows were
clearly not doing much for his career, and so he returned to his homeland to join
a new series, The Avengers, which
finally made him a star. Initially a supporting character, Macnee
soon became its star, and initially a serious crime drama,
the series gradually adjusted itself to Macnee's
personality to become a stylish and serenely executed confection. As episodes
increasingly resembled high-tech spy thrillers that qualify as science fiction,
The Avengers also became—as most
aggressively argued by John Grant in The
Encyclopedia of Fantasy—a genuine fantasy, featuring incomplete sets and
other devices clearly signaling that the depicted events were not quite real.
All this may be true, but viewers of a television series do occasionally want
to care about what's going on, and while Macnee's
most memorable co-star, Diana RIGG, could smoothly adjust to the silly
shenanigans, she also had the ability, at some point in an episode, to look a distressed
person in the eye and communicate, by means of her words and facial expression,
that she was genuinely concerned about the person's plight and would earnestly
strive to make everything all right. In contrast, Macnee
might furrow his brow now and then, but we always knew that he thought it was
all a game. Thus, for all Macnee's undeniable charm,
it was Rigg's sense of conviction that made The Avengers an international success,
and the show predictably fell apart after her departure. Macnee
is undoubtedly likeable and memorable in his own way, there are reasons other
than citizenship issues why this volume speaks of Dame Diana Rigg and does not speak of Sir Patrick Macnee.
During the 1970s, Macnee participated
in a brief revival of his greatest triumph, The
New Avengers, with a new young male lead unwisely brought in to do some of
the heavy lifting. He also drifted into the bad company of Glen A. LARSON, who
proceeded to misuse him in three of his most execrable series,
Battlestar Galactica, Automan, and NightMan. Still,
if you wanted to have a bit of fun on screen, Macnee
was definitely the man you wanted. When the producers of the pilot for a
projected revival of The Man from
U.N.C.L.E. recruited Macnee to replace the stolid
Leo G. CARROLL as the head of its secret spy organization, that was one sign
(another being the idiotic cameo appearance of George Lazenby
as James Bond) that the new series was going to abandon the earnestness of the
original and go for high camp instead. Macnee could
bring an elegant panache to science fiction and horror films that didn't take
themselves too seriously, such as A View
to a Kill, Waxworks, and Masque of the Red Death, and since
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson always regarded their
crime-solving exploits primarily as a big game, it was only fitting to observe Macnee, in the early 1990s, starring as both Holmes and
Watson in two television movies. Finally, Macnee
could be absolutely perfect in all-out spoofs like Lobster Men from Mars and The
Low Budget Time Machine.
In the late 1990s, when idea-challenged Hollywood producers hit
upon The Avengers as another old television
series they could make a movie out of, the most profitable decision—in more
ways than one—would have been to reunite Macnee and
Rigg as older-but-wiser incarnations of John Steed
and Mrs. Peel, instead of forcing audiences to painfully endure the
horrifically inadequate efforts of Ralph Fiennes and Uma
Thurman to replicate their charming camaraderie. Still, in his vocal contributions
to the film as the character Invisible Jones, Macnee,
as always, remained serene in the face of disaster.
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