[EAS]Alec Guinness Dead at 86
Peter J. Kindlmann
pjk at design.eng.yale.edu
Mon Aug 7 22:40:46 EDT 2000
Dear Colleagues -
Forgive a note more personal than my usual personal mailings about
technology, education and common sense. Alec Guinness was one of my
favorite actors, judging from the loss I feel, perhaps my favorite
actor. I saw his "Tunes of Glory" when in college and in its
different way it made as deep an impression as Ingmar Bergmann's
"The Seventh Seal" which I saw the same year. (I also saw Brigitte
Bardot's "And God Created Woman" that year, and it too made a deep
impression, but not one that has stood the test of time so well.)
I still watch "Tunes of Glory" every five or so years, and many of
my other Guinness favorites, astonishing in their quiet virtuosity,
like his George Smiley in "Smiley's People" (a BBC TV production).
Rent a Guinness movie and reacquaint yourself with one of this
century's great actors, who, like Henry Fonda, always dissolved
into the character he was playing. And if you read his two-part
auto-biography "Blessings in Disguise" (1985) and "My Name Escapes
Me" (1996) you will find him to be a wholly likeable man, boastful
of only one thing: "I am unaware of ever having lost a friend."
--Peter Kindlmann
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August 7, 2000
Sir Alec Guinness, Elegant Actor of Film
and Stage, Is Dead at 86
By ALBIN KREBS
[S] ir Alec [Image]
Guinness, the The Associated
elegant and Press
versatile British Sir Alec Guinness
actor known to in the film "Star
older audiences for Wars" in 1977.
films like "The Slide Show (8
Bridge on the River photos)
Kwai" and to a --------------------
whole new Articles About Sir
generation for his Alec Guiness
role as Obi-Wan * Colleagues Honor
Kenobi in "Star Sir Alec Guinness
Wars," died late (Apr. 28, 1987)
Saturday at a * A Reticent Alec
hospital in West Guinness Awaits a
Sussex, England. He Movie Tribute (Ap.
was 86. 27, 1987)
* TV Views of
Possessing a Guinness on Acting
plain-as-porridge (Nov. 8, 1986)
but chameleonlike * Guinness
face, Sir Alec was Remembers 'Kind
one of those gifted Hearts' (Oct. 26,
actors who left 1984)
audiences awed with * Alec Guinness
his seemingly Does a Second Tour
effortless, perfect of Duty as le
performances, which Carre's Spy (Dec.
he carried off with 20, 1981)
quiet subtlety and * Alec Guinness
undemonstrative Spies a Television
skill. Role (Sept. 28,
1980)
Although his * Sir Alec
notable career Reluctant Memoirist
encompassed the (Mar. 11, 1986)
stage and
television, it was Reviews of Books by
in motion pictures and About Sir Alec
that a much wider Guiness
audience found Sir * Guinness on Tap
Alec unforgettable (Oct. 31, 1999)
almost from the * A Friend to Man
moment he first and Bumblebee (Aug.
appeared on screen. 25, 1997)
* Conjuring Up
He was a most Enchantment in a
versatile Quiet Routine (Aug.
performer, capable 22, 1997)
of playing a wide * The Record Book
range of roles, of Guinness (Apr.
beginning in 1946, 6, 1986)
when he was Herbert
Pocket in the movie Slide Show
adaptation of * Elegant Actor of
Charles Dickens's Film and Stage (8
"Great photos)
Expectations." He
delighted millions Video
with his wittily * Alec Guinness as
etched, Obi-Wan Kenobi with
tour-de-force Mark Hamill as Luke
delineations of Skywalker in 'Star
assorted members of Wars'
an eccentric
English family --------------------
(including a [Image]
spinster and a The Associated
character in an oil Press
painting) in "Kind Guinness in British
Hearts and uniform during the
Coronets" in 1949. filming of "The
And he developed a Bridge on the River
cult following for Kwai" in 1957.
his merry antics in --------------------
"The Lavender Hill Mob" and "The
Captain's Paradise."
One of his most memorable dramatic roles
was the driven regimental colonel in
postwar Scotland in "Tunes of Glory." And
another military role, as the slightly
mad military prig of a colonel in "The
Bridge on the River Kwai" in 1957, won
him an Academy Award. He was knighted in
the late 1950's, but still had a long
career ahead of him.
Although it was often said that as a
master of disguise he was an actor with
no face of his own, it was, in fact, the
intelligent use of his malleable features
that served him so extraordinarily well.
In situations where lesser performers
required several lines of dialogue to
accomplish an effect, Sir Alec used his
own facial shorthand -- the faint curling
of a lip, a seemingly apologetic
furrowing of the brow, the quizzical
upturn of an eyebrow, a sudden brief
smile that could radiate approval or
signify chilly disdain. Particularly in
motion-picture close-up, he did not so
much act as allow his face to react to
what another actor was saying.
He was the antithesis of the personality
player or star, for he accepted small and
large roles that ranged from the starkly
dramatic to the predictably melodramatic
to the maniacally whimsical.
"Everything I've done has been on the
spur of the moment," the actor said some
years ago. "That's why my career has been
so haphazard."
Haphazard or not, it was a notable
career, one in which Sir Alec triumphed
in the theater in roles as startlingly
dissimilar as Hamlet and the suave
psychiatrist in T. S. Eliot's "Cocktail
Party." He was the drink-sodden and
doomed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in Sidney
Michaels's biographical drama "Dylan" and
the tragically broken and brainwashed
prelate in "The Prisoner."
He also played a Japanese businessman in
"A Majority of One" in 1962, the same
year that he was seen as the Arab prince,
Feisal, in "Lawrence of Arabia." He had
business savvy as well -- for his
memorable role in the 1977 blockbuster
"Star Wars," he received a percentage of
the gross.
Sir Alec was born in London on April 2,
1914. He was often mistaken for one of
the "brewery Guinnesses," he said, and in
his adulthood several members of that
family of millionaires cultivated his
friendship.
In his autobiography, "Blessings in
Disguise," published in the United States
in 1986, Sir Alec cleared up longtime
speculation as to whether he was an
illegitimate child. He was indeed, he
said.
"My birth certificate registers me as
Alec Guinness de Cuffe," he wrote. "My
mother at the time was a Miss Agnes
Cuffe; my father's name is left an
intriguing, speculative blank. When I was
five years old my mother married an Army
captain, a Scot named David Stiven, and
from then until I left preparatory school
I was known as Alec Stiven (a name I
rather liked, although I hated and
dreaded my stepfather)."
His mother's "violently unhappy marriage"
lasted only three years, ending when
Captain Stiven was posted to New Zealand,
Sir Alec said.
At Pembroke Lodge, a boarding school, the
headmaster discouraged the youth from
student theatricals by telling him,
"You're not the acting type," but later,
at Roborough School in Eastbourne, he won
the role of the breathless messenger in
"Macbeth."
The skinny, wild-eyed boy prepared for
his bit part the night of the performance
by running around the football field
twice, timing himself to dash through the
auditorium's side door and run onstage at
the moment of his cue ("Enter a
Messenger") and collapse in front of
Macbeth. "Gracious," he genuinely gasped,
"my lord (gulp!), I should report (gasp!)
that which I . . ." The schoolboy
audience burst into applause, and that
night an actor was born.
His schooling finished in 1932, he went
to work as an apprentice copywriter in a
London advertising agency. "The very
first thing I did was on impulse to phone
Martita Hunt and ask her to give me
acting lessons," he recalled years later.
"After a few lessons she sent me
packing."
In fact, after 12 lessons, Miss Hunt, a
renowned actress who later played Miss
Habersham with him in "Great
Expectations," told the drab and
emaciated young man in 1933, "You'll
never make an actor, Mr. Guinness."
Nevertheless, the would-be actor applied
to the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic
Art, which gave him a modest scholarship,
and he was able to study and live on a
single baked-beans-on-toast meal a day.
He went to classes but augmented his
training by following Londoners about,
mimicking their gait, their traits and
their gestures -- all of which would be
put to good use in a brilliant career to
come.
On the other hand, he found the studio
tiresome. "We did dancing and singing in
the mornings," he recalled later. "Tap
dancing was very much in vogue then so
I'm afraid we did an awful lot of that.
In the afternoons it was drama, and I
remember we were taught that there was a
correct and an incorrect way of executing
the most detailed stage business."
Mr. Guinness left
the Compton Studio Partial Filmography
after seven
months, but not Great Expectations,
before an annual 1946
recital at which Oliver Twist, 1948
the judges, John A Run for Your
Gielgud among Money, 1949
them, awarded him Kind Hearts and
a major prize. In Coronets, 1949
the years to come The Mudlark, 1950
he was to refer The Man in the White
often to the older Suit, 1951
actor as "the The Lavender Hill
great hero of my Mob, 1951
youth," and in The Captain's
fact on more than Paradise, 1953
one occasion the The Malta Story,
older man helped 1953
him along in his The Detective, 1954
career, The Prisoner, 1955
encouraging him The Ladykillers,
and offering him 1955
money when he The Bridge on the
needed it. River Kwai, 1957
The Horse's Mouth,
Some Struggles at 1958
the Beginning The Scapegoat, 1959
Tunes of Glory, 1960
In 1934, literally
a starving young Lawrence of Arabia,
actor, Mr. 1962
Guinness got work Fall of the Roman
in a lurid Empire, 1964
shipboard Doctor Zhivago, 1965
melodrama called
"Queer Cargo," in Hotel Paradiso, 1966
which he played
three small roles. The Quiller
Then Gielgud gave Memorandum, 1966
him his first big Scrooge, 1970
break, casting him Cromwell, 1970
as Osric and the Murder by Death,
Third Player in a 1976
production of Star Wars, 1977
"Hamlet." Star Wars: The
Empire Strikes
"My theater tide Back, 1980
began to come in Raise the Titanic,
because of Sir 1980
John's generosity, Star Wars: Return of
for from that the Jedi, 1983
point on I was A Passage to India,
never truly out of 1984
a job unless I Little Dorrit, 1988
wanted it that A Handful of Dust,
way," Sir Alec 1988
recalled in 1982. Kafka, 1991
He was from the Mute Witness, 1994
start a sort of critics' darling -- one
called his Osric in "Hamlet" an
"admirable popinjay," and later his Sir
Andrew Aguecheek in "Twelfth Night" was
pronounced "a collector's item."
At age 24 he played his first Hamlet in a
Tyrone Guthrie production at the Old Vic,
and although it was, on the whole, an
ego-chastening experience, one critic
kindly conceded that if the young actor's
Hamlet was short on force, his
performance was "touched with sweetness
and an aching sincerity."
Of his apprenticeship under Gielgud,
whose London company he had joined in
1937, Sir Alec said, "Working with him in
the 30's was a great and good discipline
because his precision demanded the same
from you." And, he said: "Going into
Tyrone Guthrie productions on the other
hand was a great liberating influence. He
could relax you as an actor where Gielgud
could make you feel stiff. I was
extraordinarily fortunate to be
oscillating between these opposite
poles."
Sir Alec, a quietly modest man known for
his unelaborate courtesy, was equally
grateful to others in the theater.
"Martita Hunt had been the first truly
sophisticated person I had met, and she
developed in me a sense of taste," he
said in an interview. "So did Edith
Evans, from whom I learnt things of value
technically."
Speaking of a producer and director at
the Old Vic, he said: "Michel
Saint-Denis, on the other hand, woke me
up to what theater was really all about
and was the first person to give me a
sense of reality for the words I was
speaking. Gielgud, Guthrie, Martita Hunt,
Edith Evans, Michel Saint-Denis -- they
were the formative people in my life."
Before enlisting in the Royal Navy in
1941, the actor had learned many lessons
well, having played 34 parts in 23 plays
by Shakespeare, Pinero, Chekhov, Shaw and
Sheridan. "It was obvious," Tyrone
Guthrie said about that period, "that he
was going to be tremendously talented. It
was not so obvious that he was going to
be so popular."
Mr. Guinness's "war" was distinguished
only by an incident that might have made
a vignette in a Guinness comedy. In the
invasion of Sicily, the
actor-turned-landing-craft-skipper was
actually the first person ashore, a
nonheroic deed of derring-don't blamed
entirely on an hour's error in orders.
When the admiral in charge blustered his
way ashore at last, the young Mr.
Guinness is said to have blandly assured
him that such tardy timing of an entrance
would never be tolerated in the theater.
On being mustered out, he resumed his
writing and stage career in the role of
Mitya in his own version of Dostoyevski's
"Brothers Karamazov," an artistic success
that failed at the box office.
His other stage appearances in the
postwar period included roles in Sartre's
"Vicious Circle," the Dauphin in Shaw's
"Saint Joan" and the title role in
Shakespeare's "Richard II." Of the last,
the critic for The Sunday Express of
London wrote: "Mr. Guinness is slight,
with an interesting angular face and a
clear, flexible voice. He has dignity,
but no majesty; he has range and control,
but no surprises. He is intensely good
without being great -- yet. His future
may bring that."
Shifting Over to the Movies
Having played so many classical roles, he
decided it was time to tackle the movies,
commenting, "On the stage I never seem to
have a chance to wear trousers."
He had been an extra in his first movie,
"Evensong," in 1934, and remembered it as
"a horrible experience." But in 1946, the
director David Lean cast him as Pocket in
the now-classic film version of "Great
Expectations."
Mr. Lean then allowed him to play an
extremely wicked Fagin in a controversial
version of "Oliver Twist," whose release
in the United States was held up for more
than two years because of pressure
brought by groups that considered the
Guinness characterization anti-Semitic.
The American version was also censored,
but among moviegoers worldwide, Alec
Guinness had clinched his claim to fame.
Now much in demand on the screen, in 1949
he made "A Run for Your Money" and "Kind
Hearts and Coronets"; in the latter, he
played several members of a dotty family
who fall prey to a murderous relative. It
was that set of performances that forever
sealed the actor's reputation as a
rubber-faced British zany in the
tradition of Sir Harry Lauder. He was
thenceforth to be hailed as the actor who
could play any part.
In 1949 he also created the role of the
seemingly omniscient psychiatrist in T.
S. Eliot's "Cocktail Party" at the
Edinburgh Festival, and the following
year went with it to Broadway, where his
performance bowled over critics and
audiences alike.
His first films were making him famous
and moderately wealthy, but he fancied
himself rather a tragedian than a
comedian and, once more, in 1951, assayed
"Hamlet" on the West End, directing the
play himself and presenting the tragic
Dane as cold, existential and matter of
fact. The flop, which he was to brood
over for years, propelled him more and
more into movies.
In early 1950's films he was a shrewdly
wary Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in
"The Mudlark"; a droopy-lidded, bowlered
and bespectacled bank clerk who engineers
the smuggling of a hoard of gold bullion
out of England in "The Lavender Hill
Mob"; and, in "The Man in the White
Suit," a chemist single-mindedly devoted
to developing a miracle fabric that would
never soil or wear out.
Yet another choice comedy role came in
1953 in "The Captain's Paradise," when he
played a Mediterranean ferryboat skipper
who commutes between wives as well as
ports. Audiences delighted in his sly,
mirthful charm as G. K. Chesterton's
priestly sleuth Father Brown in "The
Detective," also in 1954.
Then along came "The Ladykillers" in
1955, closely followed by his first
Hollywood film, a glossily cold remake of
Molnar's "The Swan" in which he starred
with Grace Kelly. Unlike many of his
compatriots who despised Hollywood, Sir
Alec said, "I found it warm in every way,
and would have stayed on had there been
work for me."
In his greatest film triumph, "The Bridge
on the River Kwai," Sir Alec was called
upon to be "both admirable and tiresome,"
he said, as the fascinatingly paradoxical
Colonel Nicholson, a British officer
interned in a hellish Japanese
prisoner-of-war camp in Burma. He made
Nicholson at times infuriating, at times
pitiable, a man whose strict adherence to
an old-fashioned code of military ethics
was both his scourge and his moral
salvation.
