#colditz tv

[misterivy]

Colditz is a British television drama series co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios and screened between 1972 and 1974.

The series deals with Allied prisoners of war imprisoned at Colditz Castle and their many attempts to escape captivity, as well as the relationships formed between the various nationalities and their German captors.

[unwillingadventurer]

The Colditz men

[wittwell]

[vintagetvstars]

David McCallum Vs. Dean Stockwell

Propaganda

David McCallum - (The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Colditz, The Outer Limits) - He became one of the hottest leading men of 1960s tv with The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and McCallum received more fan mail than any other actor in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's history, including such popular MGM movie stars as Clark Gable and Elvis Presley. He turned his Russian character from side-kick to co-star in one season during the height of the cold war. Artists wrote hit camp songs about his character like "Love Ya, Illya"

Dean Stockwell - (Quantum Leap, Dr. Kildare) - "Dean may be more well known for his roles in film, he is equally a titan of the small screen just as much as the big (despite his short king status)! ... Frankly, I think we all should recognize not only as a great actor, but as a really endearing and handsome fellow. He has the face, he has the style, he has the substance. Rise UP Dean Stockwell nation!!!" Full text propaganda included below the cut

- No Negative Propaganda Please -

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Additional propaganda below the cut

David McCallum:

Everyone knows him as Ducky from NCIS or Ashley Pitt from The Great Escape, but David McCallum was also the original Man From UNCLE, for which role he recieved record setting amounts of fan mail. Was considered to play the Doctor. Charles Bronson stole his first wife, but his second marriage lasted over 55 years, until his death, so who's the winner here.

He became an expert on forensics during his time with JAG/NCIS and attended multiple medical examiner conventions for research.

A classically trained musician, he created several instrumental albums in the 60's his biggest hit is a cover of The Edge which has appeared in movies and video games and sampled by rap artists.

Dean Stockwell:

Dean may be more well known for his roles in film, he is equally a titan of the small screen just as much as the big (despite his short king status)! Dean in his younger days was such a charmer that Dennis Hopper, upon seeing him, compared him to the late James Dean. He reflected that in his early television roles as well, often playing tortured, angst-ridden rebels. His fluffy hair, bushy eyebrows, and big brown eyes gave him an expressive and attractive charisma that nobody could turn from. Speaking of charisma, his biggest role is of course, Al Calavicci from Quantum Leap. If you watch a single episode of this show you are going to come away with an adoration for him. His cunt-slaying fashion and wise-cracking wisdom is all played excellently by him! It really is no wonder that Quantum Leap fans fell so far in love with him that, upon learning he didn't have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they campaigned HEAVILY to get him one (which was successful!). Frankly, I think we all should recognize not only as a great actor, but as a really endearing and handsome fellow. He has the face, he has the style, he has the substance. Rise UP Dean Stockwell nation!!!

[scotianostra]

The Scottish actor David McCallum was born on 19th September 1933.

Born as David Keith McCallum, Jr in Maryhill, Glasgow, the second of two sons of Dorothy Dorman, a cellist, and orchestral violinist David McCallum Sr. When he was three, his family moved to London for his father to play as concertmaster in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Early in the Second World War, he was evacuated back to Scotland, where he lived with his mother at Gartocharn by Loch Lomond.

McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, a boys’ independent school in Hampstead, London, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he played the oboe.In 1946 he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. Also involved in local amateur drama, at age 17, he appeared as Oberon in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Play and Pageant Union. He left school at age 18 and was conscripted, joining the 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force.In March 1954 he was promoted to Lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate.

David McCallum’s acting career has spanned six decades; however, these days he is best known for his starring role on the police procedural NCIS as medical examiner as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. I first really remember McCallum for his role in another US show, The Invisible Man which ran for 13 episodes in the 70’s. McCallum by then was a veteran of many TV and Film roles, starting in the 50’s including Our Mutual Friend and The Eustace Diamonds, in the 60’s he was in several ITV Playhouse shows before moving across the Atlantic to take roles in The Outer Limits and his big break as Illya Kuryakin in several incantations of The Man from Uncle.

