And Mills To Go Before We Sleep

      Saturday, we lost the last of a great generation of English actors, when Sir John Mills died at age 97 (see also here). Mills was never the "actor's actor" in the sense that others of his generation-- Olivier, Guinness, Gielgud, Ralph Richardson or even Michael Redgrave-- were. But he was the living definition of the word "stalwart," and he so often seemed not to be acting that one tended to overlook his craft.   Sadly, these days he's known more for fathering his daughters (Hayley and Juliet) than for his own career, which included an Oscar for his portrayal of the local simpleton in David Lean's Ryan's Daughter.

      But Mills was so much better an actor than that.   He was the Herbert Pocket in Lean's 1946 adaptation of Dickens' Great Expectations, and his performance as the martinet Barrow in Tunes of Glory (pictured above with Alec Guinness, as his counterpart Jock Sinclair) is a marvel of subtlety. And let us not forget his work in such films as The Rocking-Horse Winner, Hobson's Choice and In Which We Serve. More recently, he was the coke-snorting elder in Stephen Fry's adaptation of Waugh's Vile Bodies called Bright Young Things, and he had the small part of Old Norway in Branagh's Hamlet. He also has the distinction of having appeared in Howard Hughes' favourite film, Ice Cold In Alex.

      Mills was, for all intents and purposes, the anti-Trevor Howard, though Howard was significantly his junior (and Mr. Howard, unfortunately, died the better part of twenty years ago). Where Howard could be a bundle of masculine passions, Mills was restraint. (The two appeared in six films together, including Richard Attenborough's Gandhi and the forementioned Ryan's Daughter.)   He played men, though, and not grown boys. His sinews, it seemed, were always made of steel-- or at least bronze. What he lacked in versatilty (see Guinness) or passion (see Olivier) or classical-training (see Gielgud), he made up for with a sense of understatement to make any of his counterparts jealous.   He, quite literally, was the figure of English stiff-upper-lippedness, as if he himself were the modern model of sharpened stoicism, though, of course, varnished with touches of cavalier grace and good humour.

      Almost five years ago, when Sir Alec Guinness died, newspapers round the world heralded the end of a generation.   It wasn't entirely true. Now, sadly, it is true. Sir John was the last of that remarkable generation, and surely the one least commonly thought of as being part of it. They are all gone now, and we're darker for it, a thought that hangs in my mind now with a funeral to attend tomorrow. G'night, Sir John. And thanks.

      Now go rent Tunes of Glory. And Great Expectations and In Which We Serve, if you can.