Murray Melvin

Murray Melvin
Melvin sitting outside the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, Paris (2014)
Born	(1932-08-10) 10 August 1932 (age 84) Hampstead, London, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1959–present
Parent(s)	Hugh Victor Melvin Maisie Winifred Driscoll

Murray Melvin (born 10 August 1932) is an English stage and film actor noted for his work with Joan Littlewood, Ken Russell and Stanley Kubrick. He is the author of two books: The Art of Theatre Workshop (2006) and The Theatre Royal, A History of the Building (2009).

Melvin was born in London. The son of Hugh Victor Melvin and Maisie Winifred Driscoll, Melvin left his north London secondary school at the age of fourteen unable to master fractions but as head prefect, a qualification he says he gained by always having clean fingernails and well combed hair.

He started work as an office boy for a firm of travel agents off Oxford Street.

To help channel the energies of the young after the disturbing times of the war, his parents had helped to found a youth club in Hampstead, financed by the Co-operative Society of which they were longstanding members. A drama section formed with Melvin its most enthusiastic member.

A short lived job followed as an import and export clerk in a shipping office. He inadvertently exported quantities of goods to destinations that had not ordered them, followed by two unhappy years of National Service in the Royal Air Force (his father had served in the RAF during the Second World War).

He was employed as clerk and secretary to the director of the Royal Air Force sports board at the Air Ministry, then in Kingsway. Knowing nothing about sport, he considered his clean fingernails, well combed hair and his father's service had done the trick.

He attended evening classes at the nearby City Literary Institute and studied drama, mime and classical Ballet. During an extended lunch break from the Ministry, he applied to Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and auditioned on stage singing and dancing for Joan Littlewood and Gerry Raffles. On being asked to create a character he knew from life he impersonated a rather rotund director of the sports board. Having ascertained that he had to return that afternoon to work for this character Joan Littlewood said to Gerry Raffles: "the poor little bugger, we must get him away from there" - which they did.