Guinness began his stage career in 1934. Two years later, at the age of 22, he played the role of Osric in Hamlet in the West End and joined the Old Vic. He continued to play Shakespearean roles throughout his career. He was one of the greatest British actors who, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, made the transition from theatre to films after the Second World War. Guinness served in the Royal Naval Reserve during the war and commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Sicily and Elba.
Guinness was born Alec Guinness de Cuffe at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South,[1]Lauderdale Road, in Maida Vale, London.[2] His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff, born on 8 December 1890 to Edward Charles Cuff, a sometime lifeguard at Bournemouth who had served in the Royal Navy,[3] and Mary Ann, née Benfield, of a family of stonemasons and publicans. On Guinness's birth certificate, his mother's name is given as Agnes de Cuffe; the infant's name (where first names only are placed) is given as Alec Guinness, and there are no details for the father.[4]
The identity of Guinness's father has never been officially confirmed.[5] Agnes Cuff had worked at Cowes on the Isle of Wight as a barmaid at the Royal Yacht Squadron clubhouse at the time of the Cowes Regatta in 1913, which was attended by several members of the Guinness family including Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, and his sons Ernest and Walter. Members of the Guinness family claimed a "distinct resemblance" between Alec and one or other of the Guinnesses at Cowes that year; Honor Guinness, who made Alec's acquaintance in 1950 and invited him to tea with "his cousin", later visiting Alec's family with photo albums and diaries to point out the similarities she perceived, believed either her uncle Ernest or his brother Walter ("a celebrated seducer") was Alec's father, while her cousin Lindy considered Alec to closely resemble her father, Loel.[6]
From 1875, under English law, when the birth of an illegitimate child was registered, the father's name could be entered on the certificate only if he were present and gave his consent. Guinness himself believed that his father was a Scottish banker, Andrew Geddes (1861–1928), who paid for Guinness's boarding-school education at Pembroke Lodge, in Southbourne, and Roborough, in Eastbourne. Geddes—who with a "round face and sticking-out ears" bore a resemblance to Guinness and believed himself to be his father—[7] occasionally visited Guinness and his mother, posing as an uncle.[8] Guinness's mother later had a three-year marriage to a Scottish army captain named Stiven, whose behaviour was often erratic or even violent.[9][10]
Guinness first worked writing advertising copy. His first job in the theatre was on his 20th birthday (2 April 1934), while he was a student at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art, in the play Libel, which opened at the old King's Theatre, Hammersmith, and then transferred to the West End's Playhouse, where his status was raised from a walk-on to understudying two lines, and his salary increased to £1 a week.[12][13] He appeared at the New Theatre in 1936 at the age of 22, playing the role of Osric in John Gielgud's successful production of Hamlet. Also in 1936, Guinness signed on with the Old Vic, where he was cast in a series of classic roles.[14] In the later 1930s, he took classes at the London Theatre Studio.[15] In 1939, he took over for Michael Redgrave as Charleston in a road-show production of Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock.[16] At the Old Vic, Guinness worked with many actors and actresses who became his friends and frequent co-stars in the future, including Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Anthony Quayle, and Jack Hawkins. An early influence was film star Stan Laurel, whom Guinness admired.[17]
Guinness continued playing Shakespearean roles throughout his career. In 1937, he played Aumerle in Richard II and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice under the direction of John Gielgud. He starred in a 1938 production of Hamlet which won him acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.[14] He also appeared as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet (1939), Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and as Exeter in Henry V in 1937, both opposite Laurence Olivier, and Ferdinand in The Tempest, opposite Gielgud as Prospero. In 1939, he adapted Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations for the stage, playing Herbert Pocket. The play was a success. One of its viewers was a young British film editor, David Lean, who later had Guinness reprise his role in Lean's 1946 film adaptation of the play.[18]
During the war, Guinness was granted leave to appear in the Broadway production of Terence Rattigan's stage play Flare Path, about RAF Bomber Command, with Guinness playing the role of Flight Lieutenant Teddy Graham.[23]
Invited by his friend Tyrone Guthrie to join the premiere season of the Stratford Festival of Canada, Guinness lived for a brief time in Stratford, Ontario. On 13 July 1953, Guinness spoke the first lines of the first play produced by the festival, Shakespeare's Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York."[25][26]
