Robert Shaw

My favourite autograph and one of the rarest is of the brilliant actor Robert Shaw. He has starred in such magnificent movies as “Jaws”, “The Deep”, “The Sting”, “The Taking of Pelham 1…2…3..”, “A Man For All Seasons” and “From Russia With Love”. Sadly he died of a heart attack at his Irish home in Tourmakeady, Co Mayo in 1978 at the age of only 51. He was married to the beautiful Mary Ure(who starred in “Where Eagles Dare” with Clint Eastwood) who also died very young aged 42 in 1975.

TCM overview:

A rough-hewn British character actor who played more leading roles later in his career, Robert Shaw went from being typecast as tough-guy villains to proving his versatility in a wide range of performances. Shaw had his start on the stage in the late 1940s and quickly segued to the screen where he broke through as an assassin for SPECTRE in “From Russia with Love” (1963). But it was his Oscar-nominated turn as King Henry VIII in “A Man for All Seasons” (1966) that helped shed new light on the actor, leading to a variety of characters in films like “Battle of Britain” (1969), “A Town Called Hell” (1971) and “Young Winston” (1972). Shaw then entered his most fruitful period to play ruthless mob boss Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973) and criminal mastermind Mr. Blue in “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974), which paved the way for his most iconic performance as salty Quint in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975). From there, Shaw was a leading man in a number of major studio films like “Black Sunday” (1977), “Force 10 from Navarone” (1977) and “Avalanched Express” (1979). But at the height of his career, Shaw suffered a fatal heart attack. Whether on screen or as the author of award-winning novels, Shaw was a unique talent the likes of whom would not be seen again.

Born on Aug. 9, 1927 in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, Shaw was raised by his father, Thomas, a physician, and his mother, Doreen, a former nurse. When he was seven years old, the family moved to Scotland and when he was 12, Shaw’s father – a manic depressive and alcoholic – committed suicide. As a result, the family moved to Cornwall where Shaw attended the independent Truro School and briefly taught school in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1949, he made his stage debut with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and later in the year toured Australia with the Old Vic. Shaw soon made his London stage debut in a West End production of “Caro William” (1951) and a few years later, transitioned to the screen with minor supporting roles in “The Dam Busters” (1955) and “A Hill in Korea” (1956), before returning to the stage to star in his own play, “Off the Mainland” (1956). Following a turn in the British crime thriller “Man from Tangier” (1957), he spent 39 episodes as the lead pirate on the children-themed series “The Buccaneers” (ITV, 1956-57).

Following the show, Shaw went back to the big screen for small roles in “Sea Fury” (1958) and “Libel” (1959), before landing episodes of British series like “The Four Just Men” (ITV, 1959-1960) and “Danger Man” (ITV, 1960-68). After playing Leontes in the feature adaptation of “The Winter’s Tale” (1961), he played cunning SPECTRE assassin Red Grant in “From Russia with Love” (1963). At this point, Shaw became a published author with The Hiding Place (1960) and The Sun Doctor, the latter of which won the 1962 Hawthornden Prize. He next played King Claudius in Grigori Kozintsev’s adaptation of “Hamlet” (1964), the Ghost of Christmas Future in “Carol for Another Christmas” (1964), and a fictional colonel fighting in “Battle of the Bulge” (1965), an epic war film about the famed World War II battle starring Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson. In “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), Shaw was King Henry VIII to Paul Scofield’s Sir Thomas More and Orson Welles’ Cardinal Wolsey, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor – the only such honor of his career.

Shaw went on to portray Gen. George Armstrong Custer in the critically derided Western “Custer of the West” (1967), before starring in William Friedkin’s adaptation of Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party” (1968). In the “Battle of Britain” (1969), Shaw was cast alongside British heavyweights like Laurence Olivier, Trevor Howard, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine and Susannah York for this epic and surprisingly historically accurate depiction of England’s fight to stop the Luftwaffe from bombing Britain back to the Stone Age. That same year, he starred opposite Plummer in the historical drama “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” (1969), while the following year he had his first screenwriting credit with “Figures in a Landscape” (1970), wherein he played an escaped convict alongside Malcolm McDowell who try to escape from the secret police of an unidentified totalitarian country. Following a leading performance in the little known Western “A Town Called Hell” (1971), he was Lord Randolph Churchill, father to Winston Churchill (Simon Ward) in “Young Winston” (1972), a British-made biopic about the early years of the future prime minister.

