Lloyd Reckord

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. His brother was the dramatist Barry Reckord.

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. The ITV Armchair Theatre adaptation of this play, broadcast on 1 February 1959, is currently the earliest known example of an interracial kiss on television, and three years later he participated in another early televised interracial kiss in You in Your Small Corner, a Granada Play of the Week broadcast in June 1962, in which he kissed actor Elizabeth MacLennan. This claim had earlier been made for Emergency – Ward 10, which postdates Reckord's earlier kisses. The play was written by Reckord's brother Barry, and directed by Claude Whatham. 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) and Dream A40 (1965). 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. and his life was celebrated at a thanksgiving service on 29 July. Lloyd Reckord and his siblings, Carol, Barry and Cynthia, have been described as forming "a dynasty that reshaped Jamaica's cultural landscape".

Filmography