Murray Melvin

Murray Melvin (10 August 1932 – 14 April 2023) was an English actor born in St. Pancras, London, the son of Hugh Victor Melvin and Maisie Winifred, née Driscoll. He left his north London secondary school at fourteen, having served as head prefect, and took work as an office boy for a travel agency near Oxford Street before a brief stint as an import and export clerk in a shipping office. Two years of National Service in the Royal Air Force followed, during which he was employed as clerk and secretary to the director of the RAF sports board at Adastral House in Kingsway. His parents, longstanding members of the Co-operative Society, had helped found a youth club in Hampstead after the war, and it was through that club's drama section that Melvin first developed an interest in performance.

While still working at the Air Ministry, Melvin attended evening classes at the City Literary Institute, studying drama, mime, and classical ballet. During an extended lunch break, he auditioned for Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, singing and dancing for Littlewood and Gerry Raffles. He was taken on in October 1957 as an assistant stage manager, theatre painter, and general assistant to set designer John Bury, making his first professional appearance as the Queen's Messenger in a production of Macbeth. Further roles that year included a bricklayer in You Won't Always Be On Top, a peasant in And the Wind Blew, Bellie in Pirandello's Man Beast and Virtue, Calisto in De Rojas's Celestina, and Young Jodi Maynard in Paul Green's Unto Such Glory.

The final production of the 1957–58 season proved decisive for Melvin's career. He was cast as Geoffrey in Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey, a role that would define his early reputation. After the summer break, he played the title role in Brendan Behan's The Hostage, then appeared as Ebenezer Scrooge's nephew in Littlewood's adaptation of A Christmas Carol in 1958. A Taste of Honey opened at the Wyndham's Theatre in February 1959, later transferring to the Criterion, and became the hit of the season. Melvin reprised the role of Geoffrey in Tony Richardson's 1961 film adaptation, for which he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor in 1962 and received a BAFTA nomination for Most Promising Newcomer.

Melvin's work with Theatre Workshop continued through the early 1960s. In April 1960, William Saroyan cast him as the leading character Sam in The Highest Jumper of Them All, written and directed by Saroyan during a stop in London. The company then traveled to the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre for the Paris World Theatre Season, where Melvin played Brainworm in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. He subsequently played Knocker Jugg in Stephen Lewis's Sparrows Can't Sing at Stratford, later transitioning to the role of Georgie Brimsdown for the film adaptation directed by Littlewood. Lewis Gilbert also cast him in H.M.S. Defiant in 1962, alongside Dirk Bogarde.

After a break of nearly two years, the Theatre Workshop company reunited to create Oh, What a Lovely War!, which ran initially at Stratford before winning the Paris Festival and transferring to the Wyndham's Theatre, where it took the Best Musical prize at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Before the production's New York opening, the company appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, in which Melvin played Gadshill, Shallow, Vernon, and the Earl of March. The Broadway production opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in 1964, marking both Melvin's Broadway debut and his final production with Littlewood and Theatre Workshop.

The New York run of Oh, What a Lovely War! brought Melvin to the attention of filmmakers including Ken Russell and Lewis Gilbert. Russell cast him in a BBC television adaptation of Diary of a Nobody, in which Melvin played the errant son Lupin alongside fellow Theatre Workshop alumni Bryan Pringle and Brian Murphy. He appeared in a cameo in Russell's Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World in 1966, the same year Gilbert cast him in Alfie, where he played Michael Caine's work friend. Melvin became a regular presence in Russell's productions, appearing in The Boy Friend (1971), in which he performed a solo dance number in a caped French officer's outfit, and as Hector Berlioz in a cameo in Lisztomania (1975).

His most prominent role for Russell was Father Mignon in The Devils (1971), the character who serves as the catalyst for the film's documented horrors. Following that production, Melvin directed two works by The Devils composer Peter Maxwell Davies: the theatre piece Miss Donnithorne's Maggot and the opera The Martyrdom of St Magnus. He also served as speaker in a production of Davies's Missa super l'homme armé and played the Virgin in the premiere of Davies's Notre Dame des Fleurs. Outside his work with Russell, Melvin played Reverend Samuel Runt in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon in 1975 and appeared in the television series Torchwood in 2007. In addition to his performing career, he worked as a theatre director and authored two books on the theatre.