Though a well-known actor both in Britain and America, Shaw had yet to hit his most fertile period, which commenced with his turn as ruthless Irish mob boss Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973), who becomes the target of a long con by two confidence men (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) after he kills their friend and mentor (Robert Earl Jones). Shaw’s performance as the barely contained Lonnegan was a terrific counterpoint to Newman’s devil-may-care turn as expert con artist Henry Gondorff, which was perfectly exemplified in a card game where Lonnegan is out-cheated by Gondoff – one of the more memorable scenes of this multi-Oscar winning film. Shaw next played Mr. Blue, a criminal mastermind who leads a gang of thieves into a New York subway to steal $1 million in the commercial and critical action hit “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974). Standing in Mr. Blue’s way is a gruff, but determined transit cop (Walter Matthau), who contends with the chaos of multiple city agencies and a reluctant mayor (Lee Wallace) while trying to figure out just how the gang plans to escape the subway tunnel while surrounded by police.

The following year, Shaw delivered his most iconic performance in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975) playing Quint, a salty old shark fisherman who hunts down a killer great white with a landlubber police chief (Roy Scheider) and a know-it-all marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss). Shaw’s turn as the grizzled seafarer was the film’s most memorable, particularly in his confrontations with Dreyfuss’ bookish biologist and in his haunting recount of the sinking of the doomed U.S.S. Indianapolis. The movie was a monster hit and the highest-grossing film ever made at the time, making “Jaws” Shaw’s most successful film on all fronts. From there, Shaw starred alongside James Earl Jones as two pirates in “Swashbuckler” (1976) and played the Sheriff of Nottingham to Sean Connery’s Robin Hood in “Robin and Marian” (1976). He went on to search for sunken treasure with Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset in “The Deep” (1977) and was an Israeli military officer trying to thwart a crazed Vietnam vet (Bruce Dern) from blowing up the Super Bowl in “Black Sunday” (1977). Shaw next starred in the sequel “Force 10 From Navarone” (1977), taking over the Gregory Peck role as the leader of a special forces group that tries to blow up a bridge with a traitor in their midst. After completing the filming of “Avalanche Express” (1979), where he played a Russian general who defects to the United States, Shaw suffered a sudden heart attack while home in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, Ireland. He was only 51 years old.

By Shawn Dwyer

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Vincent Ball was born in 1923 in New South Wales, Australia. He was featured in such movies as “A Town Like Alice” in 1956, “Robbery Under Arms”, “Danger Within” and “Carry On Cruising”. He also has a role in the lonf running UK TV series “Crossroads”.

IMDB entry:

With the outbreak of war Vincent left his job with the Australian General Electric Company and became a pilot with the Australian Air Force in England. He returned to Australia and his old job in 1945 but couldn’t settle. He tried amateur dramatics but his dialect was a mixture of Australian, Cockney, due to his stay in London, and Canadian with having mixed with Canadian forces. To correct his accent he had elocution lessons which resulted in him marrying his teacher, Doreen, and them having a daughter, Catherine. With his diction corrected he wrote letters asking for auditions. One of these was to the Rank Organisation who replied asking him to call and see them if he was in the neighbourhood. He got a job as a stoker on a cargo ship but the journey took six months instead of the expected six weeks. Undaunted tough he presented himself at Ranks offices where impressed with his enthusiasm they gave him a job as stand in for Donald Houston in an underwater fight with an octopus in the film The Blue Lagoon. He then won a scholarship to RADA from where he went into rep working his way up to juvenile lead in Rain Before Seven, Barnett’s Folly and Nitro. He got a few bit parts in films before moving into slightly larger parts in such as A Town Like Alice, Robbery Under Arms,and Danger Within. He moved back to Australia in the 70’s appearing in various TV series and films such as Breaker Morant, Phar Lap and Muriel’s Wedding

– IMDb Mini Biography By: tonyman 5

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Nicholas Rowe was born in 1966 in Edinburgh. He is best known for her performance in 1986 in “Young Sherlock Holmes”. His partner was the actress Lou Gish who died in 2006.

IMDB entry:

peaks fluent Spanish, French and Portugese. Lives in London. Attended Bristol University (BA in Hispanic Studies). Has appeared in numerous British plays and television programs. Most recognized by Americans as Sherlock Holmes in Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). The son of a member of Parliament.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Beth

While a student at Britain’s prestigious Eton School, this son of a member of Parliament was among the seniors allowed to read for Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), his only starring role to date. Awaiting a follow-up, the aristocrat worked in a London office doing market research, and has worked only sporadically in films ever since.

Stars in “Nation”, a play based on the book by Terry Pratchett, at the National Theatre in London. [November 2009]

Stars in “Victory”, a play by Howard Barker, at the Arcola Theatre in London. [March 2009]

Betty McDowall was born in 1933 in Sydney, Australia. Her career has been mainly based in the U.K. Her film appearances include “The Shiralee” in 1957, “Spare the Rod” in 1961 and “The Omen” in 1976.

