John Keith Vernon (February 24, 1932 – February 1, 2005) was a Canadian actor. He made a career in Hollywood after achieving initial television stardom in Canada.
e made his screen debut in 1956 as the voice of Big Brother in Michael Anderson’s film version of George Orwell’s 1984 starring Edmond O’Brien. He returned to Canada afterwards and gained film experience appearing on the TV series Tugboat Annie and The Last of the Mohicans. Vernon typically played a stern, authoritarian kind of character. He made his Broadway debut in 1964 as DeSoto opposite Christopher Plummer and David Carradine in The Royal Hunt of the Sun. During the Golden Age of CBC Drama in the 1960s he co-starred in Edna O’Brien’s A Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers opposite Colleen Dewhurst, and opposite William Hutt and Rita Gam in Uncle Vanya. These prestige productions led to his starring in the CBC series Wojeck in the late 1960s, playing a crime-fighting medical examiner (the series has been acknowledged as the… read more
John Keith Vernon (February 24, 1932 – February 1, 2005) was a Canadian actor. He made a career in Hollywood after achieving initial television stardom in Canada.
e made his screen debut in 1956 as the voice of Big Brother in Michael Anderson’s film version of George Orwell’s 1984 starring Edmond O’Brien. He returned to Canada afterwards and gained film experience appearing on the TV series Tugboat Annie and The Last of the Mohicans. Vernon typically played a stern, authoritarian kind of character. He made his Broadway debut in 1964 as DeSoto opposite Christopher Plummer and David Carradine in The Royal Hunt of the Sun. During the Golden Age of CBC Drama in the 1960s he co-starred in Edna O’Brien’s A Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers opposite Colleen Dewhurst, and opposite William Hutt and Rita Gam in Uncle Vanya. These prestige productions led to his starring in the CBC series Wojeck in the late 1960s, playing a crime-fighting medical examiner (the series has been acknowledged as the inspiration for the later American series Quincy M.E., later starring in as a gangster in the episode Requiem For The Living). He left the series in order to further his acting career in the United States. In 1967, he appeared opposite Lee Marvin in Point Blank.
In 1969, he played Cuban revolutionary Rico Parra in Alfred Hitchcock’s Cold War era spy movie Topaz. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he made four appearances over five years on the TV series Mission: Impossible as four different lead villains. After appearing in a string of television episodes and films, he became well known internationally for playing the by-the-book mayor of San Francisco perpetually frustrated by Clint Eastwood in the first Dirty Harry movie (a role he later parodied in the premiere episode of Sledge Hammer!). He also played the sympathetic Fletcher in Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976 and the banker with crime syndicate connections, Boyle, opposite Walter Matthau in 1973’s Charley Varrick.
Vernon died of complications following heart surgery on February 1, 2005, in Los Angeles, California. He was cremated after a private funeral service. —Wikipedia
