JACK GWILLIMJack William Frederick Gwillim was born in Canterbury England on December 15th 1909, the son of a regimental sergeant major.After Farnham Grammar School, Surrey, at the age of 17 he joined the Royal Navy and became an all-round athlete and champion boxer.At the outbreak of the second world war he was a serving officer in Hong Kong and China. In 1946, he was invalided out of the service with arthritis while a commander, the youngest of that rank at the time of his promotion.After two decades in the Royal Navy Gwillim embarked on a new career that spanned 50 years as an actor.Gwillim had been seen in a naval amateur dramatic production by the BBC radio producer Peter Watts, who recommended him for a radio announcer's job. After testing for this, it was suggested that he enrol at the Central School of Speech and Drama.In 1951, he joined Anthony Quayle's Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-on-Avon, appearing in Richard II, Henry IV parts one and two, Henry V, Coriolanus and As You Like It. The next year, he played MacDuff in John Gielgud's staging of Ralph Richardson's much denigrated Macbeth.On an Australian tour from Stratford, Gwillim appeared as Brabantio in Othello and Henry lV in part one. Back in the West End in 1954, he played Count Peter Zichy, a Hungarian in the Austrian government in Peter Brook's staging of Christopher Fry's The Dark Is Light Enough (Aldwych Theatre) with Edith Evans.He was also with Flora Robson in Owen Holder's comedy A Kind Of Folly (Duchess), and in 1955 joined the Old Vic during Michael Benthall's five-year plan to stage all Shakespeare's plays.His second shot at Brabantio - for the nightly alternation of John Neville and Richard Burton as Othello and Iago - was held to be in very good voice. But it was his "firm, true and handsome" Hector in Tyrone Guthrie's turn-of-the-century revival of Troilus and Cressida that brought Gwillim to the fore; and as Friar Laurence, in Romeo and Juliet to Neville and Claire Bloom, he was admired for being "a youngish man, kindly, understanding and wise without fussing - and without losing the occasional humour".He also toured with the company to North America as Friar Laurence, Banquo, Hector and Thomas Mowbray in Neville's Richard II.In 1957, his Claudius in Hamlet was praised by Kenneth Tynan, who described Gwillim's performance as that of "an iron-headed general at the awkward age, slightly ashamed of having fallen in love - an original conception of which Coral Browne's voluptuous Queen makes splendid sense".Later that season, Gwillim found himself forming part of what Tynan called "a leather-lunged trio" in Douglas Seale's legendary staging of the three parts of Henry VI. Gwillim played York and Tynan wrote: "Both messrs Neville and Gwillim, pillars of the trilogy, reminded me of Donne's 'Grim eight foot high iron bound serving man': here were the robber barons of childhood nightmares come dragonishly to life."Gwillim's stint with the Old Vic came to an end with Buckingham in Henry VIII starring John Gielgud. Among subsequent West End credits was Antonio to Ralph Richardson's Shylock in the Merchant of Venice (Haymarket).Thereaft er he worked increasingly in the US, where he emigrated in 1969: as Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady (1981), in the Constant Wife with Ingrid Bergman, O'Neill's The Iceman Commeth, Laurette with Judy Holliday, A Man for All Seasons with Charlton Heston, and Terence Rattigan's Cause Celebre with Anne Baxter.He made his last Broadway appearance as Duncan to Christopher Plummer's Macbeth (1988) with Glenda Jackson. His last stage performance came in 1995 in a play called On Borrowed Time. In it he acted with two of his children, his son-in-law, two grandchildren and their dog.His numerous film roles included The Battle of the River Plate (1956), The One That Got Away (1957), Northwest Passage (1959), Solomon and Sheba (1959), The Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), In Search of the Castaways (1962), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), A Man For All Seasons (1966), Patton (1970), Cromwell (1970), Clash of the Titans (1981), The Monster Squad (1987) and his last film role at the age of 90 in Blue Shark Hash (2000).Gwillim's first wife, Peggy Bollard, died in 1958. He is survived by his actor children Sarah-Jane Gwillim and David Gwillim from that marriage, and by his second wife Olivia Selby and their actor son Jaxon Duff Gwillim.• Jack William Frederick Gwillim, actor, born December 15 1909; died July 2 2001.
Keep me informed of updates
