Britain’s Trevor Howard, Award-Winning Actor, Dies

Trevor Howard, the British actor whose reserved presence enabled him to sustain a career that extended through four decades and involved roles ranging from dashing leading men to sea-going martinets, died Thursday.

Howard, winner of Great Britain’s equivalent of the Academy Award and considered one of the English-speaking world’s finest film and stage actors, was 71.

His wife, actress Helen Cherry, was at his side when he died in a hospital at Bushey near London, said his agent, James Sharkey.

“He died quite peacefully in his sleep,” Sharkey said of the star of “The Third Man,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Mutiny on the Bounty” and his first and possibly most endearing film, “Brief Encounter.”

“He had contracted influenza and bronchitis and at the end, his illness became complicated by jaundice,” Sharkey said.

Known generally for his portrayals of “decent men” beset by the travails of plots distinguished more often by Howard’s acting than by the stories themselves, Howard off-stage presented an entirely different persona.

He was given to drink, travel, jazz, brawling, boxing and weight-lifting at Clifton College in Gloucestershire, where he cheerfully admitted to ranking “at the bottom of the class.”

“Hell-raiser?” he once said. “I don’t mind if they call me that. If it means I enjoy life, then that’s fine and I hope to continue to do so, but not to the extent of throwing bottles or annoying people.”

He wore a gray beard in his last few years and said, “When people ask me about it I tell them I’m playing King Lear.”

Of his work, he admitted that many of the nearly 100 parts he played on film may have lacked substance, but “all my performances are good enough to be seen; I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done. I consider it professional whoredom to inflict a load of rubbish on a paying public.”

Born the son of an insurance underwriter whose travels took the family around the world, Howard was encouraged by his parents to pursue a military career.

“But I just always wanted to act because I felt better when I was someone else,” he said early in his career.

He enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and made his professional debut the following year.

He quickly became known for his rugged good looks, his eagerness to brawl and, most importantly, his stage acumen. One story, possibly apocryphal, has it that during a performance of Sheridan’s “The Rivals,” Howard’s breeches split from tail bone to ankles and he played an entire act sitting down.

In 1936 he joined the Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon for a year of Shakespeare, returning there in 1939 after three years of repertory work.

He tried to join the Army at the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939, but for unknown reasons was rejected. When the War Office changed its mind and sent for him in 1940 he ignored the summons and had to be hauled off by police.

He rose from the enlisted ranks and in 1943 was given a medical discharge with the rank of paratroop captain, with jumps over Norway and Sicily to his credit and a Military Cross on his chest.

Shortly after the war he was introduced to director Carol Reed, who gave him a small role in “The Way Ahead.” Playwright Noel Coward saw him on screen and offered him a co-starring role in the screen adaptation of Coward’s one-act play “Brief Encounter,” opposite Celia Johnson. It was a syrupy saga turned to a masterpiece by dialogue and acting, and in it Howard portrayed the first of the English gentlemen who choose honor over passion that he was to represent for decades to come.

For the next several years he was seen either as a dedicated doctor or heroic officer always doing “the right thing.”

In 1947 he joined the Old Vic but then returned to films two years later in one of his most memorable roles in “The Third Man” as the briskly efficient British officer.

Following that was “The Golden Salamander,” “Odette,” “Around the World in Eighty Days,” “The Key” and many, many more.

His work in “The Key” (1958) as a doomed British tugboat captain brought him a best acting award from the British Film Academy, the English equivalent of an Oscar. (He was nominated for an Oscar for his small but vital role as D. H. Lawrence’s father in “Sons and Lovers” and won an American Emmy for his work in the title role of the 1963 TV drama, “The Invincible Mr. Disraeli.”

He was the POW leader in “Von Ryan’s Express,” Captain Bligh opposite Marlon Brando in “Mutiny on the Bounty” and the taciturn Lord Cardigan in “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Among his more recent films were “Superman,” “Gandhi” and “The Missionary,” and, on American television, “Inside the Third Reich” and “The Deadly Game.”

Sir John Gielgud, who appeared in several films with Howard, said after learning of his death: “He was an enormously versatile and powerful actor. He was a star who had no pretensions, something rare in an actor.”

And fellow actor Sir John Mills recalled Thursday: “He was wonderful to work with. He loved his wine, but that never interfered with his job.”

Nearly 20 years ago, on his 52nd birthday, Howard summed up his philosophy of acting and living:

“I have no ambition except to be happy--happy enough not to need any other goal.”