Amos Stevens
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Oscar-Winning Actor John Mills Dies at 93
LONDON - Actor Sir John Mills, the quintessential British officer in scores of films, died Saturday after an Oscar-winning career spanning more than 50 years that included roles in "Gandhi" and "Ryan's Daughter." He was 97.
Mills died at home in Denham, west of London, after a short illness, a statement from his trustees said. Details of the illness were not given.
Mills' roles ranged from Pip in David Lean's "Great Expectations" to the village idiot in Lean's "Ryan's Daughter," for which he won his Academy Award as best supporting actor in 1971.
But he took his place in film history as soldier, sailor, airman and commanding officer, embodying the decency, humility and coolness under pressure so cherished in the British hero.
On Mills' 80th birthday in 1988, historian Jeffrey Richards called him "truly an English Everyman. His heroes have been on the whole not extraordinary men but ordinary men whose heroism derives from their levelheadedness, generosity of spirit and innate sense of what is right."
Small, fair-haired, with a boyish face and very blue eyes, he was the son, the brother, the boy next door who went off to fight the Germans and only sometimes came back.
In "Forever England" he was the ordinary seaman who pins down a German battleship. In "Waterloo Road" he played an AWOL soldier. In Noel Coward's 1942 classic "In Which We Serve" he was a Cockney able seaman, and in Anthony Asquith's "The Way to the Stars," one of the most popular films of the war, he was a schoolmaster-turned-RAF pilot.
These performances were touching and restrained, within the wartime bounds of acceptable sentimentality, and they made his name.
Age seemed hardly to touch him and he carried on in military roles for decades, eventually becoming the commander, as in "Above Us the Waves" in 1955. He was trapped in a submarine in 1950's "Morning Departure," toiled through the desert in "Ice Cold In Alex" (1958), and in "Tunes of Glory" (1960) he was the commander of a Scottish regiment, tormented by a fellow officer.
In a recent survey of British film legends by Sky television, voters puts Mills in 8th place all-time among British male actors.
But Mills started his career as a hoofer, a song and dance man in old Fred Astaire roles, far from the trenches.
Born Lewis Ernest Watts, the son of a Suffolk schoolmaster, he started work at 17 as a grain merchant's clerk but longed for the stage.
His older sister Annette, part of a dancing duo at Ciro's, the London nightclub, encouraged his ambitions and he moved to the capital and changed his name.
Mills recalled how he spent the mornings selling disinfectants and toilet paper to pay the rent, and his afternoons at tap dancing lessons.
"Then I got into a very tatty double act with a man called George Posford who played the balalaika while sang 'Sonny Boy' and that was how it all started," he added.
He was acting with at traveling troupe called The Quaints, in Singapore in 1929 when Noel Coward saw the show and suggested Mills look him up in London.
That led to parts in Coward's revues and eventually his war movies, where Mills swapped dancing shoes for uniform.
Mills' own military career in the Royal Engineers lasted little more than a year after the outbreak World War II, until he was declared unfit because of an ulcer.
Mills was married first to actress Aileen Raymond, then in 1941 to Mary Hayley Bell, an actress-turned-playwright.
Their son Jonathan is a screenwriter and daughters Juliet and Hayley are actresses.
Among Mills' many non-military films were "Great Expectations," "Hobson's Choice," "The Wrong Box," "Tiger Bay" with his daughter Hayley, and "Gandhi" in which he played the viceroy of India.
He was made a CBE, or Companion of the Order of British Empire, in 1960 and knighted in 1976.
Mills was wiry, fit and remarkably youthful in to old age, which his daughter Hayley attributed to "joie de vivre."
"Maybe what attracts people is that exuberant spiritual quality that they recognize is still present," she said in 1986.
At 80, Mills rejected any idea of giving up acting.
"I've never considered myself to be working for a living; I've enjoyed myself for a living instead," he said.
Mills is survived by his wife and their children. The funeral service will be held on April 27 in Denham.
Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press.
LONDON - Actor Sir John Mills, the quintessential British officer in scores of films, died Saturday after an Oscar-winning career spanning more than 50 years that included roles in "Gandhi" and "Ryan's Daughter." He was 97.
Mills died at home in Denham, west of London, after a short illness, a statement from his trustees said. Details of the illness were not given.
Mills' roles ranged from Pip in David Lean's "Great Expectations" to the village idiot in Lean's "Ryan's Daughter," for which he won his Academy Award as best supporting actor in 1971.
But he took his place in film history as soldier, sailor, airman and commanding officer, embodying the decency, humility and coolness under pressure so cherished in the British hero.
On Mills' 80th birthday in 1988, historian Jeffrey Richards called him "truly an English Everyman. His heroes have been on the whole not extraordinary men but ordinary men whose heroism derives from their levelheadedness, generosity of spirit and innate sense of what is right."
Small, fair-haired, with a boyish face and very blue eyes, he was the son, the brother, the boy next door who went off to fight the Germans and only sometimes came back.
In "Forever England" he was the ordinary seaman who pins down a German battleship. In "Waterloo Road" he played an AWOL soldier. In Noel Coward's 1942 classic "In Which We Serve" he was a Cockney able seaman, and in Anthony Asquith's "The Way to the Stars," one of the most popular films of the war, he was a schoolmaster-turned-RAF pilot.
These performances were touching and restrained, within the wartime bounds of acceptable sentimentality, and they made his name.
Age seemed hardly to touch him and he carried on in military roles for decades, eventually becoming the commander, as in "Above Us the Waves" in 1955. He was trapped in a submarine in 1950's "Morning Departure," toiled through the desert in "Ice Cold In Alex" (1958), and in "Tunes of Glory" (1960) he was the commander of a Scottish regiment, tormented by a fellow officer.
In a recent survey of British film legends by Sky television, voters puts Mills in 8th place all-time among British male actors.
But Mills started his career as a hoofer, a song and dance man in old Fred Astaire roles, far from the trenches.
Born Lewis Ernest Watts, the son of a Suffolk schoolmaster, he started work at 17 as a grain merchant's clerk but longed for the stage.
His older sister Annette, part of a dancing duo at Ciro's, the London nightclub, encouraged his ambitions and he moved to the capital and changed his name.
Mills recalled how he spent the mornings selling disinfectants and toilet paper to pay the rent, and his afternoons at tap dancing lessons.
"Then I got into a very tatty double act with a man called George Posford who played the balalaika while sang 'Sonny Boy' and that was how it all started," he added.
He was acting with at traveling troupe called The Quaints, in Singapore in 1929 when Noel Coward saw the show and suggested Mills look him up in London.
That led to parts in Coward's revues and eventually his war movies, where Mills swapped dancing shoes for uniform.
Mills' own military career in the Royal Engineers lasted little more than a year after the outbreak World War II, until he was declared unfit because of an ulcer.
Mills was married first to actress Aileen Raymond, then in 1941 to Mary Hayley Bell, an actress-turned-playwright.
Their son Jonathan is a screenwriter and daughters Juliet and Hayley are actresses.
Among Mills' many non-military films were "Great Expectations," "Hobson's Choice," "The Wrong Box," "Tiger Bay" with his daughter Hayley, and "Gandhi" in which he played the viceroy of India.
He was made a CBE, or Companion of the Order of British Empire, in 1960 and knighted in 1976.
Mills was wiry, fit and remarkably youthful in to old age, which his daughter Hayley attributed to "joie de vivre."
"Maybe what attracts people is that exuberant spiritual quality that they recognize is still present," she said in 1986.
At 80, Mills rejected any idea of giving up acting.
"I've never considered myself to be working for a living; I've enjoyed myself for a living instead," he said.
Mills is survived by his wife and their children. The funeral service will be held on April 27 in Denham.
Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press.
