It is more than 2 years since I added to this
series. I always admired the “stiff upper lip school” of British actors and somehow
I had overlooked two of its finest proponents, who featured in what are now
nostalgic productions, but they were once the epitome of British manliness and
masculinity. Richard Todd and John Mills were two exemplars of their generation,
in the heroic mould of Jack Hawkins and Kenneth More.
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| Richard Todd |
Richard Todd (1919-2009) was the son of a Dublin doctor and
rugby internationalist, attached to the British Army. Some early days in India
were followed by life in Devon and school at Shrewsbury. Originally destined
for a military career, he decided to become an actor. This move drastically
estranged him from his mother and when he was 19, she committed suicide, which
Richard later confessed he did not much regret. A year on and he was playing in
provincial theatres, co-founding the Dundee Rep in 1939.
In 1940 he enlisted and trained at Sandhurst
from where he graduated in 1941. He subsequently joined the Parachute Regiment,
after cheating death from a bomb which killed 8 other graduates at Sandhurst
and just missing a party at the Café de Paris in the West End where 34 denizens
were Blitz fatalities. He saw action as an Airborne Division captain in the
capture of Pegasus Bridge, near Caen on D-Day (depicted in The Longest Day
(1962), with a cameo from Richard). He also saw action alongside the Americans
in the perilous Ardennes battle as the Wehrmacht made its final thrust. So,
Richard was already a real hero before becoming a celluloid one.
On demob in 1946, Todd acted on stage and in
rep and had the good fortune to get a leading role, as a terminally ill Scots
soldier in Burma, in the 1948 West End success The Hasty Heart by the
American writer John Patrick. A Hollywood film followed in 1949 with Richard
Todd, Ronald Reagan and Patricia Neal – Richard was nominated for the Best
Actor Oscar but lost out to Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men.
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| Todd's success in The Hasty Heart |
He was now a box-office draw and he worked for Disney, filming Robin Hood (1952) and less successfully Rob Roy (1953). He had another US hit, a tribute to Peter Marshall, Scots-born chaplain to the US Senate, in the biopic A Man called Peter (1955), well suited to the religiosity of 1950s America. Richard’s greatest hit came next as he starred as Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC in the wildly popular WW2 epic The Dam Busters (1955) with Michael Redgrave as boffin Barnes Wallis relating their attack on the Ruhr Dams. Richard was voted the top UK film actor.
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| Gibson and Wallis played by Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave |
Richard never regained that level of popularity. His type went out of fashion in the “kitchen-sink” era but he was a busy actor playing film cameos and classic roles on stage. I saw him in about 1965 at our then family-owned theatre in Aberdeen, playing Lord Goring delightfully in Oscar Wilde’s witty An Ideal Husband. He was a meticulous attender and supporter of Forces charities’ events and especially those connected with the Dam Busters 617 Squadron.
Todd was outwardly a convivial man, party-going
with the theatrical set. He was married 3 times but his later years were
clouded by the deaths by suicide of two sons, Seumas in 1997 and Peter in 2005.
The suicides of a mother and two sons hints at some tragically crippling
depressive gene at work. Much respected Richard was buried between his two sons
in the churchyard at Ponton, near Grantham, in 2009, near the family home.
……………………………………….
John Mills (1908-2005) had a longer and even more
distinguished career. Born in Norfolk, John was the son of a maths teacher and
a mother who worked the box-office of a local theatre. He lived in a modest
house in Felixstowe and was eventually educated at Norwich High School. He was
keen on the stage from the age of 6 and decided against a career as a corn
merchant’s clerk in Ipswich. He became a juvenile actor debuting at the London
Hippodrome in 1929. He had bit parts in “quota quickies”, British subsidized
low-budget films to counteract US predominance. He toured India and the Far
East and must have had some elfin charm as he attracted the notice of Noel
Coward and his friend the film director David Lean, who helped along his
career.
John was invalided out of the Army in 1942 with
a stomach ulcer and returned to acting. He appeared in Coward’s morale-booster In
which we Serve (1942) and had a bigger role in the family saga This
Happy Breed (1944). He was becoming well-established and landed the plum
role of Pip in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) – Alec Guinness
was Pocket, one of only two films they made together.
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| Guinness and Mills in Great Expectations (1946) |
John became firmly cast in the heroic persona
as Capt. Scott in Scott of the Antarctic (1948), a stirring tale, but
ultimately rather depressing as all Scott’s immediate expedition expired.
Morning Departure (1950), a submarine drama, was equally grim as it ends
with Mills going down with his ship and reading the naval prayer-book!
Much more cheerful was the comedy Hobson’s
Choice (1954) with John being bullied by a splendidly florid Charles
Laughton but winning over his daughter. Later in the 1950s, he was back in
uniform with Above Us the Waves (1955) all about midget submarine
heroism, Dunkirk (1958) displaying British bravery in adversity, then
very successfully outwitting Jerry in the desert in Ice Cold in Alex
(1960).
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| Andrews, Quayle, Syms and Mills enjoy their Ice Colds in Alex (1960) |
1960 was a great year for Mills. He received
critical acclaim for his role as starchy Col Basil Barrow in Tunes of Glory,
a Scots officers’ mess peacetime drama, playing opposite Alec Guinness as
flamboyant Major Jock Sinclair. He also had a family triumph when his daughter
Hayley Mills won a juvenile Oscar for her portrayal of Pollyanna, in
Disney’s very popular sentimental film. To top it all, John starred in Disney’s
The Swiss Family Robinson the highest grossing film of that year.
Mills had one last moment of fame. He played
Michael, the village idiot, in David Lean’s epic Ryan’s Daughter (1970)
set in revolutionary Ireland in 1918-19. The critics hated but the public
enjoyed the film, while Mills won the supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal
of Michael.
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| Mills as Michael in Ryan's Daughter (1970) |
John kept on in many cameo parts, notably Lord
Chelmsford in Gandhi (1982) but he moved from his house in Richmond –
sold to Ronnie Wood of The Stones – to a new family base in Denham. He was
knighted in 1995. Laden with industry honours and cherished by his public, Sir
John died at the ripe old age of 97 in 2005.
Richard Todd and John Mills entertained a very
different audience from that of today. Their age group was older. National pride is now more muted or at least
more nuanced than it was then. The qualities expected of our older
heroes, straight-speaking, brave and faithful, contrast with the violent darkness
of Daniel Craig’s James Bond or the thuggish life-style of Jason Statham’s
characters.
But let’s face it, we cannot turn the clock
back one second (worst luck!).
SMD
18.05.20
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald
2020
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