Richard Todd

In Britain he is best remembered for playing a wide assortment of clean-cut heroes.  He was rather dour, as stiff-upper-lipped as they came.  Americans, as a rule, didn't warm to those traits and yet Richard Todd enjoyed success and fame for the 9-10 years he spent making films for 20th Century Fox.  What did put him in the forefront was a handsome face, a gorgeous voice and an easy, pleasing way.  I always enjoyed him.  He was even more fun when he played a villain, which wasn't often enough.

Todd was born in Dublin in 1919, the son of a military officer who was also an international Irish rugby player.  He was still a youngster when the family moved to India where his father performed military duties.  When they left they moved to England.  Todd's life there was one of private boarding schools which to a degree he appreciated because his parents were always fighting.  His father was a drinker and a prodigious spender and his mother was usually depressed. 

Upon leaving school, Todd trained for a potential military career at Sandhurst.  His mother had dreamed of such a thing for her son and was very pleased.  But shortly thereafter he enrolled in the Italia Conti Academy in London to pursue a career in acting.  This change brought about an estrangement with his mother.  At 19 when he learned that she committed suicide, he paid scant attention.  He said he didn't believe in wallowing in self-pity.  That's good because it would be put to a good test later on.

His first acting job was in a 1936 production of Twelfth Night.  He then worked in regional theater for a spell, working often with the Welsh Players.  He then co-founded the Dundee Repertory Theater in Scotland, a great passion, and he appeared as an extra in several British films.  He performed at the Dundee in John Patrick's beautifully-written play, The Hasty Heart, in the supporting role of Yank.

Todd enlisted in the British Army in 1941 and served through 1946.  He had a distinguished career as a paratrooper and was one of the first to parachute into Normandy on D-Day and apparently he was the first Irishman.  He was an officer in the 7th Batallion on D-Day. He had some very close calls in which others were killed.  In 1946 in Palestine the Jeep in which he was riding overturned and he broke both shoulders.  It was the end of his military career.  He may have been ambivalent about that but he was always extremely proud of his military service.

With Patricia Neal in The Hasty Heart

Once again a civilian, Todd in 1948 appeared on the London stage, again in The Hasty Heart, but this time as the lead as the corporal Lachie.  He then played Lachie again on Broadway when he replaced Richard Basehart.  It was around this time that Warner Brothers bought the screen rights to the play.

The Hasty Heart (1949) is the gripping story of Lachie, a dying and bitter Scot in the final days of WWII in a Burmese M.A.S.H. unit, who watches in dismay as fellow soldiers pack up to return home.  He doesn't make it easy for those around him despite the kind nurse and a few other soldiers who try their best to aid him.  Every heart-tugging trick known to man was thrown in to add some serious emotion to this well-written story.  This is, for me, Todd's best acting and he received his only Oscar nomination for his efforts.  Right in there with him, however, is Patricia Neal as the understanding nurse and Ronald Reagan as Yank.

In 1949 Todd also married for the first time.  The union would last for 21 years and produce a son and a daughter.  In 1960 he also had a son out of wedlock, a child to whom he remained close.  The marriage would be shakier for its final 11 years.  

Hitchcock came calling.  The project was Stage Fright (1950).  Todd was fourth-billed after Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich and Michael Wilding.  The story concerns a fledgling English actress (Wyman) who helps a friend (Todd) prove he did not murder his actress-girlfriend's (Dietrich) husband.  He claims she did it.  Wyman gets a job as Dietrich's maid so she can spy on her.  The film could have been better but Todd gives a memorable performance.  Wyman was miscast and Hitchcock didn't care for her.  I suppose an English actress wasn't available to play an English actress.

A King Vidor-directed minor noir, Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), stars Ruth Roman as an actress looking to recover her health at a dude ranch.  She falls for the ranch's owner (Todd), a man who is suspected of killing his first wife.  Todd acted like he didn't want to be in the film and was outshone by Roman, Mercedes McCambridge and Zachary Scott.

In 1952-53 he made three British films for Disney... The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue.  All three were very popular in Britain and in Europe but not so much in the U.S.  In 2002 he would be named a Disney legend by the company.

His first Hollywood-based film came with that Fox contract.  So did international fame.   A Man Called Peter (1955) is my favorite Todd movie.  It is a touching performance I have never forgotten.  We showcased the film earlier this month.

England would say The Dam Busters (1955) is Todd's most famous film.  For sure it was an epic British war movie.  It is the true 1943 story of Operation Chastise when a squadron attacked three dams in Nazi Germany.  Much attention was put on the bomb being used.  It was called a bouncing bomb, designed to bounce across water to its target.  While he loved making the film (war stories greatly appealed to him), he had a scene where he had to write to parents and tell them their sons had been killed in a raid.  He did that in real life as well and found recreating the event for a film upsetting. 

