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Budapest Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Budapest Times
Losing the plots in an antiseptic Hollywood
Only Belgian author Georges Simenon (1903-1989) has had more of his books filmed than English author William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). We don't have the number for Simenon but for Maugham, to date and if television films are included, there have been more than 90 made from his novels, short stories and plays. Both writers are great favourites at The Budapest Times, and as well as reading them extensively we also look out for the films, so Robert Calder's book is an invaluable, and cautionary, reference point for Maugham. Of course, film-makers have always had a habit of setting their own scriptwriters to work 'bettering' the source material for which they already paid a handsome sum. And the result often causes the original writers to throw up their hands at the travesty that their creation has become. And that's very often the case here, as Calder details. He will advise. Calder is a Canadian, Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, and he wrote a book of literary criticism, 'W. Somerset Maugham and the Quest for Freedom' in 1972, and a biography, 'Willie, The Life of W. Somerset Maugham' in 1989. In this new book he tells how Maugham and Hollywood not surprisingly formed a long, productive partnership. Maugham had a varied and prolific career from the 1890s to the 1950s, during which he achieved success both as a novelist, with 20 books, and a dramatist, with 32 plays. Few authors have achieved such success in both genres, Calder says, and Maugham completed an even rarer trifecta by writing around 120 short stories, some of which – notably 'The Letter' and 'Rain' – Calder describes as the most memorable in the English language. In Calder's assessment, Maugham's writing appealed to the film industry because a recurrent theme and preoccupation was his concern for freedom, whether physical, emotional or intellectual. His territory was autonomy and enslavement, seeing humans as surrounded by narrowness and restrictions, trapped by poverty or the class system, restricted by a role such as colonial administrator or humble verger, and imprisoned by their emotions. In the early 20th century, Calder writes, the moving picture was becoming the newest of art forms, embryonic compared to literature, drama, opera and the visual arts. Audiences were initially excited to see moving images but soon developed a taste for actual stories, and producers began scouring the world for plots and characters. In 1915 Maugham's fame as a novelist was still to come but he was a well-known dramatist whose plays were staged in London and New York, and he sold the rights to his play 'The Explorer' to pioneering film producer Jesse Lasky. Of the 10 films made from Maugham stories in the silent era, only one – the novel 'The Magician' – was not a play. Straight away, the films shifted from Maugham's original stories, downplaying sexual struggles and revising endings, for instance. 'The Ordeal' in 1922, based on a 1917 Maugham play called 'Love in a Cottage', was extensively rewritten, making the play unrecognisable. Despite such revision and censorship, it's an unfortunate cinematic fact that many silent films are lost, with most of the Maughams among them, never to be seen again. Occasionally today one might still turn up in an attic in New Zealand or somewhere, but the chances reduce. Calder recreates the lost films from contemporary newspaper reviews and such. Usefully, he informs of complete changes of titles, so we now realise that 'Charming Sinners', released by Paramount in 1929, is actually the Maugham play 'The Constant Wife' first performed in 1926, and 'Strictly Unconditional', released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1930, is a version of another play, 'The Circle'. And who has even heard of 'Dirty Gertie from Harlem', from Sack Amusement Enterprises in 1946, let alone suspected that the plot is essentially an adaptation of 'Miss Thompson', which in turn is 'Rain'. Maugham is not credited and it is claimed to have been an original tale written by the ironically named True T. Thompson. Sadie is disguised as Gertie La Rue. When sound arrived, 'Rain' offered particularly fertile material. This short story was originally published as 'Miss Thompson' in April 1921 and is set on a Pacific island, where a missionary's determination to reform a hardened, cynical prostitute leads to tragedy. It was filmed as 'Sadie Thompson' by Gloria Swanson Productions in 1930, with Swanson in the lead, then as 'Rain' by United Artists in 1932 with Joan Crawford, and as 'Miss Sadie Thompson' by Columbia Pictures in 1953 with Rita Hayworth. At one stage, in 1940 when Mary Pickford owned the rights, she was approached by three studios. RKO wanted the story for Ginger Rogers, MGM saw it as a vehicle for Ann Sothern and Warner Bros. had Bette Davis in mind, but these projects all remained just that. Calder's account of Swanson's determined efforts to make a film that was essentially too hot for the moral crusaders trying to rein in Hollywood 'excesses' is a particularly intriguing look at