This is a publicity picture for the BBS Serial ‘The Three Musketeers’ from 1966. It also had Brian Blessed as Porthos, Jeremy Young as Athos and Gary Watson as Aramis. Richard Pasco played The Cardinal and Mary Peach was cast a Milady de Winter.

Paul Whitsun Jones was also in it and in a smaller early role, Pauline Collins

I have to say, I don’t remember Jeremy Brett in this but I do recall Brian Blessed as Athos playing the part in his usual rumbustious style – but I would think they needed someone like that in the cast to lift it a little.

I also remember Paul Whitsun Jones from this adaptation

Not long before this Jeremy Brett had gone to Hollywood to take the part of Freddie in ‘My Fair Lady’ – probably one of the worst parts you could get. However he didn’t take to Hollywood at all, so even if better parts had been offered, he wanted to remain in England

Jeremy Brett in real life was twice married, first to Anna Massey, the actress, and secondly to Joan Wilson, the American producer (under the name Joan Sullivan) of Masterpiece Theatre for the Public Broadcasting Service, in the United States.

The romantic story is that, when Brett, during the early Seventies, stood in for a period for Alistair Cooke as the presenter of Masterpiece Theatre, Sullivan was so overwhelmed by Brett’s handsome appearance that she vowed to make him her husband. Her death, after only seven years of marriage, came as a devastating blow to him.

He had a son with Anna Massey, but she described their marriage as being an unhappy one. She admitted to being young and naive when she married him and later stated that the fact that he was a manic depressive homosexual were not ideal traits to have in a a marriage

ABOVE – The look happy here though with their young son

Jeremy Brett, was an emotional man of great warmth and generosity of spirit, who cared deeply for his friends and colleagues and acted always spontaneously out of a good heart.

Quite a few years later, he got the part that seemed to fit him well and it gave him Worldwide popularity – as Sherlock Holmes

The dark shadow which lay across his overflowing good nature was an increasing tendency to manic depression, an illness (later coupled with heart disease) which began to show itself during the second series of Sherlock Holmes and which made the production of later episodes a determined and heroic struggle for him.

When he was well and stable he bravely treated his own disorder with a sharp sense of mockery and joked about his condition to his friends.