Cause of death Cancer Name Richard Todd Occupation ActorFilm director Role Soldier | Allegiance United Kingdom Height 1.75 m Years of service 1941–46 | |
Full Name Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd Battles/wars Second World WarOperation TongaOperation Overlord Children Seamus Palethorpe-Todd, Jeremy Palethorpe-Todd Spouse Virginia Mailer (m. 1970–1992), Catherine Stewart Crawford Grant-Bogle (m. 1949–1970) Movies The Dam Busters, The Longest Day, The Story of Robin Hood and, Stage Fright, The Hasty Heart Similar People |
Richard Todd - Actor Of The Year (1950)
Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd OBE (11 June 1919 – 3 December 2009) was an Irish-born British soldier and stage and film actor.
Contents
- Richard Todd Actor Of The Year 1950
- Richard todd
- Early life
- Service in World War 2
- Acting career
- The Hasty Heart
- A Man Called Peter and The Dam Busters
- Professional decline
- Unmade projects
- Personal life
- Legacy
- Death
- Box office rankings
- Select theatre credits
- Books
- Filmography
- References
Richard todd
Early life
Richard Todd was born as Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd in Dublin, Ireland. His father, Andrew William Palethorpe Todd, was an Irish physician and an international Irish rugby player who gained three caps for his country. Richard spent a few of his childhood years in India, where his father, an officer in the British Army, served as a physician.
Later his family moved to Devon and Todd attended Shrewsbury School. Upon leaving school, Todd trained for a potential military career at Sandhurst before beginning his acting training at the Italia Conti Academy.
This change in career led to estrangement from his mother. When he learned at age 19 that she had committed suicide, he did not grieve long for her, he admitted in later life.
He first appeared professionally as an actor at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in 1936 in a production of Twelfth Night. He played in regional theatres and then co-founded the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1939. He also appeared as an extra in films like Good Morning, Boys (1937), A Yank at Oxford (1938) and Old Bones of the River (1939).
Service in World War 2
At the beginning of World War II Todd enlisted into the British Army, receiving a commission in 1941. Initially, he served in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) before joining the Parachute Regiment, being assigned to the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion as part of the British 6th Airborne Division.
On 6 June 1944, as a captain, he participated in Operation Tonga during the D-Day landings. Todd was among the first British officers to land in Normandy as part of Operation Overlord. His Battalion parachuted in after the initial glider-borne forces had landed with the objective of capturing the Pegasus Bridge near Caen. During the operation he met Major John Howard on the bridge, and organized the repelling of several German counterattacks.
(As an actor Todd would later play Major Howard in the film The Longest Day, recreating these events for a cinema production).
Acting career
After the war, Todd was unsure what direction to take in his career. His former agent, Robert Lennard, had become a casting agent for Associated British Picture Corporation and advised him to try out for the Dundee Repertory Company. Todd did so, performing in plays such as Claudia, where he appeared with Claudia Grant-Bogle. Lennard arranged for a screen test and Associated British offered him a long-term contract in 1948. He was cast in the lead in For Them That Trespass (1949), directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. The film was a minor hit and Todd's career was launched.
The Hasty Heart
Todd had appeared in the Dundee Repertory stage version of John Patrick's play The Hasty Heart, portraying the role of Yank and was subsequently chosen to appear in the 1948 London stage version of the play, this time in the leading role of Cpl. Lachlan McLachlan. This led to his being cast in that role in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of the play, which was filmed in Britain alongside Ronald Reagan and Patricia Neal. Todd was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role in 1949. He was also voted favourite British male film star in Britain's National Film Awards. The film was the tenth most popular movie at the British box office in 1949.
Todd was now in much demand. He was lent out to a new company, Constellation Films, to appear in a thriller, The Interrupted Journey (1949). Alfred Hitchcock then used him in Stage Fright (1950), opposite Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman – Hitchcock's first British film located in Britain since 1939.