His most notable films were The Greatest Story Ever Told as Judas Iscariot and of course Ashley-Pitt ‘Dispersal’ in The Great Escape.

As well as the aforementioned Invisible Man in the 70’s he took time to pop back over to our shores to star in two quality series, as Flt. Lt. Simon Carter in Colditz and Alan Breck Stewart in an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Kidnapped.

The 80’s saw him team up with the lovely Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel and several guest roles in the likes of The A Team, Hart to Hart and Murder, She Wrote as well as a one off reprise of Illya in the TV movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair.

The 90’s saw David in Cluedo and Trainer on our TV screens over here and American science-fiction series VR-5 in the states..

During the last 20 years or so he has been in the kids TV show, Ben 10: Omniverse as the voice of Professor Paradox and of course Donald Horatio “Ducky” Mallard in a remarkable  436 episodes of the popular NCIS.

David has been married twice. He married his first wife Jill Ireland in 1957. They met on the set of the movie Hell Drivers. Together, they had two sons and a daughter, Paul, Jason and Valentine, with Jason being the only one who was adopted. In 1963, David introduced Jill to his co-star on The Great Escape, Charles Bronson, and she left David and married Charles in 1968. In 1967,

David McCallum passed away aged 90 on September 23rd last year, he is survived by his wife of 56 years, Katherine McCallum, his sons Paul McCallum, Valentine McCallum and Peter McCallum, his daughter Sophie McCallum and his eight grandchildren. NCIS paid tribute to him in an episode called The Stories We Leave Behind when the tagents find comfort in working on one of his unfinished cases. The episode features clips from several old shows.

[all-action-all-picture]

An Airfix ad for their Colditz Glider. The real life glider was built by British prisoners in Colditz castle during World War ll. This model, produced in 1974, was likely a tie-in with the popular Colditz TV series that ran, for 2 series, from 1972-1974. The glider became part of the storyline in the second series.

[missanthropicprinciple]

Thank you @harpothemarx <3 <3 <3

1. 3 ships: Newmann! (forever!) and lately Guy of Gisburne/Robert de Rainault (Sheriff of Nottingham) and Tomgreg

2. First ever ship: Han and Leia I guess but also maybe Bert and Erie or Frog and Toad?

3. Last song: The Path of the Wind (Instrumental) - Joe Hisaishi

4. Last movie: Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987) - a beautifully made tv movie.

5. Currently reading: The entire Sherlock Holmes canon. Got through A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, and now I've started A Scandal in Bohemia.

6. Currently watching: The Hound of the Baskervilles 1988...again. Like right this minute. But also Colditz.

7. Currently consuming: Made myself palak paneer from scratch again. Just finished my allotted caffeinated beverage of the day, my usual Earl Grey.

8. Currently craving: Palak paneer....hence me making it for the second time in a week.

9. people to tag: @thetookasnest @sharky857 @jimgandolfini @pokemonandcatsmostly @spengnitzed @slowburncowboy @patster223 @dagrans @bamfcoyotetango @thesundaytea @problemwithtrouble @stalksships @safetytree @ladylier @trifoliate-undergrowth

[kwebtv]

David Keith McCallum Jr. (September 19, 1933 – September 25, 2023) Film and television actor and musician. He gained wide recognition in the 1960s for playing secret agent Illya Kuryakin in the television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His other notable television roles include Carter in Colditz (1972–1974) and Steel in Sapphire & Steel (1979–1982). Beginning in 2003, McCallum gained renewed international popularity for his role as NCIS medical examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard in the American television series NCIS. On film, McCallum notably appeared in The Great Escape (1963).

Other television roles included two appearances on The Outer Limits and a guest appearance on Perry Mason in 1964 as defendant Phillipe Bertain in "The Case of the Fifty Millionth Frenchman".

McCallum and Vaughn reprised their roles of Kuryakin and Solo in a 1983 TV film, Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.. In 1986 McCallum reunited with Vaughn again in an episode of The A-Team entitled "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair", complete with "chapter titles", the word "affair" in the title, the phrase "Open Channel D", and similar scene transitions.

 In 1975 he played the title character in a short-lived U.S. version of The Invisible Man.

