Richard Todd

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For Richard Todd the football player, see Richard Todd (football player)

Richard Todd

from the trailer for Stage Fright (1950).
Born Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd
June 11, 1919 (1919-06-11) (age 88)
Dublin, Ireland
Years active 1937 - present
Spouse(s) Catherine Grant-Bogle (1949-1970)
Virginia Mailer (1970-1992)

Richard Todd (born June 11, 1919) is a British actor, soldier and film star.

Contents

[edit] Biography

He was born Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd in Dublin, Ireland. Todd's father Andrew William Palethorpe Todd, was a British army officer who gained three caps for Ireland at rugby before the First World War.

Todd moved to Devon, England when very young and attended Shrewsbury School. In his early career, he acted in regional theatres; he then co-founded the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1939.

During the Second World War, Todd served as an officer in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and as a Paratrooper in the British 6th Airborne Division. As a member of the 7th (LI) Parachute Battalion, he was one of the first British officers to land in Normandy on D-Day and met up with Major John Howard on Pegasus Bridge. Ironically, Todd would later play Howard in the film The Longest Day (1962), with another actor portraying Richard Todd.

After the war, Todd returned to repertory theatre in England. A film contract with Associated British followed and in 1948, he starred in the London stage version of The Hasty Heart (as Lachlan MacLachlan)[1] and was subsequently chosen to star in the Warner Brothers 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. He later appeared in the The Dam Busters as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, probably the role he is best known for. Americans remember Todd for his role as the United States Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall in the film version of Catherine Marshall's best selling biography, A Man Called Peter. 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 1960's Todd unsuccessfully attempted to produce a film of Ian Fleming's The Diamond Smugglers[2] and a television series based on true accounts of the Queen's Messengers.[3]

In 1953, he appeared in a BBC Television adaptation of the novel Wuthering Heights, as Heathcliff. Nigel Kneale, who scripted 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.[4] 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.

Todd has been married twice: to actress Catherine Grant-Bogle, whom he met in Dundee Repertory (1949-1970, two children) and model Virginia Mailer (1970-1992, two children). Now retired, Todd lives in the village of Little Humby, 8 miles from Grantham.

[edit] Tragedy

On 25 April 2006 the Daily Mail published a feature on the tragic death of two of Todd's four children by suicide. Peter, Todd's eldest son from his first marriage, shot himself in the head on 21 September 2005 - the same method his half-brother Seumas had used 8 years earlier. Peter's reason was his marriage was ending. Seumas's motivation was thought to be a depressive reaction to severe acne and the anti-acne drug he was taking. Todd's mother had also committed suicide when her son was 19, though Todd said 'her death didn't affect me badly ... we had been close but just before she died, we disagreed. She didn't want me to go on the stage. There were various differences and I had lost affection for her'. His sons' suicide affected him very profoundly and he admits to visiting their adjoining graves regularly. Todd said, 'It is rather like something that happens to men in war. You don't consciously set out to do something gallant. You just do it because that is what you are there for.'

[edit] Selected films

[edit] References

  1. ^ Todd, Richard. Caught in the Act, Hutchinson, 1986. ISBN 0091638003
  2. ^ Todd, Richard Caught in the Act Hutchinson 1986
  3. ^ ibid
  4. ^ Murray, Andy (2006). Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale (paperback), London: Headpress, p. 34. ISBN 1-900486-50-4. 

[edit] External links

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