Margaret Johnston obituary in “The Guardian” in 2002.

Margaret Johnston was born in 1914 in Sydney, Australia. She came to the UK in 1936 to study at RADA. Her film debut was in 1941 in “The Prime Minister”. Other film roles include !A Man About the House”, “Portrait of Clare” and in 1965, “Life At The Top”. She was married to the famous theatrical agent Albert Parker and after his death in 1975, she took over his agency. She died in 2002 at the age of 87.

Eric Shorter’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

Margaret Johnston, the Australian-born actor who has died aged 83, created a powerful atmosphere on stage with her combination of neurosis and ethereal sensibility, particularly in such rarefied drama as Tennessee Williams’s Summer And Smoke (1951), Philip Barry’s Second Threshold (1952), and Christopher Fry’s The Dark Is Light Enough (1954).

She was also a Shakespearean actress of distinction. As a bespectacled, jokey Portia, she greatly enlivened The Merchant of Venice at Stratford-on-Avon in 1956, her Desdemona to Harry Andrew’s Othello struck a refreshingly independent note of femininity; and as Isabel in Measure for Measure her sincerity was captivating. If her Lady Macbeth to John Clement’s sturdy soldier-poet seemed misconceived, at Chichester in 1966, it was nevertheless a heady experience. Johnston made films between plays; and on screen there are still echoes of those mental and spiritual qualities which brought such joy in the playhouse. Not that she ever thought her films mattered enough to constitute a film career. “I don’t think I have one, do I?” she once said.

One of the first and more memorable parts was Jennifer, the aware secretary in Launder and Gilliatt’s The Rake’s Progress (1945). “I wanted Lilli Palmer’s part, just because I was young and stupid,” the actress recalled half a century later, “but the best part was the one I played.” When it reappeared on television in the 1990s, a young assistant in Selfridge’s food department happened to say to the actress, who was shopping there: “I wonder what happened to Margaret Johnston?” His customer never spilled the beans.

In other films, Johnston was the spinster sister who succumbs to the Latin charm of the major-domo in A Man About The House (1947) and nearly pays with her life; the careworn second wife of William Friese-Greene in The Magic Box (1951), about the early pioneer of kinematography; a dominant executive in a striped suit in The Knave Of Hearts (1954) opposite Gérard Philipe; a neurotic occultist in Night Of The Eagle (1962) and a malevolent wife in Life At The Top (1965).

Johnston’s stage acting caught more attention in its day. Her first personal success came as Elizabeth in Rudolf Besier’s The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1948), a second-rate revival which – as one critic remarked – was worth seeing, if only for Elizabeth.

In Tennessee Williams’s Summer And Smoke (1951), Johnston played the wretched Alma in a subtle exhibition of repressed nervousness. Its run, however, was brief. Nor did Philip Barry’s equally thoughtful Second Threshold (1952) have much success, but as the daughter trying to prevent her father’s suicide Johnston’s way of seeming not quite human was very moving. Something of the same gift for expressing exalted sensibility enriched Johnston’s acting as the daughter of Edith Evans’s Hungarian countess in The Dark Is Light Enough (1954). At any rate, it provoked these words from one critic: “As the pale shade of a more radiant mother, Margaret Johnston shines in a tremulous light of her own, the light of affirmation, like a vibrato on an air played by the violin.”

When her husband Al Parker, the agent and former film director, died in 1974, Johnston took over the agency and ran it success fully for over 30 years. “Having been an actress,” she said, “I could pass on certain things that had been passed on to me in my career by great directors.”

Born in Sydney, New South Wales, young Maggie trained for the stage at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After her West End debut in 1939 in Saloon Bar, there followed seasons in provincial rep and try-out plays at Kew Bridge, one of which brought her back to the West End in Murder Without Crime (1942). After The Last Summer (1944) and new plays for HM Tennent at the Lyric, Hammersmith, (The Shouting Dies and The Time Of Your Life), Johnston was established as an actress to watch.

· Margaret Annette McCrie Johnston Parker, actor, born August 10 1918; died June 29 2002

Wendy Morgan was born in 1952 in Herfordshire. She first came to prominence for her performance in “Yanks” in 1979. Other movies include “Birth of the Beatles” where she played Cynthia Lennon’ and “The Mirror Cracked” in 1980.

IMDB entry:

David Kernan was born on June 23, 1938 in London, England. He is an actor, known forZulu (1964), That Was the Week That Was (1962) and The Chastity Belt (1971).

Originated the role of Count Malcolm in the London production of “A Little Night Music”.

