(10 August 1932 - 14 April 2023)
The British actor Murray Melvin, who has died aged 90 after a fall, will always be remembered for his association with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London E15. He auditioned in 1957 and virtually stayed with the theatre almost until his death. He became the Theatre Royal’s official archivist, eventually donating the collection to the British Library, long after the departure of Joan Littlewood.
Murray Melvin was born in St Pancras in London to the RAF officer Hugh Melvin and his wife Maisie. As members of the Co-operative Society, they started a youth club with a drama section to which Murray was drawn. Leaving school at 14, he was a clerk until he became secretary of the RAF Sports Board. He took classes in drama, ballet and mime at the City Literary Institute and applied to Littlewood for an audition. He began as assistant stage manager, set painter and tea-maker, although soon began playing small roles. His debut was as a messenger in Macbeth.
Gradually the parts got better until in 1958 he was cast in Shelagh Delaney’s play A Taste of Honey, set in Liverpool. Melvin played the part of Geoff, the gay friend of the main character Jo (Frances Cuka), a teenage girl who gets pregnant by a sailor. Geoff cares for Jo and it was the first time a gay character had been acted without the usual camp stereotyping. When Tony Richardson made the film version, Melvin was the only member from the original and won the best actor award at Cannes as well as a Bafta nomination.
Other plays that Melvin did at E15 included Brendan Behan’s The Hostage and Oh, What a Lovely War which transferred to the West End and to New York and was later filmed by Richard Attenborough (although Littlewood did not approve of it). Her only film was Sparrows Can’t Sing in 1963, about life in East London. Barbara Windsor and James Booth starred and Melvin played Knocker. He had made several films before that, including Joseph Losey’s The Criminal, Petticoat Pirates with Charlie Drake, HMS Defiant with Alec Guinness and Dirk Bogarde, Laurence Harvey’s The Ceremony and Alfie with Michael Caine.
He continued in films and TV and was cast by Ken Russell for Isadora Duncan, The Devils, The Boyfriend, Sandy Wilson’s musical starring Twiggy, and played Berlioz in the biopic Lisztomania. Stanley Kubrick used him in Barry Lyndon and Peter Medak cast him in five films including A Day in the Death of Joe Egg with Alan Bates, Ghost in the Noonday Sun with Peter Sellers, The Krays with Gary and Martin Kemp, and Let Him Have It with Christopher Eccleston. Melvin played the Dancing Master in Little Dorrit, Christine Edzard’s best film of a Dickens novel.
Murray Melvin acted on stage until 2008 and on film and TV until 2016. He also directed theatre, opera and pantomimes, and created the Actors’ Centre in Covent Garden and another one in Manchester in tribute to Joan Littlewood. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by De Montfort University, an Honorary Degree from the University of Essex and Honorary Fellowship of Rose Bruford College, the drama school in Sidcup, Kent.
MICHAEL DARVELL
