Trevor Howard

This article is about the actor. For the football player, see Trevor Howard (footballer).

Trevor Howard
Born	Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith 29 September 1913(1913-09-29) Cliftonville, Kent, England
Died	7 January 1988(1988-01-07) (aged 74) Bushey, Hertfordshire, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1944–88
Spouse	Helen Cherry (1944-88)

Trevor Howard (29 September 1913 – 7 January 1988), born Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith, was an English film, stage and television actor.

Early life

Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith was born in Cliftonville, Kent, England, on 29 September 1913, the only son and elder child of Arthur John Howard-Smith, who worked as the Ceylon representative for Lloyd's of London, and his Canadian wife, Mabel Grey Wallace, a nurse. During his lifetime his year of birth was often given as 1916. Until he was five, he lived in Colombo, Ceylon, but then travelled with his mother until the age of eight, when he was sent to school at Clifton College, Bristol.

Howard attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), acting on the London stage for several years before World War II. His first paid work was in the play Revolt in a Reformatory (1934), before he left RADA in 1935 to take small roles. That year, he was spotted by a Paramount studio talent scout, but turned down the offer of film work in favour of a career in theatre. This decision seemed justified when, in 1936, he was invited to join the Stratford Memorial Theatre and, in London, given the role of one of the students in French without Tears by Terence Rattigan, which ran for two years. He returned to Stratford in 1939.

World War II

At the outbreak of World War II, Howard volunteered for the RAF and British Army, but was turned down by both. However, in 1940, after working at the Colchester repertory theatre, he was called up into the Royal Corps of Signals, airborne division, becoming a Second Lieutenant, before he was invalided out in 1943. Although stories of his courageous wartime service earned him much respect among fellow actors and fans alike, files held in the Public Records Office reveal he had actually been discharged from the Army for mental instability and having a "psychopathic personality". The service stories were originally fabricated without his consent for publicity purposes, although Howard also recounted how he had parachuted into Nazi-occupied Norway and fought in the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Acting career

Howard moved back to the theatre in The Recruiting Officer (1943), where he met the actress Helen Cherry; they married in 1944 and stayed together until Howard's death in 1988; they had no children.

A short part in the British war film The Way Ahead (1944) provided an entry into the cinema. This was followed by The Way to the Stars (1945), which led to the role for which Howard is probably best remembered, the doctor in the 1945 film Brief Encounter, meeting and falling in love with a bored housewife played by Celia Johnson. Directed by David Lean, the film won an award at the Cannes Film Festival and considerable critical acclaim for Howard. Next came two successful Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat thrillers, I See a Dark Stranger (1945) and Green for Danger (1946), followed by They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), to which the roots of British realism in cinema can be traced. In 1947, he was invited by Laurence Olivier to play Petruchio in an Old Vic production of The Taming of the Shrew. Despite The Times declaring, "We can remember no better Petruchio", the opportunity of working again with David Lean, in The Passionate Friends (1949), drew Howard back to film and, although he had a solid reputation as a theatre actor, his dislike of long runs, and the attractions of travel afforded by film, convinced him to concentrate on cinema from this point. The Passionate Friends though, in which Howard played a similar character to Alec in Brief Encounter also featured Ann Todd and Claude Rains, but was not successful.

Howard's film reputation was secured in The Third Man (1949). As Major Calloway, he played the character type with which he became most associated, the slightly dry, slightly crusty, but capable British military officer. During filming in Vienna Howard visited the fairground which was, at that time, under the jurisdiction of the Russians, where, still wearing the uniform of a British Army Major, he was promptly arrested. He was returned to the SIB after his true identity was ascertained. He also starred in The Key (1958; based on a Jan de Hartog novel) for which he received the best actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Sons and Lovers (1960), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Another notable film was The Heart of the Matter (1953), from another Graham Greene story.

Over time Howard easily shifted to being one of England's finest character actors. Howard's later works included such films as Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Father Goose (1964), Morituri (1965), Von Ryan's Express (1965), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Battle of Britain (1969), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Superman (1978), and Gandhi (1982). The Dawning (1988) was his final film. One of his strangest films, and one he took great delight in, was Vivian Stanshall's 1980 Sir Henry at Rawlinson End in which he played the title role.

In television, Howard began to find more substantial roles. In 1962, he played Løvborg in Hedda Gabler, her former love, with Ingrid Bergman. He won an Emmy award the following year as Disraeli in The Invincible Mr Disraeli. In the 1970s, he played an abbot in the ITV Saturday Night Theatre production of Catholics (1973). He received an Emmy nomination in 1975 for his role as Abbé Faria in a television version of The Count of Monte Cristo. The decade ended with him reunited with Celia Johnson in Staying On (1980), an adaptation of Paul Scott's postscript to his Raj Quartet novels.