Was nominated for Broadway’s 1977 Tony Award as Best Actor (Featured Role – Musical) for “Side by Side by Sondheim.”

Personal comments:

[In reference to Joan Sims and Carry on Abroad (1972)] It was a great reunion for me seeing Joan again, we did a couple of things together in the early 1960s. Being on this film we really did renew our friendship. (2003)

[In reference to Kenneth Williams during the filming of Carry on Abroad (1972)] He ignored me completely during the entire six weeks of filming. Even afterwards when I got chummy with Hattie (Hattie Jacques), who would invite me every year for Christmas day and Kenneth was always there and he still never spoke to me. He totally ignored me and then to my complete surprise he wrote some very sweet things about me in his diaries. (2003)

David Kernan died in December 2023 at the age of 85.

Guardian obituary in 2024:

David Kernan obituary

Musical actor renowned for devising and performing Side By Side By Sondheim who was a regular on That Was the Week That Was

Anthony HaywardTue 16 Jan 2024 21.57

Eagle-eyed aficionados of the 1964 war film epic Zulu will recall the actor David Kernan in the role of Private Frederick Hitch, one of the British soldiers successfully defending Rorke’s Drift hospital and storehouse during the 19th-century Anglo-Zulu war.

“How can I shoot them if I can’t see them?” Kernan says as he mounts the ramparts. Moments later his character suffers a bullet-wound, but still manages to keep communication with the hospital open and supply ammunition to his comrades, the actions which earned Hitch a Victoria Cross.

But Kernan, who has died aged 85 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, devoted most of his career to musical theatre, gaining a reputation as Britain’s leading interpreter of the Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim’s songs.

That Was the Week That Was cast members at BBC Television Centre in 1963. Standing, from left to right: David Frost, Millicent Martin, Irwin C Watson, Kenneth Cope, David Kernan, Willie Rushton and Robert Lang. Seated are Lance Percival and Al Mancini. Photograph: PA

He first shone in Sondheim as Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm in A Little Night Music at the Adelphi theatre (1975-76). Jean Simmons was the star, fresh from a US tour of the production, portraying an itinerant actor reviving love with an old flame, played by Joss Ackland. The show, a romantic story inspired by the director Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night, repeated its Broadway success.

Kernan had been asked by Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth to put together a revue for their Stables theatre in Wavendon, Buckinghamshire, and, bowled over by Sondheim’s music and lyrics, he had the idea of creating a show of his songs that had not previously been performed live in Britain.

After consulting Sondheim, Kernan sought help from the broadcaster Ned Sherrin, producer of the 60s satirical TV series That Was the Week That Was, in which Kernan had performed topical songs. They recruited Millicent Martin, who had also appeared on the programme, and Julia McKenzie, and in 1975 staged The Sondheim Songbook, with numbers from shows such as West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company and Follies, some written jointly with other composers.

With a new title, Side by Side by Sondheim (suggested by McKenzie), the show was produced by Cameron Mackintosh in the West End the following year, at the Mermaid theatre, then Wyndham’s, and then at the Garrick, where it ran for 806 performances, continuing with other artists until 1978. Kernan, Sherrin, Martin and McKenzie left the London production in 1977 to take the show to Broadway, with special dispensation from the US actors’ union, Equity. All four earned Tony award nominations, before again giving way to others.

Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times: “Mr Kernan is all charm and polish, with a gleaming wit, and, like his well-matched women, displays a great sense of fun, and, occasionally, a feel for dreamily poetic passion.”

Kernan organised other Sondheim compilation shows, including Moving On (Bridewell theatre, 2000), and became a patron of the Stephen SondheimSociety, formed in 1993, giving valuable advice to performers in its workshops.

He was born in East Ham, London, to Lily (nee Russell) and Joseph Kernan, an underground train driver. His father walked out shortly after his birth and, from the age of four to 14, Kernan lived with his grandmother in Oxford, where he was head chorister at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. “I was a rather fat, plain child,” he recalled, “but I had a very pretty soprano voice.”

Aged 15, he left Portchester school, Bournemouth, trained as a chef and performed with the local Shakespeare Players. He then worked as a shop assistant in London before breaking into repertory theatre as an assistant stage manager and actor at the Theatre Royal, Huddersfield (1957).

After his West End debut, in the chorus of Where’s Charley?, starring Norman Wisdom, at the Palace theatre (1958-59), he spent some of his earnings on singing, dancing and acting lessons.

His vocal talents were demonstrated on television with Millicent Martin in the BBC current affairs series Tonight. Sherrin, one of its producers, then took the pair to That Was the Week That Was. “I think Ned wanted a mix of Oxbridge types and showbiz people, so he brought us in to lighten things up,” Kernan told the Stage. “It was an odd mix, but it worked.”