the machinations in play. The Hays Office and its 'code of decency' barred profanity, nudity, miscegenation, scenes of childbirth and ridicule of clergy. Single beds and no toilets. Despite Swanson's trickery to evade the censors and put Sadie on screen, her film is sanitised and ends not with a bang but a mawkish whimper, Calder recounts. It wasn't alone. Maugham's semi-autobiographical fiction 'Of Human Bondage' included what could well be his most compulsively page-turning section ever, as medical student Philip Carey repeatedly subjects himself to humiliation by the slutty waitress Mildred. Bette Davis played the tormentor in RKO's 1934 film and Leslie Howard took the kicks. Unknown to us until now, Warner Bros. filmed it in 1946 with Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker, and finally Seven Arts Productions did a version with Kim Novak and Laurence Harvey in 1964. Davis was also the murderess Leslie Crosbie in the Warner Bros. film of 'The Letter' in 1940, and Calder assesses that of all the Maugham adaptations it is the one that most enriches one of his stories with the artistic possibilities of the medium. As for the worst, this was surely 'Isle of Fury' starring Humphrey Bogart in Warner Bros.' 1946 version of Maugham's novel 'The Narrow Corner', seemingly 'the product of a team trying to win a quickie film contest'. Jeanne Eagels played Crosbie in Paramount's 'The Letter' in 1929, and Warner Bros. adapted it again as 'The Unfaithful' in 1947 with Ann Sheridan. Warners had also filmed 'The Narrow Corner' in 1933. Other 'multiples' were 'The Painted Veil' in 1934, 1957 (as 'The Seventh Sin') and 2006, 'The Beachcomber'in 1938 (as 'Vessel of Wrath') and 1954, 'The Razor's Edge' in 1946 and 1984, and 'Theatre' as 'Adorable Julia' in 1962 and 'Being Julia' in 2004. Calder details how Hollywood signed up eminent authors to write specifically for the studios because their names on posters guaranteed increased ticket sales, and while some of them adapted to the demands of creating film scripts, Maugham was not one. On a Hollywood sojourn in 1920 he got a $15,000 commission for a script but it was never used. After that he declined further offers. 'I'm amazed at the way in which producers buy my stories and then change the plots. If they like their own plots best, why bother to buy mine?' Calder gives us the eviscerations and revisions designed to satisfy the censor and the perceived tastes of moviegoers, if not the expectations of their author.
Budapest Times
10-05-2025
- Sport
- Budapest Times
Long seasons and short corners
Undisputed football expert Ron Knee wrote his first column for The Budapest Times back in May 2021, promising a regular analysis but then unfortunately suffered a severe case of writer's block, possibly caused by years of heading balls for his team, Chipping Sodbury Reserves in England's seventh tier. After partial recovery, here is his long-awaited second effort looking at more idiosyncrasies in modern-day soccer and holding to account 'the people who run the game'. Shirt numbers – No number should go higher than 99. This rule must be introduced following the controversy when Trent Alexander-Arnold, playing for Liverpool in the English Premier League, had a 6 accidentally added to his regular number 66 and consequently received weeks of 'social media' hate male from Christian fundamentalists, plus his children were bullied at school. Snot – Snot must go. Any player seen putting his finger to his nose and snorting out the contents at the exact moment that a camera has moved in for a close-up shall be handed a yellow card and ten minutes in a 'sin bin', with tissues. Any player rising from a tackle and able to show snot on his person shall be sent to the technical area for disinfecting. Ground staff will quickly spray the danger area on the pitch and his team will be awarded a free kick. Shirt appeals – Supporters entering a ground with a placard appealing for a player's shirt must sign a waiver pledging not to sue if subsequently falling ill to a dangerous disease should they be lucky, or unlucky, enough to be handed a snot-tainted jersey. Bras – Why do many men players wear brassieres under their shirts now? Fixture congestion – Top international and club players complain that playing every three days is too tiring. FIFA and UEFA carry on regardless, expanding the 2025 UEFA Champions League from 125 matches to 189 (excluding qualifying rounds), by expanding the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup from seven teams to 32, though it will be held only every four years instead of annually, and the 2026 World Cup will likewise grow to 48 teams from 32. Some national leagues have introduced end-of-season play-offs for promotion spots.. All these expansions and new tournaments are creating more and more stress on players' bodies. Still, when you are earning enough moolah to buy another house every week, or a super-duper Ferrari, at least that's some compensation. 