John Drainie

Who was John Drainie?

John Robert Roy Drainie was a Canadian actor and television presenter, who was called "the greatest radio actor in the world" by Orson Welles.

Drainie was most famous in Canada for two long-running roles: the lead role of Jake in the radio adaptation of W. O. Mitchell's Jake and the Kid, and a popular one-man stage show in which he played humorist Stephen Leacock. As well, he played Matthew Cuthbert in the 1956 CBC film adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, and the narrator in the CBC's 1952 series Sunshine Sketches.

Drainie began his career in radio with CJOR, CKNW and CBU in Vancouver. He was one of a group of actors, including Fletcher Markle, Alan Young, Lister Sinclair, Len Peterson, Arthur Hill, Bernie Braden and Andrew Allan, who emerged in Vancouver prior to World War II, and eventually moved to Toronto to become part of the CBC's "Golden Age of Radio".

Drainie and Ruth Springford once appeared in a radio play by Peterson, during which Springford apparently forgot that she had one more scene, and left the studio early. Drainie reportedly improvised a monologue until the director grabbed another actress and thrust her into the scene, at which point Drainie ad libbed his way back into the script. The radio audience reportedly never realized that anything was amiss. He also worked with other notables throughout his long radio career, including Jane Mallett, Toby Robins, Barry Morse, James Doohan, and Christopher Plummer.