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THE ACADEMY AWARD bestowed last spring on John Mills was nominally for his Chaney-like performance as the mute village idiot in RYAN’S DAUGHTER, but in the minds of many it was a reward for more than 40 years of skillful acting.

It’s true Mills has limitations. Temperamentally, and in subtle way even physically, he is a British actor and his appeal is primarily to those who comprehend the British ethos Furthermore, within the British framework he cannot successfully play any kind of role (he is at his best portraying the valor of the humble).

But his career is not yet over, and who knows what acting feat he may not yet achieve? The important thin about him is that he possesses a least three of the sine qua nons of the good actor: 1) understanding of and sympathy for, the human plight 2) a warm-hearted flair for mimicry 3) professional integrity.

He was born in Felixstowe, fishing port and seaside resort in East Suffolk, on February 22, ’08 His father (Lewis) taught mathematics in a nearby naval training school but his mother (née Edith Baker) had managed the box-office of the Haymarket Theatre in London. She raised an older daughter, Annette, to be a dancer and actress, and undoubtedly was responsible for John, as a very young boy, deciding to be an actor. “I used to write childish melodramas when I was seven or eight,” Mills told me, “and act them out in the schoolhouse.” And he participated in the school’s theatricals.

When he was 16 he became a clerk in the office of an Ipswich corn merchant – Mills’ grandfather had been connected with the London Corn Exchange – but on weekends he came alive with an amateur theatrical group. “I stuck it out for three years,” he says, “and was so mad about acting I cleared out, one day early in ’27, for London. I arrived there with only 10 pounds, but my sister was already established in London. She introduced me at Zelia Raye’s Dancing School, where I heard that dancers were being hired for a new Hippodrome show starring Ernest Truex called The Five O’Clock Revue.”

He was given a job in the back row of its chorus and during the show’s run made as many “contacts” as he could. One of these contacts, an agent, helped him to get with a repertory company called The Quaints which was about to tour the Far East, playing everything from Shakespeare to music-hall comedy. On this tour Mills learned the rudiments of acting and met two people who affected his life and career.

While The Quaints were playing in Tientsin he was introduced to a sixteen-year-old redhead named Mary Hayley Bell whose father worked in the British customs office there. A decade later she became his second, and present, wife. And while The Quaints were playing in Singapore he met Noel Coward, who was on a world-tour. Says Coward in his autobiography (Present Indicative): “The Quaints played their varied repertory with a certain light-hearted abandon. I was taken to their opening performance of Mr. Cinders by the manager of the theatre, and from then onwards I never left them. My chief friends among them were Betty Hare and John Mills, both of whom have worked with me a great deal since . . . I allowed myself to appear with The Quaints as Stanhope in Journey’s End for three performances. John Mills, as Lt. Raleigh, gave the finest performance I have ever seen given of that part.”

Coward told Mills to contact him when he got back to London and when Mills did so (December ’30) Coward helped him to get the part of Lord Faucourt Babberley in a production of Charley’s Aunt and sent him to Charles Cochran, who gave him the juvenile lead, and an opportunity to sing, in The 1931 Revue which Cochran was about to open in London.

While Mills was in The 1931 Revue he married a young actress named Aileen Raymond. “We were both young,” he says, “and I guess we just drifted apart.” They were not legally divorced, however, for nine years.

In October ’31 Coward cast Mills as Joe Marryot in the stage version of Cavalcade, and during the rehearsals for that fine play Coward said to Mills one day: “Come down to the stalls, there’s an interesting chap I think you’d like to meet he’s in the Air Force.” Mills did not catch the name of the ordinary looking fellow but did notice the intensity of the blue coloring of his eyes. They chatted for a few minutes about motorbikes and their engines. After the rehearsal Coward asked Mills what he had thought of the visitor and it was only then that Mills learned he had met “Lawrence of Arabia.”

When William Fox acquired the film rights to Cavalcade Mills was offered the part he’d played on the stage provided he’d sign a 7-year contract. “I turned it down,” he says, “because I thought I needed more acting and dancing experience. Also, Coward had offered me a part in Words and Music, which was set to open in London in September ’32.”

Mills made his screen debut in ’32 nevertheless. Gaumont-British was looking for a young man to sing and dance with Jessie Matthews in her second film: THE MIDSHIPMAID. “They chose me and I was in the movies without making any effort to get there,” Mills says, and adds: “For the next few years I oscillated between the legitimate theatre and the film studios. The films were quota-quickies like A POLITICAL PARTY, RIVER WOLVES and THE LASH.”

“In those days,” Mills continued, “we worked two shifts at Twickenham. They’d shoot one picture during the day and one from midnight to dawn. The law was that a British picture had to be shown with an imported one. I wouldn’t have thought of paying to see a quota-quickie but I did see THE LASH because it was paired with something starring Spencer Tracy I wanted to see. THE LASH was greeted with the biggest bird I’ve ever heard in a theatre. And I joined in.”