The next year he gave a full- rounded
portrayal of Gulley Jimson in "The
Horse's Mouth," a Swiftian satire in
which he was an unkempt old rogue of a
painter so obsessed by his art that he
had no regard for the feelings or needs
of anyone who dared impinge on his
creativity. Sir Alec received an Academy
Award nomination, not for his acting,
which was splendid, but for the
screenplay he wrote from the novel by
Joyce Cary.
Other film roles included "The
Comedians," "The Quiller Memorandum" and
Franco Zeffirelli's "Brother Sun, Sister
Moon," none of which reversed the
descending trend of the actor's film
fortunes in the early 1970's. In 1976,
however, he easily stole all his scenes
in Neil Simon's "Murder by Death," a
mystery spoof in which he played a blind
butler.
Then, in 1977, came the first installment
of George Lucas's legendary space sagas.
"I might never have been heard of again
if it hadn't been for 'Star Wars'," Sir
Alec once said. Yet he also said that he
didn't care for the "Star Wars" frenzy.
Among Sir Alec's later films were "A
Passage to India" (1984) and "Little
Dorrit" (1987). He also wrote another
book late in life, "My Name Escapes Me:
The Diary of a Retiring Actor" (1997).
Acclaim in London and on Broadway
Although films occupied most of his time,
Sir Alec did not entirely desert the
stage. He opened Canada's Shakespeare
Festival in Stratford, Ontario, in 1953,
appearing as "Richard III." In London the
following year he was praised for his
harrowing performance in "The Prisoner,"
Bridget Boland's intense study of the
brainwashing of a Roman Catholic cardinal
in an Iron-Curtain country. (He made the
film version in 1955.) He was also seen
onstage as a would-be adulterer in
Feydeau's "Hotel Paradiso" in 1956 and in
1960 had the title role in Terence
Rattigan's "Ross," a portrait of the
enigmatic T. E. Lawrence.
His greatest success on Broadway came in
1964, when Peter Glenville prodded him
into taking the tricky and difficult
title role in "Dylan," an anecdotal drama
dealing with the self-destructive poet
Dylan Thomas's last liquor-sodden months.
Sir Alec was the antithesis in character
of the Welsh poet, but he gave a
performance so heartwrenchingly sad that
he won almost every available acting
prize that season. Walter Kerr termed the
performance "mesmerizing," adding, "There
is a still center in the actor, a coal in
the ashes that defies us to will our eyes
away." (Years later, commenting on a
trifling play superbly acted by Sir Alec
in London, Mr. Kerr, not content with the
title Queen Elizabeth II had conferred on
the actor, dubbed him "St. Alec.")
Sir Alec's appearances on television were
rare but memorable. His most notable
achievement was the character of George
Smiley, the retired British intelligence
officer he created in two multipart
series seen in Britain and the United
States in the early 1980's -- "Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's
People," written by John le CarrÈ. His
understated characterization of the
aging, forlorn former spy underscored his
reputation as "an actor who makes you
forget that he is acting."
Sir Alec, who had been almost bald since
his late 20's, was often described as
"dignified" and "quiet, unassuming." He
lived in an unpretentious house in
Hampshire, in the south of England, with
his wife, Merula Salaman, who survives
him along with their son, Matthew. They
were married in 1938 when both were
appearing as animals in John Gielgud's
production of "Noah."
Of Sir Alec's acting technique, Kenneth
Tynan, the late critic, writer and
director, once said: "My point is that
the people Guinness plays best are all
iceberg characters, nine-tenths
concealed, whose fascination lies not in
how they look but in how their minds
work. The parts he plays are, so to
speak, injected hypodermically, not
tattooed all over him; the latter is the
star's way, and Guinness shrinks from
it."
The actor was mildly amused by such
esoteric analyses of his art. "I have no
ax to grind, and no interesting theories
to propound," he said. "If a play comes
my way which appeals to me and which I am
free to do, I do it. It's as simple as
that."
There was, however, one sort of script he
avoided, the sort proffered with the
assurance, "It was written just for you."
"I'm afraid I was a little abrupt
recently with a producer who sent me a
screenplay," he once confessed. "It was
rubbish, really. I sent it back with a
polite rejection. Then he came back with
the plea that 'we tailored it just for
you.' I replied simply, 'But no one came
to take the measurements.' "
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