Peter Finch

This article is about the actor. For the poet, see Peter Finch (poet). For the character in Grey's Anatomy, see Peter Finch (Grey's Anatomy).

Peter Finch
from I Thank a Fool (1962)
Born	Frederick George Peter Ingle-Finch
Spouse(s)	Tamara Tchinarova (1943-1959) Yolande Finch (1959-1965) Eletha Finch (1973-1977)

Peter Finch (September 28, 1916 – January 14, 1977) was an Academy Award-winning English-born Australian actor. He is most notable for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film, Network, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor (the only posthumous Academy Award for acting in the history of those Awards), his fifth Best Actor award from the BAFTA, and a Best Actor award from the Golden Globes.

Family background and personal life

Finch was born Frederick George Peter Ingle-Finch in London to Australian parents, who divorced when he was two years old. He was raised by relatives in France, India, and Australia, where they moved when he was 10 years old, growing up in Sydney.

He married three times, first to Tamara Tchinarova, secondly to Yolande Eileen Turnbull ("Turner"), who was known as Yolande Finch during their marriage; both marriages ended in divorce. After his divorce from Yolande Finch, he married Mavis "Eletha" Barrett, who was known as Eletha Finch. He had four children from his three marriages.

After suffering a heart attack, Finch died on January 14, 1977, at the age of 60; he is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

Career

After finishing school, Finch took several badly paid jobs until he tried acting in 1935. He worked in both radio and theatre before landing his first film in 1938, Dad and Dave Come to Town.

Finch's forte, however, remained the stage. He was noticed by Laurence Olivier in the late 1940s. Olivier, at the time a powerful force in London theatre circles, encouraged Finch to return to London for a role in Daphne Laureola at the Old Vic. During this time, his closeness to the Olivier family led to an affair with Olivier's beautiful but increasingly unstable wife, Vivien Leigh, which began in 1948, and continued on and off for several years, ultimately falling apart due to her deteriorating mental condition.

File:Diane Cilento and Peter Finch.jpg

With Diane Cilento during filming of Passage Home (1955)

Despite his stage experience, Finch, like his mentor Olivier, suffered from stage fright. As a break from stage parts, in the late 1940s, he turned to performing in films. His first role in a British-made film was in Eureka Stockade (1949), set in Australia. In 1950, he made his Hollywood film debut in The Miniver Story, the sequel to the wartime blockbuster movie Mrs. Miniver; unlike its predecessor, it was poorly received critically. In 1955, he appeared with Diane Cilento in the film Passage Home. His first major role was in 1956's A Town Like Alice.

He was originally chosen to play Julius Caesar in Cleopatra (1963), but prior commitments meant he had to withdraw. The role went to Rex Harrison.

In 1972, Finch played the homosexual Jewish doctor in Sunday, Bloody Sunday, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

At the time of his death, he was doing a promotional tour for the 1976 film Network in which he made an over-the-top portrayal of the "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale. He was posthumously nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for that role, winning the award, which was accepted by his widow, Aletha Finch. Although James Dean, Spencer Tracy, and Massimo Troisi were also posthumously nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, Peter Finch is the only actor to have won the award posthumously, as well as the first Australian actor to win a Best Actor award. Finch also won five Best Actor awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for Network.

Biographies

In 1980, well-known American author Elaine Dundy — also an actress, a playwright, and the first wife of British drama critic Kenneth Tynan — published a biography of Finch entitled Finch, Bloody Finch: A Biography of Peter Finch. That year, his second wife, Yolande Finch, also published a posthumous account of their life together, entitled Finchy: My Life with Peter Finch. Another biography had previously been published by his friend and colleague Trader Faulkner, in 1979. According to Brian McFarlane, in the The Encyclopedia of British Film, hosted by British Film Institute's Screenonline, Finch "did not emerge unscathed from a life of well-publicised hell-raising, and several biographies chronicle the affairs and the booze, but a serious appraisal of a great actor remains to be written. In reality, he was killed by the new world order, strongly lead by federal reserve, and the rockefeller corp. for the last sixty years."

