Richard Todd, actor and soldier

Published on Friday 4 December 2009 21:08

Born: 11 June, 1919, in Dublin. Died: 3 December, 2009, in Lincolnshire, aged 90.

HE EPITOMISED the stiff upper lip officer in British war movies of the 1950s: courageous, wistfully humorous and modestly brave. Richard Todd, with his winning smile and military bearing, was ideal for such roles. The Dam Busters was his best known film but there was also The Hasty Heart (co-starring Ronald Reagan), Stage Fright (directed by Alfred Hitchcock) and The Longest Day. In fact, Todd was a real-life war hero and had a distinguished war record, one of the first British soldiers to parachute into France. He had the unique experience of appearing in films about D-Day in which he was portrayed by another actor while he played his commanding officer. Todd was an officer in the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion and was among the first to meet the gliders defending the strategically important Pegasus Bridge.

Todd played many Scottish characters in his film career. One of the most notable was the title role in A Man Called Peter, about a Lanarkshire-born minister who twice became US senate chaplain. The 1951 movie was Oscar-nominated and Todd carefully studied tapes of Peter Marshall's sermons so he could reproduce the correct Scottish/American accent.

His work was approved by Mr Marshall's widow, who told Todd: "You were just about the only film actor whose Scottish syllables would have met my husband's standards."

Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd came from a well-to-do Anglo-Irish family and after Shrewsbury School he trained at Sandhurst. But he was smitten with the acting bug and after drama school became one of the founding members of the Dundee Repertory Company, which had opened that year in a disused jute mill.

The outbreak of war interrupted Todd's career and he was commissioned into the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in 1941. In 1943 he applied to become a parachutist, and that May Todd was posted to the 7th Parachute Battalion and told to prepare for the Normandy landings. In his autobiography, Caught in the Act (1986) he compared the preparation for the D-Day landings to "the read-through and cast list for a new production at the Dundee Rep", and likened himself to an actor who had just been "told the minor role I was to play" after having been "subjected to a four-year rehearsal for the big first night".

In May this year Todd returned to the Normandy beaches for the 65th anniversary of the landings. The visit was filmed by the BBC and Todd, clearly emotional and proudly wearing his red beret, pointed his walking stick to where he had landed. "As soon as we were on the ground we were covered with enemy fire. You didn't hang around. The noise was terrible," he said. "Explosions. Bombs. All hell broke loose. Everyone shouting." As he placed poppies on a wall, Todd whispered: "I lost friends here. I had never lost friends before. It was difficult."

After the war Todd returned to Dundee, but in 1948 he signed a contract with AB Pictures. The Hasty Heart, in which he played a young Scottish soldier dying of an incurable disease, was his major breakthrough and gained him an Oscar nomination.

But it was Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters that made Todd a box office star. Todd's portrayal of the modest hero was a subtle realisation. Even the rather sentimental ending, when a flustered Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave) – who had invented the bouncing bombs – approached Gibson about the number of deaths, Todd delivers a speech ("I knew everyone of those men. Not one would not have gone on the mission") that struck just the right note for the film's ending. It is said as the cameras stopped that Todd and Redgrave had tears in their eyes.

Todd was Sir Walter Raleigh in The Virgin Queen, opposite Bette Davis. Asked about working with Davis, Todd graciously said: "In the studio she was totally professional. But as a person she was terrifying." In 1953 Todd played the lead in Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue (again with a convincing accent). He often told how the extras were all from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders but his own battle scenes were limited. When leading a charge on the first day he stepped in a rabbit hole and was immobile for much of the shooting.

In the 1970s his star somewhat waned. James Bond author Ian Fleming was keen to cast him as Bond, but that was not to happen. Instead he did seven years on stage in The Business of Murder and various Oscar Wilde revivals. He also did many television dramas including Dr Who.

Todd's two marriages were dissolved. He had four sons, two of whom predeceased him.