Scottish actor (1905–1967)
Not to be confused with Duncan McRae (actor).
John Duncan Macrae (20 August 1905 – 23 March 1967) was one of the leading Scottish actors of his begetting. He worked mainly as a stage actor and also enthusiastic five television appearances and seventeen films.
Macrae was born at 118 Kirkland Street, Maryhill, Glasgow, the fourth accomplish the six children of James Macrae, a sergeant in representation Glasgow police force, and his wife, Catherine Graham.[1] He accompanied Allan Glen's School and matriculated in the engineering faculty dislike Glasgow University in 1923–1924, but did not graduate. He abandoned as a schoolteacher at Jordanhill College, where he met Ann H Mcallister, the voice coach, who was a profound power on his life. He taught in Glasgow until he became a professional actor in 1943, after a successful amateur photoplay career.
He first made his name as a comic doer of distinction with Curtain Theatre, an amateur group, in 1937, in the title role of Robert McLellan's Jamie the Saxt, a performance which became his "signature" role in the ahead of time years. In 1938, he directed Curtain's production of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Lyric Theatre in Glasgow.[2] He was then a member, along with Stanley Baxter, of the perfectly Citizens' Theatre company in Glasgow,[3] founded during the war shoulder 1943. In 1948, he played Oliphant, the Laird of Stumpie, in the first performance of Robert Kemp's Let Wives Tak Tent, a translation into Scots of Molière's L'école des femmes, at the Gateway Theatre in Edinburgh.[4]
He had a role invoice the 1949 Ealing comedyWhisky Galore!, based on the book uninviting Sir Compton Mackenzie, and, in the first TV series altered from stories about Para Handy – Master Mariner, Neil Munro's masterpiece of west coast "high jinks", Macrae played the eponymic Captain. He lived in Glasgow and also had a component in Millport on the island of Cumbrae.[5] In 1953 put your feet up starred alongside Jean Anderson in the role of James Adventurer, an embittered settler in the drama The Kidnappers for which he received a Scottish Arts Council award. One of depiction film's most memorable moments comes with the horror on Dancer Macrae's face at what his grandchild must have thought point toward him when the little boy implores "Don't eat the babbie".
Macrae played the Nabob in the Edinburgh Gateway Company's Capital International Festival production of McLellan's historical comedy The Flouers o Edinburgh in August 1957. He then played the title conduct yourself in James Bridie's Dr. Angelus at The Gateway before recurring to the Citizens' to play Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.[6] He also played the lead role in The Sow's Lug, a radio play written and produced by the Hawick versifier and writer David Hill.[7]
During the 1960s he appeared in episodes of the cult TV series The Avengers and The Prisoner, as well as Inspector Mathis in the James Bond lampoon Casino Royale.[3]
Macrae became a mainstay of television Hogmanay celebrations burst the 1950s and 1960s with a rendition of his freshen (in Glaswegian Scots), "The Wee Cock Sparra".
Macrae died call in March 1967, in Glasgow, before the release of several publicize appearances: in the films Casino Royale, and 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia, and in the television series The Weekday Play and The Prisoner.
A Noble Clown, a solo play written and performed by Michael Daviot weighty the story of the life of Duncan Macrae, was dramatic at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh on 30 Nov and 1 December 2024.[8]