| Alexis Kanner | |
|---|---|
| Born | Henri Alexis Kanner 2 May 1942 Bagnères-de-Luchon, France |
| Died | 13 December 2003 (aged 61) London, England |
| Other names | Henry Leroy, Henri Lucas |
| Occupation | Actor, Director |
Alexis Kanner (2 May 1942 in Bagnères-de-Luchon, France - 13 December 2003 in London, England) was a French-born Anglo Canadian actor, most notable for appearing in the ground-breaking TV series The Prisoner.
He was born in Nazi-occupied Bagnères-de-Luchon, France in May 1942. In April 1944, shortly before his second birthday, his family escaped with him to Montreal, Canada on the Portuguese ship Serpa Pinto.[1][2]
Contents |
Kanner attended the Montreal Children's Theatre under the tutelage of Dorothy Davis and Violet Walters.
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).[3]
He moved to England in the late 50s to join the Birmingham Repertory Theatre to further his acting career. This led to the Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company where he played in The Tempest in 1961 and the lead role in Hamlet under the direction of Peter Brook in 1965.
He appeared as Stephen in the 1962 film Reach For Glory[4] 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[5] 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[6] playing Gerrett. 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.
His earliest UK television appearance appears to have been as Peter in the Sunday Night Theatre play Echo From Afar[7] in 1959.
Other plays in which he performed were:
He appeared on British television in 1964 in an episode of The Saint, "The Ever Loving Spouse"[14] as Alec Misner and in the first of three episodes in ATV's Love Story, A Future Holiday[15] as Frank Watkins. His other appearances in that series were in the following year in Briefly Kiss The Loser[16] as Big Silver Gardner and in 1967 as Colin Turner in Cinéma Vérité[17].
His film career continued with an appearance in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders[18] 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 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.
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 complete episode featuring Kanner does survive in the BBC archives, 'A-Z' (broadcast 30 March 1966) and one partial (the first 25mins), 'It Doesn't Grow On Trees' (broadcast 26 January 1966)[19].
In 1967 he went back to Montreal to star as the lead character Ernie Turner in the film The Ernie Game[20] 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 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 starred in a little known short feature film called Twenty Nine[21] in 1969 as Graham Baird in a story of a promiscuous young husband's night out in swinging London. It was only 26 minutes long and co-starred Yootha Joyce. This was shown as the B film in Britain to the feature film If.....[22]. The band Tuesday's Children who had a cameo role in a nightclub scene released the song they played in it called SHE as a single soon afterwards.[23] No copies of this short film are known to exist.
He starred in a number of feature films soon after, including the 1969 movie Crossplot[24] with Roger Moore, Connecting Rooms [25] in 1970 with Bette Davis and Michael Redgrave, and Goodbye Gemini[26] (also 1970).
Around 1969/1970, however, for some unknown reason his career seemed to tail off in the UK.
He is wrongly credited with appearing in Invasion:UFO[27] in 1972, a compilation film made up of the episodes from the TV series UFO[28] made in 1970. He had appeared in an episode called The Cat With 10 Lives[29] but no footage of this was used in the "feature film".
He moved back to Canada and his next film was Mahoney's Estate (a.k.a. Mahoney's Last Stand)[30] in 1972 with Sam Waterston[31] and Maud Adams[32], which he also co-wrote and co-directed. The original motion picture soundtrack of the same name [33] was recorded by Ronnie Lane (who was a friend of Alexis) and Ron Wood of The Faces fame, Ron Wood later joined The Rolling Stones. Other famous names who worked on the album included Pete Townshend and Kenney Jones.
He worked again with Patrick McGoohan on the Canadian hostage drama film Kings and Desperate Men[34], in which he starred as well as writing, producing and directing. He apparently spent two years editing the film which, although filmed in December 1977, did not premiere until the 1981 Montreal World Film Festival. During the late 80s Kanner sued the producers of the film Die Hard[35] claiming that they stole the idea for that movie from this film (he lost).[36]
His final known film is the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall[37], released in 1988.
He settled back in London in 1996 and was working on a new film project called J R Profitt[38] that never came to fruition.
He died of a heart attack at his London home on 13 December 2003.[39] He had requested that his body be flown to and buried in Israel.[40]