Mercurial TV and film actor Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009) has enjoyed a dedicated cult following for decades, even though he’s tricky to pigeonhole. When recently pressed to describe the parts McGoohan so often played, the most succinct I managed was that he is invariably the “angry loner”.
There’s consistently a burning intensity to his screen persona, and an Irish spirit in those passionate but often cold and unreadable eyes. Though Irish by blood, McGoohan was born in New York City and remained an American citizen. Parts of his early childhood were spent in Ireland, but he grew up in Sheffield, England, and began his acting career there. Like so much about McGoohan, even his nationality is hard to define. It was another emigrant American, Citizen Kane-star Orson Welles, who spotted McGoohan’s potential and gave him his big break on the stage, before he broke into television.
By the early 1960s, McGoohan was the highest paid star on British television. The role of a suave spy that he played in ‘Danger Man’ made him an obvious choice to play James Bond at the dawn of the film franchise. Yet it was a part he turned down. Bond’s predilection for violence and women violated McGoohan’s strong Catholic principles. Even in series in which the handsome and much sought-after McGoohan played the leading man, he rarely if ever kisses a woman and there’s no hint of intimacy. This makes his career something of a curiosity.
Though some consider McGoohan to be an over-actor, others (myself included) would argue that he was a truly unique creative talent, able to embody parts that many other superb actors couldn’t even have attempted. He wasn’t afraid to turn up in Hollywood blockbusters and take the paycheck either – most notably he’s on top villainous form as the pantomime baddie Edward I in Mel Gibson’s absurd anti-historical epic ‘Braveheart’.
We look back on Patrick McGoohan’s top ten most influential roles.
10. ‘Brand’
Celebrated Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote some of his best-known works, such as ‘Peer Gynt’, to be read rather than performed. His less well-known work ‘Brand’ fell into this category. For many years the play was considered almost unperformable, and the character of Brand unplayable. A brave 1959 television production featured McGoohan in the title role. He excels at humanising the part of the priest struggling with his faith, no doubt bringing his own beliefs into his characterisation. ‘Brand’ rightly won McGoohan rave reviews. His performance matches intensity with conviction – a McGoohan hallmark.
9. ‘Escape from Alcatraz’
McGoohan is icy cool in this 1979 Hollywood film that had him play the antagonist to Clint Eastwood’s steely prisoner. There is a cat and mouse game between the two as McGoohan’s warden attempts to outwit Eastwood’s savvy convict to prevent a jailbreak. Curiously, viewers’ sympathies are never with the austere McGoohan.
8. ‘Scanners’
McGoohan took a prominent role in controversial director David Cronenberg’s 1981 cult classic ‘Scanners’. He plays Dr. Paul Ruth, a scientist involved in a government program studying individuals with psychic abilities. The movie is best-known for gruesome special effects featuring exploding human heads. McGoohan had something of a reputation for being prickly on set. Cronenberg is on record as saying, “He was probably the most difficult actor I ever worked with, though he gave a fantastic performance.”
7. ‘Hell Drivers’
The 1957 British film details animosity and competition between drivers at a haulage firm. But despite the low-key premise, it assembled a stellar cast including Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Sean Connery, David McCallum, Sid James and William Hartnell. McGoohan plays the truck driver ‘Red’, and does so with considerable aplomb. Although he often has a glint of danger in his eye, McGoohan’s turn in ‘Hell Drivers’ is one of the few instances where he plays an outright psychopath. He is terrifically menacing and entirely believable. Worth viewing to see McGoohan relentlessly menacing Stanley Baker as well as for the extraordinary cast.
6. ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’
Although, in the final analysis, the 1971 British film isn’t a classic, it’s a pretty enjoyable historical epic. As with ‘Hell Drivers’, it places McGoohan in a leading role alongside an incredible cast. Glenda Jackson (as Queen Elizabeth I) vies with Vanessa Redgrave (as her sister Mary, Queen of Scots) for the most plaudits. A pre-James Bond Timothy Dalton plays a love interest for Vanessa Redgrave, and the two were later an item for some years. Veterans Trevor Howard (‘Brief Encounter’) and Ian Holm (‘The Lord of the Rings’) also star. McGoohan plays the Catholic Mary’s illegitimate and Protestant half-brother James Stewart, not to be confused with the monarchs of the Stuart lineage. It’s notable how effortlessly McGoohan slips into a period setting.
