Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee CBE CStJ (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) was an English actor, singer, and former military officer.[1] In a career spanning more than sixty years, Lee became known as an actor with a deep and commanding voice who often portrayed villains in horror and franchise films. Lee was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011, and received the BFI Fellowship in 2013.
For other people named Christopher Lee, see Christopher Lee (disambiguation).
Christopher Lee
7 June 2015 (aged 93)
- Actor
- singer
1948–2015
1
- Marie Carandini (great-grandmother)
- Ian Fleming (step-cousin)
- Harriet Walter (niece)
Knight Bachelor (2009)
- Opera
- symphonic metal
- power metal
- Finland (1939)
- United Kingdom (1940–1946)
- Finnish Army (1939)
- Home Guard (1940)
- Royal Air Force (1941–1946)
1939–1946
Lee gained notoriety for portraying Count Dracula in seven Hammer Horror films. His other film roles include Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Count Dooku in three Star Wars films (2002–2008), and Saruman in both the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and the The Hobbit film trilogy (2012–2014). He frequently appeared opposite his friend Peter Cushing in horror films, and late in his career had roles in five Tim Burton films, including Sleepy Hollow (1999), Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Dark Shadows (2012). Lee's other notable roles include The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), A Tale of Two Cities (1958), The Wicker Man (1973), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Jinnah (1998), Glorious 39 (2009), and Hugo (2011).
Before his acting career, Lee served in the Royal Air Force as an intelligence officer, attached to the No. 260 Squadron RAF during World War II as a liaison officer for the Special Operations Executive. He retired from the RAF in 1946 with the rank of flight lieutenant. Lee also sang, recorded opera and musical pieces between 1986 and 1998, and worked with several heavy metal bands; he appeared on the albums Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross (2010) and Charlemagne: The Omens of Death (2013).
Early life[edit]
Lee was born on 27 May 1922 in Belgravia, London,[2] the son of Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Trollope Lee (1879–1941) of the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps, and his wife, Countess Estelle Marie (née Carandini di Sarzano; 1889–1981).[3][4] Lee's father fought in the Boer War and First World War,[5] and his mother was an Edwardian beauty who was painted by Sir John Lavery, Oswald Birley, and Olive Snell, and sculpted by Clare Sheridan.[6][7] Lee's maternal great-grandfather, Jerome Carandini, the Marquis of Sarzano, was an Italian political refugee; his wife, Lee's great-grandmother, was English-born opera singer Marie Carandini (née Burgess). He had an elder sister, Xandra Carandini Lee (1917–2002).[8]
Lee's parents separated when he was four and divorced two years later.[9] During this time, his mother took his sister and him to Wengen in Switzerland.[10] After enrolling in Miss Fisher's Academy in Territet, he played his first role, as Rumpelstiltskin.[11] They then returned to London, where Lee attended Wagner's private school in Queen's Gate, and his mother married Harcourt George St-Croix Rose, a banker and uncle of Ian Fleming.[12] Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, thus became Lee's step-cousin. The family moved to Fulham, living next door to the actor Eric Maturin.[13] One night, he was introduced to Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the assassins of Grigori Rasputin, whom Lee was to play many years later.[14]
When Lee was nine, he was sent to Summer Fields School, a preparatory school in Oxford, some of whose pupils later attended Eton.[15] He continued acting in school plays, though "the laurels deservedly went to Patrick Macnee."[16] Lee applied for a scholarship to Eton, where his interview was in the presence of the ghost story author M.R. James.[17] His poor maths skills meant that he was placed eleventh, and thus missed out on being a King's Scholar by one place. His step-father was not prepared to pay the higher fees that being an Oppidan Scholar meant,[17] so instead he attended Wellington College, where he won scholarships in the classics, studying Ancient Greek and Latin.[18] Aside from a "tiny part" in a school play, he did not act while at Wellington.[19] He was a "passable" racquets player and fencer and a competent cricketer but did not do well at the other sports played: hockey, football, rugby and boxing.[20] He disliked the parades and weapons training and would always "play dead" as soon as possible during mock battles.[21] Lee was frequently beaten at school, including once at Wellington for "being beaten too often," though he accepted them as "logical and therefore acceptable" punishments for knowingly breaking the rules.[22] At age 17, and with one year left at Wellington, the summer term of 1939 was his last.[4] His step-father had gone bankrupt, owing £25,000 (equivalent to £1,648,985 in 2021).[23]
