Denholm Elliott
Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE (31 May 1922 – 6 October 1992) was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits. In the 1980s, he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in three consecutive years, the only actor ever to have achieved this.
Born Denholm Mitchell Elliott
31 May 1922
Ealing, London, England, United Kingdom
Died 6 October 1992 (aged 70)
Santa Eulària des Riu, Ibiza, Spain
Resting place Cremated, ashes scattered in Ibiza
Nationality British
Education Malvern College
Alma mater Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Occupation Actor
Years active 1949–1992
CBE
CBE
Spouse(s) Virginia McKenna (1954; divorced)
Susan Robinson (1962–92; his death)
Early life
Elliott was born in London, the son of Nina (née Mitchell) and Myles Laymen Farr Elliott, a barrister. He attended Malvern College and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He was asked to leave RADA after one term. As Elliott later recalled: "They wrote to my mother and said, 'Much as we like the little fellow, he's wasting your money and our time. Take him away!'"
In World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force, training as a sergeant radio operator and gunner and serving with No. 76 Squadron RAF under the command of Leonard Cheshire. On the night of 23/24 September 1942, his Handley Page Halifax bomber took part in an air raid on the U-boat pens at Flensburg, Germany. The aircraft was hit by flak and subsequently ditched in the North Sea near Sylt, Germany. Elliott and two other crew members survived and he spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp in Silesia. While imprisoned he became involved in amateur dramatics.
Career
After making his film debut in Dear Mr. Prohack (1949), he went on to play a wide range of parts, often ineffectual and occasionally seedy characters as the journalist Bayliss in Defence of the Realm, the abortionist in Alfie, and the washed-up film director in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Elliott and Natasha Parry played the main roles in the 1955 television play, The Apollo of Bellac.
Elliott made many television appearances, notably in plays by Dennis Potter, including Follow the Yellow Brick Road (1972), Brimstone and Treacle (1976), and Blade on the Feather (1980). He took over for an ill Michael Aldridge for one season of The Man in Room 17 (1966) and appeared in the series Thriller (1975).
In the 1980s, he won three consecutive British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards – Best Supporting Actor for Trading Places as Dan Aykroyd's kindly butler, A Private Function, and Defence of the Realm – as well as an Academy Award nomination for A Room with a View. He also became familiar to a wider audience as the well-meaning but addlepated Dr. Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. A photograph of his character appears in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and a reference is made to Brody's death. In 1988, Elliott was the Russian mole Povin, around whom the entire plot revolves, in the television miniseries Codename: Kyril.
Having filmed Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady (1983), Elliott was quoted in a BBC Radio interview as saying that he and Marc Sinden "are the only two British actors I am aware of who have ever worked with Winner more than once and it certainly wasn't for love. But curiously, I never, ever saw any of the same crew twice." (Elliott in You Must Be Joking! (1965) and The Wicked Lady and Sinden in The Wicked Lady and Decadence). Elliott had also worked with Sinden's father, Donald Sinden, in the film The Cruel Sea (1953).
He also starred with Katharine Hepburn and Harold Gould in the television film, Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986) and with Nicole Kidman in Bangkok Hilton (1989).
In 1988, Elliott was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to acting. His career included many stage performances, including with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and a well acclaimed turn as the twin brothers in Jean Anouilh's Ring Round the Moon. His scene-stealing abilities led Gabriel Byrne, his co-star in Defence of the Realm, to say: "Never act with children, dogs or Denholm Elliott."
Personal life
Privately bisexual, Elliott was married twice; first to the British actress Virginia McKenna for a few months in 1954 and later, in an open marriage, to actress Susan Robinson, with whom he had two children, a son named Mark and a daughter named Jennifer (1964–2003). In 1995, Paul McMullan of The News of the World published a series of articles claiming that Jennifer was living on the street and working as a prostitute and hooked on heroin, by his own admission using information obtained illegally by bribing police officers. Her death in 2003 was suicide, by hanging.
Death
Elliott was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and died of AIDS-related tuberculosis at his home in Santa Eulària des Riu on Ibiza, Spain, in 1992. Tributes were paid by actors Donald Sinden and Sir Peter Ustinov, playwright Dennis Potter and former wife Virginia McKenna. Sinden said: "He was one of the finest screen actors and a very special actor at that. He was one of the last stars who was a real gentleman. It is a very sad loss." Ustinov said: "He was a wonderful actor and a very good friend on the occasions that life brought us together." Potter commented: "He was a complicated, sensitive and slightly disturbing actor. Not only was he a very accomplished actor, he was a dry, witty and slightly menacing individual. As a man, I always found him very open, very straightforward and very much to the point." McKenna added: "It is absolutely dreadful, but the person I am thinking of at the moment more than anybody is his wife. It must be terrible for her." Ismail Merchant described Elliott as "an all-giving person, full of life ... He had an affection and feeling for other actors, which is very unusual in our business."
His widow set up a charity, the Denholm Elliott Project, in his honour and collaborated on his biography. She also worked closely with the UK Coalition of People Living with HIV and AIDS. She died on 12 April 2007, following a fire in her flat in London.
Filmography
Dear Mr. Prohack (1949)
The Ringer (1952)
The Sound Barrier (1952)
The Holly and the Ivy (1952)
The Cruel Sea (1953)
The Heart of the Matter (1953)
They Who Dare (1954)
Lease of Life (1954)
The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955)
The Night My Number Came Up (1955)
Pacific Destiny (1956)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Crocodile Case (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Relative Value (1959)
Scent of Mystery (1960)
Nothing But the Best (1964)
The High Bright Sun (1964)
You Must Be Joking! (1965)
King Rat (1965)
Alfie (1966)
The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966)
The Night They Raided Minsky's (1967)
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1967)
The Sea Gull (1968)
Too Late the Hero (1970)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Quest for Love (1971)
Percy (1971)
The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
The Persuaders! (1972; television series)
Follow the Yellow Brick Road (1972; television play)
Madame Sin (1972)
A Doll's House (1973)
The Vault of Horror (1973)
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)
Brimstone and Treacle (1976; television play)
A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Signalman (1976)
Robin and Marian (1976)
To the Devil a Daughter (1976)
Voyage of the Damned (1976)
A Bridge Too Far (1977)
Shooting the Chandelier (1977; television film)
Watership Down (1978; voice)
The Boys from Brazil (1978)
Sweeney 2 (1978)
Cuba (1979)
Zulu Dawn (1979)
Saint Jack (1979)
A Game for Vultures (1979)
Bad Timing (1980)
Blade on the Feather (1980)
Sunday Lovers (1980)
Rising Damp (1980)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Brimstone and Treacle (1982)
Marco Polo (1982; television miniseries)
The Missionary (1982)
Trading Places (1983)
The Wicked Lady (1983)
The Razor's Edge (1984)
Camille (1984)
A Private Function (1984)
A Room with a View (1985)
Past Caring (1985; television film)
Bleak House (1985; television series)
Defence of the Realm (1985)
Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986; television film)
The Whoopee Boys (1986)
Hotel du Lac (1987; television film)
Maurice (1987)
September (1987)
A Child's Christmas in Wales (1987)
Codename: Kyril (1988; television series)
The Bourne Identity (1988; television film)
Noble House (1988; television miniseries)
Stealing Heaven (1988)
Bangkok Hilton (1989)
Killing Dad (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Return from the River Kwai (1989)
The Love She Sought (1990; television film)
Kick Series 1-5 1987-1991[clarification needed]
Toy Soldiers (1991)
Scorchers (1991)
A Murder of Quality (1991)
Noises Off (1992)
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