Lloyd Reckord (26 May 1929 – 8 July 2015) was a Jamaican actor, film maker, and stage director who lived in England for some years. Reckord appeared in 1958 in a West End production of Hot Summer Night, which as an ITV adaptation broadcast on 1 February 1959 contained the earliest known example of an interracial kiss on television.[1] His brother was the dramatist Barry Reckord.[2]
Biography
Lloyd Malcolm Reckord was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on 26 May 1929. He began his theatrical career with the Little Theatre Movement (LTM) pantomime at Ward Theatre. As reported by Michael Reckord in the Jamaica Gleaner, "Reckord's first big role was as Tobias in a production of Tobias and the Angel at the Garrison Theatre, Up-Park Camp, when he was in his late teens.[3]
Fired from his job at his uncle's hardware store because he insisted that he had to leave early to play his role in the LTM pantomime, Alice in Wonderland, Lloyd left Jamaica in 1951 when he was 21 to join his brother Barry, also a playwright and actor, in England."[3] He auditioned and was accepted as a student at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, subsequently joining the Old Vic Company in London. He would also study theatre in the US, years later, at Howard University, Yale University and the American Theatre Wing.[3]
Reckord also acted in several television series, including four episodes of Danger Man (1960–61, 1964–65),[13] and The Human Jungle ("Enemy Outside", 1964), but feeling typecast as an actor, he wanted to move into direction.
With only limited funds, including a grant from the BFI, he made two non-commercial film shorts Ten Bob in Winter (1963, featuring Winston Stona, Bari Johnson, Peter Madden and Andrew Salkey, with a jazz soundtrack by Joe Harriott)[14][15][16] and Dream A40 (1965).[13]
Reckord later returned to Jamaica, where he worked as a stage director, with rare screen appearances, as in The Lunatic (1991) and Third World Cop (1999).
In 2011 his work featured in the Black London's Film Heritage Project, with the compilation Big City Stories[17] including Reckord's 1963 film Ten Bob in Winter, as well an excerpt from the television play by his brother entitled You in Your Small Corner, in which Lloyd Reckord played the lead male character.[16] His short film Dream A40 was shown at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (LLGFF) at the British Film Institute.[16]
Reckord died in Jamaica on 8 July 2015 after a short illness, aged 86,[3] and his life was celebrated at a thanksgiving service on 29 July.[18][19]
^ abAmanda Bidnall, The West Indian Generation: Remaking British Culture in London, 1945-1965: "The first on-stage interracial kiss came in 1958 with the performance of Ted Willis's Hot Summer Night, and one year later that same kiss came to the small screen with the play's adaptation for ITV's Armchair Theatre."
^Stephen Bourne Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television 144116135X - 2005 "It was during the scene when I kiss Andree Melly. A frail, rather timid and very gentle voice called out from the stalls — 'I don't like to see white girls kissing niggers'. There was dead silence in the theatre, and we went on with the play."
