Jenn travels back in time to complete our Harry Potter month, gushing over the written Golden Trio, and bemoaning the differences in the films!
Vlog: Rest in Print Golden Trio
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Staff Recommendations – July 2015
The Adaptation staff are keeping cool indoors with these entertaining recommendations for July!
Adaptation #134: Ant-Man Is Watching You
Our hosts find a lot of tropey things in Ant-Man (2015). But despite the issues, they still enjoyed the humor and the action.
Adaptation #133: Dark and Twisty Places
The hosts can barely get their thoughts in order after binge reading Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. They have a lot to say about these very twisted and mostly unlikable characters, and a bit of advice for anyone that hasn’t read it yet. Pace yourself. You’re going to need time to process.
Vlog: Harry Potter in the Eyes of a Non-Reader
Adaptation #132: Terminating the Genisys
Our hosts brains are a little scrambled trying to figure out how the timeline works in the film Terminator Genisys. As a reboot it may work, but having just marathoned the first four Terminators, they are going to be a little picky.
Find Me at GeekyCon!
Adaptation #131: Free Willy from the Paper Towns
Nicole and Jess talk Paper Towns by John Green, giving Margo more than her share of character analysis and comparing the treatment of this Manic Pixie to that of Green’s Alaska and how (un)satisfying they found the ending.
Vlog: Rest in Print Peeves
Continuing with our Harry Potter month, Jess outlines the many exploits of Peeves from the book series, and bemoans the absolute absence of his antics from the films.
Ever the Gentleman…The Loss of Patrick Macnee
Just after Christopher Lee’s passing, we have lost another great, Patrick Macnee. The two of them were the last surviving members of Sir Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948). I wrote last month about the passing of Christopher Lee because everyone knew him and I wanted to honor him and shed light on lesser-known things about him. I am writing about Patrick MacNee because he is less well-known and I want to honor him by shedding light on this great man and actor.
On June 25th, 2015, Patrick Macnee died of natural causes at his home in Rancho Mirage, California with his family at his bedside, his son Rupert said. He had lived in the US for the last 40 years, and had become a US Citizen. He was 93.
I grew up with Patrick Macnee as the ever-gentlemanly spy, John Steed on BBC’s The Avengers (1961). It is his most iconic role, and honestly ruined me for all other men. He was the epitome of the debonair English gentleman. He wore a suit, and very well, along his dapper bowler hat and distinctive umbrella, which doubled as a sword. He refused to be seen with a gun, saying in later interviews: “I said that I wouldn’t carry one; when they asked me why, I said that I’d just come out of a world war in which I’d seen most of my friends blown to bits.” Macnee became outspoken and, in later years, took every opportunity to express his disapproval of the proliferation of guns in private hands. He was always proper, but with quick wit and great agility. You could say that he is the original Kingsman.
The Avengers (1961) initially focused on Dr. David Keel (Ian Hendry) and his assistant (Macnee), but Macnee’s famous bowler-hat-wearing, umbrella-wielding intelligence officer became the protagonist when Hendry exited the series. Macnee played the part alongside a succession of strong, female partners, including Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, Linda Thorson, and Joanna Lumley. The show ran from 1961 and 1969 and was reprised in the 1970s.
This show was groundbreaking, and Macnee had spoke of his pride in how the show paved the way for women to play leading action roles. Of course, it was more than that, as he treated his female partners as equals, unlike how he was originally a side-kick of sorts. The most notable of them was Emma Peel, played by Diana Rigg in fashionable outfits and the occasional catsuit. She was nobody’s fool, a speedy sports car driver and martial arts expert; he was suitably impressed, if more staid. The two routinely engaged in witty banter while keeping the world safe from supervillains.
“It made them delight in the awareness that they could get out there and do it all, fight men, take on villains, all the kinds of stuff we showed in The Avengers,” Macnee said during an interview with The Lady Magazine. “I’m very proud of what we achieved for women with The Avengers. I don’t think we knew that we were doing it at the time; it just seemed that a woman would make the ideal foil to my John Steed. And so she did.”
