by Who is the first Avenger?
While the Avengers to much of the world means Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Black Widow, those of us with longer memories remember a different team of crime fighters by that name. But it wasn’t Stan Lee’s band of superheroes that came first – two years before the first issue of The Avengers hit American bookshelves, the first episode of a British series that would, in many ways, become one of its defining TV shows part of the. 1960s, and stars actors Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman.
And those are the names we all think of when we picture that set: John Steed (Macnee) in his bowler hat, Savile Row suit and Shaftesbury Slim umbrella and Emma Peel (Rigg) and Cathy Gale (Blackman) his ass kicking their ass. black leather fighting suits.
But what is generally forgotten is that Patrick Macnee wasn’t the first bill of The Avengers to begin with. Watch any episode from that first season in 1961, and actor Ian Hendry is credited for the first time, playing David Keel, a medical doctor who, in the first episode, finds himself investigating the murder of his fiancée, as it happens. being members of a drug gang.
It was all a far cry from the robot assassins and telepathic man-eating plants that would characterize later Avengers episodes. And just as the show’s edgier beginnings have been largely ignored, so has the series’ leading man.
It’s hard to overestimate just how much of a star Ian Hendry was in the early 1960s. A year before The Avengers debuted, he led another ITV drama, Police Surgeon, but despite that show being axed after just 13 episodes, Hendry was so popular with viewers that ABC TV (which produced the series for ITV) basically thought of The Avengers as a vehicle for it.
However, over the course of 26 episodes of that first season Dr. Keel’s flamboyant enigmatic cohort, John Steed, would become a distinct character in the series. So when production on season two was delayed, and by then Hendry was contracted to do a movie role, ABC hardly hesitated to move on without its leading man, which moved Macnee up a notch, and giving him a new co-star in Honor Blackman.
Dr. David Keel was never mentioned again in The Avengers , and as Macnee’s star grew over the next eight years (The Avengers aired its final episode in 1969), Hendry would see his reputation diminish despite roles in films such as Sidney Lumet Hill’s The Avengers alongside Sean Connery, and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion with Catherine Deneuve.
He had occasional starring roles in shows such as ITV’s The Informer (1966-67) and the BBC’s The Lotus Eaters (1972-73), but most of his small screen work was one-off guest appearances, and the film life he had hoped for. take off post-Avengers never ignite.
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There were near misses though. Director Mike Hodges wanted him to play the lead in Get Carter in 1971, but the film’s producer – and the studio – had other ideas and Michael Caine was cast as the titular Jack Carter. As consolation, Hendry was offered the role of Carter’s old acquaintance Eric Paise, but, according to Hodges, the actor became hostile to Caine during filming. “The thing is that Caine’s career was progressing,” the director said in an interview in 2016, “while Ian was bugged.”
Certainly, Hendry’s drinking wasn’t helping. The actor was only 40 when he filmed Get Carter, but he looked ten years older, probably exacerbated by a disorderly and drunken private life (his wife, Janet Munro, was also battled an alcohol problem, and died in 1972, aged just 38). ).
“His beaten face reflected his boozy lifestyle, his voice a gravely mixture of brandy and smoke,” says his biographer Gabriel Hershman in the book Send in the Clowns: The Yo Yo Life of Ian Hendry. “The charisma and authority were as strong as ever, but the handsome young man who made women swoon was gone.” As time went on, Gabriel wrote, “Ian seemed to be losing the battle with his demons and the good parts were diminishing.”
In the late 1970s things got so bad, Hendry was declared bankrupt. He still managed to get work, but what he was being offered – daytime serials, soap operas and parts in low-paying provincial theater productions – was a far cry from the kind of prime-time dramas he had pioneered 20 years earlier. that.
His last role was as ex-seaman Davey Jones in Channel Four’s Brookside in 1984. Although he brought his A-game to the part, the fifty-something actor was clearly not in the best of health at the time. better.
“Hendry was one of the most handsome actors of his generation,” wrote Brookside actor Ricky Tomlinson in his autobiography. “He married an actress, Janet Munro, and they were constantly being photographed by society magazines and showbiz papers.
“This is the man I was hoping to meet, but the man who came on set that day looked awful. Someone said he had recovered from throat cancer and I know that he had problems with alcohol. He was staying at the Adelphi Hotel and someone else picked him up every morning to make sure he got there on time.”
Hendry’s last public appearance was as a guest on Patrick Macnee’s October 1984 episode of This Is Your Life. He was clearly unbroken, looked much older than his 52 years, and could not have escaped notice of how stratospheric his one-time star’s career had gone in the twenty years since they star together in The Avengers.
When Ian Hendry died of gastrointestinal bleeding on Christmas Eve 1984, his death barely registered in the media (the American actor Peter Lawford, who died the same day, generated more coverage). And even for Avengers fans, it is still something unknown. Of the 26 episodes made for that first season, only two are complete. For Police Surgeon, there is only one episode left. And of the 21 episodes of The Informant, only two survive.
Hendry was one of the most interesting actors of the 1960s in his prime, but most of his best work has been lost to time. What remains only gives us a glimpse of what he was capable of. There is no doubt that if Mike Hodges had prevailed, and alcohol was allowed, Ian Hendry would have made a darkly charismatic and strong Jack Carter.
It may have been the role that revived his career, but we’ll never know. But as disappointing as it was for him, his place in television history is assured, as shown by the man who helped shape one of the signatures of the 60s, and to star as the first Avenger.