5. ‘Ice Station Zebra’
The 1968 espionage thriller was the favourite film of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. The Cold War thriller is directed by John Sturges, who has previously made ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘The Great Escape’. McGoohan shares top billing with Rock Hudson and Ernest Borgnine. The film sees McGoohan playing a role that was more than familiar to viewers – that of an inscrutable undercover British agent. The phenomenal success of ‘Danger Man’ on television made him an obvious choice for the part, though he was making ‘The Prisoner’ at the time that this film came along.
4. ‘All Night Long’
The strange and somewhat uncomfortable 1962 film is directed by Basil Dearden, who was one of the leading British filmmakers of his age. It updates Shakespeare’s play ‘Othello’ and relocates the action to a group of jazz musicians at the dawn of the Swinging Sixties. McGoohan plays the Iago part, pushing his former friend Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris) into believing that his wife is being unfaithful to him. It is another chance for McGoohan to play the kind of ruthless, cold-hearted character that he embodied so convincingly.
3. ‘Columbo’
Patrick McGoohan’s stamp is all over ‘Columbo’, since he played the murderer four times (a record for any actor) and directed five of the episodes. He and Peter Falk hit it off and became firm friends. His association with the series begins with the 1974 episode ‘By Dawn’s Early Light’. McGoohan plays Colonel Rumford, a military man who devises a clever wheeze to make murder look like an unfortunate accident. The part won McGoohan an Emmy award, and it’s not hard to see why: he is one of the most memorable of Columbo villains in a series that boasts some truly stellar foes for the good detective. With steel glasses and bleached white hair, McGoohan is almost unrecognisable in the part, and looks significantly older than he really was. His chameleonic qualities are put to excellent use in ‘Columbo’. He would return in ‘Identity Crisis’ a year later, an episode that he also directed with considerable flair. Appropriately, that one has McGoohan playing a secret agent who murders an unfortunate go-between, played by Leslie Nielsen (‘Airplane’). Is he winking at the audience as he brings in references from ‘The Prisoner’, including his catchphrase, “Be seeing you”? McGoohan would also direct ‘Last Salute to the Commodore’, which is largely regarded as the worst episode in the series’ original run, but even the visual flair that McGoohan undoubtedly brought to his directorial work couldn’t save a sub-standard script. He would return several more times when the series was resurrected in the 80s and 90s. At its height the best show on television, ‘Columbo’ was nevertheless synonymous with Peter Falk, and only devotees now remember the influential role McGoohan played in its history. That’s why the top two are shows where McGoohan both played the lead and helped to develop the premise.
2. ‘Danger Man’
The part of John Drake (in a series that was renamed ‘Secret Agent’ for US audiences) turned Patrick McGoohan into an international star. Made sporadically for British television throughout much of the 1960s, it capitalised on the interest in the espionage genre that the ‘James Bond’ films inspired from 1962. In fact, Bond creator Ian Fleming was an early adviser on the series when it was in development. In the very first episode of ‘Danger Man’, John Drake travels to Italy. A certain seaside village in North Wales called Portmeirion doubled for Italy, and it would be used as a filming location for three further episodes. During his time there shooting ‘Danger Man’, McGoohan’s imagination fastened upon an idea that later became the cult TV favourite that he remains most strongly associated with.
1. ‘The Prisoner’
The often-baffling cult TV classic from 1967/68 is pure McGoohan. Not only was he the lead actor, but he also developed the concept for the series and wrote and directed many of the episodes. In fact, those with McGoohan’s stamp all over them are by far the strongest instalments of the short-lived series. Whether viewed as a slice of Sixties psychedelia or as an allegory of authoritarian states, ‘The Prisoner’ left itself open for interpretation and never spoon-fed viewers with easy answers as to what it was really all about. The final episode, ‘Fall Out’, which sought to wrap up the series, raised more questions than it answered. It can be seen as an audacious piece of groundbreaking television, or as maddeningly obscurantist, to taste. Either way, people have been talking about the meaning behind ‘The Prisoner’ ever since, and Patrick McGoohan’s enigmatic hero, Number 6, whose name is never divulged, will forever be a television icon. I like to think of ‘The Prisoner’ as a journey into Patrick McGoohan’s mind. It’s certainly the project that coalesced the creative talents of an artistic genius. With a taste for the odd and the offbeat, McGoohan wasn’t always easy to cast, but with full creative control, he developed a show much like his personality and style – unforgettable and truly original.
I hope you enjoyed our rundown of Patrick McGoohan’s most influential and memorable roles. There’s something enduringly fascinating about a performer so enigmatic and unknowable. I have admired his work since I was a teenager, and a decade and a half after his death, his legacy remains an inspiration to many.
