They Walked Too Briefly Among Us

• I was saddened to learn about the death, this last Thursday, of British actress Diana Rigg at age 82. Like so many people, I first became acquainted with her talents through her three-year stint as clever, cat-suited spy Emma Peel on The Avengers. Later I encountered Rigg again in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which she played espionage agent James Bond’s ill-fated bride, and later still in the 1973 American TV sitcom, Diana, and the 1998-2000 BBC-TV series, The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries. In between and since, there were other motion-picture roles, other small-screen appearances (notably in HBO’s Game of Thrones), and assorted theater performances. Yet, as I remarked in this tribute to Rigg on the occasion of her 70th birthday, back in 2008, “it’s as [Mrs. Peel] a woman in her 20s and 30s that I recall Diana Rigg best.” Not surprisingly, Emma Peel figures prominently into the obituaries published since Rigg’s demise, including those from The New York Times, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and the blogs Comfort TV and The Spy Command. Her passing follows those of two other Avengers standouts in recent years: her bowler-topped former co-star, Patrick Macnee, in 2015; and Honor Blackman, who played Macnee’s second partner on that show, Cathy Gale, and went to her grave this last April.

• Rigg recalled her years on The Avengers in this entertaining clip from a British Film Institute interview filmed in 2015.

• Attracting somewhat less attention was the passing, on September 6, of New York-born actor Kevin Dobson. After appearing in the daytime TV drama One Life to Live, Dobson scored roles on The Mod Squad, The Rookies, Emergency!, Ironside, and Cannon, before winning the prize part of Detective Bobby Crocker on Kojak (1973-1978), playing opposite Telly Savalas. An obit on the MeTV Web site says, “Dobson auditioned three times before he was cast. He credits his experience in the Army with helping him land the role. ‘I was a military policeman in the Army, so I knew how to hold a gun and throw somebody against a wall.” After Kojak went off the air, Dobson played Mickey Spillane’s famous Manhattan gumshoe, Mike Hammer, in an unsuccessful 1981 pilot film, Margin for Murder, and starred as in the 1981-1982 CBS-TV crime drama Shannon (see the opening here). He finally secured a regular, longtime slot on the prime-time soap opera Knots Landing (1982-1993). Dobson died at age 77.

• Although he lived in Kent, Washington, not far south of where I reside in Seattle, I never met Gary Alexander. But I did correspond with him occasionally, and I enjoyed a few of his books, including Interlock (2012) and Damn Near Broke (2017). We were also “Facebook friends,” though that means little. I was surprised to hear that he’d passed away on August 17 “at the ripe young age of 79, after a mercifully short battle with brain cancer,” according to his funeral home obituary. Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site provides this additional information:

The former auto insurance appraiser wrote 24 novels and more than 200 short stories (mostly for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine) as well as travel articles. He created mainly three series: the Bamson Kiet series features a police superintendent in an imaginary kingdom of Luong, beginning with Pigeon Blood (Walker 1988); the Luis Balam series features an ex-traffic cop turned tour operator in the Yucatan, Mexico, beginning with Blood Sacrifice (Doubleday, 1993); and the Buster Hightower series features a stand-up comic entangled in international intrigue, beginning with Disappeared (Five Star, 2010). His latest novel is Harry Saves the World Again (Encircle Publications, 2020), featuring amateur spy Horatio Alger “Harry” Antonelli.

I offer my condolences to Alexander’s family.

You Diabolical Mastermind, You!

I usually frown heavily upon newspaper features and obituaries that focus on older people, yet are accompanied by photographs of them when they were considerably younger. (Who are they kidding, anyway?)

Yet here I am, using a shot of actress Diana Rigg taken during her sensual prime to illustrate a post about her turning 70 years old today. My only excuse is that I always think of Ms. Rigg (who was born in Doncaster, England, in 1938) in terms of those three years she spent--1965-1968--playing cat-suited and curvaceous spy Emma Peel on The Avengers opposite Patrick Macnee. Alternatively, my mind turns to Rigg’s performance as James Bond’s doomed spouse in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Yes, of course I know that she’s had many other notable roles. She appeared in The Assassination Bureau (1969), A Little Night Music (1977), and Evil Under the Sun (1982). For a very short while, she even had her own American TV sitcom, Diana, which debuted during the memorable 1973-1974 season. It had her playing a divorced fashion coordinator who moves from London to New York City and takes up residence in her brother’s Grand Central Station of an apartment. (TV Guide said, “Amid all the confusion, the star of the show, Diana Rigg, stays cool, calm and comely.” That might have been the most praise the series received.) During the 1980s Rigg hosted PBS-TV’s acclaimed Mystery! series and later starred as criminologist and amateur sleuth Adela Bradley in a short-lived BBC series, The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries, based on an abundance of novels by once largely forgotten English wordsmith Gladys Mitchell. Rigg also turned in a chilling, Emmy Award-winning performance as Mrs. Danvers in a 1997 TV production of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.

In a recently published profile, Britain’s Daily Telegraph found that even as she begins her eighth decade of life, Rigg (now Dame Diana) remains as interesting as ever--still smoking 20 cigarettes a day, still driving a Mercedes sports car, still “[t]oo dignified to be vain,” and still feisty as hell. Reports Nigel Farndale:

Though she describes herself as ‘hopelessly un-neurotic’ and thinks she might be a better actress if she were more neurotic, she does have a sudden and explosive temper, and the angrier she gets the more articulate she becomes. She is intolerant of queue-jumpers, litter-droppers and bad-mannered people generally. When driving, she will roll down her window and yell, ‘Thank you!’ to people she has let into a line of traffic. I get a taste of this sharpness now, or rather the waitress does, when she appears and says, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’d like to talk you through the specials on the menu.’

‘I think we can read,’ Rigg says. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘But they change each day,’ the waitress says, staggering back slightly. When the waitress goes, Rigg explains her shortness with people. With her, things have to be said. She’s no good at bottling up her feelings. But she is good at saying sorry and she never sulks.

Nonetheless, pitifully nostalgic as I am, it’s as a woman in her 20s and 30s that I recall Diana Rigg best. Back in the days when she was considered one of television’s hottest stars and numbered among “the greatest British beauties of all time”; back when she was a Bond babe capable of wrapping a lonely boy’s heart around her little finger. If you’ve forgotten how appealing she could be, here’s a YouTube tribute to her days on The Avengers.



Let’s face it, Mrs. Peel: You’ll always be needed.

READ MORE: “Diana Rigg Takes on the Russians,” by Aleks Sierz (The Daily Telegraph); “Brilliant Careers: Diana Rigg,” by
Robin Dougherty (Salon).