Richard Todd
From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
- born: 11/Jun/1919 (Dublin, Ireland)
Biography
Richard Todd is a British actor.
Born Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd in Dublin, Ireland, his father Andrew William Palethorpe Todd was a British officer who gained three caps for Ireland at rugby before the First World War. He moved to Devon, England when very young and attended Shrewsbury School. During his early career, he acted in regional theatres, before co-founding the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1939.
Richard Todd served as an officer and paratrooper in the British 6th Airborne Division during the Second World War. One of the first British officers to land in Normandy on D-Day, he met up with Major John Howard on Pegasus Bridge — he would later appear in two films in which this scene was recreated: in D-Day the "Sixth of June" (1956), he played the commanding officer of the unit in which both of them served, and in "The Longest Day" (1962), he played Major Howard himself.
After the war, he gained fame in the London stage version of "The Hasty Heart" (as Lachlan MacLachlan), which took him to Broadway. He returned to England to appear in the film version and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role in 1949. He later appeared in the film "The Dam Busters" as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, probably the role for which he is best remembered. Americans probably best remember Todd for his role as the United States Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall in the film version of Catherine Marshall's best selling biography, "A Man Called Peter".
In 1953, he appeared in a BBC Television adaptation of the novel "Wuthering Heights", as Heathcliff. According to Nigel Kneale, who scripted the adaptation, the production came about purely because Todd had turned up the BBC and told them that he would like to play Heathcliff for them. Kneale was forced to write the script in only a week as the broadcast was rushed into production. He continued to act on television, including roles in "Virtual Murder", "Silent Witness", and in the "Doctor Who" story "Kinda" in 1982. His active acting career extended into his eighties.
He was married to the actresses Catherine Grant-Bogle, whom he met in Dundee Repertory (1949-1970, two children) and Virginia Mailer (1970-1992, two children). In 2006, he was reported as living in the village of Little Ponton near Grantham and attended a preview of a new Robin Hood TV series made by the BBC.
Filmography
With Hitchcock...
- Stage Fright (1950) - cast: Jonathan Cooper