Sir David Lean, CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, best remembered for big-screen epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984); for bringing Charles Dickens' novels to the silver screen with films such as Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948); and for the renowned romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).

Acclaimed by directors including Steven Spielberg^[1] and Stanley Kubrick,^[2], Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound Directors' Top Directors" poll 2002.^[3] Lean has four films in the top eleven of the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films.^[4][5]

Early life[link]

David Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye (niece of Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye). His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original Inklings literary club when a student at Oxford University. Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labeled a "dud" ^[6] of a student; he left in his mid-teens and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice. At age 16, his father deserted the family when he ran off with another woman, and young David would later follow a similar path after his own first marriage and child.^[6]

Film career[link]

Editing[link]

Bored by his work, Lean spent every evening in the cinema, and in 1927, after an aunt had advised him to find a job he enjoyed doing, he went to Gaumont Studios where his obvious enthusiasm earned him a month's trial without pay. He was taken on as a teaboy, promoted to clapperboy, and soon rose to the position of third assistant director. By 1930 he was working as an editor on newsreels, including those of Gaumont Pictures and Movietone. His career in feature films began with Freedom of the Seas in 1934 and Escape Me Never in 1935.

He edited Gabriel Pascal's film productions of two George Bernard Shaw plays, Pygmalion (1938) and Major Barbara (1941). He edited Powell & Pressburger's 49th Parallel (1941) and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942). After this last film, Lean began his directing career, after editing more than two dozen features by 1942. As Tony Sloman wrote in 1999, "As the varied likes of David Lean, Robert Wise, Terence Fisher and Dorothy Arzner have proved, the cutting rooms are easily the finest grounding for film direction."^[7] David Lean was given honorary membership of the Guild of British Film Editors in 1968.

For Lean's final film, A Passage to India (1984), he chose to both direct and edit, and the two roles were given precisely equal status in the film's credits.^[8] Lean was nominated for Academy Awards in directing, editing, and writing for the film.

Early films as director[link]

His first work as a director was in collaboration with Noël Coward on In Which We Serve (1942), and he later adapted several of Coward's plays into successful films. These included This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Brief Encounter (1945). Two celebrated Charles Dickens adaptations followed – Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). These two were the first of many Lean films that starred Alec Guinness, whom Lean considered his "good luck charm". The next film directed by Lean was The Passionate Friends, an often under-rated and atypical Lean film, but one which marked his first occasion to work with Claude Rains, who gives one of his finest performances in the film. The Sound Barrier (1952) had a screenplay by the playwright Terence Rattigan and Hobson's Choice (1954) was based on the play by Harold Brighouse. Summertime (1955) marked a new direction for Lean. U.S.-financed, the film starred Katharine Hepburn as a middle-aged American woman who has a romance while on holiday in Venice. It was shot entirely on location there.

Historical epics[link]

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lean directed a series of blockbuster films that made his reputation as a truly international director and a master of the historical epic.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was the story of British and American prisoners of war fighting for survival in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. The film starred William Holden and Alec Guinness and became the largest box office hit in the United States in 1958. The film won several Academy Awards, including best actor, best picture and best director.

In 1962, Lean made his most famous film, Lawrence of Arabia, about a British officer who unites the tribes of the Arab peninsula to fight in World War One. The film made actor Peter O'Toole a star and won several more academy awards for Lean, including best picture and best director. Lawrence of Arabia continues to appear on lists of the greatest films ever made, and frequently comes in first on lists of the greatest "epic" films. Filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have cited the picture as a major source of inspiration for their own work.

In 1965, Lean had his greatest box office success, Doctor Zhivago, a romance set during the Russian Revolution. The film, based on a novel by Boris Pasternak, tells the story of a physician and poet (Omar Sharif) who falls in love with an unavailable woman named Lara (Julie Christie) and struggles to be with her in the chaos of the revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War. Hugely popular at the time, Doctor Zhivago is currently the eighth largest grossing film in United States history, adjusted for inflation.

In addition, Lean directed some scenes of The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) while George Stevens was doing location work in Nevada. Most of his scenes involved Claude Rains and Jose Ferrer, both of whom had previously worked with Lean on Lawrence of Arabia.

Later works[link]

In 1970, David Lean directed Ryan's Daughter, a doomed romance set in Ireland. The film received less positive reviews than Lean's previous work and was not a smash hit at the international box office. Some critics felt the film's massive visual scale and extended running time did not suit its small-scale romantic narrative. Nonetheless, the film won two Academy Awards the following year.

From 1977 until 1980, Lean and Robert Bolt were working on a film adaptation of Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian, a dramatized account by Richard Hough of the Mutiny on the Bounty. It was originally to be released as a two-part film, one named The Lawbreakers that dealt with the voyage out to Tahiti and the subsequent mutiny, and the second named The Long Arm that studied the journey of the mutineers after the mutiny, as well as the admiralty's response in sending out the frigate HMS Pandora and her famous box in which some of the mutineers were imprisoned. Lean could not find financial backing for both films after Warner Bros. withdrew from the project; he decided to combine it into one, and even looked at a seven-part TV series, before finally getting backing from Italian magnate Dino De Laurentiis. Unfortunately for Lean, the project suffered a further setback when Bolt suffered a massive stroke and was unable to continue writing; the director felt that Bolt's involvement would be crucial to the film's success. Melvyn Bragg ended up writing a considerable portion of the script.

Lean was ultimately forced to abandon the project after overseeing casting and the construction of the $4 million Bounty replica; at the last possible moment, actor Mel Gibson brought in his friend Roger Donaldson to direct the film, as producer De Laurentiis did not want to lose the millions he had already put into the project over what he thought was as insignificant a person as the director dropping out.^[9] The film was eventually released as The Bounty.