He returned to musicals as the Hon Ernest Woolley in Our Man Crichton (Shaftesbury theatre, 1964-65) and was back in the West End to play Edward Rutledge, a US founding father, in 1776 (at the New theatre, now the Noël Coward, 1970). He was in the revue This Thing Called Love (Ambassadors theatre, 1983) and played the Ken Livingstone character, leader of the Greater London council, in Sherrin’s political satire The Ratepayers’ Iolanthe, with Gilbert & Sullivan songs, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1984.

Kernan kept creating his own revues even after the style went out of fashion. He conceived and directed Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood in 1986, taking it from the Donmar Warehouse in London to Broadway. In 1994, he devised a celebration of Noël Coward and Cole Porter, Noel/Cole – Let’s Do It, at the Oxford Playhouse, then the Chichester Festival theatre. Later came Dorothy Fields Forever (2002), about the American lyricist, co-created with Eden Phillips and performed at the Jermyn Street and King’s Head theatres.

On television, he was a regular featured singer in On the Bright Side (1959-60), a satirical sketch show starring Stanley Baxter which they took to the stage as On the Brighter Side at the Phoenix theatre in 1961. Kernan also appeared in Upstairs Downstairs, as an army captain who has an affair with Lady Marjorie (Rachel Gurney) in 1971, and his rare film roles included a troubadour in Up the Chastity Belt and a holidaymaker in Carry On Abroad (both 1972).

His autobiography, From East Ham to Broadway, was published in 2019.

Kernan is survived by his husband, Stuart Forsyth, whom he married in 2014 following a civil partnership in 2008.

David Stanley Kernan, actor, singer, producer and director, born 23 June 1938; died 26 December 2023

IMDB entry:

In Britain, special Christmas plays called pantomimes are produced for children. Jack Hawkins made his London theatrical debut at age 12, playing the elf king in “Where The Rainbow Ends”. At 17, he got the lead role of St. George in the same play. At 18, he made his debut on Broadway in “Journey’s End”. At 21, he was back in London playing a young lover in “Autumn Crocus”. He married his leading lady, Jessica Tandy. That year he also played his first real film role in the 1931 sound version of Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Phantom Fiend (1932). During the 30s, he took his roles in plays more seriously than the films he made. In 1940, Jessica accepted a role in America and Jack volunteered to serve in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He spent most of his military career arranging entertainment for the British forces in India. One of the actresses who came out to India was Doreen Lawrence who became his second wife after the war. Alexander Kordaadvised Jack to go into films and offered him a three-year contract. In his autobiography, Jack recalled: “Eight years later I was voted the number one box office draw of 1954. I was even credited with irresistible sex appeal, which is another quality I had not imagined I possessed.” A late 1940s film, The Black Rose (1950), where he played a secondary role to Tyrone Power, would be one of his most fortunate choices of roles. The director was Henry Hathaway who Jack said was “probably the most feared, yet respected director in America, for he had a sharp tongue and fired people at the drop of a hat. Years later, after my operation when I lost my voice, he went out of his way to help me get back into films. What I did not know was that during the filming of ‘The Black Rose’ he was himself suffering from cancer.” In the 1950s came the film that made Hawkins a star, The Cruel Sea (1953). Suffering from life long real life sea sickness, he played the captain of the Compass Rose. After surgery for throat cancer in 1966, requiring the removal of his larynx, Jack continued to make films. He mimed his lines and the voice was dubbed by either Charles Gray or Robert Rietty. His motto during those last years came from Milton’s “Comus”, a verse play in which he acted early in his career in Regent’s Park. The lines: “Yet where an equal poise of hope and fear does arbitrate the event, my nature is that I incline to hope, rather than to fear.”

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Dale O’Connor <daleoc@worldnet.att.n

He died three months after an operation to insert an artificial voice box in April 1973.

Underwent cobalt treatment for a secondary condition of the larynx in 1959 after makingThe League of Gentlemen (1960). Afterwards he took voice coaching and reduced the number of cigarettes he smoked each day from about sixty to five. However, while filming Guns at Batasi (1964) five years later his voice began to fail. It was not until Christmas 1965 that he was diagnosed with throat cancer, by which time the only possible treatment was a total laryngectomy.

He was voted Number 1 star at the British Box Office in 1954.

Initially sought for the role of Melville Farr in Victim (1961), Hawkins turned the role down because he thought the part might compromise his masculine screen image. Dirk Bogarde, who eventually played Farr, opined that Hawkins feared the role of a gay barrister would “prejudice his chances of a knighthood.”.

