I’ve interviewed a lot of celebrities over the past 40 years, but for a Baby Boomer like me, perhaps the most exciting to meet was the late, great horror icon Christopher Lee.
I’d grown up on Lee’s British Hammer Films classics of the 1950s and 1960s, which included turns as such immortal characters as Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, “Oriental’’ archvillain Fu Manchu — and, of course, his signature role, the definitive interpretation of Dracula (which he repeated nine times in films of widely varying quality).
But what I learned when Lee was promoting “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings,’’ in 2002, was that he really yearned to be a comedian.
“Casting agents thought I couldn’t play comedy, so probably the most important thing I’ve done in my career is guest-hosting ‘Saturday Night Live’ in 1978, with the original cast at the height of their powers,’’ Lee told me with his impeccable Shakespearean diction. “It was watched by 35 million people, and it was the third-highest-rated show of the series.”
The studio audience that night included Steven Spielberg, who invited Lee to play a Nazi commander opposite Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune in the World War II farce “1941.” The aristocratic actor was also screamingly funny as a gay motorcyclist in the comedy “Serial’’ (1980), Mycroft Holmes in Billy Wilder’s “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’’ (1970), Rochefort in “The Three Musketeers’’ (1973) and as a mad scientist in “Gremlins 2: The New Batch’’ (1990).
Fans tend to remember Lee for many other roles. Touring Grant’s Tomb back in 2002, he reported being recognized as the elegant villain Scaramanga in the James Bond adventure “The Man With the Golden Gun’’ (1974).
“Scaramanga was the dark side of Bond, not the brutal, mindless thug he was in the book,” said Lee, who was a stepcousin and regular golfing partner of Bond creator Ian Fleming (who reportedly wanted Lee to play the title role in “Dr. No,’’ which had already been promised to Joseph Wiseman).
Lee was also the only cast member of “The Lord of the Rings” films to have met author J.R.R. Tolkien back in the 1950s.
“I’d read the first one and thought it was one of the books of the century. I say that not because it’s good publicity, but because I really do mean that,” he told me with complete sincerity. “I was in a pub in Oxford with some friends of mine and I went over and practically knelt before him.”
Lee said he believed it’s the “Rings’’ films (he later appeared in the “Hobbit” series) he will be ultimately remembered for — but it’s not his best performance. Lee thought he’d never been better than in a 1998 Pakistani movie called “Jinnah,” in which he played that country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
He told me in 2002 that he deeply missed his late friend Peter Cushing, whose frequent collaborations began with Lee’s more-or-less screen debut as a spear carrier in Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet’’ (1948), ran through the Hammer classics (including “The Hound of the Baskervilles,’’ with Cushing as Sherlock Holmes, a role later played by Lee) and ended with the horror spoof “House of Long Shadows’’ (1983).
“We used to talk a lot, which is something I miss indeed,” he said. “It’ll happen to you one day with a certain person with whom you share jokes and stories. One of you will go and the other one’s left.’’
Now, Lee is gone at 93 after an incredibly long and prolific career.
And what is the great movie fiend’s final screen role? According to IMDb, it’s “Angels in Notting Hill’’ (2014), in which he plays a heavenly supervisor.