The great thing about Patrick Macnee, however, is that his gentleman qualities went beyond the role and were part of his personality, saying once that it was hardly acting because he grew up that way. As a frequent guest on television talk shows around the world, Macnee was an ambassador for the tradition of the British gentleman, with his special brand of congeniality, humor and intelligence, his remarkable physical agility, and his unfailing good manners, sense of decency, and fair play. His comments and responses to questions were laced with a tongue-in-cheek, somewhat subversive sense of irony, along with a lightning-fast wit.
A Quick Bio:
Daniel Patrick Macnee, professionally known simply as Patrick Macnee, was born on February 6, 1922 in Paddington, London, England into a wealthy and eccentric family, Daniel Macnee (1877-1952) and Dorothea Mary Hastings (1896-1984). His father trained race horses in Lambourn, and was known for his dress sense; he had served as an officer in the Yorkshire Dragoons in the First World War. His maternal grandmother was Frances Alice Hastings (1870-1945), who was the daughter of Vice-Admiral George Fowler Hastings and granddaughter of Hans Francis Hastings, 12th Earl of Huntingdon. His younger brother James, known as Jimmy, was born five years after him.
Macnee’s parents divorced after his mother began to identify as a lesbian. His father later moved to India, and his mother began to live with her wealthy partner, Evelyn Spottswood, whose money came from the Dewar’s whisky business. Macnee referred to her in his autobiography as “Uncle Evelyn”, and she helped pay for his schooling.
He was educated at Summerfields Preparatory School, where he acted in Henry V at the age of 11, with Sir Christopher Lee as the Dauphin; followed by attending Eton College, where comedian and author Michael Bentine became a life-long friend. Macnee first appeared on stage and made his film debut as an extra in Pygmalion (1938). His career was interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the Royal Navy. After military service, Macnee attended the Webber Douglas School of Dramatic Art in London on scholarship—about which he said, “I went to acting school, but only for nine months. If you’re an actor, you know, don’t really need to learn how to do it.”
He trudged the streets of London visiting the casting offices every day, and hung out near the entrances to London’s smarter restaurants and hotels in hope of “running into” a noted producer. There were a few near-misses. He got valuable experience onstage at The Windsor Repertory Theatre, in London’s West End, and on tours in Germany and the United States. He accepted a few minor roles, with bit parts such as Young Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol (1951). Disappointed with his limited roles, Macnee left England for Canada and the United States.
In 1954, he went to Broadway with an Old Vic troupe and later moved on to Hollywood, where he made occasional television and film appearances until returning to England in 1959. Once back home, he took advantage of his producing experience in Canada to become co-producer of the British television series Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (1960). Shortly thereafter, Macnee landed the role that brought him worldwide fame and popularity in the part of John Steed.
He reprised the role in The New Avengers (1976)—about which he said, “They call it The New Avengers but it’s really the old Avengers with new people except for me, looking rather fat and rather old.” Although popular, it failed to recapture the magic of the original series, and only lasted one year.
He did appear as the voice of Invisible Jones in the sad, failure of a movie adaptation The Avengers (1998), with Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman. I will say no more on that.
“Television has some lovely aspects to it—and some ghastly aspects—but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.” —Patrick Macnee.
Other Significant Roles:
Macnee also featured as a guest star in dozens of British, American and Australian TV productions.
He appeared in Magnum, P.I. (1984) as a retired but delusional British agent who believed he was Sherlock Holmes, in a season four episode titled “Holmes Is Where the Heart Is.” And he played both Holmes and Dr. Watson on several occasions. He played Watson alongside Roger Moore’s Sherlock Holmes in the TV film, Sherlock Holmes in New York (1976), and twice with Christopher Lee, first in Incident at Victoria Falls (1991) and then in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1992). He played Holmes in another TV film, The Hound of London (1993). He is thus one of only a very small number of actors to have portrayed both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on screen.
