Murray Melvin (1932-2023)

[Allard]

Actor Murray Melvin has passed away. An actor with a quite impressive career https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0578527/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t6 who is connected to The Avengers for appearing in Hot Snow. The very first episode of The Avengers in now left with one surviving cast member (Astor Sklair).

[Frankymole]

Very sad news. I think we have pretty much lost everyone on both sides of the camera of that very first episode. Time is the most implacable villain of them all.

[dissolute]

Very sad, they said he'd had a fall beforehand. He will be missed, what a trooper he was!

[SonofTPMcKenna]

I have a fantasy list of people I'd care to bump into and so that's another name I'll have to cross off it.

'He'd had a fall' ... the heart always sinks on reading that statement.

George Bernard Shaw had been doing fine at 94 until he decided to ascend a ladder to lop a tree in his garden at Ayot St. Lawrence. Unsurprisingly, he fell and died a few days later.

Only a few nights before this sad news was released I was watching him in conversation with Michael Billington at the National recorded in 2105. Fascinating!




I've just the below to his Guardian obit comments:

"There were two epiphanies in my developmental years, though I would hold them close to my chest for decades.

One was watching John Hurt bring Quentin Crisp to life and his self-proclaimed declaration, 'I am an effeminate homosexual for all the world to see'. The other was seeing Murray Melvin's Geoff, a far less outrez, but no less obvious depiction of a young, homosexual lad.

The kind that would have been been in regular social danger on account of being 'one of them', 'a bit like that'. The kind that would have invited scorn for wearing his homosexuality like an 'affectation'.

In fact, Murray's Geoff was a display of nothing less more remarkable than a naturally occuring homosexual. A 'soft boy', for sure, but then, yes, some of us are.

A, fortunately passing, co-worker once said to me something like, 'you lot must go on a course somewhere, to learn how to be "like that". I replied that I had never heard of such a place, or such a phenomenon, for that matter; but, I suggested, if it was the case, there had to be a class of White-Van men next door, diligently studying how to make public displays of rearranging their testicales and scratching their backsides while yelling at young 'laydeez' to reveal their mammaries. 'Yes', I said, 'I wonder what makes THEM like THAT'.

Anyway, 'Geoff' was my inner defence against the world. A valuable reassurance for my own soft, fourteen year-old self to realise that that was who I was, and so what. Good for me.

Let me not dwell on how it would take till my 30s to fully reconcile myself to my sexuality. Late developer, you know, but Melvin's Geoff always stayed with me.

Of course, his influence endured long after that performance. In particular, his role as ambassador for the legacy of the Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop.

He wore the role of the Theatre Royal's archivist like a bespoke suit which was perhaps not at all surprising given that he was a living embodiment of that remarkable era of the stagecraft when Littlewood made theatre that was of the moment, and indeed, naturally occurring."

© Stephen McKenna, 2023

[dissolute]

What a stirring tribute, Stephen! They say you should never meet your heroes but I'm sure, if you had, Murray would have remained a hero for you, as he was for so many others.

I thought his role in Hot Snow was ground-breaking for 1961, playing a homosexual gangster, although the rough Spicer makes fun of him for it. Spicer is a bit of one of those White Van men...

[Frankymole]

I wish I'd seen his performance as Geoff! It sounds like it must have been wonderful. I've never seen him be mediocre in anything, he was one of those actors that drew and magnetically held one's attention.