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In the nearly half century since sound came to films, few screen voice were as distinctive as that of Jack Hawkins. Combining a cultured, virile baritone with an imposing authoritarian figure. Hawkins came to epitomize Establishment respectability as well the British Officer Corps on the screen. A matinee idol of the ’30s or the English stage, he was schooled in farce, Shakespeare, romantic comedy and melodrama. For him, films in those early days provided pocket money. This changed in his post-war career when he became England’s No 1 box-office star in films, and the stage was then to provide “moonlighting” opportunities. Hawkins was the very essence of a British prototype star whose valor, displayed in countless fictional roles, was also to be shown in his life when throat cancer robbed him of his greatest asset, his voice, but failed to stop him from continuing his acting career.

Hawkins was born in the middleclass Wood Green section of London on September 14, ’10, the youngest of four children of a public works contractor and master builder. Despite no theatrical family background, he embarked on a stage career as a child while continuing his education. His parents, Thomas and Phoebe, enrolled him at St. Michael’s, the local church school, when he was five, and he soon found himself in the boys choir. At ten, he made his acting debut with the church’s operatic society as a lovesick maiden in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience. Two years later, in taggered wig and an ill-fitting dress, he had his first major role, playing Ruth, a pirate maid, in Pirates of Penzance.

His parents were urged to send young Jack to the fabled school run by Miss Italia Conti, “the famous teacher and agent of child actors, dancers and other such monsters.” as Hawkins recalled her. Under Miss Conti, Hawkins began his formal stage apprenticeship, making his professional debut as a frog (!) in Where the Rainbow Ends (“a madly flag-waving piece,” Hawkins remembered) at the Holborn Empire Theatre on the day after Christmas, ’23. Hawkins’ first “season” lasted four weeks matinees only. Shortly thereafter, as he reminisced in his autobiography, An Anything For A Quiet Life: “Italia explained that I was to audition for the part of the page-boy in a new play by George Bernard Shaw, called Saint Joan. I barely had time to take in all this, or even to think that this is what I wanted, before being summoned to dressing room where Sybil Thorndike who was to create the part of Saint Joan, and her husband. Lewis Casson were waiting. I was aware of another person in the room, apparently perched on the mantelpiece, dressed in very hairy tweeds, and with a mass of red hair on his face and head. Lewis Casson handed me a few pages of typescript and told me to read the pan of Dunois’ page with him. I had hardly got to the end of the first line, when G. B. Shaw, for that was who he was, clambered down from his precarious seat, and snatched the papers from me with a ferocious cry of No, boy! Like THIS!’ and in a ridiculous falsetto, read Look, look! There she goes!’ I thought him quite mad but nevertheless tried to mimic him.”

Soon after opening in Saint Joan, Jack Hawkins moved from Italia Conti to the Thorndikes, in whose company he acted for the next three years, working with other boy actors and fellow spear-carriers like Laurence Olivier and Carol Reed. “My real education.” he later said, “was taking place in the theatre, where I was being taught my craft as an actor by a remarkable, if sometime eccentric, team of teachers. Above all, I was taught to love and respect words. Each word had to be the right word, and each had to be spoken in a way that its weight and importance demanded.” Hawkins lovingly recalled his first notice, when James Agate, reviewing Shelley’s The Cenci in “The Sunday Tunes” observed: “It is possible that in Master Jack Hawkins we have a very fine actor in the making. I have certainly never seen a boy-player of such promise.”

Hawkins’ first adult role was that of Ainger, the school prefect, in John Van Druten’s Young Woodley, staged by Basil Dean. During its run, Dean offered Hawkins the second male lead in a spectacular production of Beau Geste which he (Dean) was preparing. Hawkins would play the younger brother of Laurence Olivier (in the title role). Beau Geste, however, turned out to be a disaster and closed after eight weeks. Hawkins was quickly approached, though, by director James Wales (to whom Hawkins refers in his book, for inexplicable reasons, as Jimmy Welch) to audition for the part of Stanhope, the leading character, in the Broadway production of Journev’s End. (That role, which had made a star of Colin Clive in the London production, had shortsightedly been rejected by Laurence Olivier in favor of Beau Geste!) Basil Dean gave Hawkins a leave of absence, and Wales gave him a contract for $200 a week and a first class passage to New York. When Gilbert Miller, the producer who had acquired the American rights to Journey’s End discovered that his leading man was barely 18, he forced Wales to switch Hawkins’ role. “A lot of money is at stake, and I just don’t feel it can rest on the shoulder of a guy eighteen,” Hawkins said Miller told him. Hawkins instead played Lt. Hibbert, the coward, but received satisfaction via the NY “Daily News” review: “Jack Hawkins, who plays the part of Hibbert, would make a better Captain Stanhope.”