Macnee’s other significant roles have included playing Sir Godfrey Tibbett opposite Roger Moore in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985), as Major Crossley in The Sea Wolves (again with Moore), guest roles in Encounter, Alias Smith and Jones (with creator Glen Larson), Hart to Hart, Murder, She Wrote, and The Love Boat. Although his best known part was heroic, many of his television appearances were as villains; among them were his roles of both the demonic Count Iblis and his provision of the character voice for the Cylons’s Imperious Leader in Battlestar Galactica (meeting up with Glen Larson again) and the show’s introductory voiceover. He also presented the American paranormal series Mysteries, Magic and Miracles. Macnee made his Broadway debut as the star of Anthony Shaffer’s mystery Sleuth in 1972 and subsequently headlined the national tour of that play.
On television, Macnee made a guest appearance on Columbo in the episode “Troubled Waters” (1975) and played Major Vickers in For the Term of His Natural Life (1983). He had recurring roles in the crime series Gavilan with Robert Urich and in the short-lived satire on big business, Empire (1984), as Dr. Calvin Cromwell. Macnee also narrated the documentary Ian Fleming: 007’s Creator (2000).
He also appeared in several cult films: The Howling (1981), as ‘Dr George Waggner’ (named whimsically after the director of The Wolf Man, 1941) and as Sir Denis Eton-Hogg in the rockumentary comedy This Is Spinal Tap (1984). He played Dr. Stark in The Creature Wasn’t Nice (1981), also called Spaceship and Naked Space.
Macnee played the role of actor David Mathews in the made-for-television movie Rehearsal for Murder (1982), which starred Robert Preston and Lynn Redgrave. The movie was from a script written by Columbo co-creators Richard Levinson and William Link. He took over Leo G. Carroll’s role as Alexander Waverly, the head of U.N.C.L.E. in The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E: The Fifteen-Years-Later Affair (1983), produced by Michael Sloan. He featured in the science fiction television movie Super Force (1990) as E. B. Hungerford (the series which followed did not feature Macnee), as a supporting character in the parody film Lobster Man From Mars (1989) as Prof. Plocostomos and in The Return of Sam McCloud (1989), a TV film, as Tom Jamison.
He made an appearance in Frasier (2001), and several episodes of the American science-fiction series Nightman as Dr. Walton, a psychiatrist who would advise Johnny/Nightman. Macnee appeared in two episodes of the series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (1993–94) and was a retired agent in a handful of installments of Spy Game (1997–98).
Interesting Spots:
Macnee made numerous TV commercials including one around 1990 for Swiss Chalet, the Canadian restaurant chain, and a year or so before, a commercial for the Sterling Motor Car Company. Over the James Bond theme, the car duels with a motorcycle assailant at high speed through mountainous territory, ultimately eludes the foe, and reaches its destination. Macnee steps out of the car and greets viewers with a smile, saying, “I suppose you were expecting someone else.” Macnee was the narrator for several “behind-the-scenes” featurettes for the James Bond series of DVDs and recorded numerous audio books, including the releases of many novels by Jack Higgins. He also recorded the children’s books The Musical Life of Gustav Mole and its sequel, The Lost Music (Gustav Mole’s War on Noise), both written by Michael Twinn.
Macnee featured in two pop videos: as Steed in original Avengers footage in the The Pretenders’ video for their song “Don’t Get Me Wrong” (1986) and in the video for Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back in Anger” (1996), as the band’s driver, a role similar to that which he played in the James Bond film A View To A Kill (1985).
He scored a top 10 hit of his own in 1990, with Kinky Boots—a novelty song recorded with Avengers co-star Honor Blackman—which was championed by Radio 1’s then-breakfast DJ Simon Mayo.
Macnee reunited with Diana Rigg in her short-lived NBC sitcom, Diana (1973) in a single episode.
He dictated his autobiography, which he titled Blind in One Ear: The Avenger Returns (1988), to Marie Cameron.
From people that knew him:
A tribute on his website said of him: Patrick Macnee was a popular figure in the television industry. He was at home wherever in the world he found himself. He had a knack for making friends, and keeping them. Wherever he went, he left behind a trove of memories and good wishes. Patrick Macnee was known for his unswerving professionalism, his loyalty, his intuitive creativity, his unaffected courtesy, and his understated humanity.
