And The Name Is Barry Morse!

Barry Morse passed away in London on Saturday. Like a lot of the stalwarts of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, he was stage trained, Morse at RADA. I think it helps to have training in parsing Shakespeare's language in order to sincerely speak the technobabble ("The Positronic matrix is destabilizing Captain!") a lot of science fiction requires.
Of course you older folk out there* will remember him fondly as the relentless, original Gerard in the original "The Fugitive". Morse could always be counted on in later interviews giving a classicist's spin on what the show was really all about (inevitably bringing up Inspector Javert from "Les Miserables"... which, to be fair, is exactly what Roy Huggins, the creator, meant to be invoked.).
I remember catching Morse in a particularly creepy "Twilight Zone" ("A Piano In The House") as a particularly sadistic theatre critic (Charles Isherwood, anybody?) who buys his wife a player piano for her birthday. This being the Twilight Zone, the piano has a magical ability to make people reveal their true selves- the selves they keep buried from the public, their friends, etc. At his wife's birthday, he uses the piano to strip away everyone's defenses... not of course realizing it can used on him as well. The critic's comeuppence is played beautifully by Morse. It shows what that show could do for actors who were up for the demands of really well-written morality plays. The first time I really noticed him was in "Space 1999" as Prof. Victor Bergman, the kindly space know-it-all who provided all the exposition at the end to explain the hallucinogenic whatsit that Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and the sacrificial British lamb of the week had to deal with that episode. Man, that show. Dry, weird, British.

I liked Morse especially in one of my favorite British horror anthologies "Asylum"**. Morse's segment has him working with the mighty Peter Cushing. Morse plays a crooked immigrant tailor who is ordered to weave a coat from a magic fabric in order to bring Cushing's son back from the dead. Things do not work out so well for Morse or Cushing, but Morse again is on fi-yah as he cowers (almost Peter Lorre-liketm) throughout the episode looking like a character who was doomed from the second he appeared on screen.

Here's the obituary from the New York Times today...

Barry Morse, Who Played the Dogged Detective in ‘The Fugitive,’ Is Dead at 89

By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: February 5, 2008

Barry Morse, famous for his portrayal of the cold-hearted detective who relentlessly pursues the wrongly convicted Richard Kimble for four seasons in “The Fugitive,” one of the biggest TV hits of the 1960s, died Saturday in London. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by Robert E. Wood, a friend and a co-author of Mr. Morse’s autobiography, “Remember With Advantages: Chasing ‘The Fugitive’ and Other Stories From an Actor’s Life,” (McFarland & Company, 2007).

The slim, angular-faced Mr. Morse was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and played hundreds of roles on stage and screen in his seven-decade career but never quite escaped his role in “The Fugitive.” As Lt. Philip Gerard, he hounded David Janssen as Richard Kimble, the doctor from the fictional town of Stafford, Ind., who was convicted on flimsy evidence of murdering his wife. For 120 episodes, from 1963 through 1967, Lieutenant Gerard pursued Dr. Kimble, who had escaped — on the lieutenant’s watch — when the train taking him to death row derailed. The innocent doctor’s only hope was finding the real killer, a one-armed man.

Gerard actually appeared in only 37 of the episodes, but his image was used in the opening credits, and the threat of his sudden appearance was never far from the mind of the fugitive or the audience.

For years after the series ended, Mr. Morse joked that “he was the most hated man in America,” Mr. Wood said of his friend on Monday. “Little old ladies would come up to him in airports and whack at him with their purses, screaming, ‘Why didn’t you leave that man alone?’ ”

“When Barry went into a restaurant or a hotel,” Mr. Wood continued, “people would say, ‘Oh, you just missed him, lieutenant; he went that-a-way.’ ”

Though proud of the series, Mr. Morse was glad to take on many other roles. By his own estimate, he performed in 3,000 stage, screen, television and radio productions, in England, Canada and the United States.

In the 1970s, he co-starred with Martin Landau in “Space 1999,” a science-fiction television series, made in England, about life on a lunar base. In it, he played Prof. Victor Bergman, the avuncular heart of the community. The series, syndicated in many countries, retains a cult following.

Two years ago, Mr. Morse played the president of Russia in the TV espionage thriller “Icon,” for the Hallmark Channel. Last year, in the film comedy “Promise Her Anything,” he played the ghost of a great-great-great grandfather who returns to a small Canadian town.

Mr. Morse appeared in many other television productions, including “The Outer Limits,” “The Untouchables,” “Naked City,” “The Defenders,” “Wagon Train,” “The Martian Chronicles” and “War and Remembrance.”

In 1969, when Mr. Morse played dual lead roles in the Broadway production of “Hadrian VII,” The New York Times drama critic Clive Barnes called him “a pure delight.”

Herbert Morse (he changed his name to Barry) was born on June 10, 1918, in the slums of London’s East End, a son of Charles and Mary Hollis Morse. His parents owned a tobacco shop.

When he was 15, Mr. Morse received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1941, after several years with touring companies throughout England, he made his West End debut in a play called “School for Slavery.”

Two years earlier, he had married Sydney Sturgess, a Canadian actress. They had two children, both of whom became actors. Ms. Sturgess died in 1999. Mr. Morse’s daughter, Melanie, died in 2005. He is survived by his son, Hayward, of London; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

The family moved to Canada in the early 1950s, and Mr. Morse joined the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Among his roles in dozens of productions, Mr. Morse wrote, narrated and produced a half-hour CBC Radio series, “A Touch of Greasepaint,” which ran for 14 years.

He appeared in so many Canadian television productions, Mr. Wood said, that “a critic back in the ’50s called him the test pattern for the CBC.”

My thoughts and prayers go to Morse's friends and family.

*Not me. Not that old. Seriously. Stop with the jokes.

**aka "House of Crazies". Because a non-melodramatic title is never enough in Seventies British Horror Anthologies- aka Groovy Evil Vibes of Celluloid Mania, Man.