'Dramatic' penalty shoot-outs – Some idiot somewhere suggested doing away with 30 minutes of extra time after a 90-minute knock-out draw and going instead straight to 'dramatic' penalty shoot-outs. The Budapest Times has a better idea. Let's replace 90-minute matches altogether by an immediate 'dramatic' penalty-shoot with 10 shots per side. The advantages are huge (all that stuff about fixture congestion and player fatigue) and barely need to be gone into here. Who needs a full game when you can have a 'dramatic' shoot-out (all penalty shoot-outs are described as dramatic in the press next day), plus fans won't need to fork out for over-priced stadium hot dogs, chips and cola. Real Madrid – Fully revealed themselves in the 2024-25 season as 'to the manner born', spitting their imperial dummy when decisions and results went against their majestic selves. Their results in particular failed to reach lofty expectations. Look no further than when Real Madrid TV demanded that the referee chosen for their Copa Del Rey final versus Barcelona in April be changed because he was 'biased' against the saintly men in white. The substituted defender Antonio Rudiger actually threw ice at the ref from the technical area as his team was crashing to defeat and he had to be restrained by several staff. Eyes flaring, he clearly wanted to do the official great harm. Subsequently the German international apologised for his out-of-control and got a ban. Luckily for him, the ban will be served while he is out injured anyway. In such cases, kneecapping is recommended. Derby games – Really, hoow can players care much about derby matches when they have no connection to the city in which they are signed. If you come from Cameroon, Egypt, Uzbekistan or wherever, or even Portugal, Norway or Germany, for instance, it's surely difficult to be fully committed in a Manchester United versus Manchester City or AC Milan versus Inter Milan match, or similar. See 'Nationalities' below. Thumbs-ups – When a colleague sends you an impossible pass, don't give a thumbs-up. Shake your fist violently and mouth an insult. Short corners – Without mathematical or scientific back-up we estimate that a corner straight into the box has a 50-50 chance of being won by the attacking team and thus getting into the net. Short corners fiddle around for two or three passes before finally getting into the box or they stand a 75 per cent chance of being defended and never getting into the box at all. Are players so fixated on thinking that a short corner will give them some sort of advantage when most of the time they are just a wasted opportunity? Women's football – Very nice at times but, sorry, likely to remain a mildly attractive adjunct to the stronger, more skilful men's game. Feminists please direct hate mail to the Editor. Hungarian football – Last and least but, hey, it's a small country, and skills do seem to have improved in the past few years, as they desperatel needed to. As suggested in the earlier Ron Knee column, Viktor Orbán should have had immediate election to FIFA and UEFA boards with free world travel, first-class hotels and an attractive lady 'secretary' for services to stadium building, but unfortunately nothing happened. In 2021, Mr Knee made some other suggestions to push football to the limit and bring it into the next century, but again few have been followed up, so again he demands: Tattoos: All players to have fully covered arms, legs and necks. Sackings: Any manager booted out more than three times in a season to be barred from the game. Any manager who says 'We will learn from this 10-0 defeat' to be taken out and shot, plus barred from the game. Acting lessons: All players to receive to improve instruction in tumbling, rolling in 'agony', etc. Tunnels: Players must not fraternise before games. Snarling and jostling must replace laughs and hugs. Running tracks: All pitches surrounded by these, thus pushing fans many metres from the expensive action, to be banned (even if 'dramatic' penalty shoot-outs replace the full game). Paris Saint-Germain is a prime example. Wagging a finger left to right, right to left at the referee: Insolent. Instant red card. 'False' 9: Explanation needed. What is it? Don't mystify the fans. After, all we don't have 'false goalkeepers'. Or do we? Similarly 'the press' – this simply seems to be a trendy phrase for 'defending'. Managerial spitting: Must be banned in the technical area. Managers don't run, why spit? Artificial crowd noise: Very valuable in the pandemic, should have been continued. Nationalities: Clubs should no longer be referred to as 'English' or 'Spanish' or wherever unless they have at least one player of their own nationality. Praying: Ban it. God doesn't have time to deal with football matches (to His/Her loss). Raised arms at corners: Yes, we can see you are about to kick the ball over. Or is it a carefully worked-out secret sign? Probably not. Unnecessary. Ban it. Walls: Any cowardly player who turns his back when a free kick is taken should receive a three-game ban. Hands banned from covering genitals. Rotating pitchside advertising: The most useless invention known to Man, but don't tell advertisers this. All grounds must have it. Hysterical managers who won't stay within 'technical' areas: Barbed wire recommended. Players 'geeing up' the crowd: Stupid Ridiculous goal celebrations, particularly those involving manic squad members: Fu—– At this point Ron is complaining of a bad headache and has gone to lie down.
