Who was the first Avenger?
While most of the world knows The Avengers as Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Black Widow, those of us with longer memories remember a different crime-fighting team by that name. But Stan Lee’s group of superheroes weren’t the first to arrive—two years before the first issue of The Avengers hit American bookshelves, the first episode of a British series that would become, in many ways, one of the defining TV shows of the 1960s and star actors Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, and Honor Blackman arrived.
And when we imagine this series, these are the names that come to mind: John Steed (Macnee) in his bowler hat, Savile Row suit and Shaftesbury Slim umbrella, and Emma Peel (Rigg) and Cathy Gale (Blackman) kicking ass in their black leather combat suits.
But what is often forgotten is that Patrick Macnee was not always the star of The Avengers at the very beginning. Look at any episode from the first season in 1961 and the first actor credited is Ian Hendry, who stars in the opening episode as David Keel, a medical doctor investigating the murder of his fiancée, who turns out to be members of a drug gang.
All of this was a far cry from the robot assassins and telepathic man-eating plants that would characterize later Avengers installments, and just as the series’ grittier beginnings have been largely forgotten, so too has the series’ first lead actor.
It’s hard to overstate just how big a star Ian Hendry was in the early 1960s. The year before The Avengers, he starred in another ITV series, Police Surgeon, but although that series was cancelled after just 13 episodes, Hendry was so popular with viewers that ABC TV (who produced the series for ITV) designed The Avengers as a vehicle for him.
Still, over the course of the first season’s 26 episodes, Dr. Keel’s dashing, mysterious partner, John Steed, would become the show’s standout character. So when production on the second season was delayed and Hendry signed on for a film role, ABC didn’t hesitate to move on without its original lead actor, thus moving Macnee up a notch and giving him a new supporting actor in Honor Blackman.
Dr. David Keel was never mentioned again in The Avengers, and Macnee’s star grew over the next eight years (The Avengers aired its final episode in 1969). Hendry saw his fame wane, despite starring alongside Sean Connery in Sidney Lumet’s The Hill and Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion.
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 small-screen work was guest appearances and the film career he hoped would take off after The Avengers never materialised.
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There were, however, some near misses. Director Mike Hodges wanted him for the lead role in 1971’s Get Carter, but the film’s producer and 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 resentful of Caine during filming. “The fact that Caine’s career was on the rise,” the director said in a 2016 interview, “certainly bothered Ian that his own career was going downhill.”
Of course, Hendry’s drinking didn’t help. The actor was only 40 when he made Get Carter, but he looked a decade older, probably made worse by his chaotic, booze-fuelled private life (his wife Janet Munro also struggled with a drinking problem and died in 1972, aged just 38).
“His weathered face reflected his boozy lifestyle, his voice a rough mix of brandy and smoke,” biographer Gabriel Hershman writes in his 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 had captivated the ladies was gone.” As time went on, Gabriel writes, “Ian seemed to be losing the battle with his demons, and his good roles were becoming fewer and fewer.”
By the late 1970s things had gotten so bad that Hendry was bankrupt. He still managed to work, but what he was offered – daytime soap operas, roles in low-rent provincial theatre productions – was a far cry from the prestigious primetime dramas he had starred in 20 years earlier.
His final role was as ex-marine Davey Jones in the Channel Four drama Brookside in 1984. Although he brought A-list acting to the role, the actor, now in his fifties, 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 called Janet Munro and they were constantly photographed by society magazines and showbiz tabloids.
“This was the guy I had been waiting to meet, but the guy who came on set that day looked like a mess. Someone said he was a throat cancer survivor, and I know he had problems with alcohol. He was staying at the Adelphi Hotel, and someone would pick him up every morning and bring him to the set to make sure he was on time. It must have hurt him to see how far he had fallen. He had gone from being a big star to a bit part player on a soap opera.”
Hendry’s last public appearance was as a guest on Patrick Macnee’s This Is Your Life in October 1984. He was clearly drunk, looked much older than his 52 years, and it had not escaped his attention how stratospheric his one-time co-star’s career had become in the 20-odd years since they starred together in The Avengers.
When Ian Hendry died of gastrointestinal bleeding on Christmas Eve 1984, his death went virtually unnoticed in the media (American actor Peter Lawford, who died the same day, generated more coverage). And even for Avengers fans, it remains somewhat of an unknown. Of the 26 episodes made for the first season, only two are available in their entirety. Only one episode of Police Surgeon survives. And of the 21 episodes of The Informant, only two survive.
In his prime, Hendry was one of the most captivating actors of the 1960s, but sadly much of his best work has been lost to time. What remains gives us only a glimpse of what he could have achieved. There’s no doubt that if Mike Hodges had prevailed and alcohol had allowed it, Ian Hendry would have made a darkly charismatic and compelling Jack Carter.
Perhaps it would be the role that revived his career, but we’ll never know. But as disappointing as it was for him, his place in television history is assured as the man who helped shape one of the signature series of the ’60s and portrayed the first Avenger.