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| RIP Richard Todd, War Hero, Star Of The Dam Busters and The Longest Day |
| 2009-12-04 |
| Richard Todd, the actor, who died on December 3 aged 90, was one of the first British officers to land in Normandy in advance of the main D-Day landings and went on to become Britain's highest-earning matinee idol of the post-war years; his most memorable role was that of Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC, in The Dam Busters (1955), a film he carried with the help of Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis. Handsome, blue-eyed and with an erect military bearing, Todd enjoyed the unusual distinction of appearing in films about D-Day in which the role of his wartime self was played by other actors. As an officer in the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion, he had not only been one of the first to land in Normandy, he had also been among the first to meet the glider force, under the command of Major John Howard, defending Pegasus Bridge, a scene memorably recreated in two epic films in which Todd later starred. In D-Day, the Sixth of June (1956), he played the commanding officer of his unit who vies for the affections of Dana Wynter with his Yank rival Robert Taylor. In The Longest Day (1962), which was based on the book of the same name by the Telegraph special war correspondent Cornelius Ryan, Todd took the role of Howard, performing one scene opposite the actor playing himself (a role he turned down because "I did not do anything special that would make a good sequence"). "I was, in effect, standing beside myself talking to myself," he noted. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose |