By Shannonn Kelly

Cult-hero Patrick McGoohan who would not be stamped or filed died January 13, 2009 at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California following a brief illness, said his agent, Sharif Ali.

McGoohan’s death was announced on the Web site of the official appreciation society of "The Prisoner," Six of One, of which McGoohan was honorary president since its founding 32 years ago.
McGoohan is survived by his wife of 57 years, Joan Drummond McGoohan, three daughters and five grandchildren. On June 11, 2008, he also became a great-grandfather.

I had only seen Patrick McGoohan ina few movies such as "Braveheart", "Ice Station Zebra", "Silver Streak" and TV shows,  “Secret Agent Man” and in Columbo re-runs, when about 3 years ago I was introduced to “The Prisoner” series by my  “British TV-Series-Ophile”, fiancé.

The Prisoner, a British 1960s television series starred and was co-created by Patrick McGoohan which combines spy fiction with elements of science fiction.

I was completely blown away by the concept, the symbolism and the close-to-the-bone Orwellian scariness of the series. I totally and completely fell in love with Patrick McGoohan, the actor. No other person could have helmed this series. It also helped me totally get where David Lynch got his inspiration for Twin Peaks.

I have yet to see the final episode, as I’m waiting for a perfect moment to watch it-I just want the series to go for as long as I can pretend it can.

McGoohan was born March 19, 1928 in Astoria, Queens, New York, to Thomas McGoohan and Rose Fitzpatrick, who were living in the United States after emigrating from Ireland. Shortly after his birth, his parents moved back to Ireland to live in Mullaghmore, County Leitrim.

When McGoohan was around seven, his family moved to Sheffield, England. In 1939 when World War started, McGoohan then moved to Loughborough, Leicestershire, where he attended Radcliffe College, excelling in maths and boxing.

Leaving school at sixteen, McGoohan worked a variety of odd jobs before landing a gig as a stagehand at Sheffield Repertory Theatre.

This theater launched his critically acclaimed stage career and it’s also the pace where he fell for actress Joan Drummond, the woman to whom he reportedly wrote love notes every day. They married between a rehearsal of The Taming of the Shrew and the evening performance on May 19, 1951. They had three daughters, Catherine (b. 1952), Anne (b. 1959) and Frances (b. 1960).

McGoohan first studied to become a Roman Catholic priest, which may explain why sex and violence cropped up in very few roles for the actor. Even after his first major series Danger Man (also known as Secret Agent Man in the United States) landed in 1960.
According to Scott Thill , from Wired Underwire Blog , “like the brusque heavies he played in films like 1957’s Hell Drivers or plays like Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew or Orson Welles’ Moby Dick Rehearsed, Danger Man’s John Drake was the ultimate cool customer, a globe-hopping fixer for NATO who nearly always solved major geopolitical tangles with brainy stratagems rather than sex or violence.

McGoohan’s resolute morality would eventually pave the way for others to become stars: He passed up both the roles of James Bond and The Saint’s Simon Templar, opening doors for Roger Moore.

When Danger Man was resuscitated as an hour-long thriller in 1964, McGoohan flexed his muscle further, demanding more room to act, sharper plots and more friction with his superiors, which set the stage for the intelligence showdowns that would serve as the thematic center of every Prisoner episode.”

He also became one of the highest-paid actors in England, which he parlayed into roles in spooky Disney films like Dr. Syn, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh and The Three Lives of Thomasina.

Along the way, he impressed nearly without fail. Welles called his acting "intimidating;" billionaire Howard Hughes obsessively watched Ice Station Zebra, a nuclear thriller in which McGoohan appeared alongside Rock Hudson, Jim Brown and more; Secret Agent Man’s eponymous musical theme, performed by Johnny Rivers, became a pop hit. He could do no wrong.

That is, until the controversial 1968 finale of The Prisoner, which stirred viewer outrage. McGoohan admits this led him to leave London for Los Angeles for good.

Read Wired.com’s feature article also by Scott Thill (whom I now know is a genius!) for an in-depth look at the influence Danger Man and The Prisoner had on pop-culture, which was published only hours before McGoohan died.
Scott Thill explains: “As McGoohan would later explain of the destabilizing conclusion of The Prisoner in a 1984 retrospective: "If I could do it again, I would. As long as people feel something, that’s the great thing. It’s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that’s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”

McGoohan’s career ranged from success on the stages of the West End in London to starring in a popular spy series called "Secret Agent" in the United States. He was critically praised for his King Edward Longshanks in Mel Gibson’s 1995 film "Braveheart" and won Emmys as a guest star on "Columbo" in 1975 and 1990.

McGoohan was one of several actors considered for the role of James Bond in Dr. No (along with future Bond actor Roger Moore). Part of McGoohan’s popular legend is that he turned down the role on moral grounds (the same grounds that would affect how he played John Drake). Ironically, the success of the Bond films is generally cited as the reason for Danger Man being revived in 1964, which led in turn to The Prisoner.

Despite his extensive British stage experience, he appeared on Broadway only once. In 1985, he starred opposite Rosemary Harris in Hugh Whitemore’s Pack of Lies, in which he played a British intelligence agent. McGoohan was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as "Best Actor."

McGoohan was signed to a contract with the Rank Organization, the largest European production company between 1930 and 1960. The producers may have been more interested in capitalizing on his boxing skill and appearance than his acting ability, casting him as the conniving bad boy in such films as the gritty Hell Drivers and the steamy potboiler The Gypsy and the Gentleman, and after a few films and some clashes with the management, the contract was dissolved.

Free of the contract, he did some TV work and continued on the stage in his favorite role, Ibsen’s Brand, for which he received an award. Soon producer Lew Grade approached him about another contract, this time for a TV series in which he would play a spy named John Drake.