McCallum starred with Diana Rigg in the 1989 TV miniseries Mother Love. In 1991 and 1992 McCallum played gambler John Grey, one of the principal characters in the television series Trainer. He appeared as an English literature teacher in a 1989 episode of Murder, She Wrote. In the 1990s McCallum guest-starred in two U.S. television series. In season 1 of SeaQuest DSV, he appeared as the law-enforcement officer Frank Cobb of the fictional Broken Ridge of the Ausland Confederation, an underwater mining camp off the coast of Australia by the Great Barrier Reef; he also had a guest-star role in one episode of Babylon 5 as Dr. Vance Hendricks in the Season 1 episode Infection.

IMDb listing

[mercurygray]

Currently Reading - November 2023

Gosh, it's been a little while since I did one of these!

The Year of Peril: America in 1942 - Tracey Campbell . Found this one at the library booksale just after I finished the 1942 podcast series. The book is excellent so far and really flipping some interesting issues over.

Just Finished Reading:

Millions Like Us: Women's Lives during the Second World War by Virgina Nicolson - This was excellent and I strongly recommend it. I got a lot of inspiration for the end of TDS in it and there's a lot of material that I think will come in handy for MOTA.

Sisters in Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story, by Nicola Tyrer - Another super excellent book that filled in a serious knowledge gap I had about British nursing. Might come in handy for future SAS:RH productions.

An Unladylike Profession: American Women War Correspondents in World War I by Chris Dubbs - This was an impulse purchase on thriftbooks and was very interesting.

The Call of the Wrens, by Jenni Walsh. Fiction. Glad this was only a library book - it was just okay. I'm not a big fan of time jumps as a narrative device - it feels thin.

Cassiel's Servant, by Jacqueline Carey. Fiction. It was really fun to go back to Terre D'Ange for this one, and interesting to see Joscelin's side of things. Realized Joscelin may be why/how I write Dick the way I do.

Ashes under water : the SS Eastland and the shipwreck that shook America, by Michael McCarthy. This was a book club pick that I ended up not being able to join discussion on. A really interesting story, if you're into maritime disasters.

Prisoners of the castle : an epic story of survival and escape from Colditz, the Nazis' fortress prison, by Ben Macintyre. This was on the shelf at the library and I was reading mostly for mentions of David Stirling. Still - very interesting, especially when paired with...

Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat, by Giles Milton. This book was fascinating. A lot of backstory behind the stuff that made the war work.

The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. A book club pick that I'm really glad I read.

Just Finished Watching:

Our Miracle Years (Unsere wunderbaren Jahre, Das Erste/PBS) - follows the life of one family in the post-war period. Some good food for thought here.

A Place to Call Home, Season 1 (Foxtel/ Hoopla) - More post-war, this time in Australia, which I started just as something to watch and am now very embroiled in. (Fair warning, this show contains conversation therapy, a miscarriage, and antisemitism, and may probably be triggering for some.)

World On Fire, Season 2 (BBC/PBS) - I came, I brought my Passport subscription, I tried...and after all six episodes I still don't like this show. I don't feel like we spend enough time with any of the characters to really appreciate them. It feels like everyone's there to make a point.

Outlander Season 7 (STARZ) - This was just fun. I'm not a huge fan of the books, but the TV series is really enjoyable for me.

Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) - This has been on my list for a while and it popped up recently on Hoopla. I like Peck's nervousness in the role.

Dalgliesh, Season 2 (Acorn/Hoopla) - Bertie Carvel continues to do great in this role. I kind of wish there was a crossover involving him and Morse.

To Walk Invisible (BBC/ PBS)- It was really fun to watch this back to back with Emily.

Emily (2022) - Getting two mostly recent takes on the Bronte sisters so close together was really interesting.

Farewell My Queen (2012) - watched this while on vacation in Williamsburg. A nice 18th century drama.

[ncisfranchise-source]

1957 was a big year for David McCallum, the respected Glasgow-born actor known for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Great Escape” and his 20-year run on “NCIS” as quirky pathologist Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard.