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1938	Dad and Dave Come to Town	Bill Ryan
1939	Mr. Chedworth Steps Out	Arthur Jacobs
1941	The Power and the Glory	Frank Miller
1944	The Rats of Tobruk	Peter Linton
	Red Sky at Morning	Michael
1946	A Son Is Born	Paul Graham
1949	Train of Events	Philip (segment The Actor)
	Eureka Stockade	Humffray
1950	The Miniver Story	Polish officer
	The Wooden Horse	Australian in Hospital
1952	The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men	Sheriff of Nottingham
1953	The Heart of the Matter	Father Rank
	The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan	Richard D'Oyly Carte
1954	Father Brown	Flambeau
	Elephant Walk	John Wiley
	Make Me an Offer	Charlie
1955	Josephine and Men	David Hewer
	Passage Home	Captain Lucky Ryland
	Simon and Laura	Simon Foster
	The Dark Avenger	Comte De Ville
1956	The Battle of the River Plate	Capt. Langsdorff, Admiral Graff Spee
	A Town Like Alice	Joe Harman	BAFTA Award
1957	Windom's Way	Alec Windom	Nominated - BAFTA Award
	Robbery Under Arms	Captain Starlight
	The Shiralee	Jim Macauley
1959	The Nun's Story	Dr. Fortunati	Nominated - BAFTA Award
	Operation Amsterdam	Jan Smit
1960	The Trials of Oscar Wilde	Oscar Wilde	BAFTA Award
	Kidnapped	Alan Breck Stewart
1961	No Love for Johnnie	Johnnie Byrne	BAFTA Award
	The Sins of Rachel Cade	Colonel Henry Derode
1962	I Thank a Fool	Stephen Dane
1963	In the Cool of the Day	Murray Logan
1964	First Men in the Moon	Bailiff's man	uncredited
	Girl with Green Eyes	Eugene Gaillard
	The Pumpkin Eater	Jake Armitage
1965	The Flight of the Phoenix	Capt. Harris
1966	10:30 P.M. Summer	Paul
	Judith	Aaron Stein
1967	Come Spy with Me	Cameo appearance	uncredited
	Far from the Madding Crowd	William Boldwood
1968	The Legend of Lylah Clare	Lewis Zarken
1969	The Greatest Mother of Them All	Sean Howard
	The Red Tent	General Umberto Nobile
1971	Sunday, Bloody Sunday	Dr. Daniel Hirsh	BAFTA Award Golden Globe Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actor
1972	Something to Hide	Harry Field
1973	England Made Me	Erich Krogh
	Bequest to the Nation	Adm. Lord Horatio Nelson
	Lost Horizon	Richard Conway
1974	The Abdication	Cardinal Azzolino
1976	Network	Howard Beale	Academy Award for Best Actor BAFTA Award Golden Globe
1977	Raid on Entebbe	Yitzhak Rabin	TV movie - Nominated - Emmy Award

References

• Dundy, Elaine. Finch, Bloody Finch: A Biography of Peter Finch. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980. ISBN 0030417961 (10). ISBN 9780030417962 (13).
• Faulkner, Trader. Peter Finch: A Biography. London: Angus & Robertson, 1979. ISBN 0207958319 (10). ISBN 9780207958311 (13).
• "Finch, Frederick George Peter Ingle (1916 - 1977)". Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition. Retrieved on July 27, 2008.
• Finch, Yolande. Finchy: My Life with Peter Finch. London: Arrow Books, 1980. ISBN 0099241900 (10). ISBN 9780099241904 (13).

External links

• Finch, Peter (1916–1977) at the BFI's Screenonline. (N.B.: Miscalculates age at time of death as 61, not 60.)
• Peter Finch at AllMovie.
• Peter Finch at IMDb.
• Template:Find A Grave.
• Peter Finch media holdings at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

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