Who was the first Avenger?
While The Avengers means Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Black Widow to much of the world, those of us with longer memories remember another team of crime fighters by that name. But it wasn’t Stan Lee’s band of superheroes that arrived first – two years before that first issue of The Avengers hit American bookshelves came the first episode of a British series that would become in many ways one of the defining television shows of the ‘60s, and would make stars of actors Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman.
And those are the names we all think of when we think of that series: it’s John Steed (Macnee) in his bowler hat, Savile Row suit and Shaftesbury Slim umbrella, and it’s Emma Peel (Rigg) and Cathy Gale (Blackman) causing a stir in their black leather fighting suits.
But what’s often forgotten is that Patrick Macnee wasn’t always the first star on the early billing of The Avengers. Watch any episode from that first season in 1961, and it’s actor Ian Hendry who’s first on the credits, headlined by David Keel, a doctor who, in the opening episode, investigates the murder of his fiancée by what turn out to be members of a drug gang.
It was all a far cry from the robotic assassins and telepathic man-eating plants that would characterize later Avengers installments. And just as the show’s grittier early years have been largely forgotten, so too has its first protagonist.
It’s hard to overstate just how much of a star Ian Hendry was in the early 1960s. A year before The Avengers debuted, he had starred in another ITV drama, Police Surgeon, but despite that show being axed after just 13 episodes, Hendry had proved so popular with audiences that ABC TV (who produced the series for ITV) actually conceived The Avengers as a vehicle for him.
Still, over the course of that first season’s 26 episodes, it would be Dr. Keel’s flamboyant, enigmatic cohort, John Steed, who would become the show’s standout character. So when production on season two was postponed, and Hendry had landed a film role, ABC had little hesitation in moving forward without their original lead, upping the ante and landing him a new co-star in Honor Blackman.
Dr. David Keel was never mentioned again in The Avengers, and while Macnee’s star rose over the next eight years (The Avengers aired its final episode in 1969), Hendry’s fame would wane, despite roles in films such as Sidney Lumet’s The Hill with Sean Connery and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion with Catherine Deneuve.
He had occasional leading roles in series such as ITV’s The Informer (1966–67) and the BBC’s The Lotus Eaters (1972–73), but most of his work on the small screen consisted of one-off guest appearances. The film career he had hoped to make after Avengers never materialized.
Read more: Nostalgia
There were close calls, though. Director Mike Hodges wanted him for the lead in 1971’s Get Carter , but the film’s producer—and the studio—had other ideas, and Michael Caine was cast as the titular Jack Carter. As a consolation, Hendry was offered the role of Carter’s old acquaintance Eric Paise, but according to Hodges, the actor grew to hate Caine during filming. “The fact that Caine’s career was on the rise,” the director said in a 2016 interview, “while his was in decline, undoubtedly bothered Ian.”
Hendry’s drinking certainly didn’t help. The actor was only 40 when he filmed Get Carter , but he looked a decade older, probably exacerbated by a chaotic, drink-fueled personal life (his wife, Janet Munro, also suffered from an alcohol problem and died in 1972, aged just 38).
“His battered face reflected his drunken lifestyle, his voice a raspy mix of brandy and smoke,” says his biographer Gabriel Hershman in the book Send in the Clowns: The Yo Yo Life of Ian Hendry. “The charisma and authority were as strong as ever, but the handsome young man who made women swoon was gone.” As time went on, Gabriel writes, “Ian seemed to be losing the battle with his demons, and the good sides were diminishing.”
Things got so bad in the late 1970s that Hendry was declared bankrupt. He still managed to work, but what he was offered — daytime serials, soap operas and roles in poorly paid provincial theatre productions — were all a far cry from the kind of prestige prime-time dramas he had been starring in 20 years earlier.
His last role was as former sea dog Davey Jones in Channel Four’s Brookside in 1984. Although he gave the part his best, the now fifty-year-old actor was clearly not in the best of health.
“Hendry was one of the most handsome actors of his generation,” wrote Brookside actor Ricky Tomlinson in his autobiography. “He married an actress, Janet Munro, and they were always photographed by society magazines and showbiz newspapers.
“This is the man I expected to meet, but the man who arrived on the set that day looked terrible. Someone said he had recovered from throat cancer and I know he had a problem with alcohol. He was staying at the Adelphi Hotel and someone picked him up every morning and took him to the set to make sure he arrived on time. He must have been hurting inside when he saw how far he had fallen. He had gone from being a big star to being a small actor on a soap opera.”
Hendry’s last public appearance was as a guest on Patrick Macnee’s episode of This Is Your Life in October 1984. He was clearly drunk and looked much older than his 52 years, and it could not have escaped his notice how stratospheric his former co-star’s career had become in the 20-and-thirty years since they had starred together in The Avengers.
When Ian Hendry died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage on Christmas Eve 1984, his death was barely noticed in the media (American actor Peter Lawford, who died the same day, generated more attention). And even for Avengers fans, he remains somewhat of an unknown. Of the 26 episodes made for that first season, only two exist in their entirety. Of Police Surgeon, only one episode survives. And of the 21 episodes of The Informant, only two survive.
At his peak, Hendry was one of the most compelling actors of the 1960s, but sadly most of his best work has been lost to time. What remains gives us only a glimpse of what he could do. There is no doubt that, had Mike Hodges won and the alcohol permitted, Ian Hendry would have made a darkly charismatic and compelling Jack Carter.
Perhaps it was the role that revived his career, but we will never know. But as disappointing as it was for him, his place in television history is assured, as the man who created one of the most important shows of the 60s, and for playing the very first Avenger.