From the Oct. 23, 1957, edition of weekly Variety

The actor, who died Sept. 25 at the age of 90, logged six mentions in Variety that year, starting with the March 20 edition of weekly that featured him in the cast list of a review of the British “crimer meller��� (aka crime melodrama) “The Secret Place.” From then on, McCallum was a staple in our pages, limning movies, TV shows, legit stages in the U.S. and U.K. He never stopped working.

Wedding announcement for David McCallum and Jill Ireland from the May 22, 1957, edition of weekly Variety

1957 was also the year McCallum married actor Jill Ireland in London, an event commemorated with a wedding announcement in the May 22, 1957, edition of weekly.

Five months later, McCallum got his first detailed mention in a review of British drama “Robbery Under Arms,” a Rank film production also starring Peter Finch, Ronald Lewis and Ireland. McCallum was one half of a pair of brothers who get swept into a life of crime, and he was singled out in our review. “Good opportunities are given to the brothers, Lewis and McCallum. The latter, in the more subtle part, enhances his rising reputation.”

Growing up in that era of Britain, it’s no surprise that McCallum was a Rank regular. But by the early 1960s, McCallum’s star climbed as he landed a supporting role in the 1963 Steve McQueen hit “The Great Escape.” (Scandal ensued, however, when Ireland and “Great Escape” co-star Charles Bronson began an affair on the set. Bronson and Ireland were married from 1968 until her death from breast cancer in 1990.)

Congrats ad saluting 1966 Golden Globe Award winners from the Feb. 14, 1966, edition of Daily Variety

Soon after “The Great Escape,” McCallum relocated to swinging Hollywood, co-starring with Robert Vaughn in the spy-fi comedy series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” for four seasons. MGM Television produced the NBC series that was inspired by the success of the James Bond film franchise. McCallum earned back-to-back Emmy nominations in 1965 and 1966 for the show, and the series nabbed the Golden Globe Award in 1966 for Most Popular TV Show.

From the June 24, 1968, edition of Daily Variety

MGM kept McCallum busy in features during his “Man From U.N.C.L.E” hiatus. In 1967 he starred in the globe-trotting movie comedy “Three Bites of the Apple” with Harvey Korman, Sylvia Koscina and Tammy Grimes. “Box office is the name of the game … so let yourself go with McCallum,” MGM exhorted in an ad in the Feb. 8, 1967, edition of weekly Variety for “Three Bites.”

Still, he never strayed too far from the boards. “Dave McCallum” landed prime page-one placement in the June 24, 1968, edition of Daily Variety when he was set to star in the Broadway adaptation of the hit London tuner “The Flip Side,” which opened Oct. 10 on the Main Stem and closed Oct. 12.

McCallum juggled all manner of film, TV and stage projects in the 1970s and ’80s. In the early 1970s he co-starred with Robert Wagner in the British drama series “Colditz” — a bit of foreshadowing of things to come decades later when Wagner joined the cast of “NCIS.”

From the Nov. 16, 1972, edition of Daily Variety

And who says reboots and remakes are a recent phenomenon? Fifteen years after the original series ended, CBS reunited Vaughn and McCallum for a “The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E.” TV movie that had its charms, according to our review from the April 7, 1983, edition of Daily Variety: “Robert Vaughn and David McCallum resume their spy-snooping as slickly as though they never left,” our critic wrote.

From the Nov. 29, 1982, edition of Daily Variety

Any actor fortunate enough to have a long career will inevitably deal with some downturns. McCallum did a fair amount of low-profile indie and Euro-financed movies in the 1990s. After he landed the “NCIS” gig in 2003, he mostly stuck to moonlighting with voice work in animated series and video games.

In 2012, Variety paid tribute to “NCIS” as it reached its 200 episode milestone – a rare achievement for series and one that has become even more unusual in contemporary times.

From the Feb. 7, 2012, edition of Daily Variety

From the Sept. 22, 2003, edition of Daily Variety

We couldn’t have known it back then, but “NCIS” and McCallum were destined to deliver more than 250 more episodes (not to mention two more spinoffs) during his stint on the show, which is heading into Season 21, although the premiere date is still in flux after production was delayed by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes).

