James Robertson Justice | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Justice in The Lady Says No (1952) | |
| Born | James Norval Harald Justice 15 June 1907 Lee, London, England |
| Died | 2 July 1975 (aged 68) Romsey, Hampshire, England |
| Resting place | Cremated; ashes buried in Spinningdale, Sutherland, Scotland |
| Other names | Seamus Mor na Feaseg |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1944–1971 |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 1 |
James Robertson Justice (15 June 1907 – 2 July 1975) was an English actor. He is best remembered for portraying pompous authority figures in comedies including each of the seven films in the Doctor series. He also co-starred with Gregory Peck in several adventure movies, notably The Guns of Navarone. Born in south-east London to a Scottish father, he became prominent in Scottish public life, helping to launch Scottish Television (STV) and serving as Rector of the University of Edinburgh (1957–60 and 1963–66).
Despite his later Scottish claims, James Norval Harald Justice was born on 15 June 1907 in Lee, a suburb of Lewisham in South East London.[citation needed] He was the son of Aberdeen-born mining engineer James Norval Justice and Edith (née Burgess),[1] Justice was educated at St Hugh's School, Bickley, Kent, and Marlborough College in Wiltshire.[citation needed] He later studied science at University College London, but left after a year and became a geology student at the University of Bonn, where he again left after just a year.[citation needed]
Justice returned to the UK in 1927, and became a journalist with Reuters in London alongside Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. After a year, he emigrated to Canada, where he worked as an insurance salesman, taught English at a boys' school, became a lumberjack and mined for gold. He came back to Britain penniless, working his passage on a Dutch freighter washing dishes in the ship's galley to pay his fare.
On his return to Britain, he served as secretary of the British Ice Hockey Association in the early 1930s[2] and managed the national team at the 1932 European Championships in Berlin to a seventh-place finish. He combined his administrative duties in 1931–32 with a season as goalie with the London Lions.[3]
Justice was entered in a Wolseley Hornet Special in the JCC Thousand Mile Race at Brooklands on 3 and 4 May 1932.[citation needed] The car was unplaced.[4] The following year a "J. Justice (J.A.P. Special)" competed in the Brighton Speed Trials: "Justice's machine 'Tallulah' noisily expired before the end of the course, and was pushed back to the start by way of the arcade under the terrace."[5] The Brighton event was won by Whitney Straight and according to Denis Jenkinson: "Flitting round the periphery of the team was James Robertson Justice." In February 1934, Straight took delivery of a new Maserati: "Jimmy Justice went off to Italy to collect the first car which was 8CM number 3011."[6] Motor Sport reported in 1963: "We remember him at Lewes with a G.N. and in a Relay Race with a Wolseley Hornet."[7]
In the mid 1930s Justice became a member of League of Nations's international peacekeeping force in the Territory of the Saar Basin.[citation needed] The 3,300-strong International Force in the Saar had been established under a mandate originating in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Britain (1,500), Italy (1,300), Sweden (260) and the Netherlands (250) had agreed to provide troops to guard this region of occupied Germany; which was governed by both France and Germany.[8][9] Justice remained in the Saar until the Nazis came to power. The Saar was returned to German control following a contentious referendum in 1935.[citation needed]
After the Saar, Justice fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. It was during this time that he first grew his signature bushy beard, which he retained throughout his career. In 1939, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve at the outbreak of the Second World War. But after sustaining a shrapnel wound in 1943, he was honourably discharged from the service with a pension.
After leaving the Navy, Justice pursued acting after joining the Players' Theatre in London.[citation needed] Under the chairmanship of Leonard Sachs, who was latterly chairman of BBC television's The Good Old Days, the club would stage Victorian music hall nights.[citation needed] Substituting for Sachs one night, Justice was recommended for the film For Those in Peril (1944).[citation needed]
With his domineering personality, bulky physique (he played rugby for Beckenham RFC First XV in the 1924–25 season alongside Johnnie Cradock who would become the partner of 1950s TV chef Fanny), and rich, booming voice, Justice was soon established as a major supporting actor in British comedy films.[10] His first leading role was as headmaster in the film Vice Versa (1948), written and directed by Peter Ustinov, who cast Justice partly because he had been "a collaborator of my father's at Reuters.[citation needed] Justice made it to Walt Disney in a film adaptation of Robin Hood called The Story of Robin Hood (1952) where he took the role of Little John.[citation needed] Justice also was the demanding surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt in the "Doctor" series of films of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Doctor in the House (1954), playing the role for which he is possibly best remembered.[citation needed] In his films he was sometimes credited as Seumas Mòr na Feusag (Scottish Gaelic, translation: Big James with the Beard), James R. Justice, James Robertson or James Robertson-Justice.[citation needed]
On 31 August 1957, he helped launch the TV station Scottish Television (STV), hosting the channel's first show, This is Scotland.[citation needed] From 1957 to 1960, and again from 1963 to 1966, he was Rector of the University of Edinburgh.[11] In the war film The Guns of Navarone (1961), he had a co-starring role as well as narrating the story.[citation needed]
He appeared in four films with Navarone co-star Gregory Peck, including Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), and Moby Dick (1956), in which he played the one-armed sea captain also attacked by the white whale. In the film, Justice's character tries to befriend Captain Ahab (played by Peck), but is amazed and repulsed by Ahab's obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick.[citation needed]
Not long after completing his work for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968, Justice suffered a severe stroke, which signalled the beginning of the end for his career.[citation needed] He appeared in a number of films afterward, albeit in less prominent roles (i.e. playing his best known character of Sir Lancelot Spratt for the final time in Doctor in Trouble (1970), featured only briefly in several scenes).[citation needed] He suffered a further series of strokes, which left him unable to work.[citation needed]
He married nurse Dillys Hayden (1914–1984) in Chelsea in 1941.[citation needed] They had a son named James.[12] However, in 1949 he accidentally drowned, aged four, near their watermill home in Whitchurch, Hampshire.[12] After a series of affairs, Justice separated from Hayden. Their marriage was dissolved in 1968.[13]
Justice first met the Baltic German actress Irene von Meyendorff on the set of the 1960 film The Ambassador.[citation needed] They became a couple; marrying three days before he died in 1975.[citation needed]
Justice spoke many languages (possibly up to 20) including English, Spanish, French, Greek, Danish, Russian, German, Italian, Dutch and Gaelic.[14]
On his return from the war, Justice reinvented himself with stronger Scottish roots. He dispensed with his two middle names taking the new middle name Robertson; out of his habit of wearing Robertson tartan. Justice felt so strongly about his Scottish ancestry, he once claimed to have been born in 1905 under a distillery on the Isle of Skye; sources even listed his birthplace as Wigtown, Wigtownshire.[15] He lived in Wigtown at Orchardton House between 1946 and 1950. He unsuccessfully contested the North