1. Herbert "Barry" Morse was a British-Canadian actor, writer, and director.
31 Facts About Barry Morse
1. 2.
Barry Morse was a steady fixture of BBC and CBC television programming for many years, and an artistic director of the Shaw Festival.
3.
Barry Morse was a 15-year-old errand boy when he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
4.
Barry Morse performed the role of the Lion in Androcles and the Lion, and as a result, came to know George Bernard Shaw, a patron of the academy.
5.
Barry Morse's first paid job as an actor while still a student was in If I Were King.
6.
Barry Morse featured in a number of US productions during the 1970s and 1980s for producer Yuri Rasovsky, including The Odyssey of Homer, which won a Peabody Award.
7.
Barry Morse was a member of repertory theatre companies in Peterborough, Nottingham, and other cities, where he gained experience as an actor while playing more than 200 roles.
8.
Barry Morse debuted on the London West End stage in The School for Slavery.
9.
Barry Morse was directed by John Gielgud in Crisis in Heaven.
10.
Barry Morse developed a theatrical partnership with actress Nova Pilbeam, and they worked together both in movies and on stage, most notably in the successful stage productions of The Voice of the Turtle and Flowers for the Living.
11.
Barry Morse made his movie debut in the 1942 comedy The Goose Steps Out featuring Will Hay and continued with roles in Thunder Rock, When We Are Married, and This Man Is Mine with Glynis Johns and Nova Pilbeam.
12.
Barry Morse appeared in the thrillers Asylum with Peter Cushing, Funeral Home with Kay Hawtrey and Lesleh Donaldson, and The Changeling with George C Scott.
13.
Barry Morse worked on several Lacewood animated productions, notably as the voice of Dragon in The Railway Dragon, alongside Tracey Moore, who played Emily.
14.
Barry Morse was offered a cameo in the 1993 film version of The Fugitive, but declined.
15.
Barry Morse performed on Broadway in Hide and Seek, Salad Days, and the lead of Frederick Rolfe in Hadrian the Seventh, which he played in Australia, co-featuring with Frank Thring.
16.
Barry Morse directed the Broadway debut of Staircase featuring Eli Wallach and Milo O'Shea, a depiction of gay male life.
17.
Barry Morse featured in the US national tour of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker as Davies.
18.
Barry Morse first presented a version of his one-man show Merely Players in 1959, which explored the experiences of actors through history, with the definitive version of the show debuting in 1984 for a Canadian national tour.
19.
Barry Morse served as artistic director of the Shaw Festival of Canada for the 1966 season and as an adjunct professor at Yale Drama School in 1968.
20.
Barry Morse later performed the play in 1997 at the British Theatre Museum in London.
21.
The next year, Barry Morse appeared in the world premiere performance of the science-fiction play Contact by Doug Grissom, co-featuring Ryan Case and presented in Tampa, Florida.
22.
Morse's first television series was Presenting Barry Morse, which was broadcast for 13 weeks during the summer of 1960 on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
23.
Barry Morse was such a fixture on CBC television programming during its early years that he was humorously nicknamed "the CBC Test Pattern".
24.
Barry Morse gained widespread recognition for his portrayal of Lt.
25.
Barry Morse found out the ripple effect once while eating out.
26.
Barry Morse appeared in a number of television miniseries, including The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, The Martian Chronicles, Sadat, JFK: Reckless Youth, and Frederick Forsyth's Icon.
27.
Barry Morse is quoted extensively throughout the book, as are numerous other series cast and crew.
28.
In 1951, the Barry Morse family relocated to Canada, where he worked in radio and theatre, and participated with the first television broadcasts of CBC Television from Montreal, and later Toronto.
29.
Barry Morse long patronized a number of charitable organisations, including the Toronto-based Performing Arts Lodges of Canada, the Royal Theatrical Fund, the London Shakespeare Workout Prison Project, Actors' Fund of Canada, the Samaritans, BookPALS, and Parkinson's disease treatment and research.
30.
Barry Morse died on 2 February 2008 at University College Hospital, London, aged 89, after a brief illness.
31.
Barry Morse's body was donated to science, and on 3 April 2011 Morse's ashes were scattered in St James's Square Garden, Pall Mall, London, England.