Macnee nurtured his acting career in Canada early on, but he also appeared as an uncredited extra in the British films "Pygmalion" (1938), "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" (1943) and Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" (1948), as well as some live TV dramas for the BBC, before graduating to credited parts in such films as "Scrooge" (US: "A Christmas Carol", 1951), as young Jacob Marley, the Gene Kelly vehicle "Les Girls" (1957), as an Old Bailey barrister, and the war film "The Battle of the River Plate" (1956). Between these occasional movie roles, Macnee spent the better part of the 1950s working in dozens of small parts in American and Canadian television and theatre, including an appearance in an episode of "The Twilight Zone" in 1959 ("Judgment Night"). Disappointed in his limited career development, in the late 1950s Macnee was daily smoking 80 cigarettes and drinking a bottle of whisky.