was called up for the Royal Navy. He joined as an ordinary seaman in October 1942 and was commissioned a sub-lieutenant in June 1943, becoming a navigator on Motor Torpedo Boats in the English Channel and North Sea. Reassigned as first lieutenant on a second MTB, Macnee caught bronchitis just before D-Day; while he was recuperating in hospital, his boat and crew were lost in action. Two of the crew received the Distinguished Service Medal. He left the Royal Navy in 1946 as a lieutenant. Macnee nurtured his acting career in Canada early on, but he also appeared as an uncredited extra in the British films Pygmalion (1938), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), as well as some live TV dramas for the BBC, before graduating to credited roles in such films as Scrooge (US: A Christmas Carol, 1951), as young Jacob Marley, the Gene Kelly vehicle Les Girls (1957), as an Old Bailey barrister, and the war film The Battle of the River Plate (1956). Between these occasional movie roles, Macnee spent the better part of the 1950s working in dozens of small roles in American and Canadian television and theatre, including an appearance in an episode of One Step Beyond ("Night of April 14th") and The Twilight Zone ("Judgment Night") in 1959. Disappointed in his limited career development, in the late 1950s Macnee was daily smoking 80 cigarettes and drinking a bottle of whisky. Not long before his career-making role in The Avengers, Macnee took a break from acting and served as one of the London-based producers for the classic documentary series The Valiant Years, based on the Second World War memoirs of Winston Churchill. The Avengers While working in London on the Churchill series, Macnee was offered the role in The Avengers (1961–69), (originally intended to be known as Jonathan Steed), for which he became best known. The series was conceived as a vehicle for Ian Hendry, who played the lead role of Dr. David Keel in a sequel to an earlier series, Police Surgeon (1960), while John Steed was his assistant. Macnee, though, became the lead after Hendry's departure at the end of the first season. Macnee played opposite a succession of glamorous female partners: Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson. Of the 161 completed episodes, Macnee appeared in all but two, both from the first season. Although