Leonard
Meyer Sachs (26 September 1909 – 15 June 1990) was a South African-British
actor.[1]
Queer Places:
Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Rd, London NW10 5NU, UK
Leonard
Meyer Sachs (26 September 1909 – 15 June 1990) was a South African-British
actor.[1]
Sachs was born in South Africa in the town of Roodepoort, Transvaal (now Gauteng).[2] He had many television and film roles from the 1930s to the 1980s, including Mowbray in the 1950 version of Richard II, John Wesley in the 1954 film of the same name and Lord Mount Severn in East Lynne from 1976.[3][4][5]
He founded an Old Time Music Hall, named the Players' Theatre, in Villiers Street, Charing Cross, London. He appeared as the Chairman of the Leeds City Varieties in the long-running BBC television series The Good Old Days, which ran from 1953 to 1983, and became well known for his elaborate, erudite introductions of the performers.[6] Sachs was honoured in a 1977 episode of This is Your Life.[7]
Sachs appeared in Danger Man with Patrick McGoohan.[8] He had two appearances in the science fiction series Doctor Who: as Admiral Gaspard de Coligny in The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve in 1966 and as Lord President Borusa in Arc of Infinity in 1983.[9] He also appeared in the 1985 Royal Variety Performance in a tribute to The Good Old Days.
As late as the 1980s, British public and private intolerance of homosexuality was still more than enough to ruin careers and lives, or at least to do them considerable damage; the television star Peter Wyngarde and Leonard Sachs of The Good Old Days were just two of maybe a dozen actors whose careers never really came back from court cases involving cottaging.
He married the actress Eleanor Summerfield in 1947. They had two sons, the actor Robin Sachs and Toby Sachs.[10]
Sachs died in London in 1990 at the age of 80.
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