Jack Hawkins(1910-1973)
- Actor
- Producer
In Britain, special Christmas plays called pantomimes are produced for
children. Jack Hawkins made his London theatrical debut at age 12,
playing the elf king in "Where The Rainbow Ends". At 17, he got the
lead role of St. George in the same play. At 18, he made his debut on
Broadway in "Journey's End". At 21, he was back in London playing a
young lover in "Autumn Crocus". He married his leading lady,
Jessica Tandy. That year he also played
his first real film role in the 1931 sound version of
Alfred Hitchcock's
The Phantom Fiend (1932). During the 30s, he
took his roles in plays more seriously than the films he made. In 1940,
Jessica accepted a role in America and Jack volunteered to serve in the
Royal Welch Fusiliers. He spent most of his military career arranging
entertainment for the British forces in India. One of the actresses who
came out to India was
Doreen Lawrence who became his
second wife after the war.
Alexander Korda advised Jack to
go into films and offered him a three-year contract. In his
autobiography, Jack recalled: "Eight years later I was voted the number
one box office draw of 1954. I was even credited with irresistible sex
appeal, which is another quality I had not imagined I possessed." A
late 1940s film,
The Black Rose (1950), where he
played a secondary role to Tyrone Power,
would be one of his most fortunate choices of roles. The director was
Henry Hathaway who Jack said was
"probably the most feared, yet respected director in America, for he
had a sharp tongue and fired people at the drop of a hat. Years later,
after my operation when I lost my voice, he went out of his way to help
me get back into films. What I did not know was that during the filming
of 'The Black Rose' he was himself suffering from cancer." In the 1950s
came the film that made Hawkins a star,
The Cruel Sea (1953). Suffering
from life-long, real-life seasickness, he played the captain of the
Compass Rose. After surgery for throat cancer in 1966, requiring the
removal of his larynx, Jack continued to make films. He mimed his lines
and the voice was dubbed by either
Charles Gray or
Robert Rietty. His motto during those last
years came from Milton's "Comus", a verse play in which he acted early
in his career in Regent's Park. The lines: "Yet where an equal poise of
hope and fear does arbitrate the event, my nature is that I incline to
hope, rather than to fear."
