Mark Lenard (aka Sarek): Good Actor?

Cafe Society
1

I just caught a scene from an STTNG episode where Sarek is starting to lose control over his emotions, and he and Picard are arguing over the question of whether he is fit to continue a diplomatic mission.

They guy (Lenard) really seemed like a pretty good actor. The performance was a little over the top, but hey, it’s Star Trek. He certainly seemed to lose no presence in the presence of Patrick Stewart, and given the nature of the scene especially, that’s saying at least a little.

Anyway, I figured for sure he did at least a lot of stage work. But I checked his wiki page Mark Lenard - Wikipedia and it seems he did a few guest appearances and a couple of series in the 60s and 70s and thats it.

Was there no love for Lenard, then?

Can it be that he did acting work that wasn’t mentioned on the wiki?

Could he have lived simply off of the appearances that are listed there?

Am I totally wrong to say he gave a damn decent performance in that scene and others in the Star Trek series and films?

Is the plural of series series?

-FrL-

2

I just discovered the IMDB page makes him appear much more busy than the wiki. :slight_smile:

-FrL-

3

And, oh my god, I just discovered confirmation of the existence of a TV series during my childhood, which I have insisted existed, and which my family has insisted that I am insane to think existed:

Otherworld

Now, I don’t know if this show was any good or not, but dammit, now I know it really existed and now I know its name and now I win!

Okay, sorry.

Anyway…

-FrL-

(Now, in my memory, the theme song to this series was the same as the theme to Beverly Hills Cop. Somehow I think that memory is a false one.)

4

Here is another useful site for Broadway actors. According to it, he did not do much on Broadway.

I don’t think it is nearly as complete as the IMDB however.

He was a pretty good character actor in my opinion, but nothing special.

Jim

5

I’ve noticed the relative sparsity of IBDB, as well, but I think it has more to do with the different natures of stage and film than with incompleteness. If you look at someone like, say, Mary Martin’s entry on IBDB, or even Bernadette Peters’s, you’re struck by the fact that, frankly, neither one of them were in very many shows. Yet both of them are included in any list of the most essential stars in Broadway history. Stage productions are inherently different from TV productions and films in that a show can run for years with the same stars, while films wrap in a matter of months. Television series do run for a year or more, but if you go look up the actual stars of various long-running TV shows, you find that their television listing isn’t that long, because they’re tied to the show they’re stars of for a very long time. It’s the character actors who show up in IMDB with 150 different TV shows and movies to their credit, because most of them only work one or two episodes of any given series, so they’re free sooner to pursue other work.

6

Everything you said is true, but there is also this from the IBDB FAQ:

I think for supporting actors, whose work was decades past, an incomplete listing is very likely. The 12th FAQ question has some great additional links for those who want to go digging for more information.

Jim

7

He did a lot of early off-Broadway theater that would not show up on the IBDB, such as starring roles in Ibsen, Chekov, and many other plays. He was quite active in the budding off-Broadway scene and was a staple in many companies, doing a few lead roles in Shakespeare in the Park as well. In fact, his PLATONOV opened the same week as another little play that had a slightly longer run, THE FANTASTICKS, a couple of blocks away in Greenwich Village. Unfortunately, when he was cast in George Steven’s THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, he heard the siren call of Hollywood and moved out there, where they didn’t really know what to do with him–too strong-featured, too “ethnic-looking” (he was a first-generation son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and his real name was Leonard Rosenson), too intense.

He did a cute little show called HERE COME THE BRIDES, where he really got to show off his range as the putative villiain Aaron Stempel. He mostly did convention gigs, guest shots, two-man shows with his good friend Walter Koenig, and narration performances in his later days, but according to his wife and daughters was a fun if always dignified guy, travelling the world and developing an interest in surfing in his sixties.

He was one of my favorite actors, and I can’t believe he’s been gone for ten years as of last Wednesday. I had quite the crush on him in my teens and still think he was gifted with one of the most beautiful voices ever to come from a human being.

HCTB is out on DVD and maybe you can get it on Netflix.

I met him once, at a convention at Brandeis University in 1991, and he was tall, slim, silver-haired, reserved, but very relaxed and full of anecdotes. When I got an autograph (he was raising money for the ADA since one of his daughters is diabetic) I asked if he would consider coming back to work in NY, but he liked the road, he said. I also asked him about bringing the two-man show THE BOYS OF SUMMER back East, and he said he didn’t know about that, but that he loved the part, “and if John Cullum can do it, so can I!”

8

Sweet.

9

Fascinating.

10

Mehitabel, your post tends to confirm that Lenard is just the kind of cool I suspected him to be. :slight_smile:

-FrL-

11

Thanks! :cool:

If you get the deluxe disk of ST IV, there’s a tribute to him on the second one with his wife and daughters, who look startingly like female versions of him. :smiley:
Lots of neat pix and all showing the diversity that got hidden behind the character of Sarek, not that Sarek is a bad role to be known for. The silliest plot racheted up in style when he was onscreen.

12

Unfortunately, I only knew Lenard as Sarek, as well as a couple of other ST characters, most notably as the Romulan commander in “Balance of Terror”. The animated Star Trek series has just come out on DVD, and Lenard also reprised his role as Sarek in the episode “Yesteryear,” generally regarded as the finest animated Trek episode