David McCallum

David Keith McCallum (19 September 1933 – 25 September 2023) was a Scottish actor and musician. After varied film roles in his native Britain, he gained wide recognition in the 1960s for playing secret agent Illya Kuryakin on the American television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–68), a role that earned him nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award.

His other notable television roles include Simon Carter in Colditz (1972–74) and Steel in Sapphire & Steel (1979–82). Beginning in 2003, McCallum gained renewed international popularity for his role as NCIS chief medical examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard in the CBS television series NCIS, which he played for 20 seasons until his death in 2023. In film roles, McCallum notably appeared in The Great Escape (1963), and as Judas Iscariot in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). A classically-trained musician and multi-instrumentalist, McCallum also recorded several instrumental pop music albums.

Early life

David Keith McCallum was born on 19 September 1933 in Glasgow the second of two sons of orchestral violinist David Fotheringham McCallum and Dorothy McCallum (née Dorman), a cellist. 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.

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. In 1946, at the age of 13, he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. 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. In March 1954, he was promoted to lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where Joan Collins was a classmate.

Acting career

Early roles

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. A James Dean-themed photograph of McCallum caught the attention of the Rank Organisation, who signed him in 1956. However, in an interview with Alan Titchmarsh broadcast on 3 November 2010, McCallum stated that he had actually held his Equity card since 1946.

His early roles included an outlaw in Robbery Under Arms (1957) (where he met future wife Jill Ireland), 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), directed by John Huston, which was shortly followed by a role in Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd. McCallum played Lt. Cmdr. Eric Ashley-Pitt 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".

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

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. McCallum, however, took the opportunity to construct a complex character whose appeal rested largely in what was shadowy and enigmatic about him. 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. 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. 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. 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."

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."

After The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

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 American series 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 American 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.

NCIS

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".