Don Borisenko(1939-2014)
- Actor
Canadian performer who was seen in films and television from late 1950s
to the 1970s. Called "the Canadian James Dean", after appearing in
several features with success, Borisenko went to England where he had
starring roles in two films by fellow Canadians: Sidney J. Furie's
wartime melodrama "During One Night" (1960), and Mark Robson's account
of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, "Nine Hours to Rama" (1963), in
which he played Naryan Apte, the friend of Gandhi's murderer, Nathuram
Vinayak Godse (played by Horst Buchholz). After he walked off the set
of Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), dissatisfied with his
role (which was then given to Donald Sutherland), Borisenko appeared on
different television shows, back in Canada and in England. Moving in
the 1970s to Los Angeles, he changed his name to Jonas Wolfe, appeared
in several films, as "Black Gunn" (1972) and "The Laughing Policeman"
(1973), and opened a music club, where he reportedly gave the rock
group Van Halen their first paying gig. Borisenko finally retired from
acting and dedicated to poetry, painting and sculpture.
