BIOGRAPHY
Laurence Harvey was born October 1, 1928 in Joniskis, Lithuania. His
real name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne, which he changed when
his parents emigrated to South Africa to escape persecution for
their Jewish faith, when he was five years old. At 15,
he debuted on stage with the Johannesburg Repertory Theater,
but later he joined the army and served until the end of WWII. He
went to England after the war and enrolled at the Royal Academy
of Dramatic Art, staying there three months before joining a
Manchester repertory company where he soon began to play leads.
He was married three times first to Margaret
Leighton in 1957, then to Joan Cohn in 1968 and then to Pauline
Stone in 1972. They had one daughter named Domino. After
his breakthrough film Room
at the Top in 1959, Hollywood again took interest in Harvey,
and in 1960 he co-starred with John Wayne in The Alamo, followed
by an appearance in the Elizabeth Taylor hit Butterfield 8. A
role in the 1961 British production The Long and the Short and
the Tall was next, trailed by a pair of Hollywood flops, Two
Lovers and Summer
and Smoke. Finally, in John Frankenheimer's masterful The
Manchurian Candidate, he found a role perfectly suited to
his talents, portraying a brainwashed assassin shorn of emotion;
the performance was the best of his career, but in a cruel twist
of irony the film was pulled from distribution by producer/star
Frank Sinatra when its plot too closely foreshadowed the tragic
death of President John F. Kennedy. He worked steadily until
his death from stomach cancer at his home in Hampstead, London,
in 1973. The sad story of Laurence Harvey's final years is told
in Pauline Stone's book 'One
Tear is Enough'. This was published in Great Britain in 1975
by Michael Joseph Ltd., but is now unfortunately out of print.,
However, if you click on the link above you should be able to
purchase it used from Amazon.com.
|
 |
|
