Max North's Tele-Review
PATRICK MACNEE, dark and genial 38-year old cousin of David Niven, is another regular traveller across the Atlantic, and has an adventurous background which neatly fits the role of the undercover man he plays in the new Saturday crime series "The Avengers".
"I've been a rolling stone all my life," he says, "and though the thought of settling down is sometimes attractive I always seem to end up by moving on again."
Macnee's mother is a member of the Hastings family, the family of the Earls of Huntingdon, who claim Robin Hood as an ancestor.
His grandfather, Sir Daniel Macnee, as president of the Scottish Royal Academy, and his father, Daniel Macnee, moved southwards to Berkshire, where he became famous as racehorse trainer "Shrimp Macnee".
"As a small boy, Patrick rode gallops with Gordon Richards and other celebrated jockeys, and he was bitterly disappointed when he became too tall to become a professional jockey.
He went to Eton, where his schoolmates included Ludovic Kennedy and Humphrey Lyttleton, and commanded a motor torpedo boat during the war.
His first big film part was with cousin David Niven in "The Scarlet Pimpernel", in which he was required to cross the River Loire on horseback.
He tells me: "We spent six months on location, and I seemed to spend most of it in icy water."
After a spell in the West End, he went out to Canada to appear in one TV play, and stayed for two years. After trips to London and New York, he spent four years in Hollywood, enjoying the climate in a house on Malibu Beach.
Says Macnee, "I've let it to a friend while I decide whether or not to stay on in England."
From The Manchester Evening News, England, January 21st 1961.