Having learned from his experience at the Rank Organization, McGoohan insisted on several conditions before agreeing to do the show Danger Man: all the fistfights should be different; the character would always use his brain before using a gun, and, much to the horror of the executives, no kissing. They hired him anyway.

The first series, half-hour shows geared toward an American audience, did fairly well, but not as well as they hoped in the U.S. It lasted only one year, but was rerun in several countries and gained cult status worldwide. After the series was over, one interviewer asked McGoohan if he would have liked the series to continue, to which he replied, "I would rather do twenty TV series than go through what I went through under that Rank contract I signed a few years ago for which I blame no one but myself."

McGoohan spent some time working for Disney on The Three Lives of Thomasina and The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. He had already turned down the roles of James Bond and Simon Templar (The Saint) when Lew Grade asked him if he would like to give John Drake another try.

This time, McGoohan had even more say about the series; it was expanded to an hour and the writing was changed to allow McGoohan more acting range. The popularity of the series exploded. McGoohan became the highest paid actor in the UK and it lasted almost three more seasons.

After shooting the first two episodes for the fourth season in color, McGoohan told Lew Grade he was going to quit. Grade asked if he would at least work on "something" for him, and McGoohan gave him a run-down of what would later be called a miniseries about a secret agent who resigns suddenly and wakes up to find himself in a prison disguised as a holiday resort.

Grade asked for a budget, McGoohan had one ready, and they made a deal over a handshake early on a Saturday morning to produce The Prisoner. McGoohan not only produced, he also wrote, directed and starred in the show. He used two pseudonyms, writing "Free for All" as Paddy Fitz and directing "Many Happy Returns" and "A Change of Mind" as Joseph Serf. He also wrote "Once Upon A Time" and "Fall Out" using his own name. The seven episodes were increased to seventeen.

The main character spends the entire series trying to escape from The Village and to learn the identity of his nemesis, Number One. The Prisoner was a completely new, cerebral kind of series, stretching the limits of the established television formulas. Its influence has been echoed in Lost, Babylon 5, Nowhere Man, I-man, The Truman Show, The Simpsons, Reboot, and even American Idol teaser ads.

The main character, the unnamed Number Six, became McGoohan’s most recognizable character. Unfortunately, it also became his prison. Number Six was so obsessively pro-individual that whenever McGoohan later played someone who had something to say about individuality or freedom, the character was often compared to his previous incarnation; for example, his rather ironic portrayal of the Warden in Escape from Alcatraz. "Mel Gibson will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a Number," he was once quoted as saying.

The cult of The Prisoner spawned many books, college courses, a quarterly magazine and documentaries. There were several fan clubs – most notably "Six of One," which honors the show annually with a convention in Portmeirion, Wales, where the show’s exteriors were shot. McGoohan was the honorary president.

In the May 30, 2004 edition of TV Guide, The Prisoner was ranked 7th in a list of the "25 Top Rated Cult Shows Ever!" McGoohan’s show outranked the likes of The Twilight Zone (#8) and Doctor Who (#18). TV Guide wrote, "Fans still puzzle over this weird, enigmatic drama, a Kafkaesque allegory about the individual’s struggle in the modern age."

McGoohan appeared in many films, including Howard Hughes’s favorite, Ice Station Zebra, for which he was critically acclaimed, and Silver Streak, with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. In 1977 he starred in the TV series Rafferty, playing a former army doctor who has retired and moved into private practice.

Many people consider this series a forerunner to House, M.D. He was most recognized by a later generation of fans as the Machiavellian King Edward "Longshanks" from the 1995 Oscar-winning Braveheart. In 1996 he appeared as Judge Omar Noose in A Time to Kill.

He directed Richie Havens in a rock-opera version of Othello called Catch My Soul. McGoohan received two Emmy Awards for his work on Columbo with his long-time friend Peter Falk. He directed five Columbo episodes (including three of the four in which he played the murderer) and wrote and produced two (including one of these).

He also appeared in 1981 Scanners, a science fiction/horror film by Canadian director David Cronenberg that has since attained cult movie status.

In 1996, he appeared in Paramount’s big budget cinema adaptation of The Phantom comic strip, playing the father of the title character (played by Billy Zane). Many fans of the comic objected to the casting of McGoohan, claiming he was far too old to play the character, which, in the comics, died in his late forties.

In 1991, he starred in Masterpiece Theatre’s production of "The Best of Friends" for PBS, which told the story of the unlikely friendship between a museum curator, a nun and a playwright. McGoohan played George Bernard Shaw alongside Sir John Gielgud as Sydney Cockerell and Dame Wendy Hiller as Sister Laurentia McLachlan.

In 2000, he reprised his role as Number Six in an episode of The Simpsons, "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes". In it, Homer Simpson concocts a news story to make his website more popular, and he wakes up in a prison disguised as a holiday resort. Dubbed Number Five, he befriends Number Six and escapes with his boat.

McGoohan’s last film was a voice role in the animated film Treasure Planet, released in 2002. That same year, he received the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for The Prisoner.

McGoohan’s name was linked to several aborted attempts at producing a new motion picture version of The Prisoner. In 2002, director Simon West (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) was signed to helm a version of the story. McGoohan was listed as executive producer on the project, which never came to fruition. Most recently, director Christopher Nolan attached to a proposed film version. However, the source material remained difficult and elusive to adapt into a feature film.

An mini-series version of The Prisoner was filmed for the AMC network in 2008, with broadcast scheduled for sometime in 2009.

Patrick, you’ll always be “Number 1”.  Be seeing you…

To see more clips of Patrick McGoohan, please visit the links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6gPztzkNMQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8-cp2yb43c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_DRXAf0iGI&feature=related