Resented the idea that he was typecast in war movies, pointing out in his 1973 autobiography “Anything for a Quiet Life” that he had in fact played fewer military roles than John Mills, Trevor Howard and Richard Attenborough.

Made Guns at Batasi (1964), Judith (1966), Masquerade (1965) and Danger Grows Wild(1966) while suffering from cancer of the larynx. By the time he started filming The Wednesday Play: The Trial and Torture of Sir John Rampayne (1965), Hawkins had begun to cough up blood. His final role using his own voice was in a few episodes of Dr. Kildare(1961), where he managed to give a very accurate performance as a man who had just suffered a heart attack.

Hawkins joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1940, was commissioned and served with the Second British Division in India. In 1944 he was seconded to GHQ India and soon afterwards succeeded to the command, as a colonel, of ENSA administration in India and South East Asia. He was demobilized in 1946.

He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1958 Queen’s Honours List for his services to drama.

In his will published on September 20 1973 he left just £13,019 gross but the net amount was shown as nil. This was a result of high UK taxes and a reduction in his income following the surgery in 1966 which resulted in the loss of his voice. The family home at 34 Ennismore Gardens, South Kensington was left to his wife and his three children were provided for through a trust fund.

His memorial service took place on what would have been his sixty-third birthday on 14 September 1973 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London. The address was read by Kenneth More and Richard Attenborough read the lesson.

He had a daughter, Susan with Jessica Tandy and two sons, Nicholas & Andrew, withDoreen Lawrence.

He was a student at the Italia Conti Drama School in London, England.

Provided the official celebrity opening of the Aldersley Municipal Sports Stadium, Wolverhampton on 9 June 1956. The stadium now forms part of Aldersley Leisure.

I adored it from the first moment. The excitement, the thrill, the smell of the theatre went right down to one’s toes.

Above all, I was taught to love and respect words. Each word had to be the right word; and each had to be spoken in a way that its weight and importance demanded.

I think that no actor should take Hollywood too seriously; but at the same time it would be wrong to underestimate its professionalism. Really, Hollywood is a caricature of itself, and in particular this is true of the front-office types at the studios. Their enthusiasm towards you is measured precisely to match the success of your last film.

Every time an army, navy or air force part comes up they throw it at me. There is nothing left now but the women’s services! (1956)

All of us in the film were sure that we were making something quite unusual, and a long way removed from the Errol Flynn-taking-Burma-single-handed syndrome. This was the period of some very indifferent American war movies, whereas The Cruel Sea (1953) contained no false heroics. That is why we all felt that we were making a genuine example of the way in which a group of men went to war.

[on Lafayette (1961)] A totally forgettable film . . . the only bit of acting I have ever done solely for the money.

lying to criticism of his portrayal of Gen. Sir Edmund Allenby in Lawrence of Arabia(1962)] I agree that the character has been slanted slightly, but Lady Allenby must remember that this is a film about Lawrence – not the Field Marshall.

[asked why he risked his reputation on the TV series The Four Just Men (1959)] I risk my reputation every time, why not on TV?

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

TCM overview:

Best remembered for his numerous portrayals of military men, from the indomitable Major Warden in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) to the officer-turned-criminal-mastermind in Basil Dearden’s humorous “The League of Gentlemen” (1960). Although he lost his voice after an operation for cancer of the larynx in 1966, Hawkins continued to perform, with other actors dubbing his lines. He was married to actress Jessica Tandy from 1932 to 1942.

Betsy Blair is perhaps best remembered by moviegoers for her performance in “Marty” opposite Ernest Borgnine in 1955. She was born in New Jersey in 1923 and began her acting career on the Broadway stage. In her late teens she married the actor/dancer Gene Kelly and went with him to Hollywood. Her film debut came in 1947 in “A Double Life” which starred Ronald Colman. She was also featured in “Another Part of the Forest” and “The Snake Pit” which starred Olivia de Havillamd. After her divorce from Kelly, she married the British based film director Karel Reisz and settled in the UK whereshe made such movies as “A Delicate Balance” in 1975. She died in 2009 in London.

Brian Baxter;s “Guardian” obituary:

Few film-makers of the left emerged unscathed from the Hollywood witchhunt led by Senator Joe McCarthy. Some died, some were ruined, some headed for Europe. Others named names. Among its victims, the actor Betsy Blair, who has died aged 85, considered herself fortunate.

