Kenneth Haigh obituary
He was not on the list.
The actor Kenneth Haigh, who has died aged 86, was the original Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court in May 1956, the game-changing new play that gave voice to a new generation, disaffected, provincial, working class, alienated by the Sunday newspapers, disgusted by the dreariness and hypocrisy of public life and private behavior.
The play, in some ways, was a rant, but it was also a call to arms and, in Haigh, Osborne found his ideal representative on the stage: as abrasive as he was bright, Haigh was a “school of hard knocks” Yorkshireman who, like Osborne, had served time in weekly rep and the touring theatre of the 1950s and disliked most of what he had been required to do.
Osborne’s play showed a new direction, very different from the other plays Haigh had signed up to perform with the newly formed English Stage Company that season in Sloane Square; these were Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (he was the Rev John Hale) and, even more remotely to his experience, two new plays by middle-class novelists, The Mulberry Bush by Angus Wilson and Cards of Identity by Nigel Dennis.
He became synonymous with the “angry young men” (a phrase coined by a Royal Court PR man) of the time. To a large extent he was Jimmy Porter. When he went to Broadway with the play in 1958, a young woman in the audience, Joyce Greller, climbed on the stage and slapped him around the face. The scene she interrupted, she explained to the New York Times, “reminded me of all the rotten men I’ve known – it was a composite of every one of those fine rats”; which is just how people take actors in television soap operas “for real” these days, forgetting about fiction. It emerged later, however, that the interruption was a publicity stunt rigged by the producer David Merrick, who had paid Greller, an out-of-work actor, $250 in order to boost the sagging box office, which she did … the play ran for another 15 months.
Haigh’s other signature role was Joe Lampton in the ITV series Man at the Top (1970-72), in which he embodied John Braine’s womanising northern antihero first seen in the film Room at the Top. It was Haigh’s bad luck that both Jimmy Porter and Joe Lampton were more easily identified on celluloid with Richard Burton and Laurence Harvey, the respective stars of the movie adaptations.
Haigh had a double Richard Burton connection: with the great actor when he played Brutus in the Burton/Elizabeth Taylor blockbuster Cleopatra (1963), and with the explorer of the same name who competed with David Livingstone to discover the source of the African river in one of the best ever BBC documentaries, The Search for the Nile (1971). This was narrated by James Mason, and Haigh was Burton to Michael Gough’s Livingstone.
He was at least lionised in New York for a while after Look Back. He played the title role of Caligula by Albert Camus in 1960, directed by Sidney Lumet, missing the madness (according to the critic Kenneth Tynan) but worrying at his lines like a dog with a bone and surveying the patricians with contemptuous aplomb. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 to play in Harold Pinter’s The Collection at the Aldwych and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar at Stratford-upon-Avon. But he was more at home as a Liverpudlian wildcat strike leader in Lionel Bart and Alun Owen’s underrated musical Maggie May, co-starring Rachel Roberts, in 1964.
Haigh was born in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, the son of Margaret (nee Glyn) and William Haigh, and educated at Gunnersbury grammar school in London. After national service, he trained at the (now Royal) Central School of Speech and Drama and in 1952 toured in Ireland with Anew McMaster’s repertory company; he played Cassio to McMaster’s Othello, succeeding Pinter in the role as Pinter moved on to play Iago.
After Look Back, Haigh became soul mates with Tynan, whose review of the play – “I doubt if I could love anyone who did not want to see Look Back in Anger” – transformed so many lives, inside and outside the theatre, and he often dined with him at his home in South Kensington. Haigh also befriended another critic, Michael Billington, after they met at a Christmas party at Tynan’s house in 1973. They occasionally dined together and some years later Haigh cheerily remarked to Billington, on turning up one night for supper: “I don’t know. Same house, same job, same wife. Why haven’t you fucked your life up like the rest of us?”
Haigh had returned to Britain after a period of teaching and performing at Yale drama school in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was encouraged by the critic Robert Brustein to play Prometheus and Pirandello’s Henry IV. His film career was insignificant, but he was superb as an embittered, exiled Napoleon in Eagle in a Cage (1972), though his last UK stage appearances, in Strindberg’s The Father at the Leicester Haymarket in 1975 and as a bland and chubby Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing in Manchester Cathedral in 1976, were disappointing.
He suffered the misfortune of spending the last 15 years in a care home as a result of brain damage incurred after swallowing a chicken bone in a Soho restaurant and suffering oxygen loss.
In 1974 he married the model Myrna Stephen. She and their son survive him.
Actor (88 credits)
2020 Shuttlecock
Doctor Quinn
2004 Mr. Blue (Short)
Mr. Blue
2002 How We Used to Live: A Giant in Ancient Egypt (TV Mini Series)
Burckhart
1996 The Ring (TV Movie)
Dr. Kopek
1994 Pressure Drop (Video short)
A Russian President
1993 Maigret (TV Series)
Victor Drouet
- Maigret's Boyhood Friend (1993) ... Victor Drouet
1993 The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (TV Series)
War Minister
- Paris, October 1916 (1993) ... War Minister
1992 The Blackheath Poisonings (TV Mini Series)
Sir Charles Russell
- Episode #1.3 (1992) ... Sir Charles Russell
1992 The Good Guys (TV Series)
Max Weiner
- Find the Lady (1992) ... Max Weiner
1991 Shuttlecock
Dr. Quinn
1991 Inspector Morse (TV Series)
Freddie Galt
- Fat Chance (1991) ... Freddie Galt
1991 Poirot (TV Series)
McKenzie
- The Plymouth Express (1991) ... McKenzie
1990 Lorna Doone (TV Movie)
Judge Jeffreys
1990 Theatre Night (TV Series)
Ben Jonson
- Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death (1990) ... Ben Jonson
1989 Screenplay (TV Series)
Captain Steiner
- The Act (1989) ... Captain Steiner
1987 One Life to Live (TV Series)
Mr. Kellogg
- Episode #1.4744 (1987) ... Mr. Kellogg
1987 Omnibus (TV Series documentary)
George Grosz
- George Grosz: Enemy of the State (1987) ... George Grosz
1986 The Day After the Fair (TV Movie)
Arthur
1986 The Theban Plays by Sophocles (TV Series)
Polynices
- Theban Plays: Oedipus at Colonus (1986) ... Polynices
1986 The Fourth Floor (TV Mini Series)
George Payne
- Episode #1.3 (1986) ... George Payne
- Episode #1.2 (1986) ... George Payne
- Episode #1.1 (1986) ... George Payne
1985 A State of Emergency
Nathan Weis
1985 Wild Geese II
Col. Reed-Henry
1984 Night Train to Murder (TV Movie)
Cousin Milton / Cousin Homer
1984 The Testament of John (TV Movie)
Robert
1981 Troilus & Cressida (TV Movie)
Achilles
1981 Ladykillers (TV Series)
George Joseph Smith
- My Perfect Husband (1981) ... George Joseph Smith
1981 Maybury (TV Series)
Frank Caley
- Trouble at Home (1981) ... Frank Caley
- Not to Worry, Everything Is Under Control (1981) ... Frank Caley
1980 Feelifax (TV Movie)
Roger
1979 Premiere (TV Series)
David Austin
- Weekend (1979) ... David Austin
1979 The Bitch
Arnold Rinstead
1978 A Walk in the Sun
George
1977 The Sunday Drama (TV Series)
Mark Davies
- A Good Human Story (1977) ... Mark Davies
1977 Hazlitt in Love (TV Movie)
William Hazlitt
1976 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (TV Movie)
Archdeacon Claude Frollo
1976 BBC2 Playhouse (TV Series)
Tom
- Dad (1976) ... Tom
1976 Robin and Marian
Sir Ranulf
1975 Moll Flanders (TV Movie)
Jemmy Earle
1974 The Person Responsible (TV Movie)
Michael Beasley
1974 Orson Welles' Great Mysteries (TV Series)
Jorge Vega
- Under Suspicion (1974) ... Jorge Vega
1973 Man at the Top
Joe Lampton
1973 Wessex Tales (TV Mini Series)
Barnet
- Fellow Townsmen (1973) ... Barnet
1961-1972 Armchair Theatre (TV Series)
Gustave / Emile / Harry / ...
