Richard Attenborough
Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, CBE, FRSA (/ˈætənbərə/; 29 August 1923 – 24 August 2014) was an English actor, film director, and producer.
The Lord Attenborough
24 August 2014 (aged 90)
St Mary Magdalene, Richmond, London
- Actor
- film director
- producer
- Frederick Attenborough (father)
- David Attenborough (brother)
- John Attenborough (brother)
- Gerald Sim (brother-in-law)
- Tom Attenborough (grandson)
- Will Attenborough (grandson)
United Kingdom
1940–1945
Attenborough was the president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), as well as life president of the Premier League club Chelsea. He joined the Royal Air Force during World War II and served in the film unit, going on several bombing raids over Europe and filming the action from the rear gunner's position. He was the older brother of broadcaster Sir David Attenborough and motor executive John Attenborough. He was married to actress Sheila Sim from 1945 until his death.
As an actor, Attenborough is best remembered for his film roles in Brighton Rock (1948), I'm All Right Jack (1959), The Great Escape (1963), The Sand Pebbles (1966), Doctor Dolittle (1967), 10 Rillington Place (1971), Jurassic Park (1993), and Miracle on 34th Street (1994). In 1952, he appeared on the West End stage, originating the role of Detective Sergeant Trotter in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap which has since become the world's longest-running play.[1]
For his directorial debut, 1969's Oh! What a Lovely War, Attenborough was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, and he was nominated for his films Young Winston, A Bridge Too Far, and Cry Freedom. He won two Academy Awards for Gandhi in 1983: Best Picture and Best Director. The British Film Institute ranked Gandhi the 34th greatest British film of the 20th century. Attenborough also won four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and the 1983 BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement.
Early life[edit]
Attenborough was born on 29 August 1923[2] in Cambridge, the eldest of three sons of Mary Attenborough (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and wrote a standard text on Anglo-Saxon law.[3][4] Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and studied at RADA.[5]
In September 1939, while Frederick Attenborough was Principal of University College, Leicester (1932–1951), the Attenboroughs took in two German Jewish refugee girls, Helga and Irene Bejach (aged 9 and 11 respectively), who lived with them in College House and were adopted by the family after the war when it was discovered that their parents had been killed.[6] The sisters moved to the United States in the 1950s and lived with an uncle, where they married and took American citizenship; Irene died in 1992 and Helga in 2005.[7]
During the Second World War, Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force. After initial pilot training, he was seconded to the newly formed Royal Air Force Film Production Unit at Pinewood Studios, under the command of Flight Lieutenant John Boulting (whose brother Peter Cotes later directed Attenborough in the play The Mousetrap) where he appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the propaganda film Journey Together (1945). He then volunteered to fly with the Film Unit and after further training, where he sustained permanent ear damage, qualified as a sergeant, flying on several operations over Europe filming from the rear gunner's position to record the outcome of RAF Bomber Command sorties.[8]
Producer and director[edit]
In the late 1950s, Attenborough formed a production company, Beaver Films, with Bryan Forbes and began to build a profile as a producer on projects including The League of Gentlemen (1959), The Angry Silence (1960) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961), appearing in the cast of the first two films.[12] His performance in The Angry Silence earned him his first nomination for a BAFTA. Séance on a Wet Afternoon won him his first BAFTA award.
His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), after which his acting appearances became sporadic as he concentrated more on directing and producing. He later directed two epic period films: Young Winston (1972), based on the early life of Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far (1977), an all-star account of Second World War Operation Market Garden.[12]
He won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Director for his historical epic Gandhi, and as the film's producer, the Academy Award for Best Picture; the same film garnered two Golden Globes, this time for Best Director and Best Foreign Film, in 1983. He had been attempting to get the project made for 18 years.[12] He directed the screen version of the musical A Chorus Line (1985) and the anti-apartheid drama Cry Freedom (1987). He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films.[12] The success of the latter film prompted Attenborough to sign a contract with Universal Pictures to produce and direct films over the next five years, set to produce three films for the studio, and timetable calls would be set up by January and the first production was slated for release by 1989.[14]
His later films as director and producer include Chaplin (1992) starring Robert Downey Jr., as Charlie Chaplin and Shadowlands (1993), based on the relationship between C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham (C. S. Lewis was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, who had appeared in four previous films for Attenborough: Young Winston, A Bridge Too Far, Magic and Chaplin).
Between 2006 and 2007, he spent time in Belfast, working on his last film as director and producer, Closing the Ring, a love story set in Belfast during the Second World War, and starring Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer and Pete Postlethwaite.[15]
Despite maintaining an acting career alongside his directorial roles, Attenborough never directed himself (save for an uncredited cameo appearance in A Bridge Too Far).[16]
Honours[edit]
In the 1967 Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).[54] He was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1976 New Year Honours,[55] having the honour conferred on 10 February 1976.[56]
On 30 July 1993, he was created a life peer as Baron Attenborough, of Richmond upon Thames in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.[57][58] Although the appointment by John Major was 'non-political' (it was granted for services to the cinema) and he could have been a crossbencher, Attenborough chose to take the Labour whip and so sat on the Labour benches. In 1992, he had been offered a peerage by Neil Kinnock, then leader of the Labour Party, but refused it as he felt unable to commit himself to the time necessary "to do what was required of him in the Upper Chamber, as he always put film-making first".[59]
Attenborough was the subject of This Is Your Life in December 1962 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Savoy Hotel, during a dinner held to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap, in which he had been an original cast member.[12]
In 1983, Attenborough was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award,[60] and the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolence Peace Prize by the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.[61] He was also awarded France's most distinguished awards, the Legion of Honour and the Order of Arts and Letters[62] and the Order of the Companions of O.R. Tambo by the South African government 'for his contribution to the struggle against apartheid'.
In 1992, the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded Attenborough its annual Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his life's work. The following year he was appointed a Fellow of King's College London.[63]
On 13 July 2006, Attenborough, along with his brother David, were awarded the titles of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the university".[64]
On 20 November 2008, Attenborough was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Drama from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) in Glasgow.[65]
Attenborough was an Honorary Fellow of Bangor University for his contributions to film making.[66]
Pinewood Studios paid tribute to his body of work by naming a purpose-built 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) sound stage after him. In his absence because of illness, Lord Puttnam and Pinewood chairman Lord Grade officially unveiled the stage on 23 April 2012.[67]
The Arts for India charity committee honoured Attenborough posthumously on 19 October 2016 at an event hosted at the home of BAFTA.[68]
Portrayals[edit]
In early 1973, he was portrayed as "Dickie Attenborough" in the British Showbiz Awards sketch late in the third series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Attenborough is portrayed by Eric Idle as effusive and simpering. A portrayal similar to that seen in Monty Python can be seen in the early series of Spitting Image, when Attenborough's caricature regularly appeared to thank others for an imaginary award.
In 1985 he was played by Chris Barrie in The Lenny Henry Show, in the final part of a serial pastiching A Passage to India and The Jewel in the Crown. In response to the villain claiming "Gandhi won't win!", he appears in a suit covered in Academy Awards and declares "We've already won!"
In 2012 Attenborough was portrayed by Simon Callow in the BBC Four biopic The Best Possible Taste, about Kenny Everett.
Harris Dickinson plays Attenborough in the 2022 comedy murder mystery See How They Run.