Alexis Kanner
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Alexis Kanner (May 2, 1942 - December 13, 2003) was a French-born Anglo Canadian actor, most famous for appearing in the ground breaking TV series The Prisoner.
He was born in Nazi-occupied Bagnères-de-Luchon, France. In April 1944, shortly before his second birthday, his family ecaped with him to Montreal, Canada on the ship Serpa Pinto.
Kanner made his first impression as an actor in the role of Alex, among a French Canadian cast, in the television drama series Beau Temps, Mauvais Temps (1955-1958)[1]
He moved to England in the early 60's to join the Birmingham Repertory Theatre to further his acting career this then led to the Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company where he played Hamlet under the direction of Peter Brook.
He appeared in the 1962 film Reach For Glory [2] about the brutal war games of evacuated teenage boys during the second world war. This would lead to him first meeting with the Assistant Director David Tomblin [3] who would be a major influence on the direction of the The Prisoner series six years later.
He had a small role in the 1962 comedy film We Joined the Navy [4] playing Gerrit. The only real notable thing about the film was the amount of future British small screen comedy stalwarts who were acting in either similar small roles or uncredited cameos...
He appeared on British television in 1963 in a "The Saint (TV series)" episode The Ever Loving Spouse [5]as Alec Misner.
His film career continued with an appearance in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders [6]in 1965 as part of a Mohocks gang.
He first came to national prominence in Britain when he appeared as Detective Constable Matt Stone in the first 9 episodes of Softly, Softly in 1966 on BBC TV. This was a spin-off series from Z-Cars. He claimed in interviews later that he left not wanting to be typecast but there are suggestions that he alienated cast and crew with erratic behaviour during live transmissions and this may have led to his early departure from the series.
Sadly very little of this television series remains in the BBC archives, due to the BBC's then policy of 'junking' or taping over programmes from the 1960s and 1970s. The reasoning given at the time was that the programmes had limited repeat or overseas resale value, and it was not realised until much later that this material would be of tremendous interest. As a result, many thousands of hours of television programmes were lost (such as early episodes of Doctor Who and Dad's Army). However, one episode featuring Kanner does survive in the BBC archives, 'A-Z' (broadcast 30 March 1966).
In 1967 he went back to Montreal to star as the lead character Ernie Turner in the film The Ernie Game [7] which was written and directed by Don Owen for the National Film Board of Canada...
Patrick McGoohan, impressed with Kanner's acting skills, cast Kanner as the mute psychopathic 'Kid' / No.8 in the episode Living in Harmony. This led to further appearances in The Girl Who Was Death and the final episode Fall Out, all as different characters.
He portrayed the rebellious 'No.48' in Fall Out, a role in which the dialogue was either a succession of short lines in response to other short lines or sung.
Kanner also gave an uncredited performance as the photographer in The Girl Who Was Death, in which he performed a number of stunts on a roller coaster.
He was considered a very physical actor and was deemed by some critics that he could have been the British James Dean but said that Kanner needed greater control over his own self image (an unknown source suggested he had a pretentious self image)[citation needed].
He starred in a number of films soon after, including the 1969 movie Crossplot [8] with Roger Moore, Connecting Rooms [9] in 1970 with Bette Davis and Michael Redgrave, Goodbye Gemini AKA Twinsanity[10] (also 1970), and Mahoney's Estate [11] in 1972, which he also co-wrote and co-directed.
He is wrongly credited with appearing in UFO:Invasion [12] in 1972, a compilation film made up of the episodes from the TV series UFO [13] made in 1970. He had appeared in an episode called 'The Cat With 10 Lives' but no footage of this was used in the "feature film".
He moved back to Canada and he worked again with Patrick McGoohan on the film Kings And Desperate Men [14] in 1981, in which he starred as well as writing, producing and directing.
His final known film is the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall [15], released in 1988.
He settled back in London in 1996 and died of a heart attack on 13 December 2003.