Despite being blacklisted, she was made less vulnerable by her marriage to fellow socialist Gene Kelly who, by the early 1950s, was virtually untouchable thanks to such succesful movies as On the Town, An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain. Eventually she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in the 1955 film Marty. Blair began acting in films in the late 1940s, with small roles in sturdy dramas such as The Guilt of Janet Ames, George Cukor’s A Double Life and Another Part of the Forest, from the play by Lillian Hellman. She fell out of favour for activities that included substantial fundraising for leftwing causes. After Kind Lady (1951), where she nearly lost the part, she found herself unemployable. But, cushioned by wealth and a highly intelligent, inquisitive mind, she coped – still in her early 20s – with “committee” work, as wife to a superstar and mother to their five-year-old daughter.

Born Elizabeth Winifred Boger in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, she had started her career very early. After graduating from high school at 15 and being too impatient to wait to take up her scholarship at university, she went – with her teacher mother’s connivance (her father was an insurance broker) – for an audition as a dancer in a New York night club. The teenager from a sedate, small-town background found herself in the big city, directed by and in love with the choreographer Gene Kelly. She understudied the role of Laura in the Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie and took the lead in Willliam Saroyan’s play The Beautiful People. When Hollywood beckoned, the newly married couple headed west, arriving in Los Angeles on the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, 7 December 1941.

Blair’s initial disdain for movies allowed her to concentrate on theatre work, motherhood, keeping open house to the elite of Hollywood and fundraising. She was turned down by the Communist party, which feared that her joining might compromise Kelly’s outside activities. After a handful of parts and an enforced hiatus between 1951 and 1955, she was tentatively offered the role of Clara in the movie version of Paddy Chayevsky’s teleplay, Marty. Thanks to pressure from the writer and Kelly, she was finally given the role, despite the blacklist.

The film, a tender portrait of a lonely butcher (Ernest Borgnine) and a plain girl who fall in love, became a sleeper: a critical and box-office success despite unknown actors and a small budget. It led to Oscar nominations for both leads. Borgnine took the best actor award. For Blair the outcome was different: “I got the nomination. I won the best actress award at the Cannes film festival and was hot for 200 days.” She later took the best actress award at Bafta and found herself more famous in Europe than in America where, despite the accolades, she found no work, except in a Joseph H Lewis western, The Halliday Brand (1957). She left the US and Kelly for France, a Frenchman and a new life.

A small role in Tony Richardson’s BBC TV production of Othello (1955) was followed by Meeting in Paris, a comedy with Claude Brasseur. More notice was paid to her next movie (in Spain) where she played a variation of her role as Clara. Calle Mayor (Main Street, 1956), directed by Juan Antonio Bardem, cast her as a small-town spinster who is duped into bed by the local lothario with a promise of marriage. Unfortunately for Isabel, he is doing it for a bet. During the shooting Bardem was arrested by the Franco regime but, thanks to international pressure, was released and completed the rather melancholy film to some acclaim. Blair followed it with Il Grido (The Cry, 1957), directed by the great Michelangelo Antonioni. This neo-realist drama set in the industrialised Po valley of northern Italy came at the end of the cycle of such films, and was only a modest success. Blair continued working in movies, including an early version of Lies My Father Told Me (1960) in Ireland, and two Italian movies, I Delfini (1960) and Senilita (1961). Following a move to Britain, she made Basil Dearden and Michael Relph’s All Night Long (1962), a film set in the London jazz scene.

Blair decided to stay in London where, in 1963, she met and married Karel Reisz, then established – via the Free Cinema movement and his feature debut Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – as an important director. For years she worked only sporadically, including Das Bombe (1964) and Claude Berri’s comedy Marry Me, Marry Me (1968). She also returned to the theatre – an early highlight was an elegant evening of music and poetry, The Spoon River Anthology (1964), at the Royal Court theatre. She was also among a remarkable cast in the film version of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance (1973), directed by Tony Richardson. But during this period she decided to train as a speech therapist – to the bemusement of her friends. In the mid-1980s she embarked on a spate of television and movie work, beginning with an excellent thriller, Descent Into Hell (1986), made in France. She made Flight of the Spruce Goose (1986) in Poland, was the mother in the poor television revamp of a Hitchcock classic, Suspicion (1987), and featured in the series Thirtysomething (1989).

More than 30 years after her last Hollywood movie, she returned there to film Betrayed (1988), a political thriller directed by Costa-Gavras. This gripping story of a white supremacist (Tom Berenger) being tracked by an FBI undercover agent cast her as the racist’s mother. Blair matched Berenger’s chilling performance with authority and grace. A spot in one of the Marcus Welby television episodes, and a role as Sister of Mercy in the sprawling mini-series Scarlett (a sequel to Gone With the Wind, 1994), were – disappointingly – all that followed. In 1999 she was one of many distinguished contributors to the documentary The Rodgers & Hart Story: Thou Swell, Thou Witty and – not surprisingly – turned up in both the Gene Kelly and Judy Garland episodes of the BBC Hollywood Greats series (2000). In 2002 she was due to feature in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours, playing the older Laura Brown; in her younger guise, the depressive 50s housewife was played by Julianne Moore. In the event Blair did not, because Reisz became ill and died later that year; Moore ended up playing those scenes with old-age makeup.

