Alastair Sim | |
|---|---|
 Sim as the Laird inGeordie, 1955 | |
| Born | Alastair George Bell Sim (1900-10-09)9 October 1900 Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | 19 August 1976(1976-08-19) (aged 75) London, England |
| Alma mater | University of Edinburgh |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1930–1976 |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
Alastair George Bell Sim (9 October 1900 – 19 August 1976) was a Scottish actor, who began his theatrical career at the age of thirty. He quickly became established as a popularWest End performer, remaining so until his death in 1976. Starting in 1935, he also appeared in more than fifty British films, including an iconic adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novellaA Christmas Carol, released in 1951 asScrooge in Great Britain and asA Christmas Carol in the United States. Though an accomplished dramatic actor, he is often remembered for his comically sinister performances.
After a series of false starts, including a spell as a jobbing labourer and another as a clerk in a local government office, Sim's love of and talent for poetry reading won him several prizes and led to his appointment as a lecturer in elocution at theUniversity of Edinburgh in 1925. He also ran his own private elocution and drama school, from which, with the help of the playwrightJohn Drinkwater, he made the transition to the professional stage in 1930.
Despite his late start, Sim soon became well known on the London stage. A period of more than a year as a member of theOld Vic company brought him wide experience of playingShakespeare and other classics, to which he returned throughout his career. In the modern repertoire, he formed a close professional association with the authorJames Bridie, which lasted from 1939 until the dramatist's death in 1951. Sim not only acted in Bridie's works but also directed them.
In the later 1940s and for most of the 1950s, Sim was a leading star of British cinema. His films includedGreen for Danger (1946),Hue and Cry (1947),The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950),Scrooge (1951),The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954) andAn Inspector Calls (1954). Later, he made fewer films and generally concentrated on stage work, including successful productions at theChichester Festival and regular appearances in new and old works in the West End.
Sim was born inEdinburgh, the youngest child and second son of Alexander Sim, a ladies' tailor and clothier who served on several Edinburgh committees and was a school governor andJustice of the Peace, and Isabella (née McIntyre).[1] His mother moved to Edinburgh as a teenager fromEigg, one of theSmall Isles in theHebrides, and was a nativeGaelic speaker.[2] The family lived above his father's shop at 96-98,Lothian Road;[3] later, improved finances allowed for a move to 73, Viewforth, in the wealthierBruntsfield area of the city.[4][5] Sim was educated at Bruntsfield Primary school, and received his secondary education atJames Gillespie's High School andGeorge Heriot's School.[6] He worked—probably part time[n 1]—in his father's shop and then for the men's outfittersGieve's, displaying no talent for the retail trade.[citation needed] In 1918 he was admitted to theUniversity of Edinburgh to study analytical chemistry, but was called up for army training.[1]
After the end of theFirst World War in November 1918, Sim was released from military service. On his return home, he told his family that he did not intend to resume his studies at the university but instead would become an actor.[7] His announcement was so badly received that he left the parental home and spent about a year in theScottish Highlands with a group of itinerant jobbing workers.[8] Returning to Edinburgh, he took a post in the burgh assessor's office. In his spare time, he joined poetry reading classes, winning the gold medal for verse speaking at the Edinburgh Music Festival. This led to his engagement to teachelocution at a further education college inDalry, Edinburgh. He held this post from 1922 to 1924. After taking an advanced training course in his subject, in 1925 he successfully applied to the University of Edinburgh for the post of Fulton Lecturer in Elocution, which he held for five years.[1]
While maintaining his university position, Sim also taught private pupils and later founded and ran his own drama school for children in Edinburgh. This developed his skills as a director and occasional actor. One of his pupils,Naomi Merlith Plaskitt, aged 12 when they met, became his wife six years later. The dramatistJohn Drinkwater saw one of Sim's productions for the school and encouraged him to become a professional actor.[9] Through Drinkwater's influence, Sim was cast in his first professional production,Othello at theSavoy Theatre, London, in 1930; he understudied the three principal male roles (played byPaul Robeson, Maurice Browne andRalph Richardson) and played the small role of the messenger.[1][10]
