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Barry Morse

Herbert "Barry" Morse (10 June 1918 - 2 February 2008) was a British-born Canadian actor of stage, screen, and radio best known for his roles in the ABC television series The Fugitive and Space: 1999. His performing career spanned eight decades and he had thousands of roles to his credit, including work for the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Beginnings

Born to a Cockney family, Morse was a 15 year old school dropout and errand boy when he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He performed the role of the lion in Androcles and the Lion and as a result came to know George Bernard Shaw, a patron of the academy. His first paid job as an actor whilst still a student was in If I Were King. At graduation he starred in the title role of Shakespeare's Henry V, presented as a Royal Command Performance for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Career

Radio

Upon graduation, Morse won the BBC's Radio Prize which led to several parts and a leading role in The Fall of the City. Later he played the lead in William Shakespeare's Hamlet and starred as 'Paul Temple' in the radio series Send for Paul Temple Again, among dozens of other roles. He later performed on CBC radio beginning in 1951 and continuing to the 1980s, including the long-running series A Touch of Greasepaint, the Joe McCarthy-inspired The Investigator, and 1984. He also starred in a number U.S. productions in the 1970s and 1980s for producer Yuri Rasovsky, including The Odyssey of Homer, which won a Peabody Award.

Morse's last radio performance, Rogues and Vagabonds - A Theatrical Scrapbook, aired on internet radio KSAV August 7 and August 9, 2007, prior to being released on compact disc. The hour-long special audio drama was comprised of a half-dozen vignettes and performances culled from theatrical history, including William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw.

British stage

Morse was a member of repertory theatre companies in Peterborough, Nottingham, and other cities where he gained experience as an actor while playing more than 200 roles. In 1941 he joined the national tour of The First Mrs. Fraser starring Dame Marie Tempest and A.E. Matthews. He debuted on the London West End stage in The School for Slavery. Other West End productions included Escort, The Assassin, and A Bullet in the Ballet. He was directed by John Gielgud in Crisis in Heaven. Morse developed a theatrical partnership with actress Nova Pilbeam and they worked together both in film and on stage, most notably in the hit stage productions of The Voice of the Turtle and Flowers for the Living.

Film

Morse made his film debut in the 1942 comedy The Goose Steps Out with Will Hay and continued with roles in Thunder Rock, When We Are Married, and This Man is Mine (released as A Soldier for Christmas in North America) with Glynis Johns and Nova Pilbeam. Other notable films include Kings of the Sun with Yul Brynner, Justine, and Puzzle of a Downfall Child with Faye Dunaway. He also appeared in the thrillers Asylum with Peter Cushing and The Changeling with George C. Scott. He worked on several Lacewood animated productions, notably as the voice of Dragon in The Railway Dragon and The Birthday Dragon, alongside Tracey Moore who played Emily. In 1999 he filmed the dramatic comedy Taxman with Billy Zane, released as Promise Her Anything and on DVD as Nothing to Declare. His final film appearance was in I Really Hate My Job, released in 2007.

Later stage work

Morse has performed on Broadway in Hide and Seek, Salad Days, and the lead of Frederick William Rolfe in Hadrian the Seventh. He directed the historic debut of Staircase starring Eli Wallach and Milo O'Shea, which stands as Broadway's first depiction of homosexual men in a serious way. He also starred in the U.S. national tour of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker as The Derelict.

He first presented a version of his one man show Merely Players in 1959, which explored the experiences of actors through history, with the definitive version of the show debuting in 1984 for a Canadian national tour. Morse was perhaps the only actor to have performed in every play of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw.

Morse served as Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival of Canada for the 1966 season and as an Adjunct Professor at Yale University in 1968.

In 2004, with his son Hayward Morse, he starred in the North American debut of Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship by Anthony Wynn, performed at the University of Florida, Sarasota. This two-act stage drama is based on the correspondence between playwright George Bernard Shaw, played by Morse, and Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (the intimate friend of Oscar Wilde), played by Hayward.

