A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of May
The Path of Roses
May 27, 1922 is the was the birthdate of the English actor Sir Christopher Lee.
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was perhaps the only actor of his generation to have starred in so many films and cult saga. Although most notable for personifying bloodsucking vampire, Dracula, on screen, he portrayed other varied characters on screen, most of which were villains.
After attending Wellington College from age 14 to 17, Lee worked as an office clerk in a couple of London shipping companies until 1941 when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Following his release from military service, Lee joined the Rank Organization in 1947, training as an actor and playing a number of bit parts in such films as the 1948 “Corridor of Mirrors”. He also made a brief appearance in the Laurence Olivier’s 1948 film “Hamlet”.
Lee had numerous parts in film and television throughout the 1950s. However, playing the monster in the 1957 Hammer film “The Curse of Frankenstein” proved to be a blessing in disguise, since the film was successful. It led to him being signed on for many future roles in Hammer Film Productions. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing often than not played contrasting roles in Hammer films, where Cushing was the protagonist and Lee the villain, whether it be Van Helsing and Dracula respectively in “Horror of Dracula”, or John Banning and Kharis the Mummy respectively in “The Mummy”.
Lee continued his role as “Dracula” in a number of Hammer sequels throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s. During this time, he co-starred in the Sherlock Holmes film “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. Lee also made numerous appearances as Fu Manchu, most notably in the first of the series “The Face of Fu Manchu”. By the mid-1970s, Lee was tiring of his horror image and tried to widen his appeal by participating in several mainstream films, such as; “The Three Musketeers” in 1973 and the 1974 James Bond film “The Man with the Golden Gun”.
The success of these films prompted him in the late 1970s to move to Hollywood, where he remained a busy actor but made mostly unremarkable film and television appearances, and eventually moved back to England. The beginning of the new millennium relaunched his career to some degree, during which he has played Count Dooku in two Star Wars movies (2002 and 2005). He also had the role of Saruman the White in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
On June 16, 2001, Christopher Lee was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to drama. He was created a Knight Bachelor on June 13, 2009 in the Queen’s Birthday Honors List for his services to drama and charity. Lee died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on June 7, 2015 at 8:30 am after being admitted for respiratory problems and heart failure, shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday there.