Sir Roger Moore tweeted: “So very sad to hear Pat Macnee has left us. We were mates from 1950s and I have so many happy memories of working with him. A true gent.”
Linda Thorson, who played Tara King in The Avengers alongside him, talked about remembering him as a “paradox” when talking to BBC Radio 4’s Today program. “He was the best-dressed man on television and a nudist in real life. He was always upbeat. He had great stories and great detail and wonderful energy,” she continued. “Patrick [had] a very happy and long life and the most wonderful children who took the greatest of care of him, in the last decade in particular.”
Diana Rigg said, “Patrick was a very dear man and I owe him a great deal.” Macnee was something of a mentor and teacher to Diana Rigg.
Last Words:
Mr. Macnee, you were a true gentleman and I am glad that you were a part of my life. I hope to get you into others lives as well. You were my Steed, and I think all men should strive to be like you.
RIP Daniel Patrick Macnee
Vlog: Rest in Print Marauders
In our second vlog about mistreated Harry Potter characters, Jess gets a little emotional over the representation of the Marauders in the Harry Potter books…and the lack thereof in the film adaptations
Adaptation #130: A Losing Game of Thrones
Adaptation talks Game of Thrones season 5, going over all the major storylines—cheering for some, groaning for others—and making predictions for next season!
NOTE: We do not spoil anything past where the show is, but we do talk about things that happened differently in the books, so there are some minor book spoilers.
Adaptation #129: On Top of the Jurassic World
In this week’s Adaptation, the team discusses Jurassic World (2015), and they have a lot of feelings…mostly about the park, the dinosaurs and who the real monsters are. While it might be unfair to compare this to original–and who can help themselves?–they conclude that, while enjoyable, that original wonder is lost.
Vlog: Rest in Print Neville Longbottom
The first in our month of mistreated Harry Potter characters, Kendyl talks about the character traits and plot points left out of the films that lead to Neville being misrepresented.
Staff Recommendations – June 2015
Here’s what the Adaptation staff have been up to in the month of June!
Vlog: Adaptations Better Than the Book: Fan Edition
Commentary #6: The Terminator (1984)
Kendyl and Ryan sit down to watch The Terminator (1984) and discuss the weirdness of time travel and the rudeness of the person that decided to mow the lawn outside their window during our podcast.
iTunes – Twitter – Facebook – Tumblr – YouTube – Download This Episode
Other commentaries: The Princess Bride, Batman (1989), and Jurassic Park.
Vlog: Terrible Performances in Good Adaptations
The Legendary Christopher Lee
On June 7, 2015 the great actor and icon Christopher Lee passed away due to heart failure. He was 93 years old. Most people know him for his portrayal of Saruman in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, as well as Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. But there is so much more to him than that, and his passing is a great loss.
The talk in my family about him over the years was that he was going to act until he died, and that after he died, he would will his body to be used as a prop to be in even more films forever, however morbid that thought seems now. We really thought he was never going to die, we thought he would go on forever.
He came from an amazing lineage and his life spanned some amazing eras in history, and he left us all with a legacy of films and so much more. It is hard to list all the great things about him and what he has done, but I’ll give some highlights and Tid-bits.
Christopher Frank Carandini Lee—oh excuse me—SIR Christopher Lee, was born May 27, 1922 in Belgravia, London, England and was knighted for services to Drama and Charity on June 13, 2009 as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honors. Prince Charles knighted him, and because of his age he was excused from the usual requirement of kneeling…but I would say because Christopher Lee is awesome and he kneels to no one.
He and his older sister Xandra were raised by their parents, Contessa Estelle Marie (Carandini di Sarzano) and Geoffrey Trollope Lee, a professional soldier, until their divorce in 1926. Lee’s maternal great-grandfather was an Italian political refugee, while Lee’s great-grandmother was English opera singer Marie (Burgess) Carandini. Lee also descended from the Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire and was related to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. Later, while Lee was still a child, his mother married (and later divorced) Harcourt George St.-Croix (nicknamed Ingle), who was a banker. Through his stepfather, became step-cousin to Ian Flemming, the creator and author of the James Bond series.
