Russell Crowe's Robin Hood 2010

They say that each generation gets its own particular Robin Hood, and now the 21st Century prepares to see yet another interpretation of the medieval legend about an outlaw with a bow and arrow. The Internet is red hot with video clips and interviews about 72 year old Sir Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood which gets released today! Australia is already releasing stamps showing scenes from the new film. My regular readers will be aware that during this movies long build-up, I have posted quite a few times about various stages of its production. From what I have seen from the teaser trailers, it does looks very good and I am looking forward to it.

The newspapers have been full of articles about the making of this epic, including its possible release in 3D-a sequel (if the film is successful) and on Russell Crowe’s voice training, while he was preparing for his starring role.

Crowe, 45, was born in New Zealand and brought up in Australia but will play the new role with an ‘English’ accent. Ridley Scott hired three voice coaches: Judy Dickerson, Sara Poyzer and Andrew Jack, who worked with other cast members, including Cate Blanchett, who plays Maid Marian. Veteran film director, Scott, wanted to make sure the movie sounds as well as looks ‘accurate’, so Crowe’s Robin will be pronouncing Nottingham as 'Noddinham.’

But this ridiculous fuss over ‘Robin Hood’s accent' continued today (Friday) after some papers have reported that Russell Crowe stormed out of a BBC 4 interview recorded at London’s Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, with Mark Lawson. He apparently flipped when Lawson suggested that Crowe had ‘hints’ of Irish in his portrayal of the outlaw from ‘Nottingham.’ The New Zealander raged: “You’ve got dead ears, mate – seriously dead ears if you think that’s an Irish accent.”

Voice Coach, Sara Poyzer later insisted that she taught him the Nottinghamshire accent, and that he did a pretty good job. But according to the press, Judy Dickerson contradicted this and said she coached him to speak like someone from the Rutland area!

            Leon Unczur, Sheriff of Nottingham

Councilor Leon Unczur, the current Sheriff of Nottingham, said that Crowe’s accent was “not bad,” although, some jester, interviewed after seeing the movie thought he turned out sounding more like an Aussie doing an impression of Jim Bowen from ‘Bullseye!’

VisitBritain has teamed up with Universal Pictures and other tourism agencies to promote the film and some of its locations, which include the East Midlands, Pembrokeshire and the Ashridge Estate in Hertfordshire. VisitBritain chief executive Sandie Dawe added: "We know that 40 per cent of our potential visitors would be ‘very likely’ to visit places from films and thoroughly enjoy visiting film locations they see on the big screen."

People staying in holiday lodges in the Midlands can head to Nottingham Castle and the Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre to see the exhibition ‘Robin Hood – The Movie’. They will be able to see props, costumes and also some film memorabilia. The existing forest center exhibition about the history of Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest has also been given a complete makeover.

All the exhibitions are free and throughout the month, known of course as ‘Robin Hood Month,’ medieval and Robin Hood themed events will take place all over Sherwood Forest and the surrounding communities. Nottingham County Council, together with Rufford Abbey Country Park and Sherwood Forest National Nature Reserve, have thrown themselves into the celebrations with gusto!

Director Sir Ridley Scott said: "It was fundamental to the project that this motion picture was filmed in Britain – it was extremely important to catch the real essence and feeling only British locations in particular could achieve. The only way we could achieve such a successful production was with the authenticity of the locations Britain and the East Midlands had to offer.’

Russell Crowe says he has loved the story since he was a boy, “I watched the Richard Greene TV series, but when you see the episodes now, they’re a bit creaky, and it’s basically the same story every week. I saw the Errol Flynn version and the Douglas Fairbanks one when I was really young. But I really disliked ‘Prince of Thieves’ with Kevin Costner. I thought it was like a Jon Bon Jovi video clip-all the mullet hairdos.”

This was the 1991 version which is chiefly remembered for Costner’s broad American accent, the most hilariously camp Sheriff of Nottingham ever, in the form of Alan Rickman, and Morgan Freeman’s use of a telescope about 400 years before it was invented.

“I still think there has never been a cinema Robin Hood who could have really existed,” Crowe says. “When you do the research you discover that the Robin Hood story is based on 24 to 30 different real people who were born in lots of different places. So you can take the time period, use the core message and put a different take on it.”

“Part of the recalibration of Robin Hood,” Crowe continues, “is to put him into a place where he’s a real man with a real job. I wanted to take out the fairytale, superhero aspect. He’s got at least ten years of military experience behind him. Our attitude was that all the politics, the philosophical aspects, the romance, all grow out of the story of a real person.”

For the first time, Crowe is credited as a producer, he has been involved in every aspect of the production-from the script, to the costume he wears, in this case a battered tunic and a chain mail over worn leather trousers. As I reported in an earlier post, he got himself in to peak condition for the part. His daily routine included bike riding, gym time and hours learning archery on his farm near Coff’s Harbor in New South Wales.

“Archery is a beautiful thing when you get it right, Crowe explains. “I love it and I’ve continued with it. I have a collection of bows from the film and I go out back and drag out the target and shoot off 50 arrows or more for relaxation.

Crowe did most of the action scenes himself. This is movie making on a grand scale, there’s one spectacular sequence where Robin Hood leads his band to repel an invasion by the French. This scene (see my earlier post), was filmed on a beach in Pembrokeshire (which is meant to be Dover), was a nightmare to film. The tides are fast and potentially treacherous. Scott had to marshal 130 horsemen on the beach-including Crowe - and a landing craft disgorging French fighters on to the shore under a cloud of arrows. Crowe described it as ‘all anarchy, violence and adrenaline. It was intense.’