- The Creditors (1972) ... Gustave
- The Exploding Azalea (1967) ... Emile
- Joker (1962) ... Harry
- The Way of Love (1961) ... David Enoch
1970-1972 Man at the Top (TV Series)
Joe Lampton
- The Foreman's Job at Last (1972) ... Joe Lampton
- Winners are Losers (1972) ... Joe Lampton
- High Stakes (1972) ... Joe Lampton
- Living Like a Lord (1972) ... Joe Lampton
- Don't Rock the Boat (1972) ... Joe Lampton
Show all 23 episodes
1972 Eagle in a Cage
Napoleon Bonaparte
1971 The Search for the Nile (TV Mini Series)
Sir Richard F. Burton
- Conquest and Death (1971) ... Sir Richard F. Burton
- Find Livingstone (1971) ... Sir Richard F. Burton
- The Great Debate (1971) ... Sir Richard F. Burton
- The Secret Fountains (1971) ... Sir Richard F. Burton
- Discovery and Betrayal (1971) ... Sir Richard F. Burton
Show all 6 episodes
1971 Journey to Murder
Dirk Brogan (Do Me a Favor and Kill Me)
1969 Strange Report (TV Series)
Blake
- Report 2641: Hostage - If You Won't Learn, Die! (1969) ... Blake
1968 Journey to the Unknown (TV Series)
Dirk Brogan
- Do Me a Favor and Kill Me (1968) ... Dirk Brogan
1968 A Lovely Way to Die
Jonathan Fleming
1967 ITV Playhouse (TV Series)
Hauptmann
- The Stories of D.H. Lawrence: The Prussian Officer (1967) ... Hauptmann
1965-1967 The Wednesday Play (TV Series)
Leitch / Narrator
- The Voices in the Park (1967) ... Leitch
- And Did Those Feet? (1965) ... Narrator (voice)
1967 The Deadly Affair
Bill Appleby
1960-1967 ITV Play of the Week (TV Series)
Michael Paterson / Robert Mayo
- Nice to Have You Back (1967) ... Michael Paterson
- Beyond the Horizon (1960) ... Robert Mayo
1966 The Last Invasion (TV Movie)
William
1966 Knock on Any Door (TV Series)
Max Martin
- The Paris Trip (1966) ... Max Martin
1966 Australian Playhouse (TV Series)
- The Pigeon (1966)
1966 Sunday Night (TV Series documentary)
Daniel Dunglas Home
- Mr. Sludge, the Medium (1966) ... Daniel Dunglas Home
1964 Weekend at Dunkirk
Atkins
1964 A Hard Day's Night
Simon Marshall (uncredited)
1964 Story Parade (TV Series)
Watcyn Jones
- The Elephant You Gave Me (1964) ... Watcyn Jones
1964 The Full Man (TV Series documentary)
Pip
- The Novel: Landscape and Background (1964) ... Pip
1963 Z Cars (TV Series)
Milligan
- Running Milligan (1963) ... Milligan
1960-1963 BBC Sunday-Night Play (TV Series)
Frederick Instance / Peter / Joseph Schindler
- The Full Chatter (1963) ... Frederick Instance
- A Walk in the Desert (1960) ... Peter
- Twentieth Century Theatre: Musical Chairs (1960) ... Joseph Schindler
1963 Cleopatra
Brutus
1962 Captain Brassbound's Conversion (TV Movie)
Captain Brassbound
1961 Stryker of the Yard (TV Series)
Gerry Barnes / John Kendall
- The Case of the Bogus Count (1961) ... Gerry Barnes
- The Case of Two Brothers (1961) ... John Kendall
1961 ITV Television Playhouse (TV Series)
Owen / Jerry
- A Walk on the Water (1961) ... Owen
- The Zoo Story (1961) ... Jerry
1961 Thriller (TV Series)
Detective Insp. Harry Roberts
- Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook (1961) ... Detective Insp. Harry Roberts
1960 Danger Man (TV Series)
Juan Cortes
- Josetta (1960) ... Juan Cortes
1960 The Twilight Zone (TV Series)
Lt. William Terrance Decker
- The Last Flight (1960) ... Lt. William Terrance Decker
1959 Startime (TV Series)
Alberto
- Summer Time (1959) ... Alberto
1959 Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series)
Mr. Costain / John Bedford
- Specialty of the House (1959) ... Mr. Costain
- Banquo's Chair (1959) ... John Bedford
1959 Playhouse 90 (TV Series)
Gunner / Martin Schramm / Maudsley
- Misalliance (1959) ... Gunner
- Project Immortality (1959) ... Martin Schramm
- The Second Man (1959) ... Maudsley
1959 Ten Little Indians (TV Movie)
Philip Lombard
1958 Studio One (TV Series)
Devry
- Bellingham (1958) ... Devry
1957-1958 Omnibus (TV Series)
Rodolfo in acted version of 'La Boheme' / Boswell
- What Makes Opera Grand? (1958) ... Rodolfo in acted version of 'La Boheme'
- Life of Samuel Johnson (1957) ... Boswell
1957 High Flight
Tony Winchester
1957 Saint Joan
Brother Martin Ladvenu
1956 Teenage Bad Girl
Tony Ward Black
1955-1956 Rheingold Theatre (TV Series)
Pierre / Georgios / Radio Operator Rennie
- Gabrielle (1956) ... Pierre
- Dimitrios (1956) ... Georgios
- Atlantic Night (1955) ... Radio Operator Rennie
1955 The Ragged Thieves (TV Movie)
Policeman
1953-1955 BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (TV Series)
Colby Simpkins / Judah / Judas / ...
- The Confidential Clerk (1955) ... Colby Simpkins
- Family Portrait (1955) ... Judah
- Caesar's Friend (1954) ... Judas
- Golden Boy (1953) ... Joe Bonaparte
1955 The Dance Dress (TV Movie)
Rickie
1955 Madeleine (TV Movie)
Archambault
1955 The Vise (TV Series)
Johnson
- Week-End Guest (1955) ... Johnson
1954 Companions in Crime
John Kendall
1954 The Scarlet Eagle (TV Movie)
Sneak
1954 The Coiners (TV Movie)
David Hartley
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