Hawkins played on Broadway 3/22/29-9/13/30 before returning to London and to Basil Dean, who then cast him opposite Jessica Tandy (as the young lovers living in sin) in Autumn Crocus. He portrayed Alaric Craven in the romantic comedy for 18 months, and married Jessica Tandy in ’32.

Like many of his fellow actors of the day, Hawkins indulged in a bit of film work during his off-stage hours. His first movie: BIRDS OF PREY (’30), which Hawkins referred to as “a part which was literally two coughs and a spit, and I discovered that I suffered from terrible camera shyness. As soon as I went on the set, I developed frightful nervous twitch that made my face twist into a fearful grimace, found that the only way to control this was to take aspirin. However, by the end of THE LODGER (’32), I was able to control it unaided.” Hawkins has maintained, curiously, that he was in Hitchcock’s THE LODGER. It was, instead. Maurice Elvy’s sound remake (and perhaps a case of wishful thinking?). “That performance as newspaper reporter was something I prefer to draw a veil over . . . one of ghastly series of ‘quota quickies’.” Hawkins wrote. “I do not remember all of these, for like many actors in those days I did not take my films very seriously. One tended to regard then as second-rate compared with the live theatre – which in many cases was quite true and little more than a mean of paying one’s income tax. I never imagined that my greatest fame would be found on the screen. I did act with some marvelous people, though, and I remember Anna Neagle and I making a mildly ridiculous period piece called PEG OF OLD DRURY . . . I still had every reason to believe that my tame would be found on the stage.” Of the sixteen films Hawkins made during this portion of his career, while becoming a dashing matinee idol on the West End, few would appear to alter his own assessment of the direction in which he was headed.

He recreated his stage roles in AUTUMN CROCUS and THE FROG, the hoar Edgar Wallace thriller: did elaborate costumers like PEG OF OLD DRURY and A ROYAL DIVORCE, which helped keel producer Herbert Wilcox in hock; and acted in mysteries like DEATH AT BROADCASTING HOUSE and MURDER WILL OUT plus an assortment of minor gangster films and a smattering of comedies. On stage, however, he appeared in more than fifty plays during the ’30s running the gamut from farce to Shakespeare (he played Horatio in Gielgud’s legendary Hamlet of ’34). And in January ’39, he returned to Broadway to act opposite Lillian Gish in Dear Octopus. Then it was back to London and the Old Vic as war approached. “My private and personal life came a very poor second to my professional career.” Hawkins admitted. “Jessica was equally ambitious and so our relationship, like that of Shakespeare’s young lasses, was star crossed in the most literal sense; we were both too busy seeking to be star ourselves to have time for marriage. Ambition came between us, and instead of being content to build a home life like so many other young couple of our age, we concentrated on building our careers.” The couple split up in ’40 and Jessica Tandy left for America with their young daughter Susan. (The Hawkins-Tandy divorce followed several years later.) Hawkins joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. After five months, he was put in charge of running ENSA (comparable to the American USO) in India and the Southeast Asia command, with the rank of Major. Appearing in one of the ENSA shows which came through Bombay was a young actress. Doreen Lawrence, who would become, on 10/31/47, the second Mrs. Jack Hawkins shortly after her husband’s demobilization as a full Colonel.

Hawkins’ friend Basil Dean induced him to participate in the British Council’s post-war plan to set up repertory companies to tour not only the provinces and the major cities of Europe but also the various troop center throughout the British Isles. Before embarking on the project, Hawkins reoriented himself on the stage producing and starring as King Magnus in Shaw’s The Apple Cart (he recreated the role in the ’60s on BBC tv). Then he did a tour of Europe for the British Council, alternating Othello, Hamlet (Hawkins was Claudius and Candida, followed by a short season on the West End. Hawkins was then summoned by Alexander Korda. “He told me that I should go into films, and to back his words with action, offered me a three-year contract . . . To be honest. I was astonished to receive the offer. I had math a number of moderate films before the war and had been told with brutal frankness that I had absolutely the wrong-shaped face for the screen. On top of this, I did still occasionally suffer from camera nerves that brought on a nervous twitch.”