“You’re in a cavalry charge with a 130 horses going as fast as they can,” he says, “and you smash in to 500 men on the ground and have seven or eight fights. And it has to take place at exactly the right time.” According to Crowe there was about 15 people taken from the field. Some of them went to hospital but were OK.

The script is written by Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential) and it places Robin Hood in the familiar reign of Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) as a battle-hardened, middle-aged archer. Robin has three ‘merrie men,’ Little John (Kevin Durand), Will Scarlet (Scot Grimes) and Alan A’Dayle (Alan Doyle) along with Mark Addy as the bee-keeping, mead swilling Friar Tuck. The rather spiky widow, Marian, is played by Cate Blanchett who has to resist the amorous attentions of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen). Richard’s newly crowned brother; King John (Oscar Isaac) defies the advice of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins). The design team was led by Arthur Max.

Mike (one of our Whistling Arrows), has already been to see it, and described it as: “.........gritty muddy, good action and good characters. I was not disappointed and they have left themselves wide open for a sequel because this film ends where the others begin. The sets, the thousands of props, were fantastic, dialogue gets a little hard to hear, and eventually, when the Blue Ray version is out it will be a joy to see it again.”

If you see this new version of Sir Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, please get in touch at disneysrobin@googlemail.com or comment below and let me know your opinions of it. I will be very interested to read them.

My new visitors might like to know that I regularly post; not only on the films, television series, places, ballads and images associated with Robin Hood, but also about the research into his real historical existence. I have been studying the legend for over thirty years. Please click on the Labels in the right-hand column to see the relevant posts so far. And please stick around to see plenty more!

The Billboard - April 19th 1952

The following text is taken from The Billboard on April 19th 1952 at the start of Walt Disney's promotion of his second live-action movie which was released as The Story of Robin Hood (RKO RadioPictures) in New York on 26th June 1952 (although the article puts in in July of that year). I hope you will find it interesting:

The Billboard

New York, April 12th 1952

"Capital Records have obtained the album rights involving the original cast of the forthcoming Walt Disney flick Robin Hood. Capital has become increasingly active in all phases of the album market. The company recently secured the rights to original cast recordings of the musical, Three Wishes for Jamie and Of Thee I Sing and is now riding high with the Jane Froman set, With a Song in My Heart.

Capitol intends to go all out promotion-wise with the Robin Hood album. It will be a two set record set, with an illustrated story included. In addition to the usual window displays and streamers to hype sales, the company is mulling the idea of Robin Hood archery contests, with archery sets as prizes for kids. For radio publicity, Capitol intends to make disc jockey interview records with the star of the flick, Elton Hayes, and will arrange personal appearances of the actor. A large newspaper and magazine advertising campaign is also skedded.

Simon and Schuster has latched on to the rights to release 25-cent discs of the Disney Robin Hood flick, for Little Golden Records, as well as the right to release one 10 inch platter for the Big Golden Records line.

The movie is set to open in theatres in July. Both Capitol and Simon and Schuster expect to have their waxings ready for release in July."

MERRIE CHRISTMAS!

This blog has now reached its third Christmas. It has been a year full of wonderful highs but also a number of very sad lows.

We lost our ‘Robin Hood’ this year when Richard Todd passed away aged 90 and our director Ken Annakin 94, both of them rightly awarded the status of ‘Disney Legends.’ Also Roy E Disney, nephew of the great man and executive of the Disney organisation who sadly lost his long battle with cancer a week ago.

At beginning of this year I was stunned to find my blog had made it into the newspapers when my article on the life of Joan Rice had interested the Maidenhead Advertiser and Windsor Express. I was contacted by their reporter and with all the publicity and help of the local readers, our ‘Maid Marian’s last resting place was eventually found.

Horace Ward contacted me and managed to find his press photographs from over half a century ago of Joan Rice’s wedding to David Green. This was remarkable considering they had no negatives and were originally on glass plates. Horace very kindly scanned them to me along with important details of where the wedding took place.

In January I was extremely proud to receive a ‘Your Blog Is Fabulous Award’ from Alianore. She has a blog and website dedicated to historical research into the reign of the much maligned English king, Edward II. This is a time-period in which I have had an interest for many years and her work brings his reign to life in a vibrant and entertaining way. Alianore’s blog and website and all the others that I follow can be found in the right hand panel of this site and are all highly recommended.

I have always relied on the input from my readers and luckily I have been blessed with support from some wonderful people. Geoff Waite supplied me with a concise list of Elton Hayes’s discography, along with the detailed obituary by Evelyn Branston. Jeremy Young, the Keeper at Burnham Beeches, not only gave us details of exactly where Disney’s Story of Robin Hood was filmed, but also about Walt Disney’s visit and his daughters amusing experience with a Rook.

This prompted a weekend break by my wife and me to Burnham Beeches Hotel and the forest in April and what a beautiful place it was! We were lucky to have glorious sunshine and took some great photos of the areas where Disney’s Robin Hood was shot, including Mendelssohn’s Slope and Middle Pond where ‘Whistle My Love’ was filmed. It was an unforgettable weekend and we thoroughly recommend a visit.

Herbert Smith started sweeping the floors at Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire when he was 13 years old and his son kindly gave me permission to use one of the photographs from his website, taken in 1977 just before those great film studios were demolished.

Do you remember the discovery of an extremely valuable Victorian painting depicting Robin and Maid Marian which was found by a cleaner in the broom cupboard of a Sussex workings men’s club, or Dr Luxford’s incredible find of a medieval manuscript containing an English account of Robin Hood by a fifteenth century scribe? Or can you remember the cartoon character created by Walt Disney’s producer Perce Pearce?