Guinness made his speaking debut in film in the drama Great Expectations (1946). He was initially mainly associated with the Ealing Comedies, and particularly for playing eight characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949).[29] His other films from this period included Oliver Twist (1948), The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit (both 1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), with all four ranked among the Best British films.[30] In 1950 he portrayed 19th-century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli in The Mudlark, which included delivering an uninterrupted seven-minute speech in Parliament.[31] In 1952, director Ronald Neame cast Guinness in his first romantic lead role, opposite Petula Clark in The Card. In 1951, a poll of British exhibitors identified Guinness as the top box office attraction in British films and fifth in international films, based on box office returns.[32] Guinness was idolised by Peter Sellers—who himself became famous for inhabiting a variety of characters in a film—with Sellers's first major film role starring alongside his idol in The Ladykillers.[33]
Despite a difficult and often hostile relationship, Lean, referring to Guinness as "my good luck charm", continued to cast Guinness in character roles in his later films: Arab leader Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962); the title character's half-brother, Bolshevik leader Yevgraf, in Doctor Zhivago and Indian mystic Professor Godbole in A Passage to India. He was also offered a role in Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970) but declined. At that time, Guinness "mistrusted" Lean and considered the formerly close relationship to be strained—although he recalled, at Lean's funeral, that the famed director had been "charming and affable".[36] Guinness appeared in five Lean films that were ranked in the British Film Institute's 50 greatest British films of the 20th century: 3rd (Lawrence of Arabia), 5th (Great Expectations), 11th (The Bridge on the River Kwai), 27th (Doctor Zhivago) and 46th (Oliver Twist).[37]
Star Wars
Guinness's role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1977 with Star Wars, brought him worldwide recognition to a new generation, as well as Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. In letters to his friends, Guinness described the film as "fairy-tale rubbish" but the film's sense of moral good – and the studio's doubling of his initial salary offer – appealed to him and he agreed to take the part of Kenobi on the condition that he would not have to do any publicity to promote the film.[38]
He initially negotiated a deal for 2% of the film's royalties paid to the director, George Lucas, who, upon the warm reception of the film with the press and film critics, and as a gesture of good-will for the positive amendments and suggestions Guinness proposed to the screenplay for the film, offered Guinness an additional 0.5%, bringing his share to 2.5%. When Guinness enquired about the share with the film's producer Gary Kurtz, and asked for a written agreement so as to codify his earnings, Kurtz revised Lucas's offering down by 0.25%, bringing Guinness's final, agreed-upon share of royalties paid to the director to 2.25% (Lucas received one-fifth of the overall box office takings, which would take Guinness's share of the overall box office to 0.45%).[39][40] This made him very wealthy in his later life.
Upon his first viewing of the film, Guinness wrote in his diary, "It's a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy, and warm-hearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience."[41]
Guinness soon became unhappy with being identified with the part and expressed dismay at the fan following that the Star Wars trilogy attracted. In the DVD commentary of the original Star Wars, Lucas says that Guinness was not happy with the script rewrite in which Obi-Wan is killed. Guinness said in a 1999 interview that it was actually his idea to kill off Obi-Wan, persuading Lucas that it would make him a stronger character and that Lucas agreed to the idea. Guinness stated in the interview, "What I didn't tell Lucas was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo." He went on to say that he "shrivelled up" every time Star Wars was mentioned to him.[42]
Although Guinness disliked the fame that followed and he did not hold the work in high esteem,[41] Lucas and fellow cast members Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Kenny Baker, and Anthony Daniels have spoken highly of his courtesy and professionalism, on and off the set. Lucas credited him with inspiring the cast and crew to work harder, saying that Guinness contributed significantly to achieving completion of the filming. Guinness was quoted as saying that the royalties he obtained from working on the films gave him "no complaints; let me leave it by saying I can live for the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to, that I have no debts and I can afford to refuse work that doesn't appeal to me." In his autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, Guinness tells an imaginary interviewer "Blessed be Star Wars", regarding the income it provided.[43] Guinness appeared in the film's sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), as a force ghost apparition to the trilogy's main character Luke Skywalker.
