Robert Guy Newton (1 June 1905 – 25 March 1956) was an English actor. Along with Errol Flynn, Newton was one of the more popular actors among the male juvenile audience of the 1940s and early 1950s, especially with British boys.[2] Known for his hard-living life, he was cited as a role model by the actor Oliver Reed and the Who's drummer Keith Moon.[2]
Beginning his career in theatre in the 1920s, Newton appeared in numerous plays in the West End, including Bitter Sweet by Noël Coward. In 1939 he was Horatio in Hamlet at the Old Vic theatre opposite Laurence Olivier's Prince Hamlet. After serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, he had his major break on screen playing the lead in This Happy Breed (1944) and starring in Olivier's version of Henry V (1944). These appearances saw British exhibitors vote him the 10th most popular British film star of 1944.[3]
His acting career began at the age of 16 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1921. He appeared in many repertory shows until he went to Canada where he worked on a cattle ranch for a year.[10]
Newton enlisted in the Royal Navy and saw active service in the rank of an Able Seaman on board HMS Britomart, which fought as an escort ship on several Russian convoys during World War II. After two and a half years in the Royal Navy he was medically discharged in 1943.
Return to acting
On resuming his film career, Newton played the lead in This Happy Breed (1944), a role played on stage by Noël Coward. Directed by David Lean, it was a huge hit. So too was the Laurence Olivier version of Henry V (1944), in which Newton played Ancient Pistol. These appearances helped British exhibitors vote him the 10th most popular British film star of 1944.[3] During the war, he starred in the West End in No Orchids for Miss Blandish, which was a hit.[11]
Treasure Island's success prompted Newton to return to Hollywood. He was one of several British actors in Soldiers Three (1951), an Imperial adventure tale. He returned to Britain for Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951) to play Thomas Arnold, then was cast by 20th Century Fox as Javert in their version of Les Misérables (1952). In 1951, he was voted the sixth most popular British star in Britain.[12]
Fox asked him back for The Desert Rats (1953) opposite Richard Burton and James Mason, playing a drunken school teacher who discovers bravery during World War II. He was one of several names in an airplane disaster movie The High and the Mighty (1954). He was in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents playing a tramp blackmailing a business man.
Back in Britain, Newton was given the lead in The Beachcomber (1954), a remake of Vessels of Wrath, this time in the part originally played by Charles Laughton. He again played Long John Silver in an Australian-made film, Long John Silver (1954). It was shot at Pagewood Studios, Sydney, and directed by Byron Haskin, who had directed Treasure Island.[13] The company went on to make a 26-episode 1955 TV series, The Adventures of Long John Silver, in which Newton also starred. Earlier in 1954, he quit the film Svengali for personal reasons to be replaced by Sir Donald Wolfit which left him open to a legal action while filming in Australia in 1954.
Newton married four times and had three children.[14]
He was accused of kidnapping his son, Nicholas, when he took him to Hollywood in 1951,[15] the year his third marriage ended. After a court battle, Newton's elder son was placed in the custody of his aunt and uncle.[16]
He married his fourth wife, Vera Budnik, in June 1952. They had a son.[17]
Death
Newton suffered in the latter part of his life from chronic alcoholism and died on 25 March 1956 at age 50, following a heart attack in Beverly Hills, California.[18] His body was cremated, and there is a plaque in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles in his memory. Years later his ashes were scattered into the south coast of Cornwall in Mount's Bay, near Lamorna in Cornwall, where his father had spent his childhood.[19]
^"Actor's Family Trouble". Barrier Miner. Vol. LXIII, no. 17, 381. New South Wales, Australia. 8 February 1951. p. 9. Retrieved 30 August 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
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