At the beginning of the year Mike joined us and sent in some images from his collection, which included the wonderful original poster and the souvenir programme from Disney’s Story of Robin Hood. Mike, known as Herne’s Son, is a regular contributor and very talented painter and film maker; his latest movie – a western-is currently being edited at the moment.

The DVD version of Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood was released across America this year and Ridley Scott began filming his version of the legend in Wales with his leading stars, Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. These two events in their own way have prompted more regular visitors to my blog, as has the final series of the BBC’s Robin Hood with Jonas Armstrong. I now have ten official blog followers which is great! Along with those are our loyal band of Whistling Arrows who this year answered the ten questions to win the extremely rare picture of Joan Rice at the premier of Disney’s Story of Robin Hood in 1952 very kindly supplied by Horace Ward.

One of my visitors from America was the multi talented Adele Treskillard. She first visited my blog when researching the early ballads of Robin Hood. As a folk singer she was interested in reconstructing the ballads and taking them back to their Celtic roots and soon we began sharing our views on the incredibly complex origins of the Robin Hood ballads. Along with her family she has been performing ancient ballads with her band known as Wren Song and is currently recording some of her music. For her birthday this year her family bought her the DVD of Disney’s Story of Robin Hood and her father informed me that the whole family thoroughly enjoyed the movie!

In August we spotted a ‘blooper’- a plane flying over Nottingham during the torture of Will Stutely in Disney’s Robin Hood and learnt about "the composer, who never disappoints,” - Clifton Parker, who scored the music for over 50 major feature films including our favourite Robin Hood film. Information on how Joan Rice won the Miss Lyons Beauty Pageant and transformed from being a Lyon’s Nippy to a film star was sent to me by Peter Bird and we also visited the Annual Robin Hood Festival in Sherwood Forest.

As autumn turned to winter more details of the new Russell Crowe movie of Robin Hood was released, including behind the scenes pictures and footage. These have always been popular with my blog visitors. On this site I have also tried to bring details of the history behind the legend of Robin Hood and in October this included a look at one of the first scholars to research the history behind the outlaw, Joseph Ritson.

One of the last survivors of the Golden Age of cinema, Olivia de Havilland, gave a very rare interview in November which included details about her on and off screen relationship with Errol Flynn. We also saw a rare photograph of another of our favourite Maid Marians-Joan Rice with her new born son Michael in 1953.

At the time of the discovery of this picture of Joan with her baby, I was puzzled at the timing, as her pregnancy would have coincided with her filming His Majesty O’ Keefe. But luckily I have a stalwart enthusiast and regular visitor who supplies invaluable information to me. Neil put me straight and explained how the film had taken two years to make.

Without the regular in-put, visits and enthusiasm of Neil and Mike this blog would not have got off the ground. And there is also someone else I would personally like to take this opportunity to thank - Maria Steyn. Maria has not had a particularly good year, but she has continued to contact me from time-to-time and send me some of her own personal pictures of Joan Rice. Without Maria’s help we would never have learnt about the life of our beautiful Maid Marian.

So a very big thank you to all my new and regular readers for your wonderful support and encouragement throughout the year.

Have a very Merrie Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you all in 2010.

Rusell Crowe on making Robin Hood

The internet is buzzing lately with interviews and snapshots of the filming in England of the latest Russell Crowe movie, Robin Hood. We all have to wait until May for its release, but here is another interview with the man himself on his decision to make the film and his opinions on earlier productions. The interview is split into two parts.




I would be interested to read your opinions.

Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn

A hundred years after the birth of Errol Flynn, one of the most talked about romances from Hollywood’s Golden Age has provoked decades of speculation. What exactly did happen between matinee idols Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland when the camera’s stopped rolling?

In a rare interview with the ‘Royal Society of Chemistry’ (apparently investigating on-screen chemistry!) and to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of Gone With the Wind screen legend Miss de Havilland has been looking back and putting the record straight.

Olivia de Havilland starred with Flynn in his break through film Captain Blood in 1935. As screen newcomers, they came of age together in a series of eight films for Warner Brothers including The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936 and the all-time classic Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938.

Miss De Havilland has repeatedly denied film historian Rudy Behlmer's claims that she became romantically involved with Flynn while making Robin Hood. But despite these denials, many suspected Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn did have an affair, not least because he was a notorious womaniser. Australian-born Flynn’s good looks and magnetic charm ensured his success with legions of women.

In his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways written just before his death in 1959 Flynn described his undying love for her and now she has admitted:

“We were very attracted to each other and yes we did fall in love. I believe that this is evident in the screen chemistry between us. But his circumstances at the time prevented the relationship going further. I have not talked about it a great deal, but the relationship was not consummated. Chemistry was there though. It was there.”

But:

"So much nonsense has been written. I am always being misquoted.... We were lovers together so often on the screen (eight times) that people could not accept that nothing had happened between us.”

She continues:

“I didn't reject him. You know, I was also very attracted to him. But I said that nothing could happen while he was still with Lili. (Flynn was married to Lili Damita an actress five years his senior when he first met Miss de Havilland). She was away at the time and he said that there was no longer anything much between them. I said that he had to resolve things with Lili first. But, you know, he never did. I think he was in deep thrall to her in some way. He did not leave her then and he never approached me in that way again. So nothing did ever happen between us."

Also onscreen, she was romanced by the likes of James Cagney, Leslie Howard, Charles Boyer, Henry Fonda, Montgomery Clift, Richard Burton and Robert Mitchum. In life, she was perhaps the great love in the turbulent career of John Huston. She was responsible for the decisive legal action that freed contract players from their seven-year sentences (with time added on for defiant behaviour).

Olivia de Havilland went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actress in To Each His Own in 1946 and The Heiress in 1949. She married novelist Marcus Goodrich in 1946 and had a son. She divorced Goodrich in 1953 and married Paris Match editor Piere Galante. Shortly after the birth of their daughter in 1979 they divorced.

The 93 year old actress, who has now lived in a four-storey house near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris for 56 years, has looked back on a career that began incredibly in 1935. She says, “I feel not happy, not contented-but something else. Just grateful for having lived and having done so many things that I wanted to do that have also had so much meaning for other people.”

After Errol Flynn’s overnight success in Captain Blood and Robin Hood he quickly became stereotyped in swashbuckling roles such as The Sea Hawk (1940) and The Adventures of Don Juan (1948). But by the 1950’s he had become a spent force due to heavy alcohol and drug abuse. He died of a heart attack in Vancouver on 14th October 1959.

“What I felt for Errol Flynn” Miss de Havilland says,” was not a trivial matter at all. I felt terribly attracted to him. And do you know, I still feel it. I still feel very close to him to this day."

What a truly remarkable lady.

An Interview with Ken Annakin

"I was interviewed by Perce Pearce, who was the producer and we got on very well. I hadn’t met Walt till he came over and visited the set while we were shooting.

In the planning of our picture, they were very determined that ours should be very, very true. We went up to Sherwood Forest, to Nottingham and the script was written as actually as it could be from the records. I thought we were probably making a truer picture than had been made before.

Now we didn’t have Errol Flynn, but all the things we had in the picture, were very British and very true. I mean, he [Walt] was making his picture, his version and I think we came up –with Walt’s help and insistence on truth and realism-as near as makes any matter.

He [Walt] didn’t stay very long on Robin Hood. He had a great trust in Carmen Dillon, who was responsible for the historical correctness. Everything, from costumes to sets to props and he- I’m not so sure why he was so certain- but he was dead right at having chosen her. And she did that picture and Sword and The Rose too. And his reliance was 100%. A director can’t go into every historical detail and so I would check with her also, pretty well on most things. And she would quietly be on the set and if we used a prop wrongly, she would have her say. Mine was the final say, as director, but one couldn’t have done without her.

Now Walt really-I remember him on that picture- having set the overall key of what he wanted- and seeing it was going the way he wanted- he trusted Perce Pearce as the producer, he came to trust me as the director. And I must say, I have never had Walt looking over my shoulder at anything.

I had never experienced the sketch artists and sketching a whole picture out. Now, that picture was sketched out by and approved by him. My memories of Robin Hood are basically that he visited the sets, maybe half a dozen times. He stayed probably 2 or 3 hours, maybe, while we were shooting. Not often 2 or 3 hours (laughs). And I remember that he used to go off to a place very near Denham where we were shooting. He used to go off to Beaconsfield and spend hours with the guy that had the best model railway, I think, in the world. And this was the beginning of his thoughts on Disneyland. Beaconsfield was just a place where, this guy had built up his model railway. Beaconsfield also has a studio, but the studio hasn’t any connection with that.

Then the film went back to here [America] and the whole of the post-sync work and the post production work was done. And the director was never called in to have anything you do with that. It wasn’t until I had made my fourth picture with Walt, which was Swiss Family that I was ever really allowed to do anything with the editing (laughs) or to say about the music or anything. But once you had, shot it, that was your job as the director."

Richard Todd

This article on Richard Todd’s ‘haunting double tragedy’ appeared in ‘The Daily Mail’ on Tuesday, April 25th 2006. For me this was an incredibly revealing account by Wendy Leigh, of a man who I have greatly admired. But after reading this piece, I am sure you will, like me, be left totally in awe, of this true gentleman’s courage in the face of extreme adversity.

"Veteran actor Richard Todd is 86, [2006] but looks at least ten years younger. Handsome, blue-eyed and with the erect posture of a former military man, his manners are impeccable and his charm reminiscent of his days as a Fifties matinee idol.

The star of the Dam Busters and The Longest Day, who after two marriages ended in divorce, lives alone in a small Lincolnshire village, seems to have the quintessential elderly Englishman’s existence; living out one’s golden years in peace and happiness.

But this tranquility masks a deep sorrow that surfaces when Todd reflects on the two great tragedies of his life: the suicides of two of his four children. Suddenly the actor’s sonorous voice falters and his eyes fill with tears.

For a parent to lose one child is a tragedy. To lose two is devastating beyond words. And for both to die by their own hand must be unbearable. Yet Todd has faced both calamities with characteristic stoicism, staying true to his family motto: ‘It is necessary to live.’


As he puts it in his first interview since the second suicide: ‘It is rather like something that happens to men in war. You don’t consciously set out to do something gallant. You just do it because that is what you are there for. It is your country. And you just get on with it.’


Seven months ago Peter, Todd’s eldest son from his first marriage, shot himself in the head. He killed himself in the same way as his half-brother, Seumas, had done eight years earlier.

Peter’s mother, the actress Catherine Grant-Bogle, died nine years ago, so it fell to Todd’s second wife Virginia Mailer-Seumas’s mother-to tell Todd that a second son had taken his life.

‘I came home to find Virginia’s car outside my house.’ Todd says. ‘I saw her coming towards me and said: “What a nice surprise.” Then I saw look on her face and …’ Todd stops in mid-sentence. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I can’t go on.’

Then regaining his composure, he continues: ‘Obviously, I knew Peter all his life and he knew more about my way of life than anybody else in existence. He was a devoted son. We shared so much together. I miss him. The word ‘terribly’ hangs in the air but Todd, with typical understatement, leaves it unsaid. Nor does he discuss the circumstances of Peter’s suicide.