Guinness married the artist, playwright and actress Merula Silvia Salaman (1914–2000) in 1938; in 1940, they had a son, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor. From the 1950s the family lived at Kettlebrook Meadows, near Steep Marsh in Hampshire. The house itself was designed by Merula's brother Eusty Salaman.[59][60] His great-grandson Nesta Guinness-Walker is a professional footballer.[61]
A biography claimed that Guinness was arrested and fined 10 guineas (£10.50) for a homosexual act in a public lavatory in Liverpool in 1946. Piers Paul Read, who wrote his authorised biography, did not believe it happened.[62] Another biography suggests: "The rumour is possibly a conflation of stories about Alec's 'cottaging' and the arrest of John Gielgud, in October 1953, in a public lavatory in Chelsea, after dining with the Guinnesses at St. Peter's Square."[63] This suggestion was not made until April 2001, eight months after his death, when a BBC Showbiz article related that new books claimed that Guinness was bisexual, that he had kept his sexuality private from the public eye and that only his closest friends and family members knew about his sexual orientation.[64]
While serving in the Royal Navy, Guinness had planned to become an Anglicanpriest. In 1954, while he was filming Father Brown in Burgundy, Guinness, who was in costume as a Catholic priest, was mistaken for a real priest by a local child. Guinness was far from fluent in French, and the child apparently did not notice that Guinness did not understand him but took his hand and chattered while the two strolled; the child then waved and trotted off.[65] The confidence and affection the clerical attire appeared to inspire in the boy left a deep impression on the actor.[66] When their son was ill with polio at the age of 11, Guinness began visiting a church to pray.[67] A few years later, in 1956, Guinness converted to the Catholic Church. His wife, who was of paternal Sephardi Jewish descent,[68] followed suit in 1957 while he was in Ceylon filming The Bridge on the River Kwai, and she informed him only after the event.[69]
Guinness told a story in a media interview and wrote in his memoir that he met James Dean and predicted Dean's death one week before he was killed in a car accident in 1955.[70][71] In interviews shortly after his death, Guinness recalled that all of Dean's friends had issued similar warnings because he drove too fast.[72]
Every morning, Guinness recited verse eight from Psalm 143, "Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning".[73]
Guinness died on the night of 5 August 2000 at King Edward VII's Hospital in Midhurst, West Sussex.[74][75] He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in February 2000, and with liver cancer two days before he died. His wife, who died two months later on 18 October 2000, also had liver cancer.[76] His funeral was held at St. Laurence Catholic Church in Petersfield, Hampshire, and he was interred at Petersfield Cemetery.[77][78]
Archives
In 2013 the British Library acquired the personal archive of Guinness consisting of over 900 letters, manuscripts for plays, and 100 volumes of diaries from the late 1930s to his death.[79]
Autobiographies and biography
Guinness wrote three volumes of a best-selling autobiography, beginning with Blessings in Disguise in 1985, followed by My Name Escapes Me in 1996, and A Positively Final Appearance in 1999. He recorded each of them as an audiobook. Shortly after his death, Lady Guinness asked the couple's close friend and fellow Catholic, novelist Piers Paul Read, to write Guinness's official biography. It was published in 2002.
Box office ranking in Britain
For a number of years, British film exhibitors voted Guinness among the most popular stars in Britain at the box office via an annual poll in the Motion Picture Herald.
1951: most popular British star in British films and fifth in international films.[32]
^ ab"Alec Guinness."Archived 6 November 2018 at the Wayback MachineHollywood Walk of Fame (Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Hollywood, California), 2011. Retrieved: 22 June 2011.
^ abc'Guinness, Alec (1914–2000)', The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK; viewed 22 June 2011, from Credo reference(subscription required)Archived 30 April 2024 at the Wayback Machine"Infobase Learning - Login". Archived from the original on 30 April 2024. Retrieved 30 April 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
^Marshall, Herbert. "Obituary: Robert Ardrey (1907–1980)." Bulletin of the Center for Soviet & East European Studies Spring 1980. pp. 4–6. Print
^On 3 June 1961, Guinness sent a letter to Stan LaurelArchived 11 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine, acknowledging that he must have unconsciously modeled his portrayal of Sir Andrew Aguecheek as he imagined Laurel might have done. Guinness was 23 at the time he was performing in Twelfth Night, around 1937, by which time Laurel had become an international movie star.
^le Carré, John (8 March 2002). Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: A Conversation with John le Carré (DVD). Disc 1.{{cite AV media}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
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