Richard Harris (Harris Richard)

Harris, the fifth of eight children, was born in Limerick City, County Limerick, Munster, Ireland, the son of Ivan John Harris (b. 1896, son of Richard Harris, b. 1854, son of James Harris, St. Michael's, Limerick) and Mildred Josephine Harty Harris (b. 1898, daughter of James Harty, St. John's, Limerick who owned a flour mill.) He was schooled by the Jesuits at Crescent College. A talented rugby player, he was on several Munster Junior and Senior Cup teams for Crescent, and played for Garryowen. Harris might have become a provincial or international-standard rugby player, but his athletic career was cut short when he caught tuberculosis in his teens. He remained an ardent fan of the Munster Rugby and Young Munster teams then until his death, and attending many of its matches, and there are numerous stories of japes at rugby matches with the actors and fellow rugby fans Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.

As a result, Harris ended up temporarily homeless, sleeping in a coal cellar for six weeks. Though accounts from contemporaries from his hometown of Limerick claim that these stories had been somewhat garnished, and that he actually stayed with a few aunts, sleeping on their living room sofas. After completing his studies at the Academy, Harris joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. He began getting roles in West End theatre productions, starting with The Quare Fellow in 1956, a transfer from the Theatre Workshop.

Harris made his movie debut in 1958 in the film Alive and Kicking. He had a memorable bit part in the movie The Guns of Navarone as a Royal Australian Air Force pilot who reports that blowing up the "bloody guns" of the island of Navaronne is impossible by an air raid.

Harris first starring role was in the movie This Sporting Life in 1963, as the bitter young coal miner, Frank Machin, who becomes an acclaimed rugby league football player. For his role, Harris won the award for best actor in 1963 at the Cannes Film Festival. Harris followed this with a leading role in the Italian film, Antonioni's Il deserto rosso (1964), and he also won notice for his role (acting with Charlton Heston) in Sam Peckinpah's "lost masterpiece" Major Dundee (1965), as an Irish immigrant who became a Confederate cavalryman during the Civil War.

Harris recorded several albums of music, one of which, (A Tramp Shining), included the seven-minute hit song "MacArthur Park" (in which Harris mispronounced the name as "MacArthur's Park"). This song had been written by Jimmy Webb, and it reached #2 on the American Billboard magazine Hot 100 pop song chart. It also topping several music sales charts in Europe during the summer of 1968. A second album, with music mostly composed by Webb, "The Yard Went on Forever", was published in 1969. Harris also wrote one of the songs, There are Too Many Saviours on My Cross, considered widely to be a criticism of the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

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