Sim followedOthello with productions ranging from a musicalrevue to a medieval costume drama byClifford Bax, in whoseThe Venetian he made hisBroadway debut in October 1931.[11][12] In 1932–33 he was engaged for sixteen months as a member of theOld Vic company, headed byPeggy Ashcroft. He performed in ten plays byShakespeare, two each byShaw andDrinkwater, and one bySheridan. He began to attract the attention of reviewers.The Times said that inAs You Like It Sim as Duke Senior andGeorge Devine as Duke Frederick "endowed the dukes with the properly fabulous touch of fairyland".[13] InThe Observer,Ivor Brown wrote that Sim's Claudius inHamlet had "a sly roguishness that was immensely alive."[14] During the Old Vic season, Sim married his former pupil,Naomi Plaskitt, on 2 August 1932. They had one daughter, Merlith Naomi.[1]
For several months in 1934, Sim was incapacitated by aslipped disc, which was successfully treated byosteopathy. When he recovered, he made a strong impression onWest End audiences as Ponsonby, a sycophantic bank director in the comedyYouth at the Helm.[9]Ivor Brown called his performance "a joy … a marvellous mixture of soap and vinegar".[15] On the strength of this success Sim was cast in his first film,The Riverside Murder (1935), in the role of the earnest but dim Sergeant McKay.[8] There followed a sequence of films, a mixture of comedies and detective stories, includingWedding Group (1936), in which Sim and his wife both appeared, he as a Scottish minister, she as the maid;Edgar Wallace'sThe Squeaker (1937), after a stage production of the same piece;Alf's Button Afloat (1938) with theCrazy Gang; also in 1938 he played a revengeful ex-con Soapy Marks in the Associated British Picture filmThe Terror, and the "Inspector Hornleigh" series (1939–41), as the bumbling assistant ofGordon Harker.[1]
Sim returned to substantial stage roles at the lastMalvern Festival; inJames Bridie's comedyWhat Say They? he played Professor Hayman, making him, asThe Manchester Guardian put it, "baleful as a shavenJohn Knox and lean as a buzzard… a grand performance".[16] This was the start of an association between Sim and Bridie that lasted until the latter's death in 1951, with Sim starring in, and directing,Mr Bolfry (1943),The Forrigan Reel (1945),Dr Angelus (1947) andMr Gillie (1950).[1]
By the mid-1940s, Sim was being cast in starring roles in films. His earliest successes as a leading man included the police detective in the thrillerGreen for Danger (1946); the headmaster of Nutbourne College, co-starring withMargaret Rutherford, in the farcical comedyThe Happiest Days of Your Life (1950); and a writer of lurid crime fiction in the comedyLaughter in Paradise (1951). His other films includedWaterloo Road (1944),London Belongs to Me (1948),Alfred Hitchcock'sStage Fright (1950),Scrooge (A Christmas Carol) (1951),Folly to Be Wise (1953) andAn Inspector Calls (1954).[17]
Sim turned down the role of Joseph Macroon inWhisky Galore! (1949), saying, "I can't bear professional Scotsmen".[18] An even more central role for which he was intended was the mad criminal mastermind Professor Marcus inThe Ladykillers (1955). The role was written with him in mind but was finally taken byAlec Guinness, who, in the words of Mark Duguid of theBritish Film Institute, played it "with more than a hint of Sim about him", to the extent that according to Simpson many people thought then and still think that Sim played the part.[19][20]
Sim's performance inScrooge (1951) is considered by many to be the best portrayal of the title character on screen,[21] and it is among his best-known film roles, particularly in the U.S.[n 2] In the farcicalThe Belles of St. Trinian's (1954) he played the dual roles of Millicent and Clarence Fritton, the headmistress ofSt Trinian's and her shady brother. Having originally accepted the part of Clarence, Sim agreed to play in drag as Miss Fritton whenMargaret Rutherford proved unavailable, and the director and co-producer,Frank Launder could find no suitable actress as an alternative.[23] His "Burke and Hare" filmThe Anatomist debuted on British television (on "International Theatre") on 6 February 1956, and was later released theatrically in the U.S. in 1961, leading some reference sources to list it as a 1961 movie.[24]
Sim was among the top British film stars of the early and mid 1950s,[n 3] but his films of the late 1950s are considered by the critic Michael Brooke to be of lesser quality, because of poor scripts or lack of innovative direction.[8] Sim made no films in the decade between 1961 and 1971; it is not clear whether this was, as Brooke suggests, because he found the scripts offered to him unacceptable or, as Simpson proposes, because film makers in the 1960s thought him unsuited to thekitchen sink dramas then fashionable.[8][29]
After Bridie's death in 1951, Sim appeared in only two stage productions during the rest of the decade. The first was a revival of Bridie'sMr Bolfry in 1956, in which Sim moved from the role of the puritanical clergyman to that of the Devil.[30] The second wasWilliam Golding'sThe Brass Butterfly, a 1958 comedy described byThe Times as portraying the relations between an urbane Roman emperor (Sim) and a Greek inventor with wildly anachronistic scientific ideas (George Cole).[31]
In 1959, Sim sued the food companyH J Heinz over a television advertisement for its baked beans; the advertisement had a voiceover sounding remarkably like him, and he insisted that he would not "prostitute his art" by advertising anything.[32][n 4] He lost the case and attracted some ridicule for his action, but he was conscious of the importance of his highly recognisable voice to his professional success. Brooke comments on Sim's "crowning glory: that extraordinary voice. OnlyGielgud rivalled his tonal control and sensitivity to the musicality of the English language."[8]
After doing little stage work in the 1950s, Sim resumed his theatre career in earnest in the 1960s. His range was wide, from Prospero inThe Tempest (1962) and Shylock inThe Merchant of Venice (1964), to the villainous Captain Hook inBarrie'sPeter Pan (1963, 1964 and 1968) and the hapless Mr Posket inPinero's farceThe Magistrate (1969). The new plays in which Sim appeared wereMichael Gilbert'sWindfall (1963),William Trevor'sThe Elephant's Foot (1965) andRonald Millar'sNumber Ten (1967); he directed all three productions. The first was dismissed byThe Times as a tepid comedy about a progressive young headmaster thwarted by a reactionary member of his staff; the second, billed as a pre-London tour, started and finished in the provinces; the last was castigated byPhilip Hope-Wallace inThe Guardian as "maladroit playmaking" with a tedious plot about political machinations.[35] Sim's performances provided some consolation: in the first,The Times said, his "treacherously sweet smiles, triple takes and unheralded spasms of apoplectic fury almost make the evening worth while".[35]
Much more successful among Sim's 1960s appearances were two productions at theChichester Festival:Colman andGarrick's 1766 comedyThe Clandestine Marriage (1966) andThe Magistrate. In the former he co-starred once more with Rutherford, whomJ. C. Trewin inThe Illustrated London News praised for her "irresistible comic effect"; he thought Sim "enchantingly right".[36] In the Pinero farce three years later, Trewin was equally approving of Sim and his co-starPatricia Routledge.[37]
On television, Sim portrayed Mr Justice Swallow in the comedy seriesMisleading Cases (1967–71), written byA. P. Herbert, withRoy Dotrice as the litigious Mr Haddock over whose court cases Swallow presided with benign shrewdness.[38] Sim returned to the cinema in 1971 as the voice of Scrooge in an animated adaptation ofA Christmas Carol. The following year he appeared as the Bishop inPeter Medak'sThe Ruling Class (1972) withPeter O'Toole, and in 1975 he played a cameo inRichard Lester'sRoyal Flash (1975) withMalcolm McDowell.[39] After playing Lord Harrogate in the 1976Disney filmEscape from the Dark, his last role was as the Earl in the 1976 remake ofRogue Male oppositePeter O'Toole, a role for which he literally climbed out of his sick bed, saying, "Peter needs me."
On stage Sim returned to Pinero farce, playing Augustin Jedd inDandy Dick at Chichester and then in the West End. Once again he co-starred with Patricia Routledge. His last stage appearance was in a return to the role of Lord Ogleby in a new production ofThe Clandestine Marriage at the Savoy in April 1975.[1]
Sim and his family guarded their privacy carefully. He seldom gave press interviews and refused to sign autographs. In his view, the public's interest in him should be solely confined to his stage or screen performances. In a rare interview with the magazineFocus on Film he said, "I stand or fall in my profession by the public's judgement of my performances. No amount of publicity can dampen a good one or gloss over a bad one."[40]
Sim and his wife Naomi promoted and encouraged young acting talent. Among theirprotégés wasGeorge Cole, who lived with them on and off from 1940, when he was 15 years old, until 1952, when he married and bought a house nearby. Cole appeared with Sim in eight films fromCottage to Let (1941), toBlue Murder at St Trinian's (1957).[41] An obituary of Naomi Sim noted in 1999: "Cole wasn't the only youngster to benefit from the Sims' generosity and love of youthful spirits. At least half a dozen others – 'our boys' as Naomi called them – mostly unhappy at home, have cherished memories of life at Forrigan, the welcoming woodland retreat built by the couple near Henley-on-Thames in 1947". They had a daughter, Merlith, who lives at Forrigan with her family. The actor George Cole lived next door to the family, remaining close to Naomi Sim to the end.
In 1948, Sim was electedRector of the University of Edinburgh. He held the post until 1951; when he stood down he was made anhonorary Doctor of Law.[1] He was appointedCBE in 1953, and refused aknighthood in the early 1970s.[1] AnEnglish Heritageblue plaque was unveiled in July 2008 at his former home at 8 Frognal Gardens,Hampstead, by his daughter Merlith McKendrick at a ceremony attended by George Cole.[42] There is a plaque commemorating Sim's birth outside theFilmhouse Cinema inLothian Road, Edinburgh.[43]
Sim died in 1976, aged 75, in London, from complications oflung cancer. His widow Naomi published a memoir,Dance and Skylark: Fifty Years with Alastair Sim in 1987.[1] She died on 3 August 1999.
Notes
References
| Academic offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Rector of the University of Edinburgh 1948–1951 | Succeeded by |