Actor Leo McKern, who played the TV barrister Rumpole of the Bailey, has died aged 82. He had suffered from diabetes and other health problems. His career spanned more than 50 years - from acclaimed Shakespeare stage roles to playing Clang in The Beatles' 1965 film Help! But it was as the blustering barrister Horace Rumpole in the TV series, written by John Mortimer, that he became a star around the world.
McKern also starred in "Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother," an unappreciated minor masterpiece of silliness that featured Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Madelaine Kahn, and Dom DeLuis, all enthusiastically overacting. The opera sequence is a continuous series of sight gags and slapstick that has me rolling every time I see it... |