Lean was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1973, and was knighted in 1984.^[10]

After failing to get Mutiny on the Bounty into production, David Lean embarked on his last production, A Passage to India (1984), which was released to positive reviews and received two Academy Awards. During the last years of his life, Lean was in pre-production of a film version of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. Lean assembled an all-star cast for this film, including Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield, Anthony Quinn, Peter O'Toole, Christopher Lambert, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Quaid, with Georges Corraface as the title character. Lean also wanted Alec Guinness to play Doctor Monyghan, but the aged actor turned him down in a letter from 1989: "I believe I would be disastrous casting. The only thing in the part I might have done well is the crippled crab-like walk." Steven Spielberg came on board as producer, with the backing of Warner Bros., but after several rewrites and disagreements on the script, Spielberg left the project and was replaced by Serge Silberman, a respected producer at Greenwich Film Productions. The project went through several writers, including Christopher Hampton and Robert Bolt. In the end, Lean decided to write the film himself with the assistance of Maggie Unsworth, with whom he had worked on the scripts for Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and The Passionate Friends. Originally Lean considered filming in Mexico, but later decided to film in London and Madrid, partly to secure O'Toole, who had insisted he would take part only if the film was shot close to home. Nostromo had a total budget of $46 million and was just six weeks away from filming at the time of Lean's death from throat cancer. It was rumoured that fellow film director John Boorman would be taking over direction, but the production collapsed and Nostromo soon became a BBC television mini-series.

BAFTA[link]

Lean was one of the founding members of the British Film Academy (later the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA) and was appointed its first chairman in 1947.

Reputation and influence[link]

David Lean received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990, being one of only three non-Americans to receive the award.

Lean is the most represented director on the BFI Top 100 British films list, having a total of seven films on the list, and four films in the top eleven. Lean's films in general have always been extremely popular with the general public, with The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago among the highest-grossing films of all time. While Ryan's Daughter and A Passage to India were less successful on release, they have found wide and appreciative audiences since their release on DVD.

As Lean himself pointed out,^[11] his films are often admired by fellow directors as a showcase of the filmmaker's art. Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese in particular are huge fans of Lean's epic films, and claim him as one of their primary influences. Spielberg and Scorsese also helped in the 1989 restoration of Lawrence of Arabia which, when released, greatly revived Lean's reputation.

George Lucas has referenced Lean's films, Lawrence of Arabia in particular, throughout his Star Wars film series. John Milius, David Yates, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, Stanley Kubrick, and Sydney Pollack also claimed influence from Lean's films.^{[citation needed]} Mel Brooks is also an admirer and parodied several of Lean's films in his sci-fi spoof Spaceballs. John Woo once named Lawrence of Arabia among his top three films.^[12] More recently, Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) has cited Lean's works, particularly Doctor Zhivago, as an important influence on his work,^[13] and Baz Luhrmann has named Lean as one of the inspirations for his 2008 epic Australia.^[14]

Personal life[link]

Lean was a long-term resident of Limehouse, east London. His home on Narrow Street is still owned by his family. He was married six times, had one son, and at least two grandchildren—all of whom he was completely estranged from^[15]—and was divorced five times. He was survived by his last wife, art dealer Sandra Cooke, the co-author (with Barry Chattington) of David Lean: An Intimate Portrait.^[6]

• Isabel Lean (28 June 1930 – 1936) (his first cousin); one son, Peter
• Kay Walsh (23 November 1940 – 1949)
• Ann Todd (21 May 1949 – 1957)
• Leila Matkar (4 July 1960 – 1978) (From, Hyderabad, India. Lean's longest-lasting marriage.^[16][17]
• Sandra Hotz (28 October 1981 – 1984)
• Sandra Cooke (15 December 1990 – 16 April 1991)

Filmography[link]

Awards[link]

Lean was nominated for a total of nine Academy Awards: seven for Best Director, one for Best Adapted Screenplay, and one for Best Film Editing, the latter two being for A Passage to India. Out of these nominations, Lean won two Oscars, both in the category of Best Director, for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). With seven nominations in the category of Best Director, Lean is the third most nominated director in Oscar history, tied with Martin Scorsese and Fred Zinnemann and behind Billy Wilder (8 nominations) and William Wyler (12 nominations).

Lean was also nominated for four Golden Globe awards for Best Director, winning three, for The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago.

References[link]

• Alain Silver and James Ursini, David Lean and his Films, Silman-James, 1992.
• Kevin Brownlow, David Lean, Faber & Faber, 1997.
• Roland Bergan, "Film", Eyewitness, 2006.
• Silverman, Stephen M., David Lean, Harry N. Abrams, 1989.
• Santas, Constantine, The Epics Films of David Lean, Scarecrow Press, 2011
• Turner, Adrian "The Making of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia" (Dragon's World, Limpsfield UK, 1994)
• Turner, Adrian "Robert Bolt: Scenes from two lives" (Hutchinson, London 1998)
• Morris, L. Robert and Lawrence Raskin, Lawrence of Arabia: the 30th Anniversary Pictorial History, Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1992

External links[link]

• Sir David Lean – Daily Telegraph obituary
• David Lean at the Internet Movie Database
• David Lean Archive on the BAFTA website
• David Lean at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database, Biography by Alain Silver
• Biography at British Film Institute
• Master and Commander: Remembering David Lean, by Anthony Lane The New Yorker, March 31, 2008
• Mean Lean Filmmaking Machine, by Armond White, New York Press September 3, 2008
• Honours from the Queen
• David Lean Foundation. Charity which makes grants to restore Lean's films, and to film studies students.
• Literature on David Lean

William Holden
Holden in a publicity photo, 1954
Born	William Franklin Beedle, Jr. (1918-04-17)April 17, 1918 O'Fallon, Illinois, U.S.
Died	November 12, 1981(1981-11-12) (aged 63) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Exsanguination following a fall
Occupation	Actor, wildlife conservationist
Years active	1938–81
Spouse	Brenda Marshall (m. 1941–1971) «start: (1941)–end+1: (1972)»"Marriage: Brenda Marshall to William Holden" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.db.wn.com/index.php/William_Holden) (divorced)

William Holden (April 17, 1918 – November 12, 1981) was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974. One of the most popular and well known movie stars of all time, Holden was one of the biggest box office draws of the 1950s, he was named one of the "Top 10 Stars of the Year" six times (1954–1958, 1961) and appeared on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars list as number 25. He starred in some of the most popular and critically acclaimed films of all time, including such blockbusters as Sunset Boulevard, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Wild Bunch, The Towering Inferno, and Network.