Associated British put him in a drama, Portrait of Clare (1950), which did not perform particularly well at the box office. Neither did Flesh and Blood (1951), for London Films, in which Todd had a dual role. Director King Vidor offered Todd a lead in a Hollywood movie, Lightning Strikes Twice (1951). Far more popular was The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), in which Todd played the title role for the Disney Corporation.
Associated British put him in another thriller, 24 Hours of a Woman's Life (1952), with Merle Oberon. The Rank Organisation borrowed him for a thriller, Venetian Bird (1952), directed by Ralph Thomas.
Disney reunited the Robin Hood team in The Sword and the Rose (1953), with Todd as Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. It was not as popular as Robin Hood in the US but performed well in Europe. The same went for Disney's, Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1953), in which Todd played the title role. Disney pulled back on making costume films as a result.
In 1953, he appeared in a BBC Television adaptation of the novel Wuthering Heights, as Heathcliff. Nigel Kneale, responsible for the adaptation, said the production came about purely because Todd had turned up at the BBC and told them that he would like to play Heathcliff for them. Kneale had to write the script in only a week as the broadcast was rushed into production.
A Man Called Peter and The Dam Busters
Todd's career received a boost when 20th Century-Fox signed him to a non-exclusive contract and cast him as the United States Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall in the film version of Catherine Marshall's best selling biography, A Man Called Peter (1955), which was a popular success.
Even more popular was The Dam Busters (1955) in which Todd played Wing Commander Guy Gibson. This was the most successful film at the British box office in 1955 and which would become the defining role of Todd's movie career.
20th Century Fox offered Todd another historical picture, The Virgin Queen (1955), playing Sir Walter Raleigh opposite Bette Davis' Queen Elizabeth I. It do not do as well as Peter.
In France he played Axel Fersen opposite Michele Morgan in Marie Antoinette Queen of France (1956), which was popular in France but not widely seen elsewhere. Fox cast him in a war film, D-Day the Sixth of June (1956), opposite Robert Taylor, which was a mild success.
Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst (1957) was an attempt to repeat the success of The Dam Busters, with the same director (Michael Anderson) and Todd playing another real life hero. It was popular in Britain but not on the scale of The Dam Busters. He was Dunois, Bastard of Orléans in Saint Joan (1957), directed by Otto Preminger.
Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958) was a thriller with director Anderson for Associated British. Intent to Kill (1958) was another thriller, this time for Fox, with Betsy Drake. He returned to war films with Danger Within (1958), a POW story. Then there were more thrillers, with Never Let Go (1960), directed by John Guillermin and co-starring Peter Sellers in a rare dramatic role.
Few of these films had been overly popular but Todd was still the top billed star of The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961), with Laurence Harvey and Richard Harris. He tried comedy with Don't Bother to Knock (1961), then made an adventure film in South Africa, The Hellions (1961).
Professional decline
His career in films rapidly declined in the 1960s as the counter-culture movement in the Arts became fashionable in England, with Social-realist dramas commercially replacing the more middle-class orientated dramatic productions that Todd's performance character-type had previously excelled in.
The Boys (1962) was a courtroom drama film. He had a decent part among the many stars in The Longest Day (1962), Todd's biggest hit in a long time. The Very Edge (1963) was a thriller, then he played Harry Sanders in two films for Harry Alan Towers, Death Drums Along the River (1965) and Coast of Skeletons (1965). He also had a small role in Anderson's, Operation Crossbow (1965).
In 1964 he was a member of the jury at the 14th Berlin International Film Festival.
He had a supporting part in The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965) and the lead in The Love-Ins (1968).
In the 1970s, he gained new fans when he appeared as the reader for Radio Four's Morning Story. In the 1980s his distinctive voice was heard as narrator of the series Wings Over the World, a show about the history of aviation shown on Arts & Entertainment television. He appeared before the camera in the episode about the Lancaster bomber. Todd continued to act on television, including roles in Virtual murder, Silent Witness and in the Doctor Who story Kinda in 1982. In 1989 he appeared in the first episode of the sixth series of the television whodunit; Murder, She Wrote in which he played Colonel Alex Schofield in the episode entitled Appointment in Athens.
He formed Triumph Theatre Productions with Duncan C Weldon and Paul Elliott in the late 1960s. This company produced over 100 plays, musicals and pantomimes all over the country. Some of them starred Todd.
His active acting career extended into his eighties, and he made several appearances in British shows such as Heartbeat and The Royal, his last appearance in Heartbeat being when he played Major Harold Beecham in the 2007 episode Seeds of Destruction.
Richard Todd was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1993.
He was the subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions, in March 1960 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios, and in November 1988, when Michael Aspel surprised him on stage at the Theatre Royal Windsor.
Unmade projects
Todd was the first choice of author Ian Fleming to play James Bond in Dr. No, but a scheduling conflict gave the role to Sean Connery. In the 1960s, Todd unsuccessfully attempted to produce a film of Ian Fleming's The Diamond Smugglers and a television series based on true accounts of the Queen's Messengers. He was also announced for a proposed film about William Shakespeare.
In his book British Film Character Actors (1982), Terence Pettigrew described Todd as 'an actor who made the most of what he had, which could be summed up as an inability to sit still while there was a horse to leap astride, a swollen river to swim or a tree to vanish into.'
Personal life
Both Todd's marriages ended in divorce. His first was to actress Catherine Grant-Bogle, whom he met in Dundee Repertory and was married to from 1949 until 1970; they had a son Peter (1952–2005) and a daughter Fiona. In 1960 he had a son Jeremy with model Patricia Nelson. He was married to model Virginia Mailer from 1970 until 1992; they had two sons, Andrew and Seamus (1977–1997). In retirement, Todd lived in the village of Little Ponton and later in Little Humby, 8 miles from Grantham, Lincolnshire.
Two of Todd's five children committed suicide. In 1997, Seamus Palethorpe-Todd shot himself in the head in the family home in Lincolnshire. An inquest determined that the suicide might have been a depressive reaction to the drug he was taking for severe acne. On 21 September 2005, Peter killed himself with a shotgun in East Malling, Kent, following marital difficulties.
His sons' suicides affected Todd profoundly; he admitted to visiting their adjoining graves regularly. He told the Daily Mail, that dealing with those tragedies was like his experience of war, "You don't consciously set out to do something gallant. You just do it because that is what you are there for."
Legacy
Todd, with his own military record, was a keen supporter of remembrance events especially those associated with the Normandy landings and the Dambusters. He continued to be identified in the public consciousness with Guy Gibson, the role he played in The Dam Busters.
Todd appeared at many Dambusters' anniversaries at Derwent Dam. His final appearance was in May 2008 with Les Munro (the last surviving pilot from the raid on the Ruhr dams).
The actor also narrated at least one TV documentary about the Dambusters and contributed forewords to many books on the subject, including The Dam Busters by Jonathan Falconer (2003), Filming the Dam Busters by Jonathan Falconer (2005) and most recently Bouncing-Bomb Man: The Science of Sir Barnes Wallis by Iain Murray (2009).
Death
Todd, who had been suffering from cancer, died in his sleep at a nursing home in Bourne in Lincolnshire on 3 December 2009. He is survived by his daughter Fiona and two of his four sons, Jeremy and Andrew. He was buried between his two sons Seamus and Peter at St. Guthlac's Church in Little Ponton, Lincolnshire, England. The epitaph reads – Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd, 1919–2009, husband of Virginia and Kitty, loving father of Peter, Fiona, Andrew, Seamus and Jeremy, exit Dashing young Blade – a reference to the description made by the Queen Mother of the actor.
Box office rankings
British exhibitors regularly listed Todd among the most popular local stars at the box office in various polls: