ROBERT SHAWRobert Shaw, who died on 28 August, 1978, aged 51 was a wonderfully versatile actor and a larger than life character off screen too.
He was compelling as a Bond villain, fearsome as a New York hoodlum, an Oscar nominee as the young King Henry VIII and a veteran of both the West End and Broadway stage.
Away from stage and screen, Mr Shaw was an accomplished writer of novels, plays and screenplays.
But it is for one role alone Mr Shaw will be forever remembered - the drunken, salt-licked, foul-mouthed, shark obsessed skipper Quint in Steven Spielberg’s cinema classic Jaws.
Robert Shaw was born in Westhoughton, Lancashire on 9 August 1927. He had three sisters and a brother and at the age of seven moved to Stromness, Orkney, where five years later his father Thomas, a doctor reportedly died of alcoholism.
He grew up in Cornwall and became a teacher in Saltburn, Yorkshire for a short time before heading south again to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London .
Cutting his teeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company, he made his debut in 1949 before beginning his film career with an uncredited role in the Ealing Comedy The Lavender Hill Mob, two years later.
His early career saw him cast in many war films, of which The Dam Busters (1954) was the most famous.
In 1963 his became a household name when he played Donald ‘Red’ Grant, the SPECTRE spy intent on killing Sean Connery’s 007 in From Russia With Love. In the same year he played the troubled Aston in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. In 1966 he won an Oscar nomination as young King Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons.
Among his other notable successes were The Valiant (1962), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Battle of Britain (1969), the Redford/Newman classic The Sting (1973), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), The Deep (1977) and Force 10 From Navarone (1978).
He had five published books, including The Hiding Place (1960) and The Man in the Glass Booth (1967) about the Nazi War criminal Adolph Eichman, which were both developed for the screen and the latter also became a Tony nominated Broadway play.
Arguably his best novel, however, was his second book published in 1961, The Sun Doctor, which won the Hawthornden Prize, one of the UK’s oldest literary awards.
Three times married, with nine children, Mr Shaw died of a heart attack in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, Ireland. His final film, Avalanche Express, which was in mid-production, was released the following year.
Real life in many ways mirrored Mr Shaw’s film career. His rough-hewn appearance lent itself to hard-case, hard-living characters. Like his alter ego Quint – voted at 28 in Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie characters of all time – he liked to drink and once admitted: “I drink too much. Will you tell me one great actor who doesn’t drink?”
Along with the many plaudits he achieved during his lamentably short, but action packed career, one more can be added to the lengthy and distinguished list - a pub in his home town named The Robert Shaw after his memory, something he would undoubtedly have approved of.
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