Web Page No 2542
5th January 2019
James Robertson Justice
1st Picture. Desert Island Discs
4th Picture. Book. What’s the bleeding time?
He
was one of the most readily recognisable faces in the British film world from
the 1940s through to the 1970s.
He
was born James Norval Harald
Justice on15th June 1907 and died on 2nd July 1975.
He
was the son of an Aberdeen-born geologist and named after his father. He was born
in Lee, a suburb of Lewisham, educated at Marlborough College ,
studied science at University College London,
but left after a year and became a geology student at the University of Bonn, where
he again left after just a year. He spoke many languages, possibly up to 20,
including Spanish, French, Greek, Danish, Russian, German, Italian, Dutch and Gaelic.
After
university he returned to the UK in 1927, and became a journalist with Reuters in London, alongside Ian Fleming. After a year he emigrated to Canada, where he worked as an insurance salesman, taught
English at a boys' school, became a lumberjack and mined for gold. He came back to Britain
penniless, working his passage on a Dutch freighter washing dishes in the ship's galley to pay his
fare.
On
his return to Britain he served as secretary of the British Ice Hockey Association in
the early 1930s and managed the national team at
the 1932 European Championships in Berlin to a seventh-place finish. He combined his
administrative duties in 1931–32 with a season as goaltender with the London Lions.
He
entered driving a Wolseley Hornet
Special in the JCC Thousand
Mile Race at Brooklands on 3rd and 4th May in
1932. The car was unplaced. The following year a "J. Justice (J.A.P.
Special)" competed in the Brighton Speed Trials:
"Justice's machine "Tallulah" noisily died before the end of the
course, and was pushed back to the start by way of the arcade under the
terrace.".
He
left Britain again to become a policeman for the League of Nations in the Territory of the Saar Basin (a
region of Germany occupied and governed by France and Germany under a League of
Nations mandate originating in the Treaty of Versailles).
After the Nazis came to power, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. It
was here that he first grew his signature trademark bushy beard, which he
retained throughout his career. On return to Britain, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve,
but after sustaining an injury in 1943 (thought to be shrapnel from a German shell), he was pensioned off.
He
married nurse Dillys Hayden (1914–1984) in Chelsea in 1941, and she gave birth to his son James. On
his return from the war, he reinvented himself with stronger Scottish roots, dispensing with his two middle names and
acquiring the new middle name Robertson out of his habit of wearing
Robertson tartan. Feeling strongly about his Scottish ancestry, he once
claimed to have been born in 1905 under a distillery on the Isle of Skye; many sources listed his birthplace as Wigtown, Wigtownshire, now in Dumfries and Galloway. He
unsuccessfully contested the North Angus and Mearns constituency for the Labour Party in the 1950 general
election. With the earnings he made from the film Doctor in the House (1954),
he bought a cottage in the Scottish Highlands village of Spinningdale.
He
took up acting after joining the Players' Theatre in London. The club, under the
chairmanship of Leonard Sachs who was latterly
chairman of BBC's television's The Good Old Days, would
stage Victorian music hall nights. Standing in for Sachs one night, he
was recommended for the film For Those In Peril (1944).
As
an actor, with his domineering personality, bulky physique, (he played rugby
for Beckenham RFC First XV in the 1924–25
season alongside Johnnie Cradock who
would become the partner of 1950s TV chef Fanny) and rich, booming voice, he
was soon established as a major supporting player in British comedy
films. His first leading role was as headmaster in the film Vice Versa (1948),
written and directed by Peter Ustinov, who cast him partly because he'd been "a
collaborator of my father's at Reuters." He was best known as the
demanding surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt in the "Doctor" series of films
of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Doctor in the House(1954),
playing a role for which he is possibly best remembered. In his films he was
sometimes credited under different names such as Seumas Mòr na Feusag (Scottish
Gaelic, translation: Big James with the Beard), James R. Justice, James
Robertson or James Robertson-Justice.
On
31st August 1957, he helped launch the TV station Scottish Television,
hosting the channel's first show, This is Scotland. From 1957
to 1960, and again from 1963 to 1966, he was Rector of the
University of Edinburgh. In the war film The Guns of Navarone (1961),
Robertson Justice had a co-starring role as well as narrating the story.
He
appeared in four films with Navarone star Gregory Peck, including Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951),and Moby Dick (1956),
in which he played the one-armed sea captain also attacked by the white whale.
In the film, his character tries to befriend Captain Ahab (played by Gregory Peck),
but is amazed and repulsed by Ahab's obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick.
After
a series of affairs and the drowning of his son in 1949 at his watermill
home in Whitchurch, Hampshire, he
separated from his wife and she eventually divorced him in 1968. He met
actress Irene von Meyendorff in
1960 on the set of The Ambassador,
and they remained together, eventually marrying in 1975 three days before he
died.
Not
long after completing his work for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in
1968, he suffered a severe stroke, which signalled the beginning of the end for
his career. He suffered a further series of strokes, which left him unable to
work. He was declared bankrupt in 1970, and he died penniless in 1975. His
ashes were buried in a north Scotland moor near his former residence in the
Highland village of Spinningdale.
A
biography entitled James Robertson Justice—What's The Bleeding Time? (referring
to a joke in the first Doctor film) was published by Tomahawk Press on 3rd
March 2008.
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On this day 4th January 1960-1965.
On 05/01/1960 the number one
single was Starry Eyed -
Michael Holliday and the number one album was South Pacific
Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was not listed and
the box office smash was North by Northwest. A pound of today's money was worth
£13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1
champions. The big news story of the day was Boeing 707s to be tested by UK pilots.
On 05/01/1961 the number one
single was I Love You -
Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the number one
album was South Pacific
Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was The Russ Conway
Show (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One
Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25
and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1
champions. The big news story of the day was Millionth Morris Minor produced.
On 05/01/1962 the number one
single was Moon River -
Danny Williams and the number one album was Another
Black & White Minstrell Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV
show was Coronation
Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was
worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division
1 champions. The big news story of the week was Pope ex-communicates Fidel
Castro.
On 05/01/1963 the number one
single was The Next Time/Bachelor Boy - Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the
number one album was Black & White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell
Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Coronation
Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The
Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the
way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.
On 05/01/1964 the number one
single was I Want to Hold
Your hand - The Beatles and the number one album was
With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office
smash was Dr Strangelove.
A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to
becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.
On 04/01/1965 the number one
single was I Feel Fine - The Beatles and
the number one album was Beatles For Sale - The Beatles. The top rated TV show
was Coronation Street (Granada) and
the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth
£11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division
1 champions.
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