The show clearly won’t be the same without his authoritative and avuncular presence. As we wrote in our Sept. 22, 2003, review of the pilot for the series originally titled “Navy NCIS,” McCallum’s character was key to adding “scientific insight and personality quicks aplenty” to the ensembler.

Rest in peace, Ducky.

[bruceburgdorf]

BBC Colditz Fanfiction

For those interested in Prisoner of Wars camps and POW fiction I want to share a very old fanfiction which was written in 1996 by Sue and Sal from The Android’s Dungeon (A very old fanfiction website) about the 1972 British TV series Colditz.

It is a brilliant multi-chapter fanfiction featuring the pairings Dick Player/Phil Carrington and also Franz Ulmann/Kommandant Karl

The fanfiction was originally published in paperback before it was available online and is also the oldest example of a WW2 German pairing I have found online.

[achillean-archives]

"Ironically, Kaye would sometimes lament that he himself was ‘no oil painting’, which explained, he said, why he didn’t have a partner: ‘I wouldn’t want somebody to be with me just because they wanted to be with Gorden Kaye the actor. I do believe in love, but it’s only happened to me three times . . . which is two times too many.’

He was born Gordon Kaye (the spelling ‘Gorden’ came much later) in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, in 1941, the only child of working-class parents who regarded him as their little miracle: his mother was 42 when he was born. His father, Harold, was an engineer, and an air raid warden.

A sensitive boy, he worried that his parents were so much older than other children’s. ‘I was sure that I would come home and find them dead,’ he admitted.

When he was three, he crept downstairs when his parents were having a Christmas party. He watched his mother, Gracie, talking and smoking a cigarette. When she put it down in an ashtray, young Gorden picked it up and took a drag.

Whether red-hot ash flew up from the tip, or he accidentally poked himself with the burning end, he was never sure. All he could remember was throwing himself on the floor, screaming and howling, and an agonising pain in his left eye. Next morning, the pupil was swollen, and he could barely see out of it. He later regained about 20 per cent of his vision in that eye, but for the rest of his life it stared off to the side.

At 16, he took a job as a salesman at a textiles firm, for £4 7s 6d a week. But he wanted to work in showbiz, and volunteered on Huddersfield’s hospital radio, playing rock ’n’ roll.  When The Beatles performed at the town’s cinema in 1963, Gorden interviewed them. His instinctive humour brought out the best in the Fab Four, who showered him with silly jokes.

At 22, Kaye was engaged to be married, but he had known since his teens that he was gay. That was why he had proposed to his girlfriend: ‘I thought that’s how you made the feelings go away.’

But they did not go away and, feeling increasingly lonely, he sought out a pen-friend through the small ads. A sailor called Peter in the New Zealand merchant navy got in touch, and they exchanged long, confessional messages, recorded on cassettes.

When Peter visited Britain, Gorden took him to meet his parents. Afterwards, his mother guessed there was ‘something going on’ and though Gorden denied it at first, he eventually told her the truth.

‘Don’t tell your dad,’ she warned. ‘It’ll kill him.’ He never said anything to his father and, for a long time, thought if his secret was exposed he would have to kill himself.

He threw himself into amateur dramatics. Playwright Alan Ayckbourn, then a BBC radio producer, urged him to turn professional. He applied for a job with a Bolton repertory company: the audition was so successful that the director fell off his chair laughing and had to be helped up. But the company wanted him for character work, and his first role was as an 80-year-old man. 

Bit parts on TV followed, and then he was cast as Elsie Tanner’s nephew, Bernard, in Coronation Street. By now his name was ‘Gorden’, thanks to a spelling error by the actors’ union, Equity. Before he could correct it, he was taken to hospital with kidney stones. 

The registrar misspelled his name, too, so the clipboard at the end of his bed also said ‘Gorden’. ‘I took that as an omen,’ he said. ‘Or possibly an emon.’ Those sorts of mangled vowels were the mainstay of his role as Rene.

At the outset in 1982, the show by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft was accused of mocking the heroes of the French Resistance. In fact, it was a send-up of BBC television wartime dramas such as Secret Army and Colditz. The show became hugely popular. 

But in 1989, warned that a Sunday tabloid was about to reveal his sexuality, Gorden decided to come out as gay: ‘I was born this way and I’ve never pretended to be anything other than what I am.’

He was terrified of the public response but, when the news broke, he was in panto at the London Palladium, and got a standing ovation.

Other reaction was less kind. One MP, Geoffrey Dickens, demanded the BBC sack him, for impersonating a ladies’ man on prime-time TV. 

‘That was a horrible time,’ Gorden remembered. 

‘It was a bit like the Nuremberg trials. I don’t care what my greengrocer does in bed and I don’t see why the public should have to know what I do. But of all the letters I got from the public, only two of them were nasty.’

Worse was to come. During a storm in January 1990, part of a wooden advertising hoarding was blown through his car windscreen and a piece of wood nearly 11in long was embedded in his skull. 

The injury left scars mental and physical from which he never fully recovered. He returned to record a final season of ��Allo ’Allo!, but rarely worked on TV again after that. The shock of the accident left him nervous and irritable, and clumsier than ever. ‘If I try to open a packet of biscuits,’ he admitted, ‘I spill them. And then I shout at them.’

He involved himself with charity work with the Grand Order of Water Rats, which supported entertainers and their families in hard times, and was proud to be elected Chief Rat in 1999. 

But he took little joy in life, and said he didn’t want to live into old age. Invitations were declined on the excuse that he was expecting to go to a funeral — his own.

But he never regretted a day of his time on ’Allo ’Allo! If his ability to make people laugh was a gift from God, as he believed, then Rene was his greatest stroke of luck — one other actors would kill to have, ‘and might probably put ground glass in my Diet Coke,’ he laughed.

‘I loved playing Rene. ’Allo ’Allo! enabled me to work with some of the finest comic performers in Britain. We did it for ten years . . . and even Hitler only managed six.’ " Source:

"Retired college lecturer Raymond, 86, said Gorden, who grew up in Moldgreen , had become isolated and very lonely - despite being loved by millions of fans.

“He had no brothers or sisters, just a few cousins. He never married and was a lone survivor till the end.

"It was just a case of surviving and he was very lonely. That is all very sad.”

Raymond praised his famous relative as “a brilliant actor, a comic genius, who brought a lot of joy to many people. He is still making people laugh today.”

Kaye was best known for his role as Rene Artois in the 1980s BBC sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo! which made light of the Nazi occupation of France.

BAFTA nominated, he also appeared in Last of the Summer Wine, Are You Being Served?, Coronation Street and Emmerdale.

Raymond added: “He always appreciated his fans saying ‘They’re my bread and butter’ and he always stopped to sign autographs in the street.”

Gorden, an only child, had described himself as a “shy, gay and overweight boy.”

[...]

Raymond, a father of two, said many of Gorden’s friends from London rarely visited him once he was in a care home.

He said: “Just one or two but not recently, they just seemed to forget about him.

“Me and my wife went up when we could but we’re too old to drive and it’s difficult by train and taxi.”

Raymond told how the teetotal star, who cheated death in a horrific car crash in 1990, “smoked a bit but never touched alcohol.”

He added: “I like to remember sitting and talking to him and what a brilliant actor he was.

“Allo ‘Allo was his best role. He was in 84 episodes which have been shown across the world.

[...]

Raymond fondly recalls being invited to screenings with Sheila: “We were in the audience a lot at one time. He did he make us laugh.

“He may have been forgotten by his acting friends but he’ll never be forgotten by us, his family, and his legions of fans." " Source:

[unwillingadventurer]

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Remembering David McCallum- Scottish actor and musician.

David McCallum, who became a heartthrob in the hit series ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,’ Dies at 90 💔 So sad a fine actor a great talent and a true gentleman.

An experienced character actor, he found fame in the 1960s as the enigmatic Illya Kuryakin. The British actor who played the mysterious secret agent Illya Kuryakin alongside Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo in the 1960s hit spy drama The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was a secret international counterespionage and law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). The series premiered on September 22, 1964, and completed its run on January 15, 1968. The role turned the actor into a global sex symbol.