But the facts are that his son’s body was found slumped in his car at 7.35 am on September 21, last year [2005], in a car park by the village hall in East Malling, Kent, where he lived with his wife, Jill.

According to reports, she had planned to leave her 53-year old husband, a racing car company executive. Peter, who used his father’s full surname of Palethorpe-Todd, left her a suicide note: ‘I’m so sorry but I cannot face life alone without you.’

His wife accepted there were problems in the marriage, but said that her husband had been badly affected by Seumas’s death: ‘He was extremely angry that Seumas did what he did,’ she told an inquest. ‘But because Peter wasn’t a chap to talk about things that inwardly affected him, it took its toll.’

She also said Peter’s drink problem had worsened since Seumas’s death.

Peter took a gun from a cupboard in their home. Jill, a director in an events management company, described her husband as ‘controlling’ and ‘obsessive.’ She said that on the night he shot himself, Peter knew that ‘time was running out’ for their marriage.

‘The following morning, I saw his bed had not been slept in and his car had gone. I phoned a family friend and she was the one who mentioned about the gun in the cupboard. When I saw it was gone, I phoned the police.’

A verdict of suicide was recorded.

Todd, who has another son, Andrew, and a daughter, Fiona, did not attend his son’s inquest. ‘Peter lived in Kent. Seumas and Andrew lived in Lincolnshire and they weren’t particularly close to Peter. But Peter had apparently said before he died that if anything happened to him he wanted to be buried with his brother.

So now Peter and Seumas are buried in the same churchyard just a few miles from Todd’s home. ‘There’s a space there for me, too. It’s my retirement home,’ says Todd. ‘I go down once or twice every week and have a chat to my boys.

‘The fact that Seumas committed suicide made it easier for me to cope with Peter’s suicide because I was more prepared. I leapt into action straight away. Funeral arrangements and all that sort of thing. Which I didn’t have the heart to do when Seumas died.’

I ask if the tragedies have challenged his faith in God. He insists not and says: ‘I am not going around saying: “Why me? Why me?” Saying “Why me?” doesn’t help.’

Has he ever been close to committing suicide himself? He looks at me uncomprehending. I pose the question again. ‘No. Not once.’ He says.

‘What helps me is accepting it, getting on with things. I try to think of the good times. If I get stuck in a morass of mourning, I switch off and think of something else. You have to. You can’t let yourself go on wallowing. You can’t let yourself do that.’

Eight years before Peter’s untimely death-on December 7 1997- Todd walked into his home, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, and saw Virginia, sitting with her back to him, shaking and moaning.

His son Andrew, ashen-faced, was speaking into the phone. ‘No, I’m afraid it’s definitely suicide,’ Todd heard him say. The actor ran to Seumas’s bedroom and found the 20-year-old lying on his bed, the butt of his 12-bore shotgun between his feet. ‘My heart stopped. He was lying on his back across his bed. This could not be my boy, my lovely Seumas, he could not really be dead.’ Todd said.

Seumas left a suicide note saying that he ‘could not cope.’

At first, Todd thought Seumas, a first-year student of politics at Nothumbria University, was suffering from financial worries. But he had only a small overdraft and was supported by loving, well-off parents.

Then an inquest into another student’s suicide suggested a link between depression and an anti-acne drug that Seumas had also taken.
‘I am convinced of it,’ Todd says. ‘There have been too many other cases for it to have been a one-off accident.

‘In 1996, my son came back from travelling for two years and he was tremendously depressed. In Australia he’d had chicken pox. He was panic-stricken because of the risk of facial scarring. And the illness probably also contributed to his melancholy.

‘He was very good looking and didn’t like having spots. The acne was very disheartening. The poor little chap didn’t stand a chance. It was an illness and it did not arise out of any unhappiness with us.

‘It reached crisis point because he was in his first year at university and the stress was too much. Young chaps don’t talk to each other about their depression, do they?

I first met Todd three-and-a-half years after Seumas’s suicide in Brighton, where he was appearing in ‘An Ideal Husband.’


At first, he avoided talking about his son but when he finally did, although his voice trembled slightly, he remained composed. He confided that he had been tempted to try to contact Seumas through a medium, but was afraid that if he did, Seumas would say: ‘Look, I am sorry I killed myself. I wish I could come back.’


Tears welling in his eyes, Todd recalled Seumas’s memorial and Andrew’s poignant words: ‘Thank you Seumas for being such a brave and great brother and friend to me. I know I didn’t deserve your love, and I will always miss you terribly.’

Todd said that he had changed since Seumas’s death: ‘I am more caring. I certainly make sure that my children know that I care about them, that I am around and know how they are getting on. I see Andrew every other weekend and am always on the phone with Peter and Fiona.’

He was putting on a brave face and trying to be optimistic, but I remember thinking that day in Brighton that it would be surprising if he lived to see his 80th birthday. Little did we know then that Peter’s suicide lay ahead.

Now, months after Peter’s death, Todd and I are having tea at his Victorian cottage. One wall is covered with photographs of his children, including Peter and Seumas; youthful, handsome, glittering with promise.

‘I changed my will today,’ Todd says flatly. ‘I had to because Peter was my executor but now he is dead.’

Later, at a nearby restaurant, we talk again about his sons. I suggest that being an actor may have helped him survive his double tragedy.

‘I’m sure it has. Because no matter what I feel at any one time, good or bad, I’m used to being other personalities. I switch from being unhappy to being reasonably happy. By switching identities, I just became somebody else.’

Todd became an actor against all odds. His mother wanted him to become a diplomat. Todd was born in Dublin into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family that included a judge and an Army officer; his father who served in India.