Budapest Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Budapest Times
Tragedies, triumphs of a life off and on stage and screen
It's a bit of a relief to read in British actor David Tomlinson's autobiography his recognition that he was known for 'my dimwitted upper-class twit performances' – a relief because if you had asked us here at The Budapest Times to describe Tomlinson, we would have been tempted to say, 'You know, that bloke who often used to play dimwitted upper-class twits in films', but we certainly would have hesitated to do so, for risk of 1) causing offence to the family, and 2) failing to recognise a career wider than that. So, if Tomlinson was self-aware enough, good for him, and us, and if we think back to British films of his peak period in the 1940s-1970s we can do so without guilt, because you'd have to agree that he and Ian Carmichael had basically cornered the market when it came to topping casting directors' lists of candidates to fill the parts of dimwitted upper-class twits. Tomlinson made 50 films and we haven't seen a whole lot of them, partly because he seems to be primarily remembered for three roles in Walt Disney films, and this is the sort of soppy family fare that we tend to avoid. He made a big name for himself in Disney's huge hit 'Mary Poppins' (1964), appearing as Glynis Johns' husband and singing 'Let's Go Fly a Kite'. His other two successes in the Disney trio were 'The Love Bug' in 1968 and 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' in 1971. But rather we prefer to think of him in 'The Wooden Horse' (1950) tunnelling out of Stalag Luft III, a German POW camp for officers. Also, he was one of the 'Three Men in a Boat' (1956), based on Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel (a book we love) containing non-stop twittishness not just from Tomlinson, as Jerome, but from all three bods. Another was 'The Chiltern Hundreds' (1949), in which Tomlinson was again a trademark genial high-born ass, playing Tony, Viscout Pym, the son of a lord who becomes a Labour candidate for Member of Parliament, and we've also seen him in two of the four old-fashioned but enjoyable Huggetts films, 'Here Come the Huggetts' in 1948 and 'Vote for Huggett' in 1949. Jack Warner, later of 'Dixon of Dock Green' TV fame, and Kathleen Harrison starred in these family-friendly British efforts, with a young Petula Clark. Such films give a fair idea of the Tomlinson niche. However, as he points out he did play a wide range of characters, from heroes and amiable silly asses to dignified old gentlemen. For good measure, he was even a wicked villain, dying with a bullet in his chest in the back of a plane, the only time, as far as he could recall, when he wasn't basically a 'nice guy'. And he had a solid stage craeer too, often filming during the day and working in the theatre at night. With a growing family of four sons he was rather keen on money, and one of the boys was autistic, presenting considerable problems. Here, good people helped cope. Actors usually lead very fascinating lives, engrossing to we in the common herd, and Tomlinson's memories are entertaining for sure. Here are encounters to satisfy any cinephile, with Anthony Asquith, Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley, Errol Flynn, Peter Sellers, Walt Disney, Vanessa Redgrave, Noël Coward and other luminaries. Also King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and later the Princess Royal, plus adventures on foreign lands with good times in Hollywood and bad times witnessing the appalling apartheid of South Africa. Whether its people were black or white, they were good to Tomlinson. David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was born on May 7, 1917 in Henley-on-Thames and died aged 83 on June 24, 2000 in King Edward VII's Hospital, London, after a stroke. It was a joke of his that he wanted the words 'David Tomlinson, an actor of genius, irresistible to women' on his headstone. (He was buried in the grounds of his home in Buckinghamshire, wording unknown.) The autobiography was published in 1990 and is now available again in a new edition from Dean Street Press, a publisher 'devoted to uncovering and revitalizing good books'. Tomlinson's is well worthy of such attention. From his earliest remembered family days to the world of films it is a winner, with unusual tales nicely told. Some would make good plots. These don't come much odder than that of Tomlinson's father Clarence, an outwardly respectable solicitor but given to rages at home. He horrified even himself when once he burned David's hand with a domestic iron, to teach the boy, aged about 8, a lesson after he had turned it on. But most incredibly he somehow managed to successfully juggle two entirely separate families for decades. He told his wife Florence and four children in Folkestone that for work purposes he needed to stay at his London club on weekdays, while actually living with his mistress and their seven – seven! – illegitimate children. The subterfuge was eventually uncovered when David's brother Peter was on his way to Heathrow on a double-decker airport bus that stopped unexpectedly in Chiswick, whereupon Peter found himself gazing through a top-deck window at his father sitting up in bed in a strange house drinking tea. In fact his wife had known of her husband's double life for 60 years because during the First World War in France he was writing to both women but once put the letters in the wrong envelopes. She never mentioned it until, 86 years old, she was on her death bed. 