The success of the James Bond books and films had set off a chain reaction, with secret agents proliferating on both large and small screens. Indeed, Bond creator Ian Fleming contributed some ideas when the series was being developed, according to Jon Heitland’s book, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of a Television Classic (special introduction by Robert Vaughn)

David McCallum took his place among one of the most iconic casts Hollywood ever assembled, nothing in the film’s title, The Great Escape, He was playing naval officer Eric Ashley-Pitt in the 1963 Second World War epic about the mass escape of British and Commonwealth POWs from German Stalag Luft III camp, through another POW turn in Colditz (1972-1974).

David McCallum with Steve McQueen on the set of the WWII epic. The Great Escape brought him to a US audiences. (Image: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)

In 1975, he had the title role in a short-lived science fiction series, “The Invisible Man,” and from 1979 to 1982 he played Steel in a British sci-if chiller “Sapphire and Steel” (1979-1982). Over the years, he also appeared in guest shots in many TV shows, including “Murder, She Wrote” and “Sex and the City, a romantic comedy-drama television series filmed in New York.

Later, in the 2000s as an eccentric medical examiner on “N.C.I.S.” he reached a new audience as Dr Donald "Ducky" Mallard, the medical examiner in US TV drama NCIS. McCallum was known for playing a pathologist on the hit CBS TV programme NCIS, which went on to generate several spinoff series, for twenty years. NCIS is the third-longest-running scripted, non-animated primetime television series in the U.S that is currently on air.

He was a true Renaissance man — he was fascinated by science and culture and would turn those passions into knowledge. For example, he was capable of conducting a symphony orchestra and (if needed) could perform an autopsy, based on his decades-long studies for his role on NCIS.

The Scottish-born actor died in New York on Monday 25th September 2023. He lived in Manhattan. David Keith McCallum was born on 19th September 1933 in the Maryhill (Scots: Maryhull - Scottish Gaelic: Cnoc Màiri) area of Glasgow, to a father who was the first violinist for the London Philharmonic and a mother who was a cellist.

David won a scholarship to the University College School in north London and took up the oboe with a view to a classical music career. Thus he originally pursued a career in music, training on the oboe and studying for a time at the Royal Academy of Music, though he soon left and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After RADA he started performing with repertory theatre companies.

David McCallum was drafted into the British military in 1951 and served two years, including 10 months in what was a small-arms expert. Not long after his discharge, he signed with the Rank Organization, a British production company, and began acting both in movies and on television.

David McCallum a classically trained musician, created arrangements of popular songs of the day alongside a few original pieces and made four albums with forward-thinking producer and composer David Axelrod. Those groovy productions have been sampled a lot by trip-hop artists and more. In particular, “The Edge” from 1967’s

“The Edge” from 1967’s Music: For those who might have heard this song sampled elsewhere, you could have heard it in various places. From Masta Ace (“No Regrets”) to John Legend (“Actions”) his original was used in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, the 2017 film starring Ansel Elgort.

Check out the video below and listen for that familiar intro:

David McCallum - From The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to NCIS, and all performances in between, he was a multifaceted talent during 7 decades and 100 films and TV shows a True Legend.

R.I.P David 💔

1933-2023

#DavidMcCallum #Scottishactor #Britishactor #U.N.C.L.E. #IllyaKuryakin #TheGreatEscape #navalofficer #EricAshley #NCIS #secretagent #Edge #music #Ducky #DoctorMallard #actor #talent #gentleman #Legend #ripdavidmccallum

[vintagetvstars]

David McCallum Vs. David Selby

Propaganda

David McCallum - (The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Colditz, The Outer Limits) - He became one of the hottest leading men of 1960s tv with The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and McCallum received more fan mail than any other actor in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's history, including such popular MGM movie stars as Clark Gable and Elvis Presley. He turned his Russian character from side-kick to co-star in one season during the height of the cold war. Artists wrote hit camp songs about his character like "Love Ya, Illya"

David Selby - (Dark Shadows, Falcon Crest) - VERY handsome. 16 magazine had articles about him for a reason. Does such a good job as Quentin, every moment he's onscreen is a delight. He's funny, he's evil, he's Going Thru It, he's being stupid, WHATEVER it is he's great at it. So tall in the 1960s you can clearly see him having to duck through some doorways onscreen, and still pretty darn tall as an old man. (I actually just met him recently and got his autograph, he was very nice!) If tumblr was around in the 1960s he would have been prime tumblr sexyman material.