Hawkins’ first Korda movie was the very expensive BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE. “This was not a very good film.” Hawkins said. “It was beset with disaster from the start. The original director, Robert Stevenson, had worked on the scripts for about eighteen months and possessed a very clear idea of what he wanted to do, but after we had been shooting for about five weeks, insoluble differences emerged between him and Alex, and he left the set. For a short while, Alex took over the direction himself, then he brought in my old friend, Anthony Kimmins. Anthony was a fine director, but his real forte was light comedy and farce.” Hawkins worked with David Niven and Margaret Leighton in BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE and segued with them into Korda’s THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL. “This film took such a long time to make that Doreen had two children before it was finished. Our eldest son Nicholas was born just as I started work (’48), and our second, Andrew as we finished (’50).* The shooting schedule was extended so much that was released half-way through to go to Morocco to make The Black Rose.” This is Henry Hathaway’s medieval adventure story which “introduced’ Jack Hawkins to American audiences. Of the film, Hawkins noted: “I played the role of a great English archer. This was a boring part, and I don’t know why I was cast for it. It was a kind of Tony Curtis role before the arrival of Tony Curtis. They even gave me a T. C. haircut.”

Prior to doing THE BLACK ROSE with Tyrone Power. Hawkins played small role in Korda’s THE FALLEN IDOL, directed by Carol Reed, Hawkins’ fellow spear-carrier when both were acting with the Thorndikes. Hawkins later did the American radio version (’51) of the film (with Walter Pidgeon and Signe Hasso) and even later, the American tv adaptation (’59), opposite his former wife, Jessica Tandy. In each of the three productions, he appeared in a different role. After THE BLACK ROSE, Hawkins’ name became more familiar to American moviegoers through his performances in STATE SECRET, as the Iron Curtain police chief who prevents Douglas Fairbanks Jr. from spreading the news of a dictator’s death, and as Jimmy Stewart’s boss in NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY, “which proved that I could put on a performance without wearing a wig or armour.”

In ’51, he returned to the US to play Mercutio in the Romeo and Juliet which was staged as a showcase for Olivia de Havilland (in her Broadway debut). Hawkins used the trip to become reacquainted with his daughter. Susan, “She was then very keen on a stage career, although Jessica was not very enthusiastic. I wanted her to come to England to study at RADA. (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) after she had completed her normal education.” Instead, Susan chose to study child guidance at the University of California, where she met and married an engineering student. Back in London, Hawkins played one of his first military roles a group captain in the fine RAF tribute called ANGELS ONE FIVE. That film elevated Hawkins to the No. 1 spot of British box-office stars. “Over the next few years,” Hawkins later said. “I played enough senior officers to stock the whole Ministry of Defense. I remember telling an interviewer that every time an Army, Navy or Air Force part came up they would throw it at me. To be accurate, though, I have played fewer service types than John Mills. Trevor Howard and Richard Attenborough.”

ANGELS ONE FIVE was followed by MANDY, the film about a deaf/dumb youngster who was taught to speak. Hawkins, top-billed, was the headmaster of her school. “I discovered what it was like to go through life with truly crippling handicap, and this particular experience was later of tremendous help to me when I found myself a handicapped person.” Hawkins listed this among his favorite films, feeling “MANDY was undoubtedly the turning point of my career as a film actor. The fact that it helped me sort out priorities in my own philosophical attitude to life was privately useful but professionally it was the lever that pushed me from comfortable success to stardom.” What it led to was THE CRUEL SEA, in which Hawkins had his greatest role. Charles Frend, one of the directors at Ealing, cornered Hawkins when the MANDY crew was doing interiors at the studio and spoke to him of Nicholas Montserrat’s recently published book. Frend then told him “You’re going to play Captain Ericson. It’s all arranged.” This before a script had been written or plans ever formulated to film the story.

While waiting, Hawkins made THE PLANTER’S WIFE with Claudette Cobert. “It was full of action in the depths of the Malayan jungle, although we did not leave Pinewood Studios for single day. All the outside work was done with back projection, and what made it more absurd was the fact that we were filming in the middle of winter, and dressed only in bush shirt and shorts; I was permanently frozen.”