Early life and career[link]

With George Raft in Invisible Stripes

Holden was born William Franklin Beedle, Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, the son of Mary Blanche (née Ball), a schoolteacher, and William Franklin Beedle, Sr., an industrial chemist.^[1] He had two younger brothers, Robert and Richard. Holden's paternal great-grandmother, Rebecca Westfield, was born in England in 1817, while some of his mother's ancestors settled in Virginia's Lancaster County after emigrating from England in the 17th century.^[1] Growing up, Holden was raised in the Methodist church, and while some sources cite him as a Congregationalist, Holden identified himself as a Methodist throughout his life. His family moved to South Pasadena when he was three.

After graduating from South Pasadena High School, Holden attended Pasadena Junior College, where he became involved in local radio plays. Contrary to legend and theatre publicity, he did not study at the Pasadena Playhouse, nor was he discovered in a play there. Rather, he was spotted by a talent scout from Paramount Pictures in 1937 while playing the part of an 80-year-old man, Marie Curie's father-in-law, in a play at the Playbox, a separate and private theatre owned by Pasadena Playhouse director Gilmor Brown. His first film role was in Prison Farm the following year.

Hollywood's "Golden Boy"[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Holden's first starring role was in Golden Boy (1939), in which he played a violinist turned boxer. That was followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of Our Town.^[2]

With Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard

After Columbia Pictures picked up half of his contract, he alternated between starring in several minor pictures for Paramount and Columbia before serving as a 2nd lieutenant in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit. Beginning in 1950, his career took off when Billy Wilder tapped him to star as the down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis, who is taken in by faded silent-screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard, for which Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.^[3]

Following this breakthrough film, his career quickly grew in stature as he played a series of roles that combined good looks with cynical detachment, including a prisoner-of-war entrepreneur in Stalag 17 (1953), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, a pressured young engineer/family man in Executive Suite (1954), an acerbic stage director in The Country Girl (1954), a conflicted jet pilot in the Korean War film The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), a carefree playboy in Sabrina (1954), a wandering college football star in Picnic (1955), a dashing war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), his most widely recognized role as an ill-fated prisoner in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a World War II tug boat captain in The Key (1958), and an American Civil War military surgeon in The Horse Soldiers (1959), which also starred John Wayne.

With Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954)

He also played a number of sunnier roles in light comedy, such as the handsome architect pursuing virginal Maggie McNamara in the controversial Production Code-breaking The Moon is Blue (1953), as Judy Holliday's tutor in Born Yesterday (1950), as a playwright captivated by Ginger Rogers' character in Forever Female (1953) and as Humphrey Bogart's younger brother, a playboy, in Sabrina (1954), which also starred Audrey Hepburn. In 1954, Holden was featured on the cover of Life.

With the pinnacle of his career in 1957 with The Bridge on the River Kwai, Holden starred in his share of forgettable^{[neutrality is disputed]} films during the 1960s such as Paris When It Sizzles (1964), also co-starring Audrey Hepburn, which he was forced to do by studio contracts. By the mid-1960s, his roles were having less critical and commercial impact.

Later career[link]

1960s

In 1969, Holden made a comeback when he starred in director Sam Peckinpah's graphically violent Western The Wild Bunch, winning much acclaim. Also in 1969, Holden starred in director Terence Young's family film L'Arbre de Noel, co-starring Italian actress Virna Lisi, based on the novel of the same name by Michel Bataille. This film was originally released in the United States as The Christmas Tree and on home video as When Wolves Cry.^[4]

Five years later, he starred with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno, which became a box office smash and the highest grossing film of Holden's career. He was also praised for his Oscar-nominated leading performance in Sidney Lumet's classic Network (1976), a prescient examination of television written by Paddy Chayevsky, playing an older version of the character type he had become iconic for in the 1950s, only now more jaded and aware of his own mortality.

In 1974 Holden won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his portrayal of a cynical, tough veteran LAPD street cop in the television film The Blue Knight, based upon the best-selling Joseph Wambaugh novel of the same name.

In 1980, Holden appeared in The Earthling with popular child actor Ricky Schroder, playing a loner dying of cancer who goes to the Australian outback to end his days, meets a young boy whose parents have been killed in an accident, and teaches him how to survive. Schroder later named one of his sons Holden.

During his last years, Holden also appeared in When Time Ran Out and Blake Edwards's S.O.B.. His second Irwin Allen film, When Time Ran Out was a critical and commercial failure and heavily disliked by Holden himself; his final film, S.O.B., directed by Blake Edwards, was more successful and a Golden Globe-nominated picture.

Personal life[link]

Brenda Marshall, 1952

Holden was married to actress Ardis Ankerson (stage name Brenda Marshall) from 1941 until their divorce (after many long separations) in 1971. They had two sons, Peter Westfield (born November 17, 1943) and Scott Porter (born May 2, 1946; died January 21, 2005, San Diego, California). He also adopted his wife's daughter, Virginia, from her first marriage.

Holden was best man at the marriage of his friend Ronald Reagan to Nancy Davis in 1952; however, he never involved himself in politics.

In 1954, during the filming of Sabrina, Holden and Audrey Hepburn became romantically involved, and she hoped to marry him and have children. She broke off the relationship when Holden revealed that he had undergone a vasectomy.^[5]

Holden met French actress Capucine in the early 1960s. They starred in the films The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964). They began a two-year affair; after it ended, she and Holden remained friends until Holden's death in 1981.^[6]

In 1964, Holden was again paired up with Hepburn in Paris When It Sizzles, but behind the scenes, the set was plagued with problems. Holden tried without success to rekindle a romance with the now-married Hepburn. That, combined with his alcoholism, made the situation a challenge for the production.

Holden maintained a home in Switzerland and also spent much of his time working for wildlife conservation as a managing partner in an animal preserve in Africa. His Mount Kenya Safari Club in Nanyuki (founded 1959) became a mecca for the international jet set.^[7]

While in Italy, Holden killed another driver in a 1966 drunk driving incident. He received an eight-month suspended sentence for vehicular manslaughter.^[8]

In 1972, Holden began a nine-year relationship with actress Stefanie Powers which sparked her interest in animal welfare.^[9] After his death, Powers set up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation at Holden's Mount Kenya Game Ranch.^[10]

His younger brother, Robert W. "Bobbie" Beedle, was a Navy fighter pilot who was killed in action in World War II, on January 5, 1945. After The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955) was released, Beedle was remembered by his squadron-mates as having been very much like Holden's character, Lt. Harry Brubaker.

Death[link]

On November 12, 1981, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's autopsy report, Holden was alone and intoxicated in his apartment in Santa Monica, California, when he slipped on a throw rug, severely lacerated his forehead on a teak bedside table, and bled to death. Evidence suggests he was conscious for at least half an hour after the fall. It is probable that he may not have realized the severity of the injury and did not summon aid, or was unable to call for help. His body was found four days later.^[7]

Holden had dictated in his will that the Neptune Society cremate him and scatter his ashes in the Pacific Ocean. No funeral or memorial service was held, per his wishes.

Holden is the actor "who had died while he was drinking," mentioned by Suzanne Vega in the 1987 song, "Tom's Diner".^[11]

In 2007, his stepdaughter, Virginia Holden Gaines, wrote a book, Growing Up with William Holden: A Memoir, reliving her memories of life with her father.

Filmography[link]

Features[link]

Short subjects[link]

• Reconnaissance Pilot (1943)
• Wings Up (1943)
• You Can Change the World (1951)

Awards and nominations[link]

Academy Award[link]

• Best Actor Nomination for Sunset Boulevard (1951)
• Best Actor Award for Stalag 17 (1954)
• Best Actor Nomination for Network (1977)

BAFTA Award[link]

• Best Foreign Actor Nomination for Picnic (1955)
• Best Foreign Actor Nomination for Network (1976)

Emmy Award[link]

• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a Movie Award for The Blue Knight (1974)

References[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Holden

• William Holden at the Internet Movie Database
• William Holden at the TCM Movie Database
• Profile @ Turner Classic Movies
• William Holden Wildlife Foundation

Sir Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness in 1973 by Allan Warren
Born	Alec Guinness de Cuffe (1914-04-02)2 April 1914 Paddington, London, England, United Kingdom
Died	5 August 2000(2000-08-05) (aged 86) Midhurst, West Sussex, England
Cause of death	Liver Cancer
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1934–96
Spouse	Merula Salaman (m. 1938–2000)
Children	Matthew Guinness

Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE (2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage he was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. However, he was probably best known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Yevgraf in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984). In later years, he achieved fame with younger audiences for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’s Star Wars films.

Early life[link]

Guinness was born at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale, London as Alec Guinness de Cuffe.^[1] His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff. She was born 8 December 1890 to Edward Cuff and Mary Ann Benfield. On Guinness's birth certificate, the space for the mother's name shows Agnes de Cuffe. The space for the infant's name (where first names only are given) says Alec Guinness. The column for name and surname of father is blank.^[2]

It has been frequently speculated that the actor's father was a member of the Anglo-Irish Guinness family. However, it was a Scottish banker, Andrew Geddes, who paid for Guinness's private school education. From 1875, under English law, when the birth of an illegitimate child was registered, the father's name could be entered on the certificate only if he were present and gave his consent. Guinness and Geddes never met, and the identity of Guinness's father has never been confirmed.^[3] Guinness was uninterested in his mother, who later had a short marriage to a violent,^[4] shell-shocked veteran of the Irish War of Independence.^[2]

Early career and war service[link]

Guinness first worked writing advertising copy. His first job in the theatre was on his 20th birthday, while he was still a drama student, in the play Libel, which opened at the old King's Theatre, Hammersmith, and then transferred to the Playhouse where his status was raised from a walk-on to understudying two lines and his salary increased to £1 a week.^[5] He appeared at the Albery Theatre in 1936 at the age of 22, playing the role of Osric in John Gielgud's successful production of Hamlet. 1936 also saw Guinness sign on with the Old Vic, where he was cast in a series of classic roles.^[6] During this time he worked with many actors and actresses who would become his friends and frequent co-stars in the future, including John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Anthony Quayle and Jack Hawkins. An early influence from afar was Stan Laurel, whom Guinness admired.^[7]

Guinness continued playing Shakespearean roles throughout his career. In 1937 he played Aumerle in Richard II and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice under the direction of John Gielgud. He starred in a 1938 production of Hamlet which won him acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.^[6] He also appeared as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet (1939), Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night and as Exeter in Henry V in 1937, both opposite Laurence Olivier, and Ferdinand in The Tempest, opposite Gielgud as Prospero.

In 1939, he adapted Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations for the stage, playing the part of Herbert Pocket. The play was a success. One of its viewers was a young British film editor, David Lean, who would later have Guinness reprise his role in Lean's 1946 film adaptation of the play.

Guinness served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in World War II, serving first as a seaman in 1941 and being commissioned the following year.^[8] He commanded a landing craft taking part in the invasion of Sicily and Elba and later ferried supplies to the Yugoslav partisans.

During the war, he was granted leave to appear in the Broadway production of Terence Rattigan's play Flare Path about the RAF Bomber Command.^[9]

Postwar stage career[link]

Guinness returned to the Old Vic in 1946 and stayed until 1948, playing Abel Drugger in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, the Fool in King Lear opposite Laurence Olivier in the title role, DeGuiche in Cyrano de Bergerac opposite Ralph Richardson in the title role, and finally starring in an Old Vic production as Shakespeare's Richard II. After leaving the Old Vic, he played Eric Birling in J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls at the New Theatre in October 1946. He played the Uninvited Guest in the Broadway production of T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (1950, revived at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968). His third attempt at the title role of Hamlet, this time under his own direction at the New Theatre (1951), proved a major theatrical disaster.^[10]

Invited by his friend Tyrone Guthrie to join the premier season of the Stratford Festival of Canada, Guinness lived for a brief time in Stratford, Ontario. On 13 July 1953, Guinness spoke the first lines of the first play produced by the festival, Shakespeare's Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York."

Guinness won a Tony Award for his Broadway performance as poet Dylan Thomas in Dylan. He next played the title role in Macbeth opposite Simone Signoret at the Royal Court Theatre in 1966, a conspicuous failure.^[11]

Guinness made his final stage performance at the Comedy Theatre on 30 May 1989, in the play A Walk in the Woods. In all, between 2 April 1934 and 30 May 1989, he played 77 parts in the theatre.^[12]

Film career[link]

In films, Guinness was initially associated mainly with the Ealing comedies, and particularly for playing eight different characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets. Other films from this period included The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers, and The Man in the White Suit. In 1952, director Ronald Neame cast Guinness in his first romantic lead role, opposite Petula Clark in The Card. In 1951, exhibitors voted him the most popular British star.^[13]

Other notable film roles of this period included The Swan (1956) with Grace Kelly, in her second to last film role; The Horse's Mouth (1958) in which Guinness played the part of drunken painter Gulley Jimson as well as contributing the screenplay, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award; the lead in Carol Reed's Our Man in Havana (1959); Marcus Aurelius in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964); The Quiller Memorandum (1966); Marley's Ghost in Scrooge (1970); Charles I in Cromwell (1970); Pope Innocent III in Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972); and the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), which he considered his best film performance, though critics disagreed.^[14]

Guinness also played the role of Jamessir Bensonmum, the blind butler, in the 1976 Neil Simon film Murder By Death.

David Lean[link]

Guinness won particular acclaim for his work with director David Lean, which today is his best-known and most critically acclaimed work. After appearing in Lean's Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, he was given a starring role opposite William Holden in The Bridge on the River Kwai. For his performance as Colonel Nicholson, the unyielding British POW leader, Guinness won an Academy Award. Despite a difficult and often hostile relationship, Lean, referring to Guinness as "my good luck charm", continued to cast Guinness in character roles in his later films: Arab leader Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia; the title character's half-brother, Bolshevik leader Yevgraf, in Doctor Zhivago; and Indian mystic Godbole in A Passage to India. He was also offered a role in Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970), but declined. By that time, Guinness had "mistrusted" Lean and considered the earlier close relationship as strained; although at his funeral, he recalled that the famed director had been "charming and affable".^[15]

[edit] Star Wars

Guinness's role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1977, brought him worldwide recognition by a new generation, as well as Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. In letters to his friends, Guinness described the film as "fairy tale rubbish," but the movie's sense of moral good – and the studio's doubling of his initial salary offer – appealed to him, and he signed on. ^[16] He was one of the few cast members who believed that the film would be a box office hit; he negotiated a deal for 2% of the gross royalties paid to the director, George Lucas, who received one fifth of the box office takings. This made him very wealthy in his later life, and he agreed to take the part of Kenobi on the condition that he would not have to do any publicity to promote the film. Upon his first viewing of the film, Guinness wrote in his diary that "It's a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy and warm-hearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience."^[17]

Despite these rewards, Guinness soon became unhappy with being identified with the part, and expressed dismay at the fan-following that the Star Wars trilogy attracted. In the DVD commentary of the original Star Wars, director George Lucas says that Guinness was not happy with the script re-write in which Obi-Wan is killed. However, Guinness said in a 1999 interview that it was actually his idea to kill off Obi-Wan, persuading Lucas that it would make him a stronger character, and that Lucas agreed to the idea. Guinness stated in the interview, "What I didn't tell Lucas was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo." He went on to say that he "shrivelled up" every time Star Wars was mentioned to him.^[18]

Although Guinness disliked the fame attracted by work he did not esteem,^[17] Lucas and fellow cast members Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Anthony Daniels, and Carrie Fisher have spoken highly of his courtesy and professionalism, both on and off the set. Lucas credited him with inspiring cast and crew to work harder, saying that Guinness contributed significantly to achieving completion of the filming. Guinness was quoted as saying that the royalties he obtained from working on the films gave him "no complaints; let me leave it by saying I can live for the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to, that I have no debts and I can afford to refuse work that doesn't appeal to me." In his autobiography, Blessings In Disguise, Guinness tells an imaginary interviewer "Blessed be Star Wars", regarding the income it provided.^[19]

In the final volume of the book A Positively Final Appearance (1997), Guinness recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the boy promise to stop watching the film, because, as Guinness told him, "this is going to be an ill effect on your life." The fan was stunned at first, but later thanked him (though some sources say it went differently). Guinness is quoted as saying: "Well," I said, "do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?" He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. "What a dreadful thing to say to a child!" she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.^[20] Guinness grew so tired of modern audiences apparently knowing him only for his role of Obi-Wan Kenobi that he would throw away the mail he received from Star Wars fans without reading it.^[21]

Television appearances[link]

From the 1970s, Guinness made regular television appearances, including the part of George Smiley in the serialisations of two novels by John le Carré: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Le Carré was so impressed by Guinness's performance as Smiley that he based his characterisation of Smiley in subsequent novels on Guinness.

One of Guinness's last appearances was in the BBC drama Eskimo Day.

Awards and honours[link]

Guinness won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1957 for his role in The Bridge on the River Kwai having been unsuccessfully nominated in 1952 for his performance in The Lavender Hill Mob. He was nominated in 1958 for the Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, for his screenplay adapted from Joyce Cary's novel The Horse's Mouth. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars in 1977. He received an Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980. In 1988, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Little Dorrit.

For his theatre work, he received an Evening Standard Award for his performance as T.E. Lawrence in Ross and a Tony Award for his Broadway turn as Dylan Thomas in Dylan.^[22]

Guinness was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1955, and was knighted in 1959.^[6] In 1991, he received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University.^[23] Three years later, at age 80, he was appointed a Companion of Honour.^[24]

Guinness received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1559 Vine Street on 8 February 1960.^[2]

Personal life[link]

This section's references may not meet Wikipedia's guidelines for reliable sources. Please help by checking whether the references meet the criteria for reliable sources. (April 2011)

Guinness married the artist, playwright and actress Merula Sylvia Salaman (16 October 1914 – 18 October 2000) in 1938; in 1940, they had a son, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor.

In his biography, Alec Guinness: The Unknown, Garry O'Connor says that Guinness was arrested and fined 10 guineas for a homosexual act in a public lavatory in Liverpool in 1946. Guinness avoided publicity by giving his name to police and court as "Herbert Pocket", the name of the character he played in Great Expectations. The incident did not become public knowledge until April 2001, eight months after his death when a BBC News article claimed that Guinness was in fact bisexual and that he had successfully kept his sexuality private from the public eye as his closest friends and family members also knew he had sexual relationships with men.^[25] Piers Paul Read, Guinness's official biographer, doubts that this incident actually occurred. He believes that Guinness was confused with John Gielgud, who was infamously arrested for such an act around the same time.

