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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 8 |
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PATRICK McGOOHAN 1928-2009
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Death of A Television Cult
Figure For the Ages
of TheColumnists.com
If you were a young guy in the early 1960s, you probably still remember the name John Drake. He was the leading character of TV's "Danger Man," the first British TV series to really make a splash on U.S. TV screens. Or you might remember him from "Secret Agent," the series that arrived a few years later and was even more warmly received.
In fact, I can still hear the theme song "Secret Agent Man" bopping and strolling through what's left of my brain. I preferred the instrumental version by The Ventures and if I can find my battered LP album that has that tune on it, I guess this would be the time to play it and send the neighbors into either a grand nostalgia trip or a 91l call to the local police.
I bring this up because of the death last Tuesday of actor Patrick McGoohan, 80, who played Drake in both those series, then became one of TV's abiding cult heroes when he took a new character that many assumed was also John Drake into a late 1960s TV series called "The Prisoner," which ran on CBS from January of 1968 through September of 1969, then, like "Star Trek," found its way to immortality in endless syndication of those precious episodes.
"The Prisoner" was about a secret agent who resigned his job, but then was mysteriously taken away and placed in a bizarre community that might have been invented by Franz Kafka. The enigmatic folks there were trying to plumb all the secrets he had stored in his brain--or were they? Only 17 episodes were filmed, mostly at a resort "village" in Wales.
McGoohan created the series, produced it and wrote several of the episodes. Though he always denied that his character, known only as "Number 6," was actually John Drake from his earlier series, many of the cult-like fans who embraced the series and have kept it alive in one form or another for the past 40 years continue to insist there's a connection between the programs.
A highly-regarded Irish stage actor, McGoohan never really capitalized enough on the strange popularity of those three "spy" television shows in order to get a big movie career going, though he did play in a number of big budget films over the years, among them John Sturges' 1968 "Ice Station Zebra," in which McGoohan quite naturally played a secret agent who was trying to catch a Russian spy.
I met McGoohan only once. It was in 1977, my first year as a syndicated television columnist, at a press conference for his short-lived CBS medical drama called "Rafferty," which lasted only three months. He played a doctor who had practiced medicine in the U.S. Army for 23 years, then had left to go into private practice. As I remember, he was rather dour, perhaps because he already sensed the show didn't have much of a chance opposite ABC's "Monday Night Football" and a movie on NBC.
McGoohan did manage to win two Emmy awards for guest appearances he later made on Peter Falk's "Columbo" mystery series. At one time, he even was reported to be under consideration to replace Falk in the role of Columbo. It never happened because Falk kept coming back to the role.
In my opinion, McGoohan always was an interesting actor, especially when playing dark and mysterious roles. I'd say he was born to be a cult hero and "The Prisoner" was destined to be the niche he carved for himself in television history. Fortunately, all the episodes of "The Prisoner," "Secret Agent" and "Danger Man" are now available in DVD boxed sets, so I feel confident his best work will continue to be discovered by new generations of fans for many years to come.
©2009 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Jan. 19, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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