His mother, a beauty with violet blue eyes and an accomplished horsewoman, committed suicide when Todd was only 19, and already at drama school in London.

‘Her death didn’t affect me terribly badly at all.’ He says. ‘I wasn’t devastated. We had been close but just before she died, we disagreed. She didn’t want me to go on the stage. There were various differences and I lost affection for her. I began to find her a bit tiresome. I felt no guilt at all.’

When war came, Todd trained at Sandhurst and served in the Parachute Regiment. He became one of the first British officers to land in France in advance of the main D-Day landings, and later fought bravely in the Battle of the Bulge.

‘It was probably the best time in my life,’ he said. ‘I had no worries, no responsibilities. My parents were dead, I wasn’t married, I had no children. I didn’t have to worry about where we were going to live. We were all prepared to die for our country.

After the war, Todd became a film actor, winning an Oscar nomination for his second film, ‘The Hasty Heart,’ co-starring Ronald Reagan, and was Britain’s highest-paid film star during the Fifties.

In 1949, he married Catherine and they had Peter and Fiona. He starred in Hitchcock’s ‘Stage Fright’ in 1950 with Marlene Dietrich.

‘She was awfully nice and taken with me,’ he says, a trifle immodestly. He met Marilyn Monroe in Hollywood while he was making ‘A Man Called Peter,’ about a Scottish pastor.

‘She wasn’t in the film, but I found her in the corner (on set) by herself, listening and crying because she was so moved by the sermons in the script.’

In a career spanning 40 films, he also met Elizabeth (‘nice thighs’) Taylor and Brigitte Bardot. He blushes and says nothing when asked if he was romantically involved with either star, and is the last acor in the universe who would ever kiss and tell.

The great love of his life is Virginia, a glamorous former model, whom he married in 1970, the year his marriage to Catherine was dissolved.

They had Andrew and Seumas but their marriage, too, ended in 1992 when Virginia divorced him, partly because she was tired of him being away working so much. Today [2006] , Virginia, 64, lives 20 miles from Todd’s village, Little Humby.

‘Virginia and I are perfectly happy,’ he says, ‘we are the best of friends. We see each other a lot, spend a lot of time together but we each have space.’

Asked if he would marry again, he says that, if he did, it would be to Virginia, adding: ‘She probably feels the same.’ Then jokingly, he says: ’I’ll wait till I’m a bit older to ask her, though. I’m a bit young.’

Even now-five years since [2006] his last appearance, in ‘An Ideal Husband,’ and two years since his last television appearance, in ‘Holby City’-Todd still receives more than 40 fan letters a week.


He works for Age Concern, supports the Royal British Legion and speaks at charity functions and military commemorations all over the country, raising huge sums for charity.

On those occasions, his appearance is invariably heralded by the rousing sounds of ‘The Dam Busters March’, the theme music of the film in which he played heroic Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

Vigorous, with a full diary and countless interests including the English countryside where, for many years, he farmed 320 acres in Oxfordshire, Todd drives himself everywhere, shops at Marks & Spencer and is catered to by an adoring personal assistant and a multitude of friends.

He clearly enjoys giving advice to the elderly he meets at Age Concern. ‘I tell them to make the most of it. I’d be nobody without some form of interest to keep me going.'

Todd needs two knee transplants but has been told he is too old to have them. He has had open-heart surgery three times, including a quadruple bypass, and, as a result, is a great fan of the NHS.

‘I’m lucky that with all the disabilities I’ve got, I’m still able to look after myself,’ he says.

Since Peter’s suicide, countless newspapers have requested an interview. He has rejected them all. He did not want payment for this interview, asking only that a donation be made to the British Legion.

As we prepare to leave the restaurant, an elderly man comes over to Todd and-almost reverentially- asks: 'May I shake your hand?’ Todd acquiesces, neither proud nor pleased, just accepting.
Just before we part, I ask him for his definition of Britain and Britishness. ‘To me, it means fairness, good sense, decency, kindness, politeness.’

Todd, at 86 [2006], the father of two sons who killed themselves, exemplifies all those virtues and more: self-discipline, dignity, and courage in the face of unthinkable tragedy.”


Wendy Leigh ‘Daily Mail’ Tuesday April 25th 2006

Joan Rice

Information on Joan Rice is very scarce. But over the last few years, I have managed to piece together some fragmentary facts about her life, from a wide range of sources. In particular I am indebted to Maria Steyn on The Adventures of Robin Hood Message Board, who met Joan in Maidenhead in 1978 and became a friend. Maria has very kindly passed on some details of Joan’s later life. So if you are aware of any more information on this beautiful actress, or see any errors, please contact me on this site.

Dorothy Joan Rice was born in Derby, in England on the 3rd February 1930. The early years of her life were apparently spent in Abbey Street, Derby and at a school/convent in Nottingham, where according to Life magazine, she might have been training for her role as Maid Marian, playing in Sherwood Forest.
After finishing her education, the beautiful green-eyed brunette, took various jobs in London and eventually began working as a waitress in the smart uniform of a ‘corner house girl’ or Nippie, in a Lyon’s Corner House in London (possibly Marble Arch). It was while working there, that she entered a Beach Beauty competition and won the title Miss Lyons in 1949. This led to her being introduced, by a film extra, to actor and director, Harold Huth, and eventually a seven year film contract with J. Arthur Rank.

Joan’s first film role was as the character Alma, in Huth’s own production, Blackmailed (1951) alongside Dirk Bogarde, James Robertson Justice and Mai Zetterling. She then went on to play a maid called Annie, in the clever farce, One Wild Oat (1951) which also included the first screen appearance of Audrey Hepburn, another future Maid Marian.