THE CRUEL SEA is one of the classics of British cinema, a stirring tribute to the British navy and among the best remembered post-war war movies For his performance as the courageous commander of the pocket ship, Compass Rose. Hawkins received the David O. Selznick Golden Laurel Award. “From a personal point of view,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I would be falsely modest if I did not admit I enjoyed the experience of becoming a big star; not only the large fees and the good parts that came my way as a result, but also the recognition in the street by strangers who enjoyed my performances.” Hawkins not only was now No. 1 at the box-office but also Britain’s busiest actor. THE MALTA STORY, the first of four he did with Alec Guinness, kept him in uniform as the CIC at a wartime outpost; FRONT PAGE STORY cast him as managing editor of a metropolitan newspaper; THE SEEKERS had him as one of the founders of the first white colony in New Zealand; THE PRISONER squared him off against Guinness in chilling drama of brainwashing in police state.

Hawkins’ first American film proved to be unfortunate – Howard Hawks’ stupifying spectacle, LAND OF THE PHARAOHS, which ranks high on everyone’s list of the worst films of the ’50s. Hawkins was totally miscast as the Pharaoh of Egypt; Hawks is said to have disowned the film, dismissing it with the acknowledgement. “I didn’t know how a Pharaoh talked.” Hawkins called the movie “a perfectly ridiculous film” and noted that “one of the reasons I had taken the part was that I had been told that the script was being written by William Faulkner. Frankly, I don’t think a single line uttered was from so distinguished writer, and indeed I later discovered that Faulkner had been hired to do the job, had received a huge fee, but somehow had gotten stuck in Paris. Howard Hawks, noting my displeasure on learning that other pens and typewriters had written the script, reassured me that he’d find me the right lines, that he had more used lines at his fingertips than anyone around. He was quite honest about it. When he was short of dialogue, he would borrow lines from some old movie, and I am quite sure that I ended up speaking words that Clark Gable had used in some quite different film.”

Rebounding deftly from the inanities of LAND OF THE PHAROAHS, Hawkins reverted to his hero persona to give a splendid performance as a methodical detective superintendent in THE LONG ARM (shown in this country as THE THIRD KEY.) Then he was a test pilot down on his luck in THE MAN IN THE SKY (in the US, it was titled DECISION AGAINST TIME) and an insurance investigator in FORTUNE IS A WOMAN (USA: SHE PLAYED WITH FIRE). He once again was in uniform in THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, playing the commando leader obsessed with the destruction of the bridge Alec Guinness was building for his Japanese captors. Before departing for Ceylon to film that adventure epic, Hawkins made his American tv-debut as Rufio in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (3/5/56) with Cedric Hardwicke and Claire Bloom in the title roles.

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, it turns out, marked the apogee of the careers of its three leads: Guinness. Hawkins and William Holden. On his return to England, Hawkins was decorated by Queen Elizabeth; following his acceptance of the O.B.E., he then went to work for John Ford the Scotland Yard comedy/dram GIDEON’S DAY, an atypical Ford vehicle covering one day in the hectic life author John Creasey’s redoubtable Inspector Gideon. Next, Hawkins played a bogus German general and British agent in Andre de Toth’s THE TWO-HEADED SPY, and then co-starred in his only tv series, Four Just Men based on the Edgar Wallace story. He shared the 39 episodes with Vittorio deSica, Dan Dailey and Richard Conte, his fellow crusaders against injustice and oppression. Most Hawkins’ episodes were directed by Basil Dearden, who then proceeded to convince Hawkins to change the course of his career by joining him (Dearden), Michael Relph, Richard Attenborough, Guy Green and Bryan Forbes in a production company called Allied Film Makers Ltd. The initial project was Dearden’s sophistcated gangster film, THE LEAGUE GENTLEMEN, with Relph producing, Forbes scripting, and Hawkins and Attenhorough starring. Hawkins plays an ex-Army officer who masterminds a daring bank robbery with military precision, using blackmail to persuade former military specialists to help. Allied Film Makers made several other memorable productions, including WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, VICTIM and MAN IN THE MOON; none with Hawkins, however.