The following year, Morse appeared in the world premiere performance of the science fiction play Contact by Doug Grissom, co-starring Ryan Case and presented in Tampa, Florida.

Television

Guest roles

Morse guest starred in more than a thousand drama, comedy, and talk show presentations in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Early American appearances include the U.S. Steel Hour and Playhouse 90. He also guest starred on such TV series as Naked City, The Untouchables, The Twilight Zone, Wagon Train, and The Defenders. In The Outer Limits episode "Controlled Experiment" he starred with Carroll O'Connor and Grace Lee Whitney. This episode was shot as a pilot for a proposed series starring O'Connor and Morse as two Martians sent to Earth to examine human life and experiences. CBS instead opted for the series My Favorite Martian with Ray Walston and Bill Bixby. In his later years, Morse guest-starred in a number of Canadian-produced series, including La Femme Nikita and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, as well as such British series as Doctors, Waking the Dead and Space Island One.

Series

Morse's first television series was Presenting Barry Morse, which aired for thirteen weeks in the summer of 1960 on CBC. Some of his best known television roles included: Lt Philip Gerard on the 1960s series The Fugitive with David Janssen; "Prof. Victor Bergman" in the 1975-1976 season of Space: 1999 with Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, and Zienia Merton; 'Mr. Parminter' in The Adventurer with Gene Barry; and "Alec 'The Tiger' Marlowe" in The Zoo Gang with Sir John Mills, Lilli Palmer, and Brian Keith. In 1982 he played the Ronald Reagan-esque U.S. President Johnny Cyclops in the satirical sitcom Whoops Apocalypse in the UK and hosted the series Strange But True for the CBC.

Miniseries

Morse appeared in a number of television mini-series, including The Winds of War and War and Remembrance (both with Robert Mitchum), The Martian Chronicles, Sadat, and Frederick Forsyth's Icon. Other notable miniseries appearances include A Woman of Substance, Master of the Game, and Race for the Bomb.

Books

The book based on his long running stage play Merely Players - The Scripts was published in 2003 and his Pulling Faces, Making Noises was released in 2004.

Stories of the Theatre was published in 2006 and features material from his CBC radio series A Touch of Greasepaint, which aired from 1954 to 1967.

His long-awaited theatrical memoir, Remember With Advantages - Chasing 'The Fugitive' and Other Stories from an Actor's Life (ISBN 9780786427710), (written with Robert E. Wood and Anthony Wynn), details his life and career. The book features a foreword written by Academy Award-winning actor Martin Landau and was released by McFarland and Company publishers in Spring 2007.

Morse wrote the foreword to the upcoming book Talkin' Trek and Other Stories, by Anthony Wynn (ISBN 1593930747), in which he reminisced about his experience as a character actor, working with varied Star Trek performers such as William Shatner, James Doohan, Grace Lee Whitney, Paul Carr, and others. The book is to be released by BearManor Media in early 2008.

Personal life

Marriage and relocation

After a short courtship, Morse married actress Sydney Sturgess on March 26, 1939, during their work together in repertory theatre in Peterborough. The couple had two children, Melanie Morse (1945-2005) and Hayward Morse, born in 1947.

In 1951, the Morse family relocated to Canada, where he worked in radio and theatre, and participated in the first television broadcasts of CBC Television from Montreal, and later Toronto.

Morse became a Canadian citizen in 1953.

Charitable work

Barry Morse long supported a number of charitable organizations, including the Toronto-based Performing Arts Lodges of Canada, the Royal Theatrical Fund, the London Shakespeare Workout Prison Project, Actors' Fund of Canada, The Samaritans, BookPALS, and Parkinsons disease treatment and research.

The Parkinsons disease cause in particular held a special place in Morse's heart as his wife of more than 60 years, actress Sydney Sturgess, had a 14-year long battle with the disease prior to her death in 1999. In recent years, he also became an advocate for senior citizens in his adopted homeland of Canada.