'The marriage was important to her,' Tomlinson writes. The only time her husband was truly kind to her was whenever she was ill, so she made a point of being frequently ill and had, the son believes, two or even three unnecessary operations. Tomlinson says his childhood was plagued by the tensions and friction when his father was home. He and his three brothers were used to his arrival in Folkestone on Friday night and departure on Monday morning. 'If truth be told, we were quite pleased to see him go,' Tomlinson tells. The family was frightened of this unpredictable man. The boy enjoyed the pleasures of Folkestone. There were horses, gas lights, Punch and Judy, cinema and a rollerskating rink. He was 10 when he decided to be an actor after visiting the Pleasure Gardens Theatre. Do they really get paid for doing that, he wondered? He couldn't believe anything could be quite so wonderful. 'I decided then and there that it must be better than working and I have never altered my view.' The young man had a a stammer but was determined to overcome it and his father's opposition. He scoured London for theatrical jobs then joined the Grenadier Guards, which was a big mistake so he bought himself out after 16 months. A period as dogsbody in repertory helped equip him for his first professional, but non-speaking, appearance in 1936. The film director Anthony Asquith saw him in a play and signed him, rescuing him from dispiriting provincial tours with often drunken colleagues and cold and uncomfortable theatrical boarding-houses, and an unsuccessful spell selling vacuum cleaners. In the Second World War he was a Royal Air Force flying instructor, surviving a crash after blacking out in a Tiger Moth. There was the appalling tragedy of a first marriage in 1943 to a beautiful American widow who threw herself out of a 15th-floor window in New York, together with her two little boys. He was in England with the RAF. In 1953 Tomlinson married Audrey Freeman and theirs was a long and happy union, remaining together for nearly 50 years and raising the four boys. At first he had a stammer but overame it with tenacity and determination. Courage was the vital factor to succeed in acting, he says. Succeed he did and the memories of a full career are here to enjoy.
Budapest Times
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Budapest Times
Building a career and then destroying it
Actor Robert Shaw took his craft seriously, when he thought it was worthy, starting on stage in Shakespearean plays and graduating to film roles. So might it pain him if he were to discover from the Great Beyond that two of his best silver-screen appearances fondly remembered here at The Budapest Times involved dying rather spectacular final exits in "blockbuster' commercial films? We approach John French's book with great interest. Many other cinemagoers, we are sure, still recall with horror the bloody, scarifying moments when Shaw slipped slowly into the gaping mouth of the huge Great White Shark at the climax of 'Jaws' in 1975. And it was in 'From Russia with Love', the second James Bond film, released in 1963, that Shaw suffered another momentous cinematic exit. In that one, he plays SPECTRE assassin Donald 'Red' Grant, who has been trained to assassinate Bond (played by Sean Connery). The two engage in a ferocious fight to the death in a carriage on the Orient Express train, and Grant is about to prevail until Bond tricks him into setting off a booby trap, one of the gadgets hidden in a special briefcase supplied to 007 by Q Branch. Triumph for Bond, end of Grant, naturally. John French knew Robert Shaw well, professionally and personally, having been Shaw's agent for the last five years of the actor's life, which ended in 1978 aged a relatively young 51 years. For three years before that, French worked for Shaw's then-agent as an assistant. French thus appears in his own book around the two-thirds mark, with the decision to do so in the third-person 'he' and not the first-person 'I', thus avoiding what he feared might be the risk of changing his Shaw biography into a sort of hybrid autobiography. But despite the closeness between the two men, readers are assured by French's publisher of a 'perceptive, sympathetic, but unsparing portrait of the blessings and curses endowing this mercurial, engimatic but deeply engaging man'. What's that old phrase – warts and all? Impressively, considering that the agent/author enters the picture so late on, French delivers an absolutely fulsome account, as detailed pre-himself as it is post-himself. Readers are still given a treat, with no short shrift of the actor's early years. Robert Archibald Shaw was born in Westhoughton, near Bolton, Lancashire, UK, on August 9, 1927, and so with his death in 1978 it means a good number of Shaw's contemporaries were still around to tell their tales for the biography, which went into print 15 years later in 1993. It remains available through Dean Street Press. In a way, then, can Shaw's demise be considered a case of 'Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse'? Perhaps not quite, although Shaw had become an awful alcoholic and the book tells us that, 'The flipside to Shaw's diverse abilities was his well-earned reputation as a hellraiser. A fiercely competitive man in all areas of his life, whether playing table tennis or drinking whisky, he emptied mini-bars, crashed Aston Martins, fathered nine children by three different women, made (and spent) a fortune, and set fire to Orson Welles' house'. It certainly doesn't sound like a recipe for life longevity, and French recounts how Shaw's passing came after he had driven himself too hard and too fast but was never able to get past the tortured relationship to his father, who had committed suicide by taking poison in 1938 when Shaw was just 11 years old. His father Thomas was a General Practitioner, and in 1926 he married Doreen Avery, who trained as a nurse. Doctor Shaw was a chronic drunk, always carrying a hip flask and often borrowing money to frequent the pub until closing time. His drinking got progressively worse and he would go into Robert's room after an evening of imbibing and weep on his son's bed. Shaw never got past the relationship, his feelings becoming harder and harder to cope with. As an adolescent he became prey to brooding and unpredictability, a loner whose moodiness made him difficult to get close to. Winning was essential because he hated losing, whether playing rugby, tennis, boules or arm-wrestling, for instance. If he wasn't good at something he worked on it until he was proficient. He delighted in doing down opponents, even if, at golf, it was a one-legged man. Shaw had success on the school stage and by his late teens was set on becoming an actor, and, he would always add, a writer. While he is most probably remembered as being a celebrated Oscar-nominated star, for 'A Man for All Seasons' in 1967, he wrote six published novels, the second one, 'The Sun Doctor' in 1961, winning the Hawthornden Prize for novels by writers under the age of 41. It was sold for translation to France, Sweden, Denmark and Holland. Some of these books received ecstatic reviews. Shaw also wrote plays, and they included the praised 'The Man in the Glass Booth', written in 1967 and filmed in 1975. He passed entry to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1946 but from being Head Boy at Truro School in Cornwall, and the natural centre of attraction, now he was just another student, small fish in a big pond. French says his predictable reaction, conditioned by his inability to 'win', was to become aggressive and uncooperative, an outsider. He despised the teaching methods and the organisation of RADA, describing it as a concentration camp. When he graduated in summer 1949 he was on the employment market with 200 other actors that year. So it was slow going for him at first, with lowly stage appearances as a 'spear-carrier' and months out of work waiting for offers. Here The Budapest Times can reveal that your correspondent Osterberg is so ancient that as a 6- and 7-year-old he used to watch Shaw when he made a breakthrough by landing the role of Captain Dan Tempest in the action-packed television series 'The Buccaneers' that ran for 39 episodes. Where's that credit card? – now you can buy the complete series on DVD. Eventually, over the years Shaw worked himself into the position where he didn't have to look for work because work, instead, came looking for him. Though heavily discontented with his parts, he was undoubtedly making an impact on his fellow professionals. At the same time he had inflated ideas of his worth. In his personal life he was a man's man, uneasy with women, occasionally lusting after them but not really understanding nor making a true friendship with one. While never a womaniser, he would pursue one relentlessly if captivated. As a young man he hardly drank at all, regarding alcohol in much the same way as he did the opposite sex, of interest but a matter of no great passion. He could be wildly extravagant but generous, hating snobs, and his life was often in total turmoil. Eventual professional and financial pressures saw him become a fall-down drunk. Tax problems forced the family into exile in western Ireland. A favourite word of his had been 'energy', created from the adrenelin of success, establishing himself as an actor of quality with a certain degree of public fame. His writing was being applauded internationally, he was mixing with people he admired intellectually, earning almost as much as he spent and getting regular offers of work. But he did not feel he had reached the first rank of actors, and in time the energy died. He would take any part – even if he knew they were 'pieces of shit' – for the money. The only quality threshold was the size of his fee. The huge success of 'Jaws' helped right the Shaw ship for a while but the following six films were all failures, if not disasters. John French has the details in full, and they make sad and sorry but fascinating reading. Robert Shaw felt ill while driving in Ireland, stopped the car, got out and died of a heart attack at the roadside on August 28, 1978. The price of success, and a troubled childhood, indeed.
