Every Disney Hero Has
a Voice
The Story of Robin Hood & His Merrie Men (1952)
Disney Legend ~ Richard Todd
June 11th, 1919 – December 3rd, 2009
Actor Richard Todd's innate power and dash proved a
perfect fit for Disney's chivalrous, high-adventure movies "The Story of
Robin Hood and His Merrie Men" in 1952, "The Sword and the Rose"
in 1953 and "Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue," which in 1954, was
selected as the Command Performance Film in England.
Long before Mel Gibson starred in
"Braveheart," Film Critic Bosley Crowther described Richard in the
"New York Times" as "handsome as the kilted and bonneted Rob,
simply a splendid idealization of the hero ..."
All three motion pictures were produced in England
with blocked funds that Disney had been unable to get out of the country since
World War II. While some questioned Disney's presence overseas, the actor felt
it perfectly appropriate.
After all, he pointed out to a" Los Angeles
Times" reporter in 1953, "They're British stories!"
Born June 11, 1919, to a British army officer,
Richard grew up in Ireland, India, and England. He attended a London drama
school, where his natural acting ability upstaged his initial intent to
playwright. He worked with various repertory companies, including the Open Air
Theatre in Regents Park, where he played opposite Vivien Leigh in
"Shakespeare's Twelfth Night," and founded the Dundee Repertory
Theatre in 1939.
Soon after, World War II interrupted his career.
Richard, who served in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and the
Parachute Regiment, was among the first wave of parachutists dropped onto the
beaches of Normandy for the D-Day Invasion. He also participated in the Battle
of the Bulge and Rhine crossing operations.
By 1946, Richard was a ready-made hero for post-war
movies. His role with Ronald Reagan in "The Hasty Heart" in 1949, won
him critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, including an Academy Award
nomination and British National Film Award. The next year, he was cast by
Alfred Hitchcock with Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich in "Stage
Fright." His other films include "Lightning Strikes Twice"
directed by King Vidor, "The Virgin Queen" with Bette Davis and
"A Man Called Peter" directed by Henry Koster.
Richard was particularly well-suited for war-themed
motion pictures. Among them, "The Dam Busters" with Michael Redgrave,
"D-Day the Sixth of June" with Robert Taylor, "The Longest
Day" directed by fellow Legend Ken Annakin, and more.
Richard recalled his transition from mostly war
films to Disney medieval fare with bemused affection, saying the "Robin
Hood roles" were "where my image was all daring deeds, until my swash
began to buckle a bit."
By the late-1960s, he returned his focus to his
first love, the stage, performing in productions, including Oscar Wilde's
"An Ideal Husband." Among his small screen roles, Richard Todd
costarred as himself in the 1996 television movie "Marlene Dietrich:
Shadow and Light."
Todd died at home on December 3, 2009.
Richard
Todd OBE (11 June 1919 –
3 December 2009) was an Irish-born British stage and film actor and soldier.
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, a British
officer, served as an army physician.
Later
his family moved to West Devon and Todd attended Shrewsbury School. Upon
leaving school, Todd trained for a potential military career at Sandhurst
before inaugurating his acting training at the Italia Conti Academy.
This
change in career led to estrangement from his mother. When he learned, aged 19,
she had committed suicide, he admitted in later life that he had not grieved
long for her.
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.
Army
career
During
the Second World War, Todd joined the British Army, receiving a commission in
1941. Initially, he served in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry before
joining the Parachute Regiment and 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 the British Airborne 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 were
reinforcements that parachuted in after glider forces had landed and completed
the main assault against Pegasus Bridge near Caen. He later met up with Major John
Howard on Pegasus Bridge and helped repel several German counter attacks.
As an
actor, Todd would later play Howard in the 1962 film The Longest Day,
while Todd himself was played by another actor.