The Virgin Queen (1955) was Bette Davis's second time at bat as Queen Elizabeth I and Todd plays Sir Walter Raleigh who schmoozes the Queen into allowing him to make a trip to The New World.  Costar Joan Collins and a shiny cast of character actors find their places in the proceedings which don't amount to much.  Todd apparently got on well with his volatile leading lady.  He knew something about good manners and she liked that he did.

Liz and Walt

D-Day the Sixth of June (1956) was Todd's first movie dealing with Normandy although battle sequences occur only in the final 15 minutes.  The rest of the story concerns a British officer (Todd) and an American officer (Robert Taylor), en route to Normandy, who reminisce about their romances with the same woman (Dana Wynter).

Otto Preminger called Todd to play the sturdy Dunois, bastard of Orleans, in Saint Joan (1957).  Too bad he answered the phone.  Preminger staged one of his grand productions in the press.  It included a talent search for the actress to play the title role.  Jean Seberg won it over 18,000 hopefuls although it was hardly a win.  Preminger harangued her something awful and the press crucified her and she developed an ever-lasting doubt about her talent.

Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958) is a modest thriller that I have always remembered because of Todd's sinister performance.  He shows up at Anne Baxter's home claiming to be her brother who was killed the year before in a car accident.  Implausible?  Yes but nicely done nonetheless.

His last film under his Fox contract was Intent to Kill (1958), a slight little British noir about a Canadian surgeon who is asked to assist in a delicate brain operation on a South American president hiding from a gang of assassins.  Of course, I liked it and thought Todd and his costar Betsy Drake (Cary Grant's wife at the time) were on the mark.

The end of his Fox contract also drew the curtain on his best period as an actor.  It's not that he didn't have some good films left in him but when he returned to Britain, perhaps there wasn't quite the fuss made over him as had happened in the States.  Fuss or not, even Americans in short time seemed to forget about him as well.  His classy gentleman persona had a short shelf life.  

Todd had always had an interest in farming and around the late 50s-early 60s he bought his first spread.  Basically it was a dairy farm.  On one farm or another, he would keep at it for most of the rest of his life.  He said he enjoyed the country life, being among farmers, and hunting pheasants.  It is another reason, of course, that his acting career took a bit of a back seat.  Nothing thrilled him like the life of the gentleman farmer.

From L:  Todd, Harris, Harvey

He declined the lead role in 1961's The Guns of Navarone.  The part was eventually played by Gregory Peck and the film was a huge success.  Instead he starred in The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961) alongside Laurence Harvey and Richard Harris.  Also known as Jungle Fighters, the story involves a 7-man unit of British soldiers who get lost while on a mission in a Malaysian jungle in a Japanese-controlled area.  It has its moments with acting honors going to Harris. 

Around the same time he heard that Ian Fleming personally requested him for the role of James Bond in 1962's Dr. No but he was busy making the above film and could not commit.

Todd was absolutely thrilled that his old Fox boss, Darryl Zanuck, included him in the large, glittering cast of The Longest Day (1962)  He played Major John Howard, the officer he actually assisted at the Orne Bridge in Normandy.  It was a very meaningful role for Todd and the film was very important to him.  It was a top-grosser for the studio. 

Maureen O'Hara leaves Todd, her neglectful but stern husband, and their two children to live with her new lover, Rossano Brazzi, in Italy in The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965).  The children come for a visit and along with Brazzi's child decide to break-up the romance.  I enjoyed the proceedings, greatly heightened, of course, by beautiful Italian scenery but the film was not a success.  It was the final film of one of my favorite directors, Delmer Daves. 

Todd made 50 feature films and we have only dealt with 13 of them and briefly mentioned three more.  The others are mainly British films, most of which I've never heard of.  My guess is that most of them never arrived in the States.  Todd also did a lot of television, British and American, and performed in a number of plays.   Of course he managed an episode of Murder She Wrote.

 

By the mid-60s Todd discovered that his especially well-spoken, well-dressed British actor persona had slipped out of fashion.  In the late 60s he formed Triumph Theater Productions with two partners and they produced over 100 plays, musicals and pantomimes, some of which starred Todd.

In 1970 Todd and his first wife were divorced and he immediately married his second wife with whom he would have two sons.  Their marriage would last until 1992.  

He put out an autobiography in 1986, Caught in the Act.   Three years later he wrote In Camera, An Autobiography Continued.

He was knighted (OBE) in 1993.  You may call him Sir Richard Todd, thank you veddy much. 

In 1997 one of his sons from his second marriage died by suicide due to a reaction he had from taking an acne medication.  In 2005 his son from his first marriage took his own life following marital difficulties.   

That dapper fellow with the golden voice who entertained me in 10 or so movies over the years, that charming Man Called Peter, the gentleman farmer, a basically happy man who experienced terrible personal tragedy died from cancer at age 90 in Lincolnshire, England in late 2009.  He is buried between his two deceased sons.

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the directors