Mills’ first screen role of any consequence was as Able Seaman Brown in the first cinemation of C. S. Forester’s BROWN ON RESOLUTION which has also been titled FOREVER ENGLAND and BORN FOR GLORY. The part is an actor’s delight, since all the action revolves around it. Able Seaman Brown smuggles himself into Germany; reaches the cove in which a German battleship is being repaired; and then, by sniping at the workmen, he delays the ship’s departure long enough for a British submarine to arrive and sink her when she sets out for sea.

Mills then returned to the stage in a comedy called Jill, Darling and during its successful run he moon-lighted in his second film role of consequence-as Lord Guildford Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane Grey, in Tudor Rose. When Jill, Darling finished its London run Mills went into the cast that was being assembled for a stage dram called Red Night. The male lead was played by Robert Donat, who even then was plagued by severe asthma attacks. So much so that during the try-out of Red Night in the province Donat feared he would have to bow out. “Donat stuck it out because h thought it would be a shame to deprive me and the rest of the cast of our chance to play Red Night in London,” Mills says. “Red Night helped my career a great deal an have always been grateful to Donat.”

Late in ’38 Tyrone Guthrie invited Mills to join the Old Vic company and his first roles there were as Young Marlowe in She Stoops to Conquer and as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “You often hear of players working for a small salary at the Old Vic because of the prestige and experience they thereby acquire,” Mills says, and adds: “I was darn glad for the £15 a week.”

Donat, I believe, got Mills the part in GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (’39), which was the first film of consequence on US screens to contain the Mills’ image. MGM produced it in London, and Mills, playing Pete Colley as a young man, personified all of Chips’ former students. Like every other British actor, Mills was eager to become known in the US but GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS did not do much for him in this regard.

He then got the most important stage role he had had up to that time: as George in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. “To get the American can accent,” he says, “I went to see James Cagney in ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES about 17 times. I really think I got the accent, for I was approached to play the part in the film version in the US. But then the war broke out.”

While he was playing in Of Mice and Men its director, Anthony Pelissier, reintroduced him to Mary Hayley Bell, who was then starring in the West End in Tony Draws a Horse. But they were parted almost at once. She went with the company that tool Tony Draws a Horse to Broadway and he enlisted in the Royal Engineers, and was soon making propaganda films.

Re-meeting Miss Bell gave him reason for getting a divorce and a soon as it came through he and Miss Bell married (1.16.41). Noel Coward, Fay Compton, Laurence Olivier Vivien Leigh, Ursula Jeans, Roger Livesey and Anthony Pelissier were among the guests.

Not long after his wedding Mills was invalided out of the service (duodenal ulcer) and his first screen role after returning to civilian life was that of a Nazi spy in COTTAGE TO LET. It is one of the very few villain parts he has ever played on either stage or screen. But in his next picture he had a role less alien to the Mills image: William Wilberforce in YOUNG MR. PITT (Donat had the title role).

“Once again Noel Coward gave my career a lift,” Mills says. “He wrote the magnificent part of Shorty Blake, the cockney sailor. In Which We Serve, especially for me.” Mills says Coward was extremely nervous while making in IN WHICH WE SERVE because “he hadn’t acted in a film for sometime and had never tackled a production job like it. But he was always willing to listen to criticism.”

Mills’ 11-weeks-old daughter Juliet appeared in that picture (as Shady Blake’s baby), and she appeared in films with her father throughout her childhood.*

Mrs. Mills gave up acting after her marriage and turned to play writing, and, while her husband was working on IN WHICH WE SERVE, she put the finishing touches to her first play, Men in Shadow, which depict a group of Allied airmen cooped up in the attic of a French farmhouse during World War II waiting for the French underground to get then back to England. Needless to say it had a starring part for her husband who also directed a road company of it, Mills subsequently appeared in her Duet for Two Hands (’45) and The Uninvited Guest (’53)

The British like John Mills’ face, his bearing, and the way he reads lines, and Coward cast him to as good effect in THIS HAPPY BREED as he had in IN WHICH WE SERVE. Mills has been especially good in parts requiring a uniform (WE DIVE A DAWN, WATERLOO ROAD, THE WAY TO THE STARS). But the picture that made Mills an international star was David Lean’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS. He played the grown-up Pip so well he go everything out of the part that Dickens intended. GREAT EXPECTATIONS remains one of the great films (David Lean directed, Ronald Neame produced).

Mills still remembers an incident involving Juliet while GREAT EXPECTATIONS was being made. She was then four years old and had accompanied her father to the studio – she is not in GREAT EXPECTATIONS – on a day when Alexander Korda was making his rounds. He spoke pleasantry to Juliet and she gave his a withering look and said tartly: “No talking in the studio when the red light is on!” Mills also remember that Alec Guinness, then a newcomer to films, asked him for tips, during the filming of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, on acting for the camera.

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* Juliet, born 11.21.41, became well known on the London stage (Five Finger Exercise) ; married a US songwrlter named Russ Alquls Jr. and bore a 501 (Sean) ; and now has a US-tv program called “Nanny and the Professor.” Mill has two other children. Hayley, b. 4.17.46, whose film career, begun when she was an adolescent, is now in some doubt. After living for several years with director Roy Boulting, aged 58, she married him this spring. Jonathan, b. 12.5.49, apparently aspires to the non acting side of show business He was an assistant director on Ryan’s Daughter.

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