Acting
After
the war, Todd returned to repertory theatre in the UK. He was appearing in a
play when spotted by Robert Lennard, a casting director for Associated British
Picture Corporation. That company offered him a screen test, and subsequently
signed him a long-term contract in 1948. He was cast in For Them That
Trespass (1949).
Todd had
appeared in the Dundee Repertory stage version of The Hasty Heart,
playing 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 England. Todd was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Actor for the role in 1949.
Alfred
Hitchcock used him in Stage Fright (1950), then he made a film in
Hollywood for King Vidor, Lightning Strikes Twice (1951). Neither did
particularly well at the box office. He appeared in three movies for the Disney
Corporation, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), The
Sword and the Rose (1953) and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1953).
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.
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 bestselling biography, A Man Called
Peter (1955). This was a popular success, as was The Dam Busters
(1955) in which Todd played Wing Commander Guy Gibson. Other notable films he
starred in include Saint Joan (1957), directed by Otto Preminger, and The
Yangtse Incident (1957).
His
roles grew smaller and/or less distinguished throughout the 1960s. In 1964 he
was a member of the jury at the 14th Berlin International Film Festival.
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 appears 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.
His
active acting career extended into his eighties. He was appointed an Officer of
the Order of the British Empire in 1993.
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 movie 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. 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 four children committed suicide. In 1997, Seamus Palethorpe-Todd shot
himself in the head in the family home in Lincolnshire. An inquest heard 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 his Little Humby home
on 3 December 2009. He is survived by his daughter and one of his three sons,
Andrew.
Selected
filmography
- The Hasty Heart (1949)
- The Interrupted Journey (1949)
- For Them That Trespass (1949)
- Portrait of Clare (1950)
- Stage Fright (1950)
- Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)
- Flesh and Blood (1951)
- 24 Hours of a Woman's Life (1952)
- The Story of Robin Hood and His
Merrie Men (1952) as
Robin Hood
- Venetian Bird (1952)
- The Sword and the Rose (1953) as Charles Brandon
- Wuthering Heights (1953) (TV) as Heathcliff
- Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1954) as Rob Roy MacGregor
- The Dam Busters (1954) as Wing Commander Guy Gibson,
VC
- A Man Called Peter (1955) as Peter Marshall
- The Virgin Queen (1955) as Sir Walter Raleigh
- D-Day the Sixth of June (1956)
- Marie-Antoinette reine de France (1956) as Comte Axel von Fersen
- Yangtse Incident (1957) as John Kerans
- Saint Joan (1957) as Jean de Dunois
- Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958)
- Danger Within (1958)
- Intent to Kill (1958)
- Never Let Go (1960)
- The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961)
- The Hellions (1961)
- Don't Bother to Knock (1961)
- The Longest Day (1962) as Major John Howard
- The Very Edge (1962)
- The Boys (1962)
- Death Drums Along the River (1963) as Harry Sanders
- Coast of Skeletons (1964) as Harry Sanders
- Operation Crossbow (1965)
- The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965)
- The Love-Ins (1967)
- Subterfuge (1968)
- Last of the Long-haired Boys (1968)
- Dorian Gray (1970)
- No. 1 of the Secret Service (1977)
- The Big Sleep (1978)
- Home Before Midnight (1979)
- House of the Long Shadows (1983)
- Murder One (1988)
Box
Office Rankings
British exhibitors regularly
listed Todd among the most popular local stars at the box office in various
polls:- 1950 - 7th most popular British star
- 1952 - 5th most popular British star
in Britain
- 1954 - 9th most popular British star
- 1955 - 7th most popular British star
Select
Theatre Credits
- An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1965) - Strand
Theatre London with Margaret Lockwood, Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray and Roger
Livesey - also toured South Africa
- Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith (1967) - Haymarket Theatre,
London
- Sleuth (1972–73) - Australian tour
- Equus (1975) - Australian tour
- The Business of Murder (1983–91) - Mayfair Theatre, London
Books
- Caught in the Act (1986)
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