Tid-bit: Lee was Flemmings choice for Dr. No (1962). Lee enthusiastically accepted, but by the time Fleming told the producers, they had already chosen Joseph Wiseman for the role. Lee finally got to play a James Bond villain in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), in which he was cast as the deadly assassin Francisco Scaramanga. Lee said of his performance, “In Fleming’s novel he’s just a West Indian thug, but in the film he’s charming, elegant, amusing, lethal.…I played him like the dark side of Bond.”
Through his long life, he was more than just a great actor, he was a man of honor, a loving husband and father, a Classically trained singer and sometimes a fanboy.
Tid-bit: Apparently he geeked out when he bumped into J.R.R. Tolkien randomly in a pub, who gave Lee his blessing to play Gandalf in any future Lord of the Rings film (although he didn’t play Gandalf, he made a fabulous Saruman). He also once declared himself to be an unconditional fan of Gene Hackman.
He didn’t start acting until he was 25 and it was hard for him to break into it with supporting roles because he towered over the leading men at 6’ 5”.
Tid-bit: He is entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as “The Tallest Leading Actor”.
Still, he was able to make a go of it starring in many Hammer Films horror films, but when they got schlocky he tried to break away from them.
Tid-bit: Lee agreed to star in the 1966 Dracula: Prince of Darkness, but he felt the script was so awful he adamantly refused to say any of the dialogue. Hammer decided that it was far more important to have a mute Lee as star as opposed to anyone else, and thus had Dracula hiss and yell through the film. In his autobiography, he relates his first meeting with Peter Cushing during production of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), in which he played the monster. Lee stormed into a dressing room where Cushing was sitting and angrily yelled “I haven’t got any lines!” Cushing replied, “You’re lucky; I’ve read the script.”
But what did he do in the first 25 years of life? A hell of a lot more than most 25 year-olds can say!
When Lee was nine, he was sent to Summer Fields School, a preparatory school in Oxford whose pupils often later attended Eton. He continued acting in school plays, though “the laurels deservedly went to Patrick Macnee (The Avengers, 1969).” Lee applied for a scholarship to Eton, where his interview was in the presence of the ghost story author M. R. James. He placed eleventh and thus missed out on being a King’s Scholar by one place. His stepfather was not prepared to pay the higher fees that being an Oppidan Scholar meant and so he did not attend. Instead, Lee attended Wellington College, where he won scholarships in the classics, studying Ancient Greek and Latin. Aside from a “tiny part” in a school play, he didn’t act while at Wellington. At age 17 and with one year left at Wellington, the summer term of 1939 was his last. His stepfather had gone bankrupt, owing £25,000.
Then, his mother and stepfather separated, and Lee had to get a job. While looking for work, he saw the death of the murderer Eugen Weidmann in Paris, the last person in France to be publicly executed by guillotine.
Tid-bit: Lee was quite interested in the history of public executions, and reportedly knew “the names of every official public executioner employed by England, dating all the way back to the mid-15th century.”
World War II soon broke out and Christopher Lee volunteered. He joined the Royal Air Force and became an intelligence officer for the Long Range Desert Patrol, a forerunner of the SAS, Britain’s special forces. He fought the Nazis in North Africa, often having up to five missions a day. During this time he helped retake Sicily, prevented a mutiny among his troops, contracted malaria six times in a single year and climbed Mount Vesuvius three days before it erupted. Later he moved to Winston Churchill’s even more elite Special Operations Executive, whose missions are still classified. The SOE was more informally, and fabulously called The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Lee never said anything specific about his time in the SOE/SAS, but he has said: “I was attached to the SAS from time to time but we are forbidden—former, present, or future—to discuss any specific operations. Let’s just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read in to that what they like.” Further he once said: “I’ve seen many men die right in front of me—so many in fact that I’ve become almost hardened to it. Having seen the worst that human beings can do to each other, the results of torture, mutilation and seeing someone blown to pieces by a bomb, you develop a kind of shell. But you had to. You had to. Otherwise we would never have won.”