Religious conversion[link]

While serving in the Royal Navy, Guinness had planned to become an Anglican priest. However, in 1954, while he was filming Father Brown in Burgundy, Guinness, who was in costume as a Catholic priest, was mistaken for a real priest by a local child. Guinness was far from fluent in French, and the child apparently did not notice that Guinness did not understand him, but took his hand and chattered while the two strolled; the child then waved and trotted off.^[26] The confidence and affection the clerical attire appeared to inspire in the boy left a deep impression on the actor.^[27] Alec Guinness was formally received into the Roman Catholic Church on 24 March 1956. His wife followed suit in 1957 while he was in Sri Lanka filming The Bridge on the River Kwai, and she informed him only after the event.^[28] They remained devout and regular church-goers for the remainder of their lives. Their son Matthew had converted to Catholicism some time earlier.^[29] Every morning, Guinness recited a verse from Psalm 143, "Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning".^[30]

Death[link]

Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.^[31] He had been receiving hospital treatment for glaucoma, and had recently also been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was interred at Petersfield, Hampshire, England. His widow, Lady Guinness, died of cancer at Petersfield, two months after her husband, also aged 86,^[32] and was interred alongside her husband of 62 years.

Autobiographies and biography[link]

Guinness wrote three volumes of a best-selling autobiography, beginning with Blessings in Disguise in 1985, followed by My Name Escapes Me in 1996, and A Positively Final Appearance in 1999. He recorded each of them as an audiobook. Shortly after his death, Lady Guinness asked the couple's close friend and fellow Catholic, novelist Piers Paul Read, to write Guinness's official biography. It was published in 2003.

Filmography[link]

Box Office Ranking in Britain[link]

For a number of years, British film exhibitors voted Guinness among the most popular stars in Britain at the box office via an annual poll in the Motion Picture Herald.

• 1951 - 1st most popular British star (5th overall)^[13]
• 1952 - 3rd most popular British star^[33]
• 1953 - 2nd most popular British star^[34]
• 1954 - 6th most popular British star^[35]
• 1955 - 10th most popular British star^[36]
• 1956 - 8th most popular British star^[37]
• 1958 - most popular star^[38]
• 1960 - 4th most popular star^[39]

References[link]

Notes

Bibliography

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alec Guinness

• Alec Guinness at the Internet Broadway Database
• Alec Guinness at the Internet Movie Database
• Alec Guinness at the British Film Institute's Screenonline

• Works by Alec Guinness on Open Library at the Internet Archive

Robert Mitchum
Born	Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (1917-08-06)August 6, 1917 Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.
Died	July 1, 1997(1997-07-01) (aged 79) Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Lung cancer
Occupation	Actor, author, composer, singer
Years active	1942–1996
Spouse	Dorothy Spence (1940–97)

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time. Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir style, and is considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s.

Early life and career[link]

Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, into a Methodist family.^[1] His mother, Ann Harriet (née Gunderson), was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter, and his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was a shipyard and railroad worker.^[2] A sister, Annette, (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career) was born in 1914. James Mitchum was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919, when his son was less than 2 years old. After his death, Ann Mitchum was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. She returned to her family in Connecticut, and married a former British Army major who helped her care for the children. In September 1919 a second son, John, was born. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the Bridgeport Post.^[3]

Throughout Mitchum's childhood, he was known as a prankster, often involved in fistfights and mischief. When he was 12, his mother sent Mitchum to live with his grandparents in Felton, Delaware, where he was promptly expelled from his middle school for scuffling with a principal. A year later, in 1930, he moved in with his older sister, in New York's Hell's Kitchen. After being expelled from Haaran High School, he left his sister and traveled throughout the country on railroad cars, taking a number of jobs including as a ditch-digger for the Civilian Conservation Corps and as a professional boxer. He experienced numerous adventures during his years as one of the Depression era's "wild boys of the road." At age 14 in Savannah, Georgia, he was arrested for vagrancy and put on a local chain gang. By Mitchum's own account, he escaped and returned to his family in Delaware. It was during this time, while recovering from injuries that nearly lost him a leg, that he met the woman he would marry, a teenaged Dorothy Spence. He soon went back on the road, eventually riding the rails to California.

Mitchum arrived in Long Beach, California, in 1936, staying again with his sister Julie. Soon the rest of the Mitchum family joined them in Long Beach. During this time he worked as a ghostwriter for astrologer Carroll Righter. It was sister Julie who convinced him to join the local theater guild with her. In his years with the Players Guild of Long Beach, he made a living as a stagehand and occasional bit player in company productions. He also wrote several short pieces which were performed by the guild. According to Lee Server's biography (Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care), Mitchum put a talent for poetry to work writing song lyrics and monologues for his sister Julie's nightclub performances. In 1940 he returned East to marry Dorothy, taking her back to California. He remained a footloose character until the birth of their first child, James Mitchum, nicknamed Josh (two more children would follow, Christopher Mitchum and Petrine). Mitchum then got a steady job as a machine operator with the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation.

A nervous breakdown (which resulted in temporary blindness), apparently from job-related stress, led Mitchum to look for work as an actor or extra in movies. An agent he had met got him an interview with the producer of the Hopalong Cassidy series of B-westerns; he was hired to play the villain in several films in the series during 1942 and 1943. He continued to find further work as an extra and supporting actor in numerous productions for various studios. After impressing director Mervyn LeRoy during the making of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Mitchum signed a seven-year contract with RKO Radio Pictures. He found himself groomed for B Western stardom in a series of Zane Grey adaptations.

Following the moderately successful western Nevada, Mitchum was lent from RKO to United Artists for the William Wellman-helmed The Story of G.I. Joe. In the film, he portrayed war-weary officer Bill Walker (based on Captain Henry T. Waskow), who remains resolute despite the troubles he faces. The film, which followed the life of an ordinary soldier through the eyes of journalist Ernie Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith), became an instant critical and commercial success. Shortly after making the film, Mitchum himself was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving at Fort MacArthur, California. At the 1946 Academy Awards, The Story of G.I. Joe was nominated for four Oscars, including Mitchum's only nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He finished the year off with a western (West of the Pecos) and a story of returning Marine veterans (Till the End of Time), before filming in a genre that came to define Mitchum's career and screen persona: film noir.

