Rumpole of the Bailey interest in nineteenth-century anarchists, especially the Russian Peter Kropotkin from whom the title of the play was drawn. The character's name was later changed to Horace Rumpole when it was discovered that there was a real barrister called Horace Rumbold. The title of the play was briefly changed to "Jolly Old Jean Jacques Rousseau" before settling on the less esoteric "Rumpole of the Bailey". Mortimer was keen on Michael Hordern for the role of Rumpole. When Hordern proved unavailable, the part went to Australian-born actor Leo McKern. Mortimer was initially unenthusiastic about McKern's casting but changed his opinion upon seeing
Leo Fuchs Leo Fuchs Leo Fuchs (May 15, 1911 – December 31, 1994) was a Polish-born Jewish American actor. According to YIVO, born Avrum Leib Fuchs in Warsaw; according to Schechter, born in Lwów, Galicia, then Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine). Fuchs performed in many Yiddish and English plays and movies throughout the mid-twentieth century, and was famed as a comic, a dancer, and a coupletist. He wrote much of his own material and toured widely. Fuchs was born into a Yiddish theatrical family: his father, Yakov Fuchs, was a character actor; his mother, Róża Fuchs (Ruzha Fuchs), was "a leading lady of