According to Ken Annakin, Walt Disney’s only Achilles heel, during the making of Robin Hood was the casting of Joan Rice as Maid Marian. Annakin described her as an attractive brunette with a determined face and good figure, but no acting experience. Her acting ability was also criticised by the star of the film, Richard Todd in a recent radio interview. But although six other young actresses had also been screen tested, Walt Disney, would not change his mind, he said that he saw Joan as a great little ‘emoter’.

The other girls may be easier to work with, Disney said, but Joan has a quality. The camera loves her. She gets my vote. With your documentary experience it shouldn’t be beyond your skill to get a performance out of her. Treat her like a child. Spend time with her. So for Ken Annakin, the choice was made and Joan Rice was a cross, he said, he had to bear.

In April 1951 shooting began on Disney’s Story of Robin Hood (1952) and soon things became fraught between Joan Rice and Ken Annakin. In his book, So You Wanna Be A Director, Annakin describes how accident prone she was. During filming she used to ride to and from the local hotel at Denham on a bicycle and fall off nearly every single day. One evening, Annakin saw her standing forlornly by the studio door. He stopped and asked her what was wrong. Joan had smashed up her bike yet again. He offered her a lift, so she climbed in his MG Midget but during the journey she accidently dropped some ash from her cigarette and burnt a hole in one of the red leather rumble seats. The car was Annakin’s pride of his life and this incident reduced poor Joan to tears!

If there was a batten lying on the floor, she’d trip over it, and the funny thing is that nobody on the crew fancied her! Annakin said.

I had to go over dialogue with her word by word and guide her with chalk numbers on the floor, for her moves. The crew would often, shake their head and sigh audibly. One day an electrician sidled past while, while Joan was struggling with her lines and said to Ken Annakin, she’s nowt but a big, soft milk tart, Governor! Big tits and no drawers! This sent Joan off crying again and informing Annakin’s assistant, that that if he didn’t want her, she could always go back to being a waitress! But Disney had chosen her, so Ken Annakin and Joan Rice were chained irrevocably together for the rest of the show!
Despite this cruel criticism, the film, and Joan’s role as a spirited Maid Marian was a success. In fact for many, including myself, she was certainly one of the best, if not the best Maid Marian that ever graced the silver screen. So perhaps Uncle Walt was right!

Her film career took-off, and from story-book history, Joan Rice moved on to a WWII Navy drama, in her next movie, Gift Horse (1952) with Trevor Howard and Richard Attenborough, as June Mallory a Wren cipher clerk. Christmas 1952 saw Joan’s first television appearance as a guest on the BBC’s Current Release: Party Edition, transmitted on the 17th December with a whole host of top celebrities of the time, including Richard Todd, Dirk Bogarde, Trevor Howard, Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins and Petula Clark.

Joan then teamed up again with James Hayter and Bill Owen, from those Disney days, in the rather poor B movie, A Day To Remember released on 29th March 1953. Her next role was as Avis in the typical British farce Curtain Up (1953) alongside such great British talents as Margaret Rutherford and Robert Morley. The movie about a megalomaniac producer, who has to have a new play, ‘Tarnished Gold,’ ready in one week, was directed by Ralph Smart, who later worked on 18 episodes of TV’s hugely successful The Adventures of Robin Hood between 1955-1956.

It was in 1953 that Joan married film producer David Green, son of Harry Green who owned a top London club, frequented by film celebrities in the 1950’s, called Kiss Corner. Joan and Harry later had a son, Michael, but their marriage only lasted up until 1964.

Her last film of 1953 was The Steel Key, a melodrama which has Joan as the love interest, Doreen Wilson, alongside Terence Morgan as attractive rogue, Johnny O’Flynn. Between them they investigate the theft of a secret formula for hardened steel and get involved in international espionage. The movie is often described as a prototype for The Saint and was directed by Robert Baker, who later worked on that successful television series.

It was in the first movie to be filmed in Fiji, His Majesty O’Keefe, released in America on the 16th January 1954, that Joan Rice reached the pinnacle of her brief movie career. This lavish Technicolor adventure in the South Seas, featured Joan as a beautiful island girl who eventually marries Irish American, Captain David O’Keefe, a fortune hunter, played by Burt Lancaster.

After being washed up on the tiny island of Yap in the Solomon Islands, O’Keefe teaches the local islanders modern agriculture and eventually manages to establish a group of trading posts selling Copra, an oil yielding coconut pulp, across the South Seas. But not before he takes as his bride, a dusky Polynesian maiden, Dalabo aki Dali, played by Joan Rice and has a series of battles, not only with local superstitions, but with the native farmers, pirates and white Europeans.

In October 1954 Joan’s ninth movie was released, a comedy drama, The Crowded Day. In this she played Peggy Woman alongside John Gregson, Freda Jackson, and Rachael Roberts, in the five individual stories of a group of salesgirls and their boyfriends at a department store during Christmas week. A colleague from Disney’s Robin Hood, Hal Osmond, also appeared.

Sadly, Joan’s movie career was starting to fade, when she appeared as Iris, alongside much loved funny man Norman Wisdom’s second film appearance, One Good Turn(1955). Following this, Joan worked once again with Harold Huth in his ‘B Film’ as Pat Lewis in Police Dog. In 1956 she appeared in her first Hammer production, Women Without Men also known as Blonde Bait. A prison drama about three women who for various reasons decide to arrange an escape to settle things on the outside, then give themselves back up to the authorities. Joan played Cleo Thompson.

