Robert Shaw

Robert Archibald Shaw was born on 9 August 1927 at 51 King Street in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, the son of Thomas Archibald Shaw, a medical doctor and former Royal Field Artillery Lieutenant of Scottish descent, and Doreen Nora Shaw, née Avery, a former nurse born in Piggs Peak, Swaziland. He had three sisters, Elisabeth, Joanna, and Wendy, and one brother, Alexander. When Shaw was seven, the family relocated to Stromness, Orkney, in Scotland. Following his father's suicide when Shaw was twelve, his mother moved the family to Cornwall, where he attended Truro School. He worked briefly as a teacher at Glenhow Preparatory School in Saltburn-by-the-Sea before enrolling at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, from which he graduated in 1948.

Shaw launched his acting career in regional theatre across England. As early as 1946, he played Angus in a production of Macbeth at Stratford, where he performed for two seasons. He made his London stage debut at the Embassy Theatre in Caro William in 1952, and the following year returned to Stratford. After the Second World War he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, appearing in productions of Macbeth, Henry VIII, Cymbeline, and other Shakespeare plays. With the Old Vic company during the 1951–52 season, he continued primarily in Shakespearean roles. In 1959, he achieved a significant stage success in The Long and the Short and the Tall on the West End, directed by Lindsay Anderson, a performance that was subsequently filmed for television.

Shaw made his Broadway debut in 1961 in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, appearing alongside Donald Pleasence and Alan Bates, replacing Peter Woodthorpe, who had originated the role in London. The production ran for 165 performances. He returned to Broadway in 1964 in The Physicists, directed by Peter Brook, though that production ran for only 55 performances. In 1967, his play The Man in the Glass Booth opened in London and transferred to Broadway the following year, where it ran for 264 performances. The work, which Shaw both wrote and adapted for the stage, presents a morally complex narrative centered on a man who is either a Jewish businessman pretending to be a Nazi war criminal or a Nazi war criminal pretending to be a Jewish businessman. The play earned Shaw a Tony Award nomination for Best Play in 1969. In 1970, he returned to Broadway in Gantry, a musical adaptation of Elmer Gantry co-starring Rita Moreno, which ran for a single performance. He appeared on Broadway in Old Times in 1971, and in Dance of Death and The Man in the Glass Booth among other productions through 1974.

Shaw's writing extended well beyond the stage. His first novel, The Hiding Place, published in 1960, received positive reviews, and his second, The Sun Doctor, published in 1961, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1962. He subsequently wrote a trilogy of novels comprising The Flag (1965), The Man in the Glass Booth (1967), and A Card from Morocco (1969), as well as the play Cato Street, about the 1820 Cato Street Conspiracy, which received its first production in London in 1971. He also adapted The Hiding Place into a screenplay for the film Situation Hopeless ... But Not Serious, starring Alec Guinness.

Shaw's film career gained significant momentum when he was cast as assassin Donald "Red" Grant in the James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963). He played the relentless Wehrmacht panzer commander Colonel Hessler in Battle of the Bulge (1965) and portrayed a young Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966), a performance that earned him nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award. He played General George Armstrong Custer in Custer of the West (1967) and starred in the film version of Pinter's The Birthday Party (1968), directed by William Friedkin. He appeared among an ensemble cast in Battle of Britain (1969), with the role of Sailor Malan written specifically for him, and took the lead in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), playing Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro opposite Christopher Plummer as Incan Emperor Atahualpa. He appeared in Young Winston (1972) as Lord Randolph Churchill and in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). Shaw achieved widespread popular recognition playing the mobster Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting (1973) and the shark hunter Quint in Jaws (1975). Later film credits included Robin and Marian (1976) and both Black Sunday and The Deep, released in 1977. The Man in the Glass Booth was adapted into a film in 1975.

Shaw had a small role in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) early in his screen career and appeared in numerous British television productions throughout the 1950s, including The Buccaneers (1956–57), in which he starred as Captain Dan Tempest across 39 episodes. He, Pleasence, and Bates reprised their Caretaker roles in a 1963 film version, with Shaw among those who helped finance the production. Shaw died on 28 August 1978, twelve days after his fifty-first birthday.