JACK HAWKINS

To many filmgoers, the archetypal British hero was personified by Jack Hawkins. Yet he began his professional career as a child actor in roles which were almost the antithesis of those in which he later became known. He was signed up by Madame Italia Conti and, in addition to playing pageboy-type parts, he took ballet and singing classes.

It was, in fact, as a pageboy in George Bernard Shaw’s St Joan that he got his first break in the West End, having been auditioned by the great playwright himself.

Hawkins was born on 14 September 1910 at a terraced house in Lyndhurst Road, Wood Green, London, the son of a master builder. He learned his considerable acting craft through many years in the theatre, and under the strict, but always kindly, guidance of the actor-managers Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson, acknowledged at that time as the best husband-and-wife theatre team in the world. It was in the role of St George in Where The Rainbow Ends that Hawkins played his first stage hero, and it gave him the taste for playing this type of man – one with sterling chivalry and leadership qualities. In time, he developed this character with such a fine art that when he had the opportunities to play heroic roles in films, it was as though they had been specially written for him.

Irony seems to have played more than an unusually large part in Hawkins’s personal life. Although his name immediately conjures up pictures of Hawkins, the rugged sea skipper; Hawkins, the straight-backed Army colonel; Hawkins, the hawkeyed RAF Group Captain – in fact, to quote Hawkins himself, ‘I played enough senior officers to stock the whole Ministry of Defence’ – in real life he had the devil’s own job to enlist in the services. He was at first, it seems, rejected by all the fighting forces, having volunteered after watching thousands of troops returning from the evacuation of Dunkirk. At last, he was accepted by the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and though he may have looked every inch an Officer, it was as a lowly private that Hawkins was enrolled. Not having attended any of the acceptable public schools, nor even acting school, he found it was some time before his obvious officer potential was noted, but by the end of the World War II he had worked his way up to full colonel.

After the war, Hawkins went back to the theatre, and was spotted by Alexander Korda who signed him to a three-year contract. Slowly, through a series of costume dramas, he began to establish himself. But it was in the part of Ericson, Commander of a corvette in The Cruel Sea (1952) that he became a film star of international status. At about this time, he was signed to the Rank Organization, and thus began the roles with which he will always associate him. No one ever played a British officer better than Hawkins; no actor ever brought such authority to these roles. In 1954 he was voted the No. 1 British box-office name. Much to his amusement, a critic wrote: ‘Hawkins makes love better to a battleship than to a woman.’

It was as a founder director of Allied Film Makers, along with Brian Forbes and Richard Attenborough, that Hawkins was able to combine his knowledge and talent for playing service officers in the role of an embittered ex-Army Major, who collects a group of former wartime veterans around him to carry out an audacious bank raid. The League Of Gentlemen (1961) was based on a novel by John Holland, adapted for the screen by Brian Forbes, directed by Basil Deardon and produced by Michael Relph. It was an instant success and well justified Rank’s high production cost of £1 million with substantial box-office receipts. However, it took a toll on Hawkins’s health that could never be equated, for it was during the making of this picture that Hawkins began to have trouble with his throat. The condition was particularly aggravated during the filming of the bank raid sequence, which took three days to shoot, mostly in dense smoke.

When Hawkins finally went to a specialist, his condition was diagnosed as cancer of the throat. He had a choice: either an immediate operation in which he would have to have his larynx removed, or certain death within a short space of time. This, of course, was a terrible proposition for Hawkins, especially since his rich, distinctive voice was such a recognizable part of his persona. He went through with the operation and, with the same determination many of his characters demonstrated, he won this first round for survival. Without any means of vocal communication, Hawkins began to fret, and when the chance came to have an electronic voicebox inserted in his throat, although there was only a fifty-fifty chance that he would pull through the operation, he did not hesitate. However, this time the odds were not good enough, and in the summer of 1973 the legendary film warrior fought and lost his battle against the last enemy.

THE HEROES (VI)

LESLIE HOWARD (COMING SOON)