Film noir[link]

Mitchum was initially known for his work in film noir. His first foray into the genre was a supporting role in the B-film When Strangers Marry, about newlyweds and a New York City serial killer. Undercurrent, another of Mitchum's early noirs, featured him playing against type as a troubled, sensitive man entangled in the affairs of his brother (Robert Taylor) and his brother's suspicious wife (Katharine Hepburn). The film was director Vincente Minnelli's only film noir.

John Brahm's The Locket (1946) featured Mitchum as bitter ex-husband to Laraine Day's femme fatale, while Raoul Walsh's Pursued (1947) combined western and noir styles, with Mitchum's character attempting to recall his past and find those responsible for killing his family. Crossfire (also 1947) featured Mitchum as a member of a group of soldiers, one of whom killed a Jew. It featured themes of anti-Semitism and the failings of military training. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk, earned five Academy Award nominations.

Mitchum's famous role in Out of the Past (1947)

Following Crossfire, Mitchum starred in Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High), directed by Jacques Tourneur and featuring the cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca. Mitchum played Jeff Markham, a small-town gas station owner whose unfinished business with gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) and femme fatale Kathie Moffett (Jane Greer), comes back to haunt him. Though ignored by most critics on its release, the film was a modest box office hit at the time and has received a positive reappraisal. Mitchum was photographed again by Musuraca in the Robert Wise psychological western Blood on the Moon the following year.

On September 1, 1948, after a string of successful films for RKO, Mitchum and actress Lila Leeds were arrested for possession of marijuana.^[4] The arrest was the result of a sting operation designed to capture other Hollywood partiers as well, but Mitchum and Leeds did not receive the tip-off. After serving a week at the county jail, (he described the experience to a reporter as being "like Palm Springs, but without the riff-raff") Mitchum spent 43 days (February 16 to March 30) at a Castaic, California, prison farm, with Life magazine photographers right there taking photos of him mopping up in his prison uniform.^[5] The arrest became the inspiration for the exploitation film She Shoulda Said No! (1949), which starred Leeds. The arrest did little to affect Mitchum's career in the long term, but was seen as an embarrassment by his studio, who ordered Mitchum to clean up his act. The conviction was later overturned by the Los Angeles court and District Attorney's office on January 31, 1951, with the following statement, after it was exposed as a set-up:

Whether despite, or because of, his troubles with the law and his studio, the films released immediately after his arrest were box-office hits. Rachel and the Stranger (1948) featured Mitchum in a supporting role as a mountain man competing for the hand of Loretta Young, the indentured servant and wife of William Holden, while he appeared in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella The Red Pony (1949) as a trusted cowhand to a ranching family.

Mitchum returned to true film noir in The Big Steal (also 1949), where he again joined Jane Greer in an early Don Siegel film.

Career in the 1950s and 1960s[link]

In Where Danger Lives (1950) he played a doctor who comes between a mentally unbalanced Faith Domergue and cuckolded Claude Rains. The Racket was a noir remake of the early crime drama of the same name and featured Mitchum as a police captain fighting corruption in his precinct. The Josef von Sternberg film Macao (1952) saw Mitchum a victim of mistaken identity at an exotic resort casino, playing opposite Jane Russell. Otto Preminger's Angel Face was the first of three collaborations between Mitchum and British stage actress Jean Simmons. In the film, Simmons plays an insane heiress who plans to use young ambulance driver Mitchum to kill for her.

Mitchum's cynical, mischievous attitude through his career had led him to shrug off fame as a fluke. His expulsion from Blood Alley (1955) is frequently attributed to his pranks, especially one in which he reportedly threw the film's transportation manager into San Francisco Bay. According to Sam O'Steen's memoir, Cut to the Chase, Mitchum showed up on set after a night of drinking and tore apart a studio office when they didn't have a car ready for him. Mitchum walked off the set of the third day of filming Blood Alley, claiming he could not work with the director. Because he was showing up late and behaving erratically, producer John Wayne, after failing to obtain Humphrey Bogart as a replacement, took over the role himself.^[6][7]

Following a series of conventional westerns and films noirs, including the Marilyn Monroe vehicle River of No Return (1954), he appeared in Charles Laughton's only film as director, The Night of the Hunter (1955). Based on a novel by Davis Grubb, the film noir thriller starred Mitchum as a monstrous criminal posing as a preacher to find money hidden by his cellmate in the cellmate's home. His performance as Reverend Harry Powell is considered by many to be one of the best of his career.^[8][9] Stanley Kramer's melodrama Not as a Stranger though, also released in 1955, was a box office hit for Mitchum. The film starred Mitchum against type, as an idealistic young doctor, who marries an older nurse (Olivia de Havilland), only to question his morality many years later. However, the film was not well received, with most critics pointing out that Mitchum, Frank Sinatra and Lee Marvin were all too old for their characters. Olivia de Havilland received top billing over Mitchum and Sinatra.

Following a succession of average westerns and the poorly received Foreign Intrigue (1956), Mitchum starred in the first of three films with British actress Deborah Kerr. The John Huston war drama Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison starred Mitchum as a marine corporal shipwrecked on a Pacific Island with a nun, Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), being his sole companion. In this character study they struggle to resist the elements and the invading Japanese army. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. For his role, Mitchum was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor.

Thunder Road (1958) was loosely based on an incident in which a driver transporting moonshine was said to have crashed to his death on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee somewhere between Bearden Hill and Morrell Road. According to Metro Pulse writer Jack Renfro, the incident occurred in 1952 and may have been witnessed by James Agee, who passed the story on to Mitchum–who not only starred in the movie, but also produced the film, co-wrote the screenplay, and is rumored to have directed much of the film himself. Mitchum also co-wrote (with Don Raye) the theme song, "The Ballad of Thunder Road."

In The Sundowners (1960)

Mitchum and Kerr reunited for the Fred Zinnemann film, The Sundowners (1960), where they played husband and wife struggling in Depression-era Australia. Opposite Mitchum, Kerr was nominated for yet another Academy Award for Best Actress, while the film was nominated for a total of five Oscars. Robert Mitchum was awarded that year's National Board of Review award for Best Actor for his performance. The award also recognized his superior performance in the Vincente Minnelli western drama Home from the Hill (also 1960). He was teamed with both Kerr and previous leading lady Jean Simmons as well as Cary Grant for the extremely offbeat Stanley Donen ensemble comedy The Grass Is Greener the same year.