It was during the filming of THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN that Hawkins began having serious throat trouble and cobalt treatments were recommended by various specialists. “I took nearly eight months to recover from the treatment, but in the end my voice returned to normal.” Hawkins later wrote. “To make quite certain that I was not straining it more than I had to, I took voice projection lessons, and cut the number of cigarettes I smoked each day from about sixty down to five.” He then plunged back into filmmaking, playing Quintus Anus, Admiral of the Roman fleet in BEN-HUR, Sir Edmund Allenby in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and General Cornwallis in the French-made LAFAYETTE.

On his first trip to Hollywood, to promote THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, Hawkins was surprised to discover that he liked the film capital. “I can only believe those who have a tough time in Hollywood and complain so much about it must be slightly deficient in talent.” Several years later, returning to make TWO LOVES, he recalled: “I was a big box-office draw and was treated as a valuable property, to be handled with care. But on the studio floor, that atmosphere of graded sycophancy was completely missing. No other film center can touch Hollywood crews for this dedication. I think that no actor should take Hollywood too seriously, but at the same time, it would be wrong to underestimate its professionalism.”

FIVE FINGER EXERCISE, his second (and last) Hollywood-made film, and RAMPAGE, which he and Robert Mitchum made in Hawaii, were Hawkins’ final two starring roles. His throat again was troubling him, and he ha difficulty struggling through his “guest” roles in THE GUNS OF BATASI and ZULU. Hawkins resigned himself to the worst, but managed several more film parts THE THIRD SECRET, JUDITH, MASQUERADE (for his old friend Basil Dearden), and a charity appearance in the UN-sponsored THE POPPY IS ALSO A FLOWER, speaking for the la time on the screen. He also did Back to Back with Shelly Winters for American tv (Bob Hope Chrysler Theater, 10/65) and a six-parter for the “Dr. Kildare” series in ’66 with his friend from the old Sybil Thorndike troupe, Raymond Massey. This was his last speaking role. On 1/25/66, Hawkins underwent a laryngectomy. “For an actor.” Hawkins wrote, “this is a sentence of working death.”

For more than a year Hawkins contemplated other directions to his life, “Then one day, entirely out of the blue. Henry Hathaway came to call.” Hawkins remembered in his autobiography. “He had made everyone’s life hell when we were filming THE BLACK ROSE years before. He asked me now to come to Nairobi with him to do some work on his THE LAST SAFARI – act as go-between for the company and the local actors. Henry’s was an act of compassion that demonstrated a sensitive understanding of other people’s suffering. He had had cancer himself and he knew the anxiety and fear that it brings . . . Henry was the first to take a hand in my future. The next was Peter O’Toole, who came up with a part in GREAT CATHERINE.” O’Toole, Hawkins and Jules Buck were partners in Keep Films, formed during the early ’60s (Hawkins was executive producer of that company’s THE PARTY’S OVER in ’65 and co-producer in ’73 of O’Toole’s THE RULING CLASS). GREAT CATHERINE returned Hawkins to the screen as the only laryngectomy actor in films. Actually, most of his lines in his few scenes in each of his subsequent 18 movies (!) were dubbed by either Charles Gray or Robert Riatty.

Hawkins’ last screen appearance was in the tv-movie. QB VII, for which he received (in ’74) a posthumous Emmy nomination for his role as the judge. In the spring of ’73 he came to NYC after learning of a new device called “Voicebak,” a plastic voice box, still apparently in its experimental stages which is implanted in the throat. The implantation failed, and his old wound from the original operation did not heal properly. Another try with “Voicebak” was considered unadvisable, and Hawkins returned to London where he accepted a role in THE TAMARIND SEED. He began costume fittings, but soon was forced to with draw from the cast (Oscar Homolka replaced him), On July 18, ’73, Hawkins died. Several months before his death, he had made an appearance on Dick Cavett’s tv show and described his life without real speech, hoping to give courage to others similarly afflicted. “The most I can hope for is to vary the pitch of the sounds.” he said. “The actual croaking quality. I’m afraid, is here to stay. It’s a damned nuisance but there you are.”

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* Daughter Caroline was born in ’54. Nicholas has shown interest in the production side of films and did second unit work on one of the last Jack Hawkins movies, THE LAO LION, made in South Africa. Andrew leans toward acting and works in regional theatre.

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