Stuart Damon (right) with his Champions co-stars William Gaunt and Alexandra Bastedo.
In today's Sci-Fi Blast From The Past, veteran actor Stuart Damon talks about his role as jet-setting hero Craig Stirling in the 60's Sci-Fi adventure series The Champions.
How many people do you know who can honestly say that they have charmed Cinderella, prevented international disasters and served as chief of staff for a big city hospital where romance, intrigue and murder are part of daily life? If the person is actor Stuart Damon then you can believe him. In his over forty years in the business this tall, dark and handsome leading man has captivated audiences with his performances on the stage and in front of the camera.
For the past twenty-two years Damon has portrayed surgeon and socialite Doctor Alan Quartermaine on the popular ABC Television daytime soap opera General Hospital. However, before the actor began practicing medicine he was dispensing justice as Craig Stirling, an agent for Nemesis and a third of the superhuman crimefighting force from the 1968 ITC series The Champions. Damon was working at the Piccadilly Theatre in London’s West End when he was approached about a part on the programme.
“The show’s producer [Monty Berman] and the casting people actually saw me onstage in a musical production about Harry Houdini called Houdini - Man of Magic,” recalls the actor. “They were looking for an American actor who looked just like I did, so they called my agent and I had to go in and audition. I was very, very excited because I’d never done a television series before and couldn’t think of any type of show I would rather have done than an action one.
“I did the screen test and it was all extremely physical and action-oriented. Luckily, being a young man at the time I was very athletic. I was obviously good enough in terms of the physicality and also from an acting point of view that they gave me the job.
“So they came to me,” he adds. “I had absolutely no say whatsoever in the part. Here was someone, though, who was a hero that dressed great, did all these phenomenal, physical things and who always came out being the good guy. How could you miss? Craig Stirling was sterling,” jokes Damon.
The Champions, a.k.a. Craig Stirling, Sharron Macready (Alexandra Bastedo) and Richard Barrett (William Gaunt), were operatives for Nemesis, a small but efficient agency based in Geneva, Switzerland whose goal was preserving the status quo. The team travelled everywhere from the world’s capitals to bug-infested jungles to scorching deserts to do battle against a panoply of international terrorists, dictators, drug dealers and deranged scientists.
Fortunately, their unique physical and mental powers, acquired in the program’s first episode The Beginning, usually gave them the upper hand in this global game of life and death. However, although the three were superhuman they were not indestructible. This sense of mortality provided Damon and his costars with the chance to create characters that were distinguishable from and much more realistic than most traditional comic book or television superheroes.
“My character grew because I grew as an actor,” explains Damon. “I’ve always taken my work very, very seriously. In all the years I’ve been an actor I’ve never worked one day on anything without being excited to be there and determined to do the best job I could. So I was just always trying to improve and to be creative and as imaginative as possible when playing Craig Stirling. Like anything else, the more time you spend acting the better you get at it.”
Did the show’s creators Dennis Spooner and Monty Berman have a hand in helping Damon develop his character? “I didn’t really have a lot of interaction with them,” he says. “I mean, we were very friendly and we had a very cordial relationship, but in terms of input, there was none. It was not asked for nor was it given. I was handed the scripts and if there was a problem here or there I would ask them about it, but they were the bosses. We didn’t have any conversations about where the character was going or what my opinion was. I was hired as an actor and that’s what I did.”
In The Beginning the head of Nemesis, Commander Tremayne (Anthony Nichols), sends the trio to Tibet to collect specimens of a lethal bacterium developed by Chinese scientists. They complete their mission, but in trying to escape their plane is damaged by gunfire and crashes in the Himalayas. The three are rescued by an enigmatic old man from an ancient Tibetan civilization long thought dead.
Not only does this stranger heal the agents’ injuries but he also endows them with special powers. These include heightened senses of sight, smell and hearing, enhanced physical strength and increased mental capabilities which include extra sensory perception. The three also find that they are telepathically linked together and can communicate with each other through mere thought. Such abilities come in handy when they must defend themselves against a group of Chinese soldiers hunting for them. Unfortunately, this encounter left Damon with one of his most vivid memories from the series.
“I had to jump off this little hut on to a baby trampoline that was covered in bushes, then shoot up into the air and take down the bad guys,” remembers the actor. “I did it and I did it very well. The director [Cyril Frankel] was so impressed he asked, ‘Do you think you could travel another five feet in the air?’
“Having that kind of young stud mentality I said, ‘Absolutely.’ The whole thing with trampolines, though, is that you have to hurl yourself up as opposed to out. Well, I did it a second time and our stunt director, Alf Joint, saw that I was headed straight for the concrete floor. He caught me under the arm and pulled me down on top of him. However, my feet went smashing into the floor and my back was in such an overly curved position that to this day I still have a very bad back. I’ve had to go many times to physical therapy and have had lots of cortisone injections in my back, but it’s still weak.
“I also remember getting clipped a couple of times because I insisted on doing my own fights,” continues Damon. “The funny thing is that looking back on it I never would have done any of that if I had had the hindsight that I have now. I was just a young kid trying to be as athletic and macho as possible, but the truth of the matter is that there were plenty of stunt men who could have done the job.”
Although his physical prowess helped get him out of several tight corners, Craig Stirling relied just as much on brains as brawn in most situations. One example of this is the episode The Interrogationin which the agent fights to stay one step ahead of his unnamed captor (the late Colin Blakely) who is determined to break his will.
“That was a wonderful two-character piece in which Craig didn’t know where he was and they were trying to brainwash him to find out if he was a double agent. It was a pleasure to work with Colin Blakely, who was then a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was more like working onstage as opposed to in front of a camera because we were doing takes that were five to six minutes long. That’s unheard of when you’re shooting film or television. So this is unquestionably my favourite story because it was the most challenging for me as an actor.
“Another episode that comes to mind is the one [Shadow of the Panther] in which Donald Sutherland guest-starred. He played this weird voodoo worshipper in long robes,” chuckles the actor. “Now, I’m a tall guy [6’3”] so I was always taller than everybody else on the series. Of course, when Donald came on the set he dwarfed me, so every day I would look up at this tower of robes standing in front of me. Donald’s a great guy and we had a lot of laughs together.
“I also particularly enjoyed working with Jeremy Brett [Granada Television’s Sherlock Holmes]. God rest his soul; Jeremy passed away at too young an age. He was a kind person and a true professional. Jeremy actually appeared in the very last Champions episode we filmed [Desert Journey], although it wasn’t the last one that was shown.”
Despite the legacy of his bad back Damon recalls The Champions with great fondness, especially when it comes to his costars. “I was closer with Bill than I was with Alex because Alex was always a much more solitary person than either Bill or myself. Bill and I were quite good friends, but I don’t have a bad memory of either one of them,” he says. “Anthony Nichols was also a fine gentleman. I had tremendous respect for him. Anthony was a man of the theatre so his craft of acting was precision cut and he was always right on the money.
“It was one of those situations that you just have to be lucky to be involved with in this business. Bill, Alex and I were working together every day for a solid year and we got on great. I’d like to be able to dish some dirt, but the honest truth is there isn’t any,” proclaims Damon.
Steve Eramo
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