Lloyd Bochner had that wonderfully sonorous type of voice that
was always tailor-made for radio or for the stage. Unsurprisingly then,
by the time he was eleven, Lloyd was already employed as part-time
voiceover artist and reader of drama serials by radio stations in
Vancouver.
Lloyd Wolfe Bochner was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Frieda (Kenen) and Charles Abraham Bochner. He was of Russian Jewish and Ukrainian Jewish descent. He made his acting debut as a youth with the Joseph
Barrington Juveniles. Lloyd's education at the University of Toronto
was interrupted in 1943 by wartime service in the Royal Canadian Navy.
However, in 1947, he graduated with a B.A. and a few years later moved
to New York to further hone his acting skills. In 1953, he returned to
Canada to participate in the inaugural season of the Stratford Festival
getting to enact choice Shakespearean roles from Horatio in "Hamlet" to
Orsino in "Twelfth Night".
Having made his screen bow in a small Canadian production,
The Mapleville Story (1946),
Lloyd's first significant exposure in television was as British army
officer Nicholas Lacey in the half-hour NBC serial
One Man's Family (1949),
which had first been performed on radio and starred
Bert Lytell and
Marjorie Gateson. His real breakthrough
came quite a few years later, once having moved to Hollywood, as
co-star of the studio-bound crime series
Hong Kong (1960). He played local
British police-chief Neil Campbell, solving crime in tandem with an
American newspaper correspondent (played by Australian actor
Rod Taylor). This, in turn, led to
other key roles including his almost legendary appearance in the
classic
Unwahrscheinliche Geschichten (1959)
episode "To Serve Man" in 1962 (at one time voted 11th in a TV guide
poll of 100 best TV episodes of all time). Based on a short story by
Damon Knight written in 1950, "To
Serve Man" unfolds in flashback as narrated for the viewer by Lloyd's
decoding expert Michael Chambers. It has all the elements of great
television, with an excellent cast (including
Richard Kiel, later known as
'Jaws' from the 'James Bond' movies; and Theodore Marcuse
as Citizen Grigori giving an indelible impression of Nikita
Khrushchev); and an unexpected and disturbing denouement when it turns
out that the supposedly altruistic alien Kanamits have come to earth to
harvest humans for food. Lloyd repeated his famous punch-line, "it's a
cook book!", years later as a spoof in
Leslie Nielsen's
Die nackte Kanone 2 1/2 (1991).
For most of the 1960s and 1970s, Lloyd was cast in supporting roles,
often as mellifluous, meticulously-attired, upper-class snobs,
practically guaranteed to harbour treacherous intent. He appeared in
several motion pictures, notably as the malicious, smooth villain
Frederick Carter who unsuccessfully tangles with Lee Marvin in Point Blank - Keiner darf Überleben (1967), and
in the same year, as homosexual drug dealer Vic Rood on the receiving
end of the beating from Frank Sinatra in
Der Schnüffler (1967). However, on the
whole, Lloyd's preferred medium was television. He had a recurring role
in the long-running soap-opera
Der Denver-Clan (1981) as Blake Carrington's
manipulative rival, Cecil Colby, in league with archvillain Alexis
Carrington (Joan Collins). A
versatile character actor, Lloyd's clean-cut, aquiline features and
quiet air of authority lent themselves to portraying a vast gallery of
medical men, soldiers, politicians and executives. Some of these were
men of integrity, but like many a good actor, Lloyd rather enjoyed the
challenge of playing the scoundrel.
During his half century-long acting career, Lloyd Bochner garnered two
Liberty Awards as best television actor, Canada's equivalent of the
Emmy Awards. He was also an active member in the Association of
Canadian Radio and Television Artists. He died at age 81 of cancer on
October 29, 2005 in Santa Monica, California. His children are actors Hart Bochner, Paul Bochner, and Johanna Courtleigh.
