Actors - Peter Wyngarde

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	Actors - Peter Wyngarde

Peter Paul Wyngarde (born August 23 1933) is a British actor best known for playing the character Jason King in two television series in the late 1960s early 1970s.

He was born in Marseille, France, the son of an English father and a French mother. His father worked for the British Diplomatic Service, and as a result his childhood was spent in a number of different countries. In 1941, while his parents were away in India, he went to stay with a Swiss family in Shanghai. When the Imperial Japanese Army invaded the city, they were captured and placed in the Lung-hai concentration camp. Conditions in the camp were sometimes harsh - on one occasion Peter had both his feet broken and spent two weeks in solitary confinement after being caught taking messages between camp huts.

As a young man he went into acting and had early roles in episodes of The Avengers
. He became a British household name after starring in the espionage series Department S (1969). After that series ended, his character, the suave womaniser Jason King, was spun-off into a new action espionage series entitled Jason King (1971), which ran for one season (26 one-hour episodes).

In 1975 he was arrested and convicted for an act of "gross indecency" with a truck driver in the toilets of Gloucester bus station. His career never recovered. After losing his TV celebrity status, Wyngarde worked in Austria, acting and directing at the English Theatre in Vienna, South Africa and Germany. He also landed the role of General Klytus in the film version of Flash Gordon
, although it is perhaps significant that the part required him to wear a metal mask throughout.

During the 1980s and 1990s he made a number of TV appearances, including the Doctor Who serial Planet of Fire in 1984, and he appeared in the film Tank Malling (1989).

An enduring myth is that Wyngarde's real name is Cyril Louis Goldbert. This story had its genesis in the early 1970s when, in a newspaper interview Wyngarde was asked his real name and as a joke gave the name of his uncle, Louis Jouvet, himself a renowned French actor. The name not only stuck but was added to over the years.

A bizarre footnote to the Wyngarde biography is his unusual foray into music. To cash in on his fame and appeal, RCA allowed him to record an album of songs. Perhaps to their credit (at least in hindsight) but to their dismay at the time, Wyngarde did not deliver a bunch of easy listening standards but the most unusal collection of spoken word/ musical arranagements. The LP is thought to have been quickly withdrawn after its release, but has gained cult status in the intervening years.

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Actors - Peter Wyngarde

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