Bernard Lee - Life and Career

Life and Career

Lee was born on 10 January 1908, the son of Nellie (née Smith) and Edmund James Lee. He was born in either County Cork in what is now the Republic of Ireland, or Brentford, London. Lee's father was also an actor and Bernard's first appearance on stage in 1914, at the age of six, was with his father in a sketch called "The Double Event" at the Oxford Music Hall in London. Lee attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, working as a fruit porter to pay his fees. During the 1930s, after graduating from RADA, he initially worked in repertory theatre in Rusholme and Cardiff before beginning work on the West End stage in thrillers, such as Blind Man's Bluff. Lee also played in comedic roles, such as with Arthur Askey in Ten Minute Alibi.

After wartime service in the army between 1940 and 1946, Lee returned to the stage whilst also developing a successful film career. His wartime service was with the Royal Sussex Regiment and while he was awaiting his demob he attended golfing ladies night where he met a producer—also a fellow guest—and was subsequently offered a part in the play "Stage Door". During the 1950s he had a long run on stage, appearing as Able Seaman Turner in Seagulls Over Sorrento, a role he later reprised in the film of the same name with Gene Kelly (released in the US as Crest of the Wave). In total Lee appeared in over one hundred films and often played "solid, dependable characters such as policemen, serving officers or officials. These films include The Third Man (1949), The Blue Lamp (1950), Beat the Devil (1953), The Battle of the River Plate (1956), The Spanish Gardener (1956), Dunkirk (1958), Beyond This Place (1959), Whistle Down the Wind (1961) and The L-Shaped Room (1962).

In 1962, Lee was cast in the role that The Illustrated who's who of the cinema thought would probably be his best remembered, playing the character of M, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)—and the superior of James Bond—in the first Eon Productions film, Dr. No. A number of Bond scholars have noted that Lee's interpretation of the character was in line with the original literary representation; Cork and Stutz observed that Lee was "very close to Fleming's version of the character", whilst Rubin commented on the serious, efficient, no-nonsense authority figure. Smith and Lavington, meanwhile, remarked that Lee was "the very incarnation of Fleming's crusty admiral." One American newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, described Lee as "a real roast-beef-and-Yorkshire-pudding type of British actor." Terence Pettigrew, in his study British film character actors: great names and memorable moments agreed, noting that Lee was a "gruff, reliable, no-nonsense role character actor", with "kindly eyes, droll manner and expressly Anglo-Saxon level-headedness".

In 1972, Lee was mugged and robbed by two youths. On 30 January 1973 Lee's first wife, Gladys Merredew, died in a fire at their seventeenth-century home in Oare, Kent which also left Lee hospitalised. After the mugging and fire, Lee turned to drink, was unable to find work for two years and ran into debt. By chance Lee met Richard Burton in a pub, who, upon hearing of Lee's problems, gave him a cheque for $6,000 to clear his debts, together with a note saying that everyone has a spot of trouble once in a while. Burton's gift assisted Lee in overcoming his depression. Three years after the fire, Lee married television director's assistant Ursula McHale.

Lee's first marriage produced a daughter, Ann, who also followed her father onto the stage, and did so with his blessing, Lee saying "She's doing what she wants to do and enjoying every moment of it." Ann later married Alan Miller, a stage actor and later a stage manager at the BBC: their son—and Lee's grandson—is British actor Jonny Lee Miller. Lee's hobbies included golf, fishing, reading, music and sailing.