Blair’s autobiography, The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood and Paris, was published in 2003. She declared herself content, having, she said, no regrets about the blacklist, which obliged her to mature as a person and – consequently – as an actor. Modestly, she once said, “it certainly wasn’t much of a career. For all my ambitions, I think my life was more important to me.” Her daughter Kerry Kelly Novick and stepsons Matthew, Toby and Barney Reisz survive her.

Arabella Weir writes: I first met Betsy when I was a know-it-all 12-year-old via my friend, her stepson, Toby, Karel Reisz’s middle son of three. Betsy presided over a large, friendly, uniquely inclusive house. She had a charming, relaxed, sunny attitude to the stream of friends her stepsons would bring home at all hours. Betsy was unlike any grown-up I’d ever met – happily offering endless, delicious meals, more often than not a bed, tolerance and inclusion in adult conversations whenever we, “the kids”, would pop into view. Eventually Betsy and Karel became my friends independently, supporting and encouraging me as I started a career in acting. Although Betsy was an intelligent, informed and outspoken woman, it’s impossible to think of her without thinking of Karel. Whilst devoted to him, Betsy never seemed like anything less than his equal. Karel and Betsy’s house was often filled with the great and good, yet Betsy was never grand or precious with her guests. They were just their friends, like the rest of us.

If Betsy was in your corner you’d always be OK, but when you got into trouble she could be very steely. Betsy had a very distinctive, singsong way of saying “hello” when she answered the phone. One time she caught Toby, Barney and I larking around doing an exaggerated version of her unique “hello” – something as young teenagers we naturally found hilarious. Betsy did not and with one look we were chastened. You didn’t mess with Betsy. She was a tremendously loving, loyal and ceaselessly supportive friend – and really good, often wicked, fun. You could talk to her about absolutely anything – nothing shocked her. I’m extraordinarily lucky to have had her as my surrogate mother for 40 years.

• Betsy Blair (Elizabeth Winifred Boger), actor, born 11 December 1923; died 13 March 2009

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Betsy Blair was born in Cliffside, New Jersey, a child model before finding work as a chorus dancer at the early age of 15. She received her first mini-break on Broadway in “Panama Hattie” in 1940 delivering a single line, but by the next year she had copped the ingénue lead in William Saroyan‘s “The Beautiful People.” At around the same time, she met dancer extraordinaire Gene Kelly and married him in 1940. Despite her background in dance, Betsy was admittedly not in the same league as a Vera-Ellen, Cyd Charisse, or Ann Miller, so she was never afforded the opportunity to glide with Gene in films. Moreover, she never even appeared in a musical film.

She made her large screen debut in 1947 and, for the next couple of years, appeared in a number of above-average dramas such as The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947), A Double Life(1947) starring Ronald Colman, The Snake Pit (1948), wherein she played a demented inmate alongside Olivia de Havilland, and a shining role in Another Part of the Forest(1948). After such promise, things came to a halt. Betsy had been involved in SAG politics as early as 1946 proposing the formation of the first Anti-Discrimination committee. Within a year the House Un-American Activities Committe began to investigate Betsy and others in the motion picture industry and what they considered left-wing extremist viewpoints. Her name appeared in the “Red Channels” and that was that. Her career was undone. By the early 1950s, all film offers had dried up. The only reason Betsy won the female lead in the 1955 cinematic classic Marty (1955) was because her husband threatened to stop shooting at MGM if they didn’t let her work despite the blacklist. It would be the role of a lifetime for Betsy. As the touching plain-Jane girlfriend of Ernest Borgnine‘s title butcher, Betsy won the Cannes Film and British Film acting awards, not to mention an Oscar nomination. It did not help her overcome the blacklist, however.

By 1957, she was divorced from Kelly and had moved to Europe to avoid the Hollywood shun. Shortly thereafter, she lived with French actor Roger Pigaut. In 1963, she married producer/director Karel Reisz. They would remain together for almost 40 years until his death in London of a blood disorder in 2002. Betsy later published her memoirs and discussed quite candidly her life on Broadway, life with Gene Kelly, and life amid the blacklisting. She continued to live in England before passing away from cancer on 13th March, 2009. She was 85 years old.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

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Margaret Johnston obituary in “The Guardian” in 2002.

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Guardian obituary in 2024:

David Kernan obituary

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Betsy Blair

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