1. Murray Melvin appeared in several Ken Russell film and television productions including The Devils and played Reverend Samuel Runt in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.
38 Facts About Murray Melvin
1. 2.
Murray Melvin worked as a theatre director and authored two books on the theatre.
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Murray Melvin was born on 10 August 1932, in St Pancras, London, the son of Hugh Victor Murray Melvin and Maisie Winifred, nee Driscoll.
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Murray Melvin left his north London secondary school at the age of fourteen unable to master fractions but as head prefect, a qualification he said he gained by always having clean fingernails and well-combed hair.
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Murray Melvin started work as an office boy for a firm of travel agents off Oxford Street.
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Murray Melvin was employed as clerk and secretary to the director of the Royal Air Force sports board at the Air Ministry, then based at Adastral House in Kingsway.
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Murray Melvin attended evening classes at the nearby City Literary Institute and studied drama, mime and classical ballet.
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Murray Melvin was cast as Geoffrey in Shelagh Delaney's play, A Taste of Honey.
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Murray Melvin reprised the role of Geoffrey in the 1961 film version directed by Tony Richardson.
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Murray Melvin won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor in 1962 and was nominated for the BAFTA "Most Promising Newcomer" award.
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Rehearsals then started for Stephen Lewis's Sparrows Can't Sing in which Murray Melvin played the role of Knocker Jugg.
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Murray Melvin returned to the Wyndham's Theatre where the play won the Best Musical category in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
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Murray Melvin became a member of what has often been called the Ken Russell Repertory Company, appearing in many of Russell's films, including The Devils and The Boy Friend.
14.
Murray Melvin appeared in Russell's BBC television version of Diary of a Nobody, which was filmed at the Ealing Studios on a specially built 'silent film' set.
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Alongside Murray Melvin, who played the errant son, Lupin, were other actors from Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, including Bryan Pringle and Brian Murphy, who became Russell regulars.
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Murray Melvin was seen in a cameo in the final scenes of Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World, Ken Russell's film of Isadora Duncan, which starred Vivian Pickles as the title character.
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Murray Melvin's best known film role for Russell was as Father Mignon in The Devils, the character who is the catalyst to the true-life horrors documented in the film.
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Murray Melvin was the speaker in a production of Davies's Missa super l'homme arme and he played the Virgin in the premiere production of Davies's Notre Dame des Fleurs.
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Murray Melvin again had a cameo as Hector Berlioz in Ken Russell's Lisztomania, as a test-run for a film about Berlioz that Russell was preparing.
20.
Murray Melvin appeared in Russell's film about the poet, Samuel Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
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Murray Melvin remained a lifelong friend of Ken Russell, and was often seen with Russell at festival screenings of the director's films.
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Murray Melvin had an important role as Reverend Samuel Runt in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.
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Murray Melvin was reunited with his co-stars from the film version of A Taste of Honey, Rita Tushingham and Paul Danquah, in the swinging sixties comedy Smashing Time, in which he and Danquah had cameo roles.
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Murray Melvin co-starred with Russell-regular Oliver Reed in Richard Fleischer's film of The Prince and the Pauper, Crossed Swords, and in Alberto Lattuada's four part television film Christopher Columbus.
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Murray Melvin featured in two films by Christine Edzard, Little Dorrit, and As You Like It.
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Murray Melvin appeared in the first episode of the television series The Avengers in 1960.
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Murray Melvin played the Dauphin in Shaw's St Joan, directed in 1966 by Waris Hussein.
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Murray Melvin played Bertold in a Theatre 625 production of Pirandello's Henry IV directed by Michael Hayes; as Don Pietro in Peter Hammond's TV series based on The Little World of Don Camillo; and as the hermit in Mai Zetterling's production of William Tell.
29.
Murray Melvin appeared in The Adventures of Don Quixote as the Barber in the BBC television film directed by Alvin Rakoff and starring Rex Harrison.
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Murray Melvin starred in The Tyrant King, the six-part children's television series directed by Mike Hodges.
31.
Murray Melvin played a crucial role in the last two episodes of The Flaxton Boys, where he plays the upper-class twit, Gerald Meder.
32.
In 1994, Murray Melvin supplied the voice of the villain Lucius on the British children's animated TV series Oscar's Orchestra for the BBC and France 3.
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Murray Melvin appeared in a Christmas Special episode of the BBC's Jonathan Creek called "The Black Canary".
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Murray Melvin was a founding member of the Actors' Centre and was its chairman for four years during which time he started a centre in Manchester in honour of Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop.
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Murray Melvin directed the first productions of three of Graeme Garden's perennially popular pantomimes.
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Murray Melvin led the successful campaign to erect a statue of Joan Littlewood in Theatre Square at Stratford.
37.
In December 2022, Murray Melvin suffered a fall from which he never fully recovered.
38.
Murray Melvin died at St Thomas' Hospital in London on 14 April 2023, at the age of 90.