Kendrew Lascelles

Kendrew Lascelles (pronounced "Lassels"; 20 September 1935 – 1 March 2022) was an English-born actor, writer, and performer whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television across several decades. Born in Gatley, England, near Greater Manchester, he relocated to South Africa with his family at age three, eventually settling in KwaZulu-Natal in his late teens. His work consistently engaged with issues of social conscience, including apartheid and the Vietnam War.

Lascelles began performing professionally at seventeen, with his first paid role coming in 1953 when he stepped in as a replacement for an injured principal dancer in a production of Faust featuring tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano. That same year he met director Leon Gluckman during a Natal University production of King Lear. He subsequently studied in London, earning a diploma in Cecchetti dance, before returning to South Africa in 1956 to work with the National Theatre's Seven Against the Sun and the Frank Staff South African Ballet Company, where one of his notable roles was the Wolf in Peter and the Wolf.

His first major career milestone came in 1962 when he co-authored, alongside the cast, Gluckman's anti-apartheid revue Wait a Minim!, which toured internationally for seven years, including two years in the West End and two years on Broadway. The production brought the Anti-Apartheid Movement to Broadway and broader Western audiences. During the same period, Lascelles co-wrote and performed in the BBC production Time to Breve, a skit based on Laurence Olivier's Richard III, and appeared as the Buckingham Palace Flunkie in the 1965 Beatles film Help!

Following the conclusion of the Wait a Minim! tour, Lascelles settled in the United States. He appeared as a guest on talk shows hosted by David Frost, Steve Allen, and Ed Sullivan, and began writing scripts for television, including work for the Smothers Brothers and The Dean Martin Show. In 1970 he wrote and first performed the poem The Box on the Smothers Brothers Summer Show on ABC. John Denver, after seeing the performance, asked Lascelles for permission to perform the piece and subsequently recorded it for his 1971 album Poems, Prayers and Promises. The B-side of Lascelles's own 45 release of The Box featured the song When All the Laughter Dies in Sorrow, which Chicago recorded for its 1971 album Chicago III. Burl Ives pursued a recording deal for The Box but withdrew upon discovering it had already been released on that 45. Lascelles received over one million letters from fans following his initial 1970 performance of the poem, and delivered a follow-up recitation on the Smothers Brothers in August 1971.

From 1972 to 1973, Lascelles served as a staff writer and occasional performer for the Smothers Brothers Show and Dean Martin's Golddiggers. Among his notable television roles during this period was Harry Nine Lives, performed alongside Dean Martin and Peter Sellers. He also expanded into film, playing Owen in the 1974 Roger Corman-produced Candy Stripe Nurses and Nonus in Donald Cammell's The Argument, a film shot in 1971 that was not released until 1998. He also released an anthology of poetry in 1973.

In the early 1980s, Lascelles was involved in multiple productions at Gordon Davidson's Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. His play Waterhole was first produced there under the title Legends, directed by Robert Egan, and subsequently staged at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival. His play Exclusive Circles received a reading at the Mark Taper Forum with Alfre Woodard, directed by Egan, followed by a second reading at the New York Actors Studio monitored by Elia Kazan, before being produced at the Denver Center Theatre Company, where Lascelles played the role of Bossie. Additional Los Angeles-area stage work included the role of Doc in a 1982 production of Sam Shepard's The Tooth of Crime, the role of Lang in Trophy Hunters at the Company of Angels Theater, a one-man staging of Samuel Beckett's Molloy at the UCLA Theater, and a production of Tigers alongside Susan Tyrell in Laurel Canyon. Between 1985 and 1987, Lascelles worked as a playwright with the Denver Center Theatre Company, which produced both Trophy Hunters and Exclusive Circles, as well as a production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in which Lascelles played Lucky.

Also during this period, Lascelles was commissioned alongside Leon Gluckman by producer Michael Butler to develop the musical Reggae. The two worked on the project in Jamaica until Gluckman's death, after which additional writers contributed to the production. Reggae ultimately opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway in 1980, giving Lascelles his second Broadway credit.

Lascelles's screenwriting work in the 2000s included the adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1945 novel Focus. Miller had been approached about a film adaptation as early as 1994 but declined until reading Lascelles's script, after which he agreed to the project. The resulting film, released in 2001 and produced by Robert A. Miller and Michael R. Bloomberg and directed by Neal Slavin, starred William H. Macy, Laura Dern, David Paymer, and Meat Loaf. Lascelles also wrote the screenplay for The Aryan Couple, a drama produced and directed by John Daly and released in 2004, starring Martin Landau, Caroline Carver, Kenny Doughty, and Judy Parfitt. The film won multiple awards at the 2005 Beverly Hills Film Festival, including the Golden Palm Award, Best Director, Best Producer, and the jury award for Best Feature Film.

Over the course of his career, Lascelles authored four novels, seventeen plays, four musicals, two produced screenplays, a television mini-series, and four anthologies of poetry. His performance background encompassed comedy, revue, drama, and classical Cecchetti dance. His writing was produced on stage, broadcast on the BBC and American networks, and recorded by multiple musical artists.