His mother separated from Rose, and Lee had to get a job, his sister already working as a secretary for the Church of England Pensions Board.[24] With most employers on or preparing to go on summer holidays, there were no immediate opportunities for Lee, who was sent to the French Riviera, where his sister was on holiday with friends.[24] On his way there he stopped briefly in Paris, where he stayed with the journalist Webb Miller, a friend of Rose, and witnessed Eugen Weidmann's execution by guillotine – the last public execution performed in France.[25] Arriving in Menton, he stayed with the Russian Mazirov family, living among exiled princely families.[26] It was arranged that he should remain in Menton after his sister had returned home, but with Europe on the brink of war, he returned to London instead.[27] He worked as an office clerk for United States Lines, taking care of the mail and running errands.[28][29]
Military service[edit]
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Lee had enrolled in a military academy and volunteered to fight for the Finnish Army against the Soviet Union during the Winter War.[30] He and other British volunteers were kept away from the actual fighting, but they were issued with winter gear and were posted on guard duty a safe distance from the border. After two weeks in Finland, they returned home.[31][32] In a later interview, Lee said he knew how to shoot but not how to ski and that he probably would not be alive if he had been allowed to go to the front line.[31][33][34] Lee returned to work at United States Lines and found his work more satisfying, feeling that he was contributing. In early 1940, he joined Beecham's, at first as an office clerk, then as a switchboard operator.[35] When Beecham's moved out of London, he joined the Home Guard.[36] In the winter, his father fell ill with bilateral pneumonia and died on 12 March 1941. Realising that he had no inclination to follow his father into the Army, Lee decided to join up while he still had some choice of service, and volunteered for the Royal Air Force.[37]
Lee reported to RAF Uxbridge for training and was then posted to the Initial Training Wing at Paignton.[38] After he had passed his exams in Liverpool, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan meant that he travelled on the Reina del Pacifico to South Africa, then to his posting at Hillside, at Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia.[39] Training with de Havilland Tiger Moths, Lee was having his penultimate training session before his first solo flight, when he suffered from headaches and blurred vision. The medical officer hesitantly diagnosed a failure of his optic nerve, and he was told he would never be allowed to fly again.[40] Lee was devastated, and the death of a fellow trainee from his former school, Summer Fields, only made him more despondent. His appeals were fruitless, and he was left with nothing to do.[41] He was moved around to different flying stations before being posted to Southern Rhodesia's capital, Salisbury, in December 1941.[42] He then visited the Mazowe Dam, Marandellas, the Wankie Game Reserve and the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. Thinking he should "do something constructive for my keep", he applied to join RAF Intelligence. His superiors praised his initiative, and he was seconded into the British South Africa Police and was posted as a warder at Salisbury Prison.[43] He was then promoted to leading aircraftman. Leaving South Africa, he sailed from Durban to Suez on the Nieuw Amsterdam.[44]
