Actors - John Drainie

Home > Listing Index > Actors > John Drainie

	Actors - John Drainie

John Robert Roy Drainie (April 1, 1916-October 30, 1966) was a Canadian actor and television presenter, who was called "the greatest radio actor in the world" by Orson Welles.

Drainie was most famous in Canada for two long-running roles: the lead role of Jake in the radio adaptation of W. O. Mitchell's Jake and the Kid, and a popular one-man stage show in which he played humorist Stephen Leacock. As well, he played Matthew Cuthbert in the 1956 CBC film adaptation of Anne of Green Gables
.

Drainie began his career in radio with CJOR, CKNW and CBU in Vancouver. He was one of a group of actors, including Fletcher Markle, Alan Young, Lister Sinclair, Len Peterson, Arthur Hill, Bernie Braden and Andrew Allan, who emerged in Vancouver prior to World War II, and eventually moved to Toronto to become part of the CBC's "Golden Age of Radio".

Drainie and Ruth Springford once appeared in a radio play by Peterson, during which Springford apparently forgot that she had one more scene, and left the studio early. Drainie reportedly improvised a monologue until the director grabbed another actress and thrust her into the scene, at which point Drainie ad libbed his way back into the script. The radio audience reportedly never realized that anything was amiss.

In 1964, Drainie was also a cohost with Laurier Lapierre of the controversial newsmagazine series This Hour Has Seven Days. Ill with cancer, Drainie left the series in its second year, and was replaced by Patrick Watson.

Drainie passed away in 1966. His widow, Claire, subsequently remarried Canadian theatre impresario Nathan A. Taylor. John and Claire Drainie's eldest daughter, Bronwyn Drainie, is a noted Canadian journalist and broadcaster who wrote a biography of her father, Living the Part: John Drainie and the Dilemma of Canadian Stardom, in 1988.

Two major Canadian awards, ACTRA's John Drainie Award and the Writers' Trust of Canada's Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, were named in Drainie's honour.

Drainie, John Drainie, John Drainie, John Drainie, John Drainie, John Drainie, John

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for John Drainie ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article John Drainie; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay