Richard Attenborough – A retrospective season at Chiswick Cinema

Images above: Richard Attenborough in In Which We Serve (1942); images IMDb

Actor, producer, director – one of the most prolific film makers Britain has ever known

The first time I was aware of Richard Attenborough as an actor was when I watched Noel Coward’s In Which We Serve as a child. Weekend television was full of Black and White war films and I saw it with my father, who had served in the navy on destroyers during WWII.

Like the sailors in the story, he had lived through the experience of having his ship torpedoed, twice, in the shark filled waters off South Africa. Watching the film brought it all back to him: the memory of being in the oily water waiting for rescue and as ships came and went, not knowing if he would be picked up. It was the only time he talked to me about what he had gone through in the war.

What I did not realise until I started doing some research on Richard Attenborough in preparation for meeting his son Michael, was that this had been Richard Attenborough’s first film role at the age of 19. His name did not even appear in the credits, but his performance as the young sailor who cracked up and deserted his post under fire was so memorable I can visualise it now all these years later.

By the time he was 26 he was one of the most popular actors in British film, after the success of Brighton Rock (1948) based on Graham Greene’s novel, in which he played the psychopathic gangster Pinkie Brown so creepily.

Image above: Richard Attenborough in Brighton Rock with Carol Marsh; image IMDb

There followed a slew of films in the 1950s and ’60s: I’m All Right Jack (1959) with Peter Sellers, The Great Escape (1963) and The Sand Pebbles (1966) with Steve McQueen, The Flight of the Phoenix ((1965) with James Stewart, and Doctor Dolittle (1967) with Rex Harrison, before he turned his hand to producing and directing.

His credits as director are equally if not even more prolific and impressive: Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Young Winston (1972), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Gandhi (1982), A Chorus Line (1985), Cry Freedom (1987), Chaplin (1992), Shadowlands (1993) and Closing the Ring (2007), the love story set in Belfast during the Second World War starring Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer and Pete Postlethwaite which was to be his last film as producer and director.

Unless you are under the age of 30, tell me you have not been profoundly moved by at least one of these films, or that they do not serve as markers to various points in your life. No wonder he was President of RADA and BAFTA (and Chelsea FC. A man has to have a hobby).

Where to start though, when it comes to arranging a retrospective to mark the centenary of his birth? Michael Attenborough, no mean achiever himself in the world of theatre, has lived in Chiswick for more than 30 years and has chosen a programme with Chris Parker at Chiswick Cinema of five films to run this year and another five next year, to highlight his late father’s achievements.

Image above: Michael Attenborough at home in Chiswick with his father’s Oscar

Film programme

This is the programme for this year:

Sunday 18 June – The Angry Silence (1960) Actor

Sunday 9 July – Gandhi (1982) Director

Sunday 30 July – The Great Escape (1963) Actor

Sunday 10 September – Shadowlands (1993) Director

Saturday 11 November – Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) Director

Image above: Richard Attenborough in The Angry Silence with Michael Craig; image IMDb

The Angry Silence – “a landmark film”

“I chose The Angry Silence” Michael told The Chiswick Calendar, “because for me it was a landmark film.

“Before he did it, he said he was going to give up acting because he was fed up with being cast as the psychotic boy next door and he was always cast much younger than he was as well, so he set up Beaver Films with Bryan Forbes and started producing films.

“He couldn’t get anyone to put up the money for this film as it was controversial, so they made it as a profit-sharing venture and I think this was one of the first, if not the first example of a profit-sharing film. It got made because everyone did it for nothing. ”

The film is about a young factory worker who decides to stand up against his workmates and fellow union members when they want to hold a wildcat strike. An odd choice for a man who was a committed lifelong supporter of the Labour Party?

“It’s not a film against striking. It’s a plea for democracy, it’s about the abuse of democracy.

“The miners union in Wales said they wouldn’t show it and he asked if he could go and show it to them and talk to them about it. They ended up not only showing it but giving him a miner’s lamp, which I have upstairs. He was very active on miners’ rights.”

Image above: Michael Attenborough with a photograph of himself and his father

The film was a critical success and even though he had not set out to play the lead, doing so had the unexpected bonus of boosting Richard Attenborough’s acting career.

“It transformed his acting career. He was offered older parts and was offered big character roles which would never have come his way otherwise.”

It led to the role of serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place (1971). After a stint as director he came back to acting again in the 1990s in the Jurassic Park films, Miracle on 34th Street (1994) and Elizabeth (1998).

Michael was ten when his father made The Angry Silence. He remembers it well because he went to the set with him and heard his lines in the car on the way there and while he was doing his make-up.

The family lived in a big house in Richmond: Michael, his two younger sisters and their parents. His mother was the actress Sheila Sim. Michael often went with his father to the film studio.

“For a while I was quite nervous, very aware not to be in the wrong place, not to stand in an actor’s eyeline for example, but he tended to use the same crew again and again, the sound man, the continuity woman and so on, so I got to know the crew quite well.”

Image above: Oh! What a Lovely War; Image IMDb

Oh! What a Lovely War – first film as a director

Oh! What a Lovely War was another turning point. The satire on WWI used the metaphor of a seaside pier as the entry point from which young men experienced the harsh reality of the trenches.

The music hall performers at the end of pier theatre (including a young Maggie Smith) enticed them up onto the stage to take the King’s shilling and the shooting gallery morphed into the battlefield.

“It was based on Joan Littlewood’s theatre show and he found a metaphor that stood in for the theatricality of it.”

Watching the filming of Oh! What a Lovely War in Brighton was how Michael met his first wife at the age of 18, the actress Jane Seymour. Jane was one of the chorus girls.

“I met Jane at 18. We married when I was 21, separated when I was 24 and got divorced when I was 26. We are still good friends.”

Richard Attenborough was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Director for this directorial debut and went on to be nominated for Young Winston, A Bridge Too Far, Gandhi and Cry Freedom.

“Dad was so ferociously committed to his work, he led a completely crazy life, running around filing and doing political work.”

Their relationship was not always easy. With a father as successful as Richard Attenborough, the environmentalist / documentary maker David Attenborough as his uncle, and a university academic for a grandfather, failure in their family was not considered an option.

“He was a very different dad to me than he was to my two sisters. I was quite frightened of him as a child. He was an authority figure.”

Richard had a very combative relationship with his own father, Michael told me, especially as his father was Principal of Leicester University College and Richard did not want to go to university. He gained his father’s respect by winning a scholarship to RADA, but suffered an intellectual inferiority complex despite his achievements as an actor.

“David once said his older brother ‘failed exams with impressive regularity’, so I was pushed because he didn’t want me to feel the same way.

“I suddenly got a wonderful English teacher at Westminster and began to get interested in literature and as I got better academically he mellowed. I went to a radical chic university – Sussex, which was a delight.

Richard was given the honorary position of Chancellor of Sussex Univeristy in 1998, a position which he held for ten years.

“I used to joke with him that I got him into university.”

Michael grew up to be a theatre director who has been artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, Principal Associate Director and Executive Producer of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Associate Director of a number of other theatres around the country before that.

He is Director Emeritus of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and was awarded a CBE in 2013 for services to theatre.

Image above: Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim with all eight Oscars

Gandhi – winner of eight Oscars

Back to the films in the retrospective season. Gandhi, the epic historical biography of the man who led India’s successful campaign for independence, won eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, so it is a no-brainer to include the film in the season.

“It is his momentous film” said Michael. “His stand-out biggest and best achievement. It was an 18 year obsession because he couldn’t get the money.”

The Hollywood studios would not back it because they wanted a big star to take the lead and in their minds there was no such Indian actor.

“They told him he was mad. Bigger fools them.”

Image above: Richard Attenborough filming Gandhi with Ben Kingsley

Michael claims the credit for suggesting Ben Kingsley, (an English actor who is half Indian). When Gandhi was made Michael was in his early 30s and already well established in his theatre career.

“He would pick my brains. I knew Ben. I knew his work and I knew him socially. I took dad to see him in Baal, a Bertolt Brecht play that was on at the Donmar Warehouse.”

Apparently Richard didn’t think much of the play, but did rate Ben, who went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor. Michael also introduced him to the composer George Fenton, who he signed up to produce the music. He and Ravi Shankar were nominated for Best Original Score but did not win. He and Richard went on to work together on Cry Freedom and Shadowlands.

“Actors liked working with dad” Michael told me. “Ben Kingsley paid him a very nice compliment. He said: ‘he democratised every space he walked into’.

“He inspired huge loyalty because of his sense of commitment, his passion and his energy.”

Image above: Richard Attenborough and Charles Bronson in the tunnel; Steve McQueen making a break for it

The Great Escape

“We picked this because it is just such an iconic movie. Even football crowds still sing the theme tune.”

Richard had always turned down offers from Hollywood when his children were young because he wanted to keep his family together. The Great Escape was deemed to be OK because it did not mean working in LA, it was filmed in Germany, and it saw the beginning of a “lovely relationship” with Steve McQueen, said Michael. They went on to make The Sand Pebbles together three years later.

“Many years later dad got a phone call from Steve McQueen when he was in LA. He went to meet him in a downtown bar. It was dark inside and down the far end of  the bar was this man wearing a baseball cap. They spend a couple of hours chatting. Eventually dad said he had to go to a meeting and he was on his way out when McQueen called him back and said ‘I love you, you know that, don’t you?’

“A week later he died. He didn’t tell dad he was dying of cancer but he was wearing the cap because he was having chemo and his hair was falling out.”

“I also had an extraordinary meeting with Robert Downey Junior after dad had died. He did the tribute to dad at BAFTA.

“I think Dad was a bit of a father figure to him. He gave him this walloping great break as Chaplin. Dad felt some strain during the filming, but stayed calm and thought Robert was a genius.’

“He had an avuncular / paternal relationship with some of these actors. He had an easy way with everyone.”

A hard person to come out from under the shadow of?

“I readily admit there was a Richard shaped monkey on my back for quite a long while, but he loved my career. He loved Sussex University and my theatre career.

“He was a devoted follower of everything I directed, but not (tactfully) at first nights. But when it came to my first on the legendary main stage, [at Stratford] he would not be deterred!”

Peter was directing Othello. 

“He said ‘are you kidding? You think I’m not going to see my son’s opening night? He was very proud.

“When I was awarded my CBE I was in my mid-sixties and he was in Denville Hall, a care home for retired actors. I remember thinking as I was driving down to see him how pleased he would be and realising that I was still trying to please him. He was thrilled.”

Image above: Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins in Shadowlands; Richard Attenborough directing; Images IMDb

Shadowlands

Shadowlands tells the story of how C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned Christian theologian, writer and professor, lead a passionless life until he met spirited poet Joy Gresham from the US.

“I picked Shadowlands because it was his favourite of all the films he’d directed. It was the fifth movie he’d done with Anthony Hopkins. They got on like a house on fire.

“Tony said dad was just very practical. He understood actors and everything was just very straightforward. ‘He talked my language’ he said.”

Image above: David Attenborough speaking at an International Monetary Fund meeting; Image IMF

Staying with Uncle David

I could hardly let the opportunity pass to ask about “Uncle David” who as a result of his extraordinary career has won a place in the nation’s heart as a ‘national treasure.’

Of course he was also a fabulous uncle. Making an exception to his not-filming-in-Hollywood rule to make The Flight of the Phoenix in 1965 with a hero of his, James Stewart, Richard called Michael, aged 15, into his office to break the news.

“The bad news is I’m taking your mother and sisters with me to Hollywood but you can’t come because you’re doing your O Levels. But the good news is that while we’re away you’ll be staying with Uncle David.

“I was delighted. David is a lovely man and his house was full of animals. He had a pet gibbon called Sam who I spent a lot of time talking to. The first night I stayed there though, uncle David pulled the curtains to sit down for dinner and I got the surprise of my life. The curtains were covered with stick insects.”

He also made up for missing the filming by joining them for the summer holidays.

“Gregory Peck let us stay at his house while he was away. It was so plush, with a huge swimming pool. The beach parties there were great fun.”

Book tickets to the opening night

Michael Attenborough will be taking questions from the audience after the first of the series, The Angry Silence, on Sunday 18 June. He has many more stories where these came from!

You can book tickets here: chiswickcinema.co.uk

Read more stories on The Chiswick Calendar