Tid-bit: During his death scene in Return of the King (only included in the Extended Edition to Lee’s disapproval), director Peter Jackson was describing to him what sound people getting stabbed in the back should make. Lee gravely responded that he had seen people being stabbed in the back, and knew exactly what sound they made.
There is so much more I could say about his time in the war, but then this post would be so much longer than it already is. So I will finish this section with this, by the end of the war he’d received commendations for bravery from the British, Polish, Czech and Yugoslavian governments. And this was all before the age of 25.
Since then, he has had an amazing career, because besides the fact that he was a decorated hero, he was also amazingly talented—if the classically trained singer did not give it away, here is more:
Still early in his career, Lee dubbed foreign films into English and other languages including Jacques Tat’s “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday”. Sometimes he dubbed all the voices including women’s parts. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., recalled that Lee could do any kind of accent: “foreign, domestic, North, South, Middle, young, old, everything. He’s a great character actor”.
Lee spoke fluent English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, and was moderately proficient in Swedish, Russian and Greek. Lee stated in an interview that he was “conversationally fluent” in Mandarin.
Tid-bit: He was the original voice of Thor in the German dubs in the Danish 1986 animated film Valhalla, and of King Haggard in both the English and German dubs of the 1982 animated adaptation of The Last Unicorn.
Besides that, Lee was a world champion fencer.
Tid-bit: In Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), in which he played the villainous Count Dooku. He did most of the swordplay himself, though a double was required for the long shots with more vigorous footwork. Lee’s face was imposed on the double’s body. Lee mentioned that in the last 40 years, he has done more sword fights than any other actor, but “not anymore.”
Mostly, he has played the villain, which he did so well that I wouldn’t even count it as a demerit, and he has been in so many films that he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Screen Credits (2007) which was 244 at the time, starring in the most films with a sword fight (17 films), being the most connected actor along and being the Tallest Leading Actor.
Tid-bit: Guinness says that he connects to virtually any actor in 2.59 steps—take that Bacon!
However, he later admitted that his film work was not always chosen on quality but often on whether it could support his family. In fact, he has a history of being considerate to his loved ones, and caring for their well-being. And he got to be awesome while doing so.
Lee was engaged for a time in the late fifties to Henriette von Rosen, whom he met at a nightclub in Stockholm. Her father, Count Fritz von Rosen proved demanding, getting them to delay the wedding for a year, asking his London-based friends to interview Lee, hiring private detectives to investigate him, and asking Lee to provide him with references, which Lee obtained from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., John Boulting and Joe Jackson. Lee found the meeting of her extended family to be like something from a surrealist Luis Buñuel film and thought they were “killing [him] with cream.” Finally, Lee had to have the permission of the King of Sweden to marry. Lee had met him some years before whilst filming Tales of Hans Anderson and received his blessing. However, shortly before the wedding, Lee ended the engagement. He was concerned that his financial insecurity in his chosen profession meant that she “deserved better” than being “pitched into the disheveled world of an actor.” She understood and they called the wedding off (though she must have later been saddened that it didn’t turn out that way).
Later, Lee was introduced to Danish painter and former model Birgit “Gitte” Krøncke by a Danish friend and his wife in 1960. They were engaged soon after and married on March 17, 1961. They had a daughter, Christina Erika Carandini Lee (b. 1963) and were still married upon his death.
Beyond the serious note there, Christopher Lee had some fun in his life.
He was on the cover of Paul McCartney’s 1973 Band on the Run album (seen below), as well as the video for the song—which was a making-of for the cover.
Around 1988, Lee agreed to play a vampire once more in an unproduced Dutch/Belgian comedy that was to be called “Blooper.” The script, written by Frank van Laecke, was commissioned because of the physical resemblance between Lee and Dutch opera singer Marco Bakker, as noted by Bakker’s wife, actress Willeke van Ammelrooy. Lee, a great lover of opera, got along well with both of them. The story concerned an opera singer called Billy Blooper (Bakker) who learns his father (Lee) is a vampire who’s teeth had gone rotten after eating too many sweets. Now whenever he bites anyone, instead of turning into a vampire, they became half-human, half-chicken (which sounds ridiculously campy and fun—and is right up my horror alley).
And yes, the rumors are true, Christopher Lee loved Heavy Metal.
Lee’s first contact with heavy metal music was singing a duet with Fabio Lione, former lead vocalist of the Italian symphonic power metal band Rhapsody of Fire (and currently a member of Angra), on the single “The Magic of the Wizard’s Dream” from the Symphony of Enchanted Lands II album. Later he appeared as a narrator on the band’s four albums Symphony of Enchanted Lands II—The Dark Secret, Triumph or Agony, The Frozen Tears of Angels and From Chaos to Eternity as well as on the EP The Cold Embrace of Fear—A Dark Romantic Symphony, portraying the Wizard King. He also worked with Manowar while they were recording a new version of their first album, Battle Hymns. The original voice was done by Orson Welles (who was long dead at the time of the re-recording). The new album, Battle Hymns MMXI, was released on November 26, 2010.
In 2006, he bridged two disparate genres of music by performing a heavy metal variation of the Toreador Song from the opera Carmen with the band Inner Terrestrials. The song was featured on his album Revelation in 2007. The same year, he produced a music video for his cover version of the song “My Way.”
His first complete metal album was Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which was critically acclaimed and awarded with the “Spirit of Metal” award from the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony, where he described himself as “a young man right at the beginning of his career”. It was released on 15 March 2010. In June 2012, he released a music video for the song “The Bloody Verdict of Verden”.
On his 90th birthday (May 27, 2012) he announced the release of his new single “Let Legend Mark Me as the King” from his upcoming album Charlemagne: The Omens of Death, signifying his move onto “full on” heavy metal. That makes him the oldest performer in the history of the genre. The music was arranged by Richie Faulkner from the band Judas Priest and features World Guitar Idol Champion, Hedras Ramos.
In December 2012, he released an EP of heavy metal covers of Christmas songs called A Heavy Metal Christmas. He released a second in December 2013, entitled A Heavy Metal Christmas Too. With the song “Jingle Hell,” Lee entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart at #22, thus becoming the oldest living performer to ever enter the music charts, at 91 years and 6 months. The record was previously held by Tony Bennett, who was 85 when he recorded “Body and Soul” with Amy Winehouse in March 2011. After media attention, the song rose to #18.
Lee released a third EP of covers in May 2014, to celebrate his 92nd birthday. Called Metal Knight, in addition to a cover of “My Way” it contains “The Toreador March”, inspired by the opera Carmen, and the songs “The Impossible Dream” and “I Don Quixote” from the Don Quixote musical Man of La Mancha. Lee was inspired to record the latter songs because, “as far as I am concerned, Don Quixote is the most metal fictional character that I know.” His fourth EP and third annual Christmas release came in December 2014 as he put out “Darkest Carols, Faithful Sing”, a playful take on “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” He explained: “It’s light-hearted, joyful and fun.…At my age, the most important thing for me is to keep active by doing things that I truly enjoy. I do not know how long I am going to be around, so every day is a celebration and I want to share it with my fans.”
Rock on Mr. Lee, ROCK ON!
Tid-Bit: His one outspoken regret, or at least claimed it as his biggest mistake, was that he turned down Donald Pleasence’s role as Dr. Sam Loomis in Halloween (1978). Honestly, that would have been so amazing, but he did so many other fantastic roles that that one was no big loss.
I’m really glad that the last thing I saw him in was The Hobbit trilogy, because even though he is known for his villain roles, including Saruman, I always want to root for him, and seeing Saruman on the side of good felt like redemption, and a nice send off.
What I want to do now is to try to watch every film he was in—especially the ones I have no idea what they are about, like The Oblong Box (1969), and re-watch some that I didn’t realize he was in, like The Wicker Man (1973)—not the really bad Nick Cage remake, but the really interesting and thrilling original!
I suppose that will take me until I, myself, am 93. And in that way, and many others, I guess Christopher Lee really will live on forever.
Vlog: Dream Cast: The Lunar Chronicles
In which Jess goes a little overboard in dream-casting not only Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, but her entire Lunar Chronicles series!
Adaptation Podcast 