Mitchum's performance as the menacing southern rapist Max Cady in Cape Fear (1962) brought him even more attention and furthered his renown as playing cool, predatory characters. The 1960s were marked by a number of lesser films and missed opportunities. Among the films Mitchum passed on during the decade was John Huston's The Misfits, the last film of its stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, the Academy Award–winning Patton, and Dirty Harry. The most notable of his films in the decade included the war epics The Longest Day (1962) and Anzio (1968), the Shirley MacLaine comedy-musical What a Way to Go! (1964), and the Howard Hawks western El Dorado (1966), a remake of Rio Bravo (1959), in which Mitchum took over Dean Martin's role of the drunk who comes to the aid of John Wayne.

Music career[link]

One of the lesser known aspects of Mitchum's career was his forays into music, both as singer and composer

Mitchum's voice was often used instead of that of a professional singer when his characters sang in his films. Notable productions featuring Mitchum's own singing voice included Rachel and the Stranger, River of No Return and The Night of the Hunter. After hearing traditional calypso music and meeting artists such as Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader while filming Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison in the Caribbean island of Tobago, he recorded Calypso — is like so... in March 1957. On the album, released through Capitol Records, he emulated the calypso sound and style, even adopting the style's unique pronunciations and slang. A year later he recorded a song he had written for the film Thunder Road, titled "The Ballad of Thunder Road". The country-styled song became a modest hit for Mitchum, reaching #69 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart. The song was included as a bonus track on a successful reissue of Calypso... and helped market the film to a wider audience.

Though Mitchum continued to use his singing voice in his film work, he waited until 1967 to record his follow-up record, That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings. The album, released by Nashville-based Monument Records, took him further into country music, and featured songs similar to The Ballad of Thunder Road. "Little Old Wine Drinker Me," the first single, was a top ten hit at country radio, reaching #9 there, and crossed over onto mainstream radio, where it peaked at #96. Its follow-up, "You Deserve Each Other," also charted on the Billboard Country Singles Chart.

Mitchum also co-wrote and composed the music for an oratorio which was produced by Orson Welles at the Hollywood Bowl.^[10]

Albums[link]

Singles[link]

Later career[link]

Mitchum at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.

Mitchum made a departure from his typical screen persona with the 1970 David Lean film Ryan's Daughter, in which he starred as Charles Shaughnessy, a mild-mannered schoolmaster in World War I era Ireland. Though the film was nominated for four Academy Awards (winning two) and Mitchum was much publicized as a contender for a Best Actor nomination, he was not nominated. George C. Scott won the award for his performance in Patton, a project which Mitchum had rejected for Ryan's Daughter.

The 1970s featured Mitchum in a number of well-received crime dramas. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) saw the actor playing an aging Boston hoodlum caught between the Feds and his criminal friends. Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1975) transplanted the typical film noir story arc to the Japanese underworld. He also appeared in 1976's Midway about an epic 1942 World War II battle. Mitchum's stint as an aging Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler adaptation Farewell, My Lovely (1975) was sufficiently well-received by audiences and critics for him to reprise the role in 1978's The Big Sleep.

In 1982, Mitchum went on location to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to play Coach Delaney in the film adaptation of playwright/actor Jason Miller's 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning play That Championship Season. He played a hard-boiled, bigoted coach whose former star players continue to swear allegiance to him, with one exception.

Mitchum expanded into the medium of television with the 1983 miniseries The Winds of War. The big-budget Herman Wouk story aired on ABC and starred Mitchum as naval officer "Pug" Henry, and examined the events leading up to America's involvement in World War II. He followed it in 1988 with War and Remembrance, which followed America through the war, and returned to the big screen for a memorable supporting role in Bill Murray's Scrooged.

In 1987, Mitchum was the guest host on Saturday Night Live where he played private eye Philip Marlowe for the last time in the parody sketch, "Death Be Not Deadly". The show also ran a short comedy film he made (written and directed by his daughter, Trina) called Out of Gas. This was a mock sequel to his 1947 classic Out of the Past. Jane Greer reprised her role from the original film.

In 1991, he won a lifetime achievement award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards in 1992.

Though Mitchum continued to appear in films throughout the 1990s, such as Tombstone, Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, and appeared in contrast to his role as the antagonist in the original, a protagonist police detective in Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear, the actor gradually slowed his workload. His last film appearance was in the television biopic, James Dean: Race with Destiny. His last starring role was in the 1995 Norwegian movie Pakten.

Death[link]

Mitchum died on July 1, 1997, in Santa Barbara, California, due to complications of lung cancer and emphysema. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea.^[11] He was survived by his wife of 57 years, Dorothy Mitchum, and actor sons, James Mitchum, Christopher Mitchum, and daughter Petrina (Trina) Mitchum. His grandchildren, Bentley Mitchum and Carrie Mitchum, are also actors, as was his younger brother John Mitchum, who died in 2001. His other grandson, Kian Mitchum, is a successful model.^[12]

Legacy[link]

Graffiti of Mitchum in Atlanta, Georgia

Mitchum is regarded by critics as one of the finest actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Roger Ebert called him 'the soul of film noir'. Mitchum himself, however, was self-effacing; in an interview with Barry Norman for the BBC about his contribution to cinema, Mitchum stopped Norman in mid flow and in his typical phlegmatic style said, "Look, I have two kinds of acting. One on a horse and one off a horse. That's it." He had also succeeded in annoying some of his fellow actors by voicing his puzzlement at those who viewed the profession as challenging and hard work. He is quoted as having said in a BBC interview with Barry Norman that acting was actually very simple and that his job was to "show up on time, know his lines, hit his marks, and go home".^[13][14]

Interviewer Larry King has said on a number of occasions that Mitchum's interview was his most challenging. Mitchum, a man of few words, tended to answer simply "Yes" or "No" to many of King's questions.

He is #23 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars. Along with his performance as the menacing rapist Max Cady, is #28 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains, as a villain.

He was the voice of the famous American Beef Council commercials that touted "Beef . . . it's what's for dinner", from the early 1980s until his death. There is a "Mitchum's Steakhouse" in Trappe, Maryland,^[15] where Mitchum and his family lived from 1959 to 1965.^[16]

Filmography[link]

Features[link]