The 1980s saw a revival of Howard's career as a film actor. The role of a Cheyenne Indian in Windwalker (1981) revitalized his acting. He continued with cameo roles, including Judge Broomfield in Gandhi (1982). His final films were White Mischief and The Dawning, both released in 1988.

He declined a CBE in 1982.

Howard did not abandon the theatre altogether in 1947, returning to the stage on occasion, most notably as Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard (1954) and the captain in The Father (1964). His last appearance on the British stage was in Waltz of the Toreadors in 1974.

Throughout his film career Howard insisted that all of his contracts held a clause excusing him from work whenever a cricket Test Match was being played.^{[citation needed]}

Death

He died on 7 January 1988, from a combination of bronchitis, influenza and jaundice, in Arkley, Barnet, aged 74, survived by his widow Helen.

Shakespeare

Howard left behind just two Shakespeare performances, the first, recorded in the 1960s, was as Petruchio opposite Margaret Leighton's Kate in Caedmon Records' complete recording of The Taming of the Shrew; the second was in the title role of King Lear for the BBC World Service in 1986.

Awards and nominations

Howard was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Sons and Lovers (1960). He won one BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for The Key (1958) and was nominated four more times. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a Movie for Hallmark Hall of Fame: Invincible Mr. Disraeli in 1963 and received two other nominations, one as a lead and the other as a supporting actor. He also got three Golden Globe Award nominations.

A British government document leaked to the Sunday Times in 2003 shows that Howard was among almost 300 celebrities to decline honours.

Filmography

• The Way Ahead (1944)
• Brief Encounter (1945)
• The Way to the Stars (1945)
• I See a Dark Stranger (1946)
• Green for Danger (1946)
• They Made Me a Fugitive (1947)
• So Well Remembered (1947)
• The Passionate Friends (1949)
• The Third Man (1949)
• Odette (1950)
• Golden Salamander (1950)
• The Clouded Yellow (1950)
• Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951)
• Outcast of the Islands (1952)
• The Gift Horse (1952)
• The Heart of the Matter (1953)
• La mano dello straniero (1954)
• Les amants du Tage (1955)
• The Cockleshell Heroes (1955)
• Run for the Sun (1956)
• Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
• Interpol (1957)
• Manuela (1957)
• A Day in Trinidad, Land of Laughter (1957) (narrator)
• The Key (1958)
• The Roots of Heaven (1958)
• Malaga (1960)
• Sons and Lovers (1960)
• The Lion (1962)
• Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
• Man in the Middle (1963)
• Father Goose (1964)
• Operation Crossbow (1965)
• Von Ryan's Express (1965)
• Morituri (1965)
• The Liquidator (1965)
• The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966)
• Triple Cross (1966)
• Pretty Polly (1967)
• The Long Duel (1967)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)
• Battle of Britain (1969)
• Ryan's Daughter (1970)
• Twinky (1970)
• Kidnapped (1971)
• The Night Visitor (1971)
• To Catch a Spy (1971)
• Mary, Queen of Scots (1972)
• The Offence (1972)
• Pope Joan (1972)
• Ludwig (1972)
• A Doll's House (1973) (TV)
• Who? (1973)
• 11 Harrowhouse (1974)
• Persecution (1974)
• Cause for Concern (1974) (narrator)
• Craze (1974)
• The Count of Monte Cristo (1975) (TV)
• Conduct Unbecoming (1975)
• Hennessy (1975)
• Aces High (1976)
• Albino (1976)
• The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones (1976)
• Eliza Fraser (1976)
• The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977)
• Babel Yemen (1977) (voice)
• Slavers (1978)
• Stevie (1978)
• Superman (1978)
• Meteor (1979)
• Hurricane (1979)
• The Shillingbury Blowers (1980)
• The Sea Wolves (1980)
• Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1980)
• Windwalker (1981)
• Light Years Away, also known as Les Années lumière (1981)
• The Great Muppet Caper (1981)
• The Missionary (1982)
• Gandhi (1982)
• Flashpoint Africa (1984)
• Sword of the Valiant (1984)
• Dust (1985)
• Time After Time (1986)
• Foreign Body (1986)
• Shaka Zulu (1986)
• Peter the Great (TV series) (1986)
• White Mischief (1988)
• The Dawning (1988)
• The Unholy (1988)

References and sources

• M. Munn, Trevor Howard: the man and his films, 1989
• V. Knight, Trevor Howard: a gentleman and a player, 1986
• T. Pettigrew, Trevor Howard: a personal biography, 2001

External links

• Trevor Howard at the Internet Movie Database
• Trevor Howard at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Trevor Howard papers archived at Bristol University
• Trevor Howard at Find a Grave