David McCallum

David Keith McCallum was born on 19 September 1933 in Glasgow^[4] the second of two sons of orchestral violinist David Fotheringham and Dorothy McCallum (née Dorman), a cellist.^[5] When he was three, his family moved to London for his father to play as the leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Early in the Second World War, he was evacuated back to Scotland, where he lived with his mother at Gartocharn by Loch Lomond.^[6]

McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, a boys' independent school in Hampstead, London, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he played the oboe.^[7] In 1946, at the age of 13, he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. ^[8] Also involved in local amateur drama, at age 17, he appeared as Oberon in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Play and Pageant Union. He left school at age 18 and was conscripted for National Service. He joined the British Army's 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force.^[9] In March 1954, he was promoted to lieutenant.^[10] After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate.^[11]

In 1951, McCallum became assistant stage manager of the Glyndebourne Opera Company. He began his acting career doing boy voices for BBC Radio in 1947 and taking bit parts in British films from the late 1950s. His first acting role was in Whom the Gods Love, Die Young playing a doomed royal.^[12] A James Dean-themed photograph of McCallum caught the attention of the Rank Organisation, who signed him in 1956.^[13] However, in an interview with Alan Titchmarsh broadcast on 3 November 2010, McCallum stated that he had actually held his Equity card since 1946.^[14]

His early roles included an outlaw in Robbery Under Arms, (1957) junior RMS Titanic radio operator Harold Bride in A Night to Remember (1958), and a juvenile delinquent in Violent Playground (1958). His first American film was Freud: The Secret Passion (1962),^[15] directed by John Huston, which was shortly followed by a role in Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd. McCallum played Lt. Cmdr. Eric Ashley-Pitt (a.k.a., "Dispersal") in The Great Escape, which was released in 1963. He took the role of Judas Iscariot in 1965's The Greatest Story Ever Told. His other television roles included two appearances on The Outer Limits in the episodes "The Sixth Finger" (1963) and "The Forms of Things Unknown" (1964), and a guest appearance on Perry Mason in 1964 as defendant Phillipe Bertain in "The Case of the Fifty Millionth Frenchman".

He also played the role of "The Invisible Man", the second television series with this title, debuted in the US in 1975 on NBC and starred David McCallum as the scientist Daniel Westin and Melinda Fee as his wife, Dr. Kate Westin. The series was created by Harve Bennett

 

The Man from U.N.C.L.E., intended as a vehicle for Robert Vaughn, made McCallum into a sex symbol, his Beatle-style blond haircut providing a trendy contrast to Vaughn's clean-cut appearance. McCallum's role as the mysterious Russian agent Illya Kuryakin was originally conceived as a peripheral one. In fact, McCallum recalled in a 1998 interview that "I'd never heard of the word 'sidekick' before", when presented by his character's description for the first time.^[16] McCallum, however, took the opportunity to construct a complex character whose appeal rested largely in what was shadowy and enigmatic about him.^[13] Kuryakin's popularity with the audience as well as Vaughn and McCallum's on-screen chemistry were quickly recognized by the producers, and McCallum was elevated to co-star status.

Although the show aired at the height of the Cold War, McCallum's Russian alter ego became a pop culture phenomenon. The actor was inundated with fan letters, and a Beatles-like frenzy followed him everywhere he went.^[13] While playing Kuryakin, McCallum received more fan mail than any other actor in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's history, including such popular MGM stars as Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, and Elvis Presley.^[17] Hero worship even led to a record, "Love Ya, Illya", performed by Alma Cogan under the name Angela and the Fans, which was a pirate radio hit in Britain in 1966. A 1990s rock-rap group from Argentina named itself Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas in honour of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. character.

McCallum received two Emmy Award nominations in the course of the show's four-year run (1964–1968) for playing the intellectual and introverted secret agent.^[13] Describing his popularity during the show's run, McCallum said, "There is a practicality about it. You have to deal with it by not going to certain places. I was rescued from Central Park by mounted police once. When I went to Macy's department store the fans did $25,000 worth of damage and they had to close Herald Square to get me out. That's pretty classic, but you just have to deal with it. And then whoever was next came along, and you get dropped overnight, which is a relief."^[18]

McCallum and Vaughn reprised their roles of Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo in the 1983 television film, Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.. In 1986, McCallum reunited with Vaughn again in an episode of The A-Team entitled "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair", complete with "chapter titles", the word "affair" in the title, the phrase "Open Channel D", and similar scene transitions.

In an interview for a retrospective television special, McCallum recounted a visit to the White House during which, while he was being escorted to meet the U.S. president, a Secret Service agent told him, "You're the reason I got this job."^[19]

 

McCallum never quite repeated the popular success he had gained as Kuryakin until NCIS, though he did become a familiar face on British television in such shows as Colditz (1972–1974), Kidnapped (1978), and ITV's science-fiction series Sapphire & Steel (1979–1982) opposite Joanna Lumley. In 1975, he played the title character in a short-lived U.S. version of The Invisible Man.

McCallum appeared on stage in Australia in Run for Your Wife (1987–1988), and the production toured the country. Other members of the cast were Jack Smethurst, Eric Sykes and Katy Manning.

McCallum played supporting parts in a number of feature films, and he played the title role in the 1968 thriller, Sol Madrid.

McCallum starred with Diana Rigg in the 1989 TV miniseries Mother Love. In 1991 and 1992 McCallum played gambler John Grey, one of the principal characters in the television series Trainer. He appeared as an English literature teacher in a 1989 episode of Murder, She Wrote. In the 1990s, McCallum guest-starred in two U.S. television series. In season 1 of seaQuest DSV, he appeared as the law-enforcement officer Frank Cobb of the fictional Broken Ridge of the Ausland Confederation, an underwater mining camp off the coast of Australia by the Great Barrier Reef; he also had a guest-star role in one episode of Babylon 5 as Dr. Vance Hendricks in the Season 1 episode "Infection".

In 1994, McCallum narrated the acclaimed documentaries Titanic: The Complete Story for A&E Networks. This was the second project about the Titanic on which he had worked: the first was the 1958 film A Night to Remember, in which he had had a small role.

In the same year, McCallum hosted and narrated the TV special Ancient Prophecies. This special, which was followed soon after by three others, told of people and places historically associated with foretelling the end of the world and the beginnings of new eras for mankind.

In 1997 McCallum had a guest role in Season 7, Episode 22 of "Law & Order", playing the neighbor of the murder victim.

 

Beginning in 2003, starting with the original backdoor pilot on the series JAG, McCallum starred in the CBS television series NCIS as Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard, the team's chief medical examiner and one of the show's most popular characters. In Season 2 Episode 13 "The Meat Puzzle", NCIS Special Agent Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander) asks Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), "What did Ducky look like when he was younger?" and Gibbs replies, "Illya Kuryakin".^[20]

According to the behind-the-scenes feature on the 2006 DVD of NCIS season 1, McCallum became an expert in forensics to play Mallard, including attending medical examiner conventions. In the feature, Donald P. Bellisario says that McCallum's knowledge became so vast that at the time of the interview, he was considering making him a technical adviser to the show.

McCallum appeared at the 21st Annual James Earl Ash Lecture, held 19 May 2005 at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, an evening for honouring America's service members. His lecture, "Reel to Real Forensics", with Cmdr. Craig T. Mallak, U.S. Armed Forces medical examiner, featured a presentation comparing the real-life work of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner staff with that of the fictional naval investigators appearing on NCIS.^[21]

In late April 2012, it was announced that McCallum had reached an agreement on a two-year contract extension with CBS-TV. The move meant that he would remain an NCIS regular past his eightieth birthday.^[22] In May 2014 he signed another two-year contract.^[23] He signed an extension in 2016,^[24] beginning a limited schedule in 2017^[25] and from then renewed his contract for each season separately.^[26]

With series lead Mark Harmon's departure from the show in the fall of 2021 (Season 19), McCallum became the last remaining member of the original NCIS cast until his death in 2023.

The Season 21 episode, "The Stories We Leave Behind", is a posthumous tribute to both McCallum and to Dr. Mallard. It begins with Medical Examiner Jimmy Palmer finding Ducky had died at his home, the morning before he is set to help a young woman clear her USMC father's name of desertion. The episode segues between the rest of the team trying to close this final case and them remembering Ducky's insights and wisdom via flashbacks to previous episodes. At Ducky's house, Jimmy first encounters Ducky's dog Solo, a reference to Napoleon Solo, the partner of McCallum's character Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.^[27]

In the 1960s, McCallum recorded four albums for Capitol Records with music producer David Axelrod: Music...A Part of Me (Capitol ST 2432, 1966),^[5] Music...A Bit More of Me (Capitol ST 2498, 1966),^[5] Music...It's Happening Now! (Capitol ST 2651, 1967), and McCallum (Capitol ST 2748, 1968). The best known of his pieces today is "The Edge", which was sampled by Dr. Dre as the intro and riff to the track "The Next Episode". McCallum's version of "The Edge" appears on the soundtracks to the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV and the 2017 film Baby Driver.

McCallum did not sing on these records, as many television stars of the 1960s did when offered recording contracts. As a classically trained musician, he conceived a blend of oboe, cor anglais, and strings with guitar and drums, and presented instrumental interpretations of hits of the day. The official arranger on the albums was H. B. Barnum. However, McCallum conducted, and contributed several original compositions of his own, over the course of four LPs. The first two, Music...A Part of Me and Music...A Bit More of Me, have been issued together on CD on the Zonophone label. On Open Channel D, McCallum did sing on the first four tracks, "Communication", "House on Breckenridge Lane", "In the Garden, Under the Tree" (the theme song from the film Three Bites of the Apple), and "My Carousel". The music tracks are the same as the Zonophone CD. This CD was released on the Rev-Ola label. The single release of "Communication" reached No. 32 in the UK Singles Chart in April 1966.^[28]

In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Discotheque Affair", McCallum plays the double bass as part of a band in a night club. He also played guitar and sang his own composition, "Trouble", with Nancy Sinatra on "The Take Me to Your Leader Affair", and played several instruments in "The Off-Broadway Affair".

In the 1970s, McCallum also recorded three H. P. Lovecraft tales for Caedmon Records, an imprint of August Derleth's Arkham House publishing venture: "The Rats in the Walls" (TC 1347, 1973); "The Dunwich Horror" ("slightly abridged"; TC 1467, 1976); and "The Haunter of the Dark" (TC 1617, 1979).

In 2016, McCallum published a crime novel entitled Once a Crooked Man. The narrative is set in New York and London and centres on a young actor who tries to foil a murder.^[29] McCallum stated at the time that a second novel was in progress.^[30]

 

On 11 May 1957, McCallum married actress Jill Ireland in London. They met during the production of the film Hell Drivers. The marriage legally ended in February 1967, after a separation of approximately two years.^[31] McCallum and Ireland had three sons: Paul, Jason, and Valentine (Val). Jason, who was adopted, died from an accidental drug overdose in 1989.^[32] Val McCallum is a guitarist, playing on and off with Jackson Browne since 2002, Lucinda Williams from 2011 to 2016, and many others.^[33][34] McCallum was also a member of the comic-country band, Jackshit.^[35]

On 16 September 1967, McCallum married fashion model-turned-interior designer Katherine Carpenter in Valley Stream, New York.^[31] The couple met at a photo shoot for Glamour magazine in 1965, and were together for 58 years.^[31] They had a son, Peter, and a daughter, Sophie. McCallum and his wife were active in charitable organisations that support the United States Marine Corps: Katherine's father was a Marine who served in the Battle of Iwo Jima and her brother was killed in the Vietnam War. On 27 August 1999, McCallum was naturalized as a United States citizen.^[36] McCallum had six grandchildren. He was friends with Tibor Rubin.^[32][37]

McCallum died at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on 25 September 2023, at the age of 90.^{[38][39][40][41]}

NCIS aired a tribute episode dedicated to McCallum on 19 February 2024.^[27]

• Music: A Part of Me (Capitol Records, 1966)^[5]
• Music: A Bit More of Me (Capitol Records, 1967)^[5]
• Music: It's Happening Now! (Capitol Records, 1967)
• McCallum (Capitol Records, 1967)

Authors of works appear after the titles:

• Lassie Come-Home - Eric Knight (Caedmon Records, 1973)
• The Rats in the Walls - H. P. Lovecraft (Caedmon Records, 1973)
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and the Damned Thing - Ambrose Bierce (Caedmon Records, 1973)
• The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Caedmon Records, 1973)
• The Dunwich Horror - H. P. Lovecraft (Caedmon Records, 1976)
• The Haunter of the Dark - H. P. Lovecraft (Caedmon Records, 1979)
• Five Tales from the Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio (with Carole Shelley) (Caedmon Records, 1981)

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to David McCallum.

• David McCallum at IMDb  
• David McCallum at the Internet Broadway Database  
• David McCallum at the Internet Off-Broadway Database  
• David McCallum discography at Discogs  
• David McCallum at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television