<Archive obituary> Mr James Mason (1909-84)
Michael Rhodes
<The Times, July 28, 1984>
Mr James Mason
Versatile cinema talent
Mr James Mason, who died yesterday in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the
age of 75, was a highly intelligent and creative cinema performer who
appeared in more than 100 films. And although many of them were
unworthy of his talent he could lift the poorest material just as he
could enrich the best. He made a reputation in parts calling for moody
and tyrannical introspection, notably as Ann Todd's sadistic guardian
in "The Seventh Veil", before maturing into a versatile and dependable
character player.
One of his best performances came under Sir Carol Reed's direction in
1947, when he played a dying gunman on the run in Belfast in "Odd Man
Out". Soon afterwards, expressing his disenchantment with the British
cinema, he left for Hollywood where, after a difficult start, he
successfully built a new career.
James Mason was born in Huddersfield on May 15, 1909, the son of a
textile merchant. He was educated at Marlborough and Peterhouse
College, Cambridge where he took a first in architecture and got a
taste for acting.
His professional debut was at the Theatre Royal, Aldershot, in 1931
and two years later he made his first London appearance in "Gallows
Glorious" at the Arts Theatre.
He joined the Old Vic company and then the Gate Theatre in Dublin,
where he played between 1934 and 1937. He entered films in 1935,
playing a reporter in "Late Extra", but for several years most of his
parts were in low budget "quota quickies".
In 1939 with two friends, Roy and Pamela Kellino, he set up his own
film, "I Met a Murderer", a crime story in which he was the killer of
the title. He and Pamela Kellino were married two years later. During
the Second World War he worked with ENSA and his film career finally
took off through a series of costume melodramas which gave him the
opportunity to create a memorable gallery of suave and vicious
villains.
The film that made him a star was "The Man in Grey", in which he took
a whip to Margaret Lockwood; "Fanny by Gaslight", "They Were Sisters",
and "The Wicked Lady", also with Margaret Lockwood, followed in
similar vein. "The Seventh Veil" proved to be the most successful of
all and from 1944 to 1947 Mason was voted Britain's top box-office
star. Anong thosew who admired his performance in "The Seventh Veil"
was the veteran American director, D.W. Griffith. But Mason had become
increasingly unhappy with the films he was being offered, and with
what he saw as a monopolistic stangle-hold on the industry by J.
Arthur Rank; and at the peak of his popularity he departed for
Hollywood.
It was to be some time before the move paid off. Mason's outspokenness
did not endear him to Hollywood and his choice of parts was not always
happy. He appeared in two films for the emigre director, Max Ophuls,
"Caught" and "The Reckless Moment", and made a splendid Rommel in "The
Desert Fox"; while his Brutus in the 1953 production of "Julius
Caesar" helped to make it one of the best screen versions of
Shakespeare.
But it was not until 1954 when he played opposite Judy Garland in
George Cukor's remake of "A Star is Born" that he managed a major
performance, a harrowing study of a man's tragic decline, for which he
gained an Oscar nomination. He brought the same nervous intensity to
the part of a drug addict in "Bigger than Life" (1956), a film which
he also produced. The best of his later roles was Humbert Humbert in
Stanley Kubrick's film of the Nabokov novel, "Lolita", which appeared
in 1962. To his portrayal of a middle-aged man's infatuation with a
12-year-old girl, Mason brought a degree of sympathy, combined with
wry humour, that few other actors could have managed. With "Odd Man
Out", it ranks as his outstanding screen achievment. Three years
earlier he had been a memorable villain in Alfred Hitchcock's "North
By Northwest" and had given an engagingly tongue in cheek performance
in an adaptation of the Jules Verne story "Journey to the Centre of
the Earth".
He maintained a prolific output throughout the 1960s and 1970s, making
two and three films a year, though many were routine assignments
easily, and perhaps best forgotten. There was still, however, much to
rellish. His Timonides in "The Fall of the Roman Empire" was a bright
spot in an otherwise dreary epic and he had good supporting parts in
"The Pumpkin Eater" and as Gentleman Brown in Conrad's "Lord Jim". He
added to his stock of German officers in "The Blue Max" (1966) and the
same year he was in "Georgy Girl", a story of the "swinging sixties",
and a John Le Carre thriller, "The Deadly Affair." In 1969 he turned
producer again for "Age of Consent", directed in Australia by Michael
Powell; but a long-cherished Powell project, "The Tempest", with Mason
as Prospero, proved abortive. The martinet Yorkshire father in "Spring
and Port Wine" was a tailor-made part, there were more Germans in
"Cross of Iron" and "The Boys from Brazil" and a well judged Mr Jordan
in the fantasy, "Heaven Can Wait". He was superb as the old tutor
recalling his days in India in James Ivory's "Autobiography of a
Princess".
Once he became established in films, Mason returned only occasionally
to the stage. He was in an unsuccessful Broadway play, "Bathsheba", in
1947, and during the 1950s played Angelo in "Measure for Measure" and
Oedipus in "Oedipus Rex" at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford,
Ontario.
His marriage to Pamela Kellino, which produced a daughter, Portland,
and a son, Morgan, was dissolved in 1964. His second wife was
Australian actress, Clarissa Kaye, whom he married in 1971. His
autobiography "Before I Forget", appeared in 1981.
END