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Additional propaganda below the cut

David McCallum:

Everyone knows him as Ducky from NCIS or Ashley Pitt from The Great Escape, but David McCallum was also the original Man From UNCLE, for which role he recieved record setting amounts of fan mail. Was considered to play the Doctor. Charles Bronson stole his first wife, but his second marriage lasted over 55 years, until his death, so who's the winner here.

He became an expert on forensics during his time with JAG/NCIS and attended multiple medical examiner conventions for research.

A classically trained musician, he created several instrumental albums in the 60's his biggest hit is a cover of The Edge which has appeared in movies and video games and sampled by rap artists.

David Selby:

Dark Shadows was a daily soap opera in the 60's and that means that unless an actor swore or something truly heinous happened all mistakes are just there for our viewing pleasure.

Here have this video of his character and another dude right after trying to summon the devil

I love David Selby and I love David Selby as Quentin Collins (all of them). He plays the tragic, disaster, self-absorbed "hero" so well and is one of the original wet cat men of TV.

Also this incredibly gay scene of those two characters

TW: Gypsy Slur

[scotianostra]

Happy 90th Birthday Scottish actor David McCallum.

Born as David Keith McCallum, Jr on this day 19933 in Maryhill, Glasgow, the second of two sons of Dorothy Dorman, a cellist, and orchestral violinist David McCallum Sr. When he was three, his family moved to London for his father to play as concertmaster in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Early in the Second World War, he was evacuated back to Scotland, where he lived with his mother at Gartocharn by Loch Lomond.

McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, a boys' independent school in Hampstead, London, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he played the oboe.In 1946 he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. Also involved in local amateur drama, at age 17, he appeared as Oberon in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Play and Pageant Union. He left school at age 18 and was conscripted, joining the 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force.In March 1954 he was promoted to Lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate.

David McCallum’s acting career has spanned six decades; however, these days he is best known for his starring role on the police procedural NCIS as medical examiner as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. I first really remember McCallum for his role in another US show, The Invisible Man which ran for 13 episodes in the 70's. McCallum by then was a veteran of many TV and Film roles, starting in the 50's including Our Mutual Friend and The Eustace Diamonds, in the 60's he was in several ITV Playhouse shows before moving across the Atlantic to take roles in The Outer Limits and his big break as Illya Kuryakin in several incantations of The Man from Uncle.

His most notable films were The Greatest Story Ever Told as

Judas Iscariot and of course Ashley-Pitt 'Dispersal' in The Great Escape.

As well as the aforementioned Invisible Man in the 70's he took time to pop back over to our shores to star in two quality series, as Flt. Lt. Simon Carter in Colditz and Alan Breck Stewart in an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson's, Kidnapped.

The 80's saw him team up with the lovely Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel and several guest roles in the likes of The A Team, Hart to Hart and Murder, She Wrote as well as a one off reprise of Illya in the TV movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair.

The 90's saw David in Cluedo and Trainer on our TV screens over here and American science-fiction series VR-5 in the states..

During the last 20 years or so he has been in the kids TV show, Ben 10: Omniverse as the voice of Professor Paradox and of course Donald Horatio "Ducky" Mallard in over 350 episodes of the popular NCIS.

David has been married twice. He married his first wife Jill Ireland in 1957. They met on the set of the movie Hell Drivers. Together, they had two sons and a daughter, Paul, Jason and Valentine, with Jason being the only one who was adopted. In 1963, David introduced Jill to his co-star on The Great Escape, Charles Bronson, and she left David and married Charles in 1968. In 1967, David married Katherine Carpenter and they have two children together, a son Peter and a daughter, Sophie. He and Katherine currently live in New York.

In NCIS since 2018, Ducky, played by McCallum, has appeared in fewer episodes. avid McCallum explained that appearing in fewer episodes will allow him to see more of his family, which includes his wife, children, six grandsons, and their cat, Nickie. According to IMDB he has chalked up an amazing 457 appearances in the show, morethan anyother character in the series.