The consummate villain for sixty years and Ian Fleming’s cousin to boot! I had the good (or bad) fortune to see his work in the Hammer films as a kid. For some reason, WCIA-3 in Champaign, IL would have a week or two of these flicks from three to five during the Early Show. Less harmful than Jerry Lewis week in my opinion.
Mr. Lee definitely got immortalized for numerous generations by landing the roles of Saruman the White (a good guy converted to evil) in The Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku/Darth Tyrannus in the terrible Star Wars prequels. At least he was one of the few upsides to negate Jar Jar and the horrendous dialog. Scaramanga in Bond’s The Man with the Golden Gun was pretty sweet too. These three roles earned him individual appearances on the villain dating-parody site Am I Evil or Not?
He had a humorous side too. I clearly recall him being the guest host on SNL with the first troop. In his opening monologue he introduced a couple horror flicks he turned down, namely The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave; he played Death apologizing to a little girl for taking her hamster away; led a team of vampire slayers who had to drive a stake through Nixon’s memoirs before they were published; and did a hilarious “mistake” with his pronunciation when introducing the musical guest, “Ladies and gentlemen, meet…loaf.” Lee was definitely a natural at comedy. It probably explained why he could be a convincing, menacing Dracula.