Cec Linder


Cecil Yekuthial Linder was a Polish-born Canadian film and television actor. He was Jewish and managed to escape Poland before the Holocaust. In the 1950s and 1960s, he worked extensively in the United Kingdom, often playing Canadian and American characters in various films and television programmes.
In television, he is best remembered for playing Dr. Matthew Roney in the BBC serial Quatermass and the Pit. In film, he is best remembered for his role as James Bond's friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter, in Goldfinger. Another well-known film in which he appeared was Lolita, as Doctor Keegee.

Career

Linder was raised in Timmins, Ontario, where his father was a rabbi to the Jewish community. During the early years of his professional career, Linder worked as an announcer at CKGB in Timmins.
Linder accumulated more than 225 credits in film and television productions in a long performing career. He had an extensive television career on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, probably his most prominent role was as the palaeontologist Roney in the original BBC version of Quatermass and the Pit. In the United States, he was a regular in the CBS soap operas The Secret Storm and The Edge of Night and in the 1980s appeared in several of the Perry Mason revival TV films as District Attorney Jack Welles. He was also a regular on the popular 1980s Canadian crime series Seeing Things, playing Crown Attorney Spenser.
Linder had guest roles in episodes of a variety of other popular British, American and Canadian television programmes, including: The Forest Rangers, Doomwatch, The Littlest Hobo, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Ironside, The Saint, Danger Bay, The New Avengers, The Secret Storm, and The Edge of Night as Senator Ben Travis #2.
Linder appeared as Inspector Cramer in the CBC 1982 radio dramatizations of Nero Wolfe short stories. His last work was as Syd Grady in two episodes of the television series Sweating Bullets. He died the following year at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto of complications from emphysema.

Selected filmography