“Robert Shaw”, The Legendary British Actor

 

“Robert Shaw” 

The Legendary British Actor

 

Actor, author, dramatist, and screenwriter Robert Archibald Shaw was from England. The son of former nurse Doreen Nora, who was born in Piggs Peak, Swaziland, and doctor Thomas Archibald Shaw, of Scottish ancestry, Robert Archibald Shaw was born on August 9, 1927, at 51 King Street in Westhoughton, Lancashire. He had a brother named Alexander, along with three sisters: Elisabeth, Joanna, and Wendy. When he was seven years old, the family relocated to Stromness, Orkney, in Scotland. After Shaw's father committed suicide himself when he was 12 years old, the family moved to Cornwall, where Shaw enrolled at the independent Truro School. He briefly served as a teacher at Saltburn-by-the-Glenhow Sea's Preparatory School in the North Riding of Yorkshire before enrolling in and graduating from London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1948.

 

Shaw started out as an actor by participating in regional productions across England. In a 1946 staging of Macbeth at Stratford, he played Angus. He spent two seasons performing at Stratford. He made an appearance in The Cherry Orchard on British TV in 1947, and he also performed portions of Macbeth and Twelfth Night there. In 1951, he appeared in The Lavender Hill Mafia in a minor role as a police laboratory technician near the end of the movie. The following year, in Caro William, he made his West End stage debut in London. He made an appearance on television in 1952's A Time to Be Born. In 1953, he went back to Stratford.

 

Shaw appeared in minor roles in The Dam Busters in 1955, The Scarlet Pimpernel on television in 1956, Doublecross and A Hill in Korea in 1956, both starring young performers including Michael Caine, and Hindle Wakes on television in 1957.

 

He played the title role in a West End production of The Long, the Short, and the Tall in 1959. For his performance as Henry VIII in the 1966 drama movie A Man for All Seasons, Shaw received nominations for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. In 1973's The Sting, he played the mobster Doyle Lonnegan, and in 1975's Jaws, he played the shark hunter Quint.

 

Shaw had ten children in total, two of whom were adopted from three different marriages. He had four daughters with Jennifer Bourke, his first wife. Elizabeth and Hannah are two of his four kids from his second marriage to actress Mary Ure. Through his wife's previous marriage with writer John Osborne, he adopted Colin. Ian Shaw, a son of Shaw, became an actor. He had one son, Thomas, with Virginia Jansen, his third and last wife, from 1976 until his death in 1978. He also adopted Charles, her son from a prior relationship. Rob Kolar, an American musician, and composer is Shaw's grandson. Ferdia Shaw, one of his grandsons, made his acting debut in the movie Artemis Fowl.

 

Shaw resided in Drimbawn House in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, Ireland, for the final seven years of his life. Shaw spent the majority of his life abusing booze, just like his father. On August 28, 1978, as he was making his way from Castlebar, County Mayo, to his house in Tourmakeady, Shaw suffered a heart attack and passed away in Ireland at the age of 51. He suddenly fell ill, pulled over, got out, and died on the side of the road. During the time, he was accompanied by his wife Virginia and son Thomas. He was shifted to Castlebar General Hospital and later declared dead. His ashes were dispersed close to his Tourmakeady house after his body was cremated. In his honor, a monument made of stone was unveiled there in August 2008.

 

Shaw has a Wetherspoons pub named after him in his birthplace of Westhoughton. Villain Sebastian Shaw from the X-Men comics is named and modeled after Shaw. Shaw's first novel, The Hiding Place, published in 1960, received positive reviews. His second novel The Sun Doctor in 1961, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1962.

 

Shaw became well known as a film actor when cast as assassin Donald "Red" Grant in the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love in 1963. For TV he adapted and appeared in a production of A Florentine Tragedy in 1963, and was Claudius in Hamlet at Elsinore in 1964 with Christopher Plummer. He played the title role in The Luck of Ginger Coffey in 1964, shot in Canada alongside Mary Ure, who became his second wife. He had a role in A Carol for Another Christmas in 1964. Shaw later said of his early career, "I could have been a straight leading man but that struck me as a boring life."

 

In 1964, Shaw returned to Broadway in a production of The Physicists directed by Peter Brook but it ran for only 55 performances. Shaw then embarked on a trilogy of novels – The Flag in 1965, The Man in the Glass Booth in 1967, and A Card from Morocco in 1969. He also adapted The Hiding Place into a screenplay for the film Situation Hopeless.

 

Shaw was the relentless Wehrmacht panzer commander Colonel Hessler in Battle of the Bulge in 1965, a young Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons in 1966, which earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; General George Armstrong Custer in Custer of the West in 1967, Martin Luther in Luther, and The Birthday Party in 1968, directed by William Friedkin.

 

In 1967, London had great success with his play The Man in the Glass Booth. He received the most acclaim for his writing when he adapted The Man in the Glass Booth for the theatre. The story of a guy who, at various points in the narrative, is either a Jewish businessman posing as a Nazi war criminal or a Nazi war criminal posing as a Jewish businessman is complicated and morally ambiguous in both the book and the play. When the play was produced in the UK and the US, there was a lot of debate about it. Some critics praised Shaw for his "sly, clever and sophisticated analysis of the moral dilemmas of nationality and identity," while others were harshly critical of how Shaw handled such a delicate subject.

 

Shaw was one of many stars in the Battle of Britain in 1969, with the role of Sailor Malan written specifically for him. He had the lead in The Royal Hunt of the Sun in 1969 and in 1970, Shaw returned to Broadway playing the title role in Gantry, a musical adaptation of Elmer Gantry which ran for just one performance, despite co-starring Rita Moreno. His play Cato Street, about the 1820 Cato Street Conspiracy, was produced for the first time in 1971 in London. He appeared in Old Times on Broadway in 1971.

 

As an actor he appeared in A Town Called Bastard in 1971, a spaghetti Western; Young Winston in 1972, as Lord Randolph Churchill; A Reflection of Fear in 1972; The Hireling in 1973; had a cameo in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad in 1973; played mobster Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting in 1973, was a huge hit; was the subway-hijacker and hostage-taker "Mr. Blue" in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in 1974. He made his final appearance on Broadway, in a production of Dance of Death, in 1974.

 

Shaw achieved his greatest film stardom after playing the shark-obsessed fisherman Quint in Jaws in 1975. Shaw then appeared in two more films in 1975, End of the Game and Diamonds. Robin and Marian in 1976 as the Sheriff of Nottingham opposite Audrey Hepburn and Sean Connery; Swashbuckler in 1976; playing the lighthouse keeper and treasure-hunter Romer Treece in The Deep in 1977, and as Israeli Mossad agent David Kabakov in Black Sunday in 1977.

 

When Force 10 from Navarone was being filmed in 1978, Shaw said "I'm seriously considering making this my last movie. I've run out of meaningful things to say. I find some of the lines revolting. In movies, I'm not at ease. The last movie I enjoyed producing is beyond me to recall." In 1979, he produced Avalanche Express, his final movie. Within months of one another, Shaw passed away in August 1978 from a heart attack, and Mark Robson, a director-producer, passed away in June 1978.

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