GREGSON, Richard John (1930-2019)

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He was the son of Capt Donald Selfe (Salfe?) GREGSON, formerly Indian Cavalry, who m 1924 (as her 2nd husband) Violet Gwendoline Pearl (1899- 1999) dau of Sir Francis Stanhope HANSON (1868-1910), 2nd son of Sir Reginald HANSON 1st Baronet of Bryanston Sq  (cr 1887 ext 1996), and (m 1897) Pearl Norcutt (d 1960) dau of Charles Albert WINTER

His online (not yet in print) Telegraph obituary here - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2019/10/28/richard-gregson-film-producer-oscar-nominated-screenwriter-agent/

EXTRACTS

Richard Gregson, who has died aged 89, was a film producer, screenwriter and agent, and one-time husband of the American film actress, Natalie Wood. For 20 years he was a leading figure in the film world of Hollywood and London, serving as agent for Robert Redford, John Schlesinger, Alan Bates and Frederic Raphael.

Richard John Gregson was born in Poona on May 5 1930, the youngest of the four children of Captain Donald Gregson, 3rd Indian Cavalry. His mother, Violet Hanson, was the daughter of Sir Francis Hanson, second son of Sir Reginald Hanson, 1st Bt, who imported chutneys, curry powders and more from India and sold Red, White and Blue coffee. He was Lord Mayor of London from 1886-1887.

Violet’s father had died young and her difficult mother, Pearl, had married her off to the tutor of her brother Charlie: Billie Bullivant, a rich young homosexual who entertained the likes of Noël Coward, Prince Felix Yusupov and Ivor Novello, and spent time with undergraduates at Cambridge, among them Cecil Beaton.

Violet returned from her honeymoon virgo intacta, so her marriage was annulled “by reason of the incapacity of the Respondent to consummate the marriage”. Donald Gregson was her second husband. They divorced in 1944, and she remarried and lived to be 100. In 1933 her brother, Charlie Hanson, was drowned, somewhat questionably, in the Thames, his head bashed in.

Following marriage to and divorce from Sally Ronaldson, in the mid-1960s Gregson embarked on a long-distance romance with Natalie Wood, who later moved in with him in Pimlico (where she was robbed of jewellery and furs worth £30,000). They married in May 1969, and had one daughter, Natasha, but they divorced the following year after Natalie had overheard him chatting too intimately to his secretary on the telephone.

Sally Ronaldson, whom he married in 1958, was Gregson’s first wife. They had two daughters and a son. They were divorced, and she died in 2003.

In 1984 he married, thirdly, Julia Gregson, whose 2009 novel, East of the Sun, won numerous prizes and was translated into 21 languages. They settled happily in North Wales and had a daughter.

Richard Gregson, born May 5 1930, died August 21 2019