After "killing time" at RAF Kasfareet near the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal Zone in 1942, he resumed intelligence work in the city of Ismaïlia.[45] He was then attached to No. 205 Group RAF before being commissioned at the end of January 1943,[46] and attached to No. 260 Squadron RAF as an intelligence officer.[47] As the North African Campaign progressed, the squadron "leapfrogged" between Egyptian airstrips, from RAF El Daba to Maaten Bagush and on to Mersa Matruh; they lent air support to the ground forces and bombed strategic targets. Lee, "broadly speaking, was expected to know everything."[48] The Allied advance continued into Libya, through Tobruk and Benghazi to the Marble Arch and then through El Agheila, Khoms and Tripoli, with the squadron averaging five missions a day.[49] As the advance continued into Tunisia, with the Axis forces digging themselves in at the Mareth Line, Lee was almost killed when the squadron's airfield was bombed.[50] After breaking through the Mareth Line, the squadron made their final base in Kairouan;[51] following the Axis surrender in North Africa in May 1943, the squadron moved to Zuwarah in Libya in preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily.[52] They then moved to Malta, and, after its capture by the British Eighth Army, the Sicilian town of Pachino, before making a permanent base in Agnone Bagni.[53] At the end of July 1943, Lee received his second promotion of the year, this time to flying officer.[54] After the Sicilian campaign was over, Lee came down with malaria for the sixth time in under a year, and was flown to a hospital in Carthage for treatment. When he returned, the squadron was restless, frustrated with a lack of news about the Eastern Front and the Soviet Union in general, and with no mail from home or alcohol. Unrest spread and threatened to turn into mutiny. Lee, by now an expert on Russia, talked them into resuming their duties, which much impressed his commanding officer.[55]
After the Allied invasion of Italy, the squadron was based in Foggia and Termoli during the winter of 1943, where Lee was then seconded to the Army during an officers' swap scheme.[56] During most of the Battle of Monte Cassino he was attached to the Gurkhas of the 8th Indian Infantry Division.[57] While spending some time on leave in Naples, Lee climbed Mount Vesuvius, which erupted three days later.[58] During the final assault on Monte Cassino, the squadron was based in San Angelo, and Lee was nearly killed when one of the planes crashed on takeoff, and he tripped over one of its live bombs.[59] After the battle, the squadron moved to airfields just outside Rome, and Lee visited the city, where he met his mother's cousin, Nicolò Carandini, who had fought in the Italian resistance movement.[60] In November 1944, Lee was promoted to flight lieutenant and left the squadron in Iesi to take up a posting at Air Force HQ.[61] Lee took part in forward planning and liaison, in preparation for a potential assault into the rumoured German Alpine Fortress.[62] After the war ended, Lee was invited to go hunting near Vienna and was then billeted in Pörtschach am Wörthersee.[63] For the final few months of his service, Lee, who spoke fluent French, Italian and German, among other languages, was seconded to the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects.[64] Here, he was tasked with helping to track down Nazi war criminals.[65] Of his time with the organisation, Lee said: "We were given dossiers of what they'd done and told to find them, interrogate them as much as we could and hand them over to the appropriate authority".[65] He completed his service with the RAF in 1946 with the rank of flight lieutenant.[64]
Lee said that during the war he was attached to special forces, but declined to give details.[66][67] Lee's stepfather served as a captain in the Intelligence Corps, but it is unlikely he had any influence over Lee's military career. Lee saw his stepfather for the last time on a bus in London in 1940, after he was divorced from Lee's mother, and Lee did not speak to him.[68]
Career[edit]
1947–1957: Career beginnings[edit]
Returning to London in 1946, Lee was offered his old job back at Beecham's with a significant raise, but he turned them down as "I couldn't think myself back into the office frame of mind." The Armed Forces were sending veterans with an education in the Classics to teach at universities, but Lee felt his Latin was too rusty and didn't care for the strict curfews.[69] During lunch with his cousin Nicolò Carandini, now the Italian Ambassador to Britain, Lee was detailing his war wounds when Carandini said, "Why don't you become an actor, Christopher?"[70] Lee liked the idea, and after assuaging his mother's protests by pointing to the successful Carandini performers in Australia (which included his great-grandmother Marie Carandini, who had been an opera singer), he met Nicolò's friend Filippo Del Giudice, a lawyer-turned-film producer and head of Two Cities Films, part of the Rank Organisation. Lee recalled that Giudice "looked me up and down" and "concluded that I was just what the industry had been looking for." He was sent to see Josef Somlo for a contract:[71]