Leonard Kempinski

Leonard Kempinski is a fictional character from the British soap opera Emmerdale played by Bernard Archard. He made his first appearance on 15 December 1992 and remained a regular in the programme for just over a year, before his character was killed off in the Emmerdale plane crash of New Year's Eve 1993/94.

Storylines

Leonard came to the village in 1992 as a friend of Amos Brearly (Ronald Magill) that Annie Sugden (Sheila Mercier) met while out visiting Amos in Spain. She invited him back with her and stayed with the Sugden family for Christmas. Annie's son Jack Sugden was very much against the marriage but he and his mother reconciled before she married Leonard. Leonard and Annie married on October 28th 1993 but their marriage only lasted two months. Annie and Leonard decided to emigrate to Spain and whilst Annie's younger son Joe (Frazer Hines was driving them to the airport on 30th December 1993, a piece of burning wreckage from the Emmerdale plane crash forced Joe's car off the road. Leonard was killed in the accident. He last appeared as a corpse on January 5th 1994.

Legacy

When Annie returns to the village for the funeral of Jack in February 2009, she recalls to Victoria Sugden (Isabel Hodgins) about how Victoria awoke Annie from her coma following the plane crash. She tells Victoria how she lost Leonard, as well as her step-grandson Mark Hughes (Craig McKay) and how the farm was left destroyed.

Development

Leonard Kempinski was introduced in December 1992 as a new love interest for the show's matriarch Annie Sugden, played by Sheila Mercier. Although Annie had been central to the development of the programme since it first aired back in 1972, she did not feature in many prominent storylines in the 1990s (due to Mercier's age), let alone romantic stories. Annie had been depicted as being close to long time friend Amos Brearly, who although he had proposed to her in January 1973, she had turned him down and producers felt that Amos and Annie were better as friends, as well as the fact that Magill had quit the programme the year previous. When Magill reprised his role as Amos, producers introduced Leonard as part of the rejuvenation of the soap.

1993 was a historic year for the programme, and ironically, this occurred due to low ratings. The soap had been threatened with being axed after nearly 21 years on air, so producers decided to air storylines they felt would boost ratings. One of these was Zoe Tate (Leah Bracknell) coming out as a lesbian (a first on British pre-watershed TV) and another was the wedding of Annie and Leonard, which aired in October 1993. This storyline heralded a new era for the programme, but ratings were not as successful as originally believed. In October 1993, the show had turned 21 and a couple of months later celebrated by airing a story which would mark a turning point in its history. On 30th December 1993 Emmerdale attracted its highest ever audience of over 18 million when a plane crashed into the village, killing four villagers. This led to the villagers deciding to have the village name changed from Beckindale to Emmerdale to help get over the plane crash. Leonard was axed by producers as they felt that the character had naturally reached an end, and it would allow for more scenes involving Mercier who was forced to come to terms with the death of a second husband after only a short period of marriage.