After a couple of years, Joan moved into the world of television with appearances in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan as Sybil Adams. Meanwhile in August 1958 The Long Knife was released. A melodrama about a nurse, Jill Holden, played by Joan, working in a convalescent home wrongly accused of killing several of her patients. As the story unravels, she begins her own investigation to prove her innocence and discovers that the victims were all being blackmailed. But the movie failed to have much of an impact and by November 1958 Joan moved back to the small screen, appearing alongside debonair Roger Moore in an episode of the series Ivanhoe.
June 1959 saw Joan’s appearance in the comedy film Operation Bullshine as Private Finch, with Donald Sinden and Barbara Murray. Set along the English coast at an anti aircraft station, the movie follows the mayhem caused at the base by a group of new female recruits.

After a role in an episode of the TV series The Pursuers in 1961 Joan made her last major screen appearance before her retirement from the film industry. This was in the highly rated heist movie, Payroll released in 1961. With a particularly good performances from Billie Whitelaw and Kenneth Griffith, the gritty story involves a gang of working class criminals in Newcastle, whose payroll robbery ends up with an unplanned fatality. The deceased's wife then decides to set off and track down the villains.

Joan appeared in one more television series, Zero One, aired on British television on the 9th January 1963. Then she retired from acting for nine years. She came out of retirement for a brief character role, as a grave robbers wife, in her second Hammer film, The Horror of Frankenstein in 1970.

She then set up The Joan Rice Bureau in Maidenhead, Berkshire, during the 1970’s and it was here that her office dealt with real estate and property. Joan was being cared for financially at this time by David Green and she lived in a local apartment with her much loved golden retriever called ‘Jessy’. It was in Maidenhead during 1978 that Maria Steyn met Joan Rice and Maria and has kindly informed me of Joan’s later years. They became close friends after Maria had arranged to rent an apartment through Joan’s bureau and they later met several times at Joan’s apartment. Sadly both Joan’s mother and her golden retriever passed away in 1979.

In 1984 Joan married Ken McKenzie a Salesman from Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis and they both moved to Cookham near Maidenhead. But by the start of the 1980’s Joan had been suffering with depression, which led to her drinking and smoking heavily. During this period, Maria describes Joan as looking very pale and unhealthy, with regular severe coughing fits. As time went on, Maria began to find it hard to communicate with her. Soon they lost touch.

Joan died aged 67on January 1st 1997 in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

We all have our favourite characters in the world of television and film. For me Joan Rice will always be Maid Marian.

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007
(To read more about Joan Rice please click on the label 'Joan Rice' in the panel opposite or below).

An Interview With Richard Todd

In October 2006 the BBC broadcast a new series of Robin Hood. Filmed in Budapest, with a Hungarian crew, these 13 part episodes were yet another evolution of the legend. With a fairly young, mostly unknown cast, it was aimed at the early Saturday evening, family viewing slot, left vacant by the hugely successful Dr Who series. It was written by Dominic Minghella and starred Jonas Armstrong as Robin Hood, Lucy Griffiths as Maid Marian and Keith Allen as the Sheriff of Nottingham. It received mixed reviews but was successful enough to be granted a second series, which is currently in production (although filming has been held up due to Jonas Armstrong having fractured a metatarsal in his foot during a fight scene).

One of the special guests invited along by the BBC in Lincolnshire to see the pilot episode of their new series, was the man who had played Robin Hood for Walt Disney 54 years earlier, the veteran British actor Richard Todd.

This is the interview Richard Todd gave with Rod Whiting of BBC Radio Lincolnshire about making Walt Disney’s ‘The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men.’

Richard Todd: This went much against my instincts because I was an actor and you see I thought, Robin Hood, No! No! No! I don’t want to do that, hanging by my tail from trees and all that sought of thing. And Walt Disney came over to England and we had lunch together and he told me that he wanted a quick witted, quick thinking, quick moving, welter-weight. I really had a ball on that film. It was nothing like what you are able to do today. It doesn’t hold a candle to this in many ways.

Rod Whiting: What do you think about the new programme?

Richard Todd: From what I have seen it’s excellent. I told you. We couldn’t hold a candle to it. In the days when I made Robin Hood. Yeah! I think it’s extremely good. It’s very intelligent, its bright, its beautifully photographed, it has tremendous production values. Whether it will be intriguing for audiences, I wouldn’t know. As I said just now, I’m a bit old fashioned and I think I’m still a child at heart. I want to see Robin Hood! You know the Robin Hood that I have been nurturing in my mind for the odd ninety years. Or whatever it is I’ve been alive.

Rod Whiting: Not some chap with a beard then?

Richard Todd: (laughs) No! No! No! What happened to Friar Tuck? Does he come in sometime?

Rod Whiting: I think he will. I think he will at some stage.

Richard Todd: And Little John?

Rod Whiting: Yes. I think he’s about to make his appearance.

Richard Todd: Oh Good! Good!

Rod Whiting: Joan Rice was Maid Marian in your film.

Richard Todd: Yes.

Rod Whiting: And you know I was horrified to read that the biography of Joan Rice is nothing more than ‘A pert English actress....’

Richard Todd: She wasn't an actress.

Rod Whiting: Right.

Richard Todd: Poor little girl. I mean goodness knows why Walt and the others chose her. She was a waitress in a Lyons Corner House in London. She had never acted. She was a pretty little thing. She was a nice little thing. She tried her best. She did her best. It wasn’t there.

Rod Whiting: But you did have a chap called Bill Owen in the film.

Richard Todd: Oh a lot of other people that would be remembered today.

Rod Whiting: Peter Finch?

Richard Todd: Peter Finch, James Robertson Justice, James Hayter.