Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey (
October 1,
1928 â€"
November 25,
1973) was a
Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in
British and
American films.
Laurence Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was
Laruschka Mischa Skikne, his real name was
Zvi Mosheh (Hirsh) Skikne, called
Hirshkeh by his family. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ber "Boris" and Ella Skikne, a
Jewish family in the tiny village of
Joniskis,
Lithuania. At the age of five he emigrated with his family to
South Africa where he took on the English name of
Harry. He grew up in
Johannesburg, and was in his teens when he served with the entertainment unit of the
South African Army during
World War II. After moving to
London, England, he enrolled in the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where he became known as
Larry, and from there moved to perform on stage and film where he adopted the
stage name "Laurence Harvey", taken either from the shop name
Harvey Nichols or from
Harvey's Bristol Cream.
Harvey's first major role came in 1959 when he was cast by
director Jack Clayton in
Room at the Top produced by British
film producing brothers Sir
John Woolf and
James Woolf of Romulus Films and Remus Films. For his performance, Harvey received a nomination for a
BAFTA Award and for an
Academy Award for Best Actor, the first person of Lithuanian descent to be nominated for an
Academy Award.
During the
1950s and
1960s, Harvey appeared in several major films, including
BUtterfield 8 (1960),
The Alamo (1960),
A Walk on the Wild Side (1962),
Darling (1965) and the critically acclaimed
The Manchurian Candidate (1962), for which he is most well known.
British actor
John Fraser writes in his memoir "Close Up" (2004) that Harvey was gay, and his lover was his manager James Woolf. "As a teenager, he started out living with Hermione Baddeley, a blowsy star of intimate revue more than twice his age. Then he married Margaret Leighton, old enough to be his mother, but a woman of style. When this marriage was over, he married Joan Cohn, widow of
Harry Cohn, managing director of Columbia Studios. Throughout all these career marriages, he still managed to string Jimmy Woolf along."
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Laurence Harvey and Paulene Stone with toddler Domino. (Splash News) |
Harvey was married three times:#
Margaret Leighton (
1957-
1961) (
divorced)#
Joan Perry Cohn (
1968-
1972) (
divorced) widow of movie mogul
Harry Cohn#
Paulene Stone (
1972-
1973), with whom he remained until his death from
stomach cancer at age of 45, and with whom he had a daughter, the famous bounty hunter
Domino Harvey (
1969-
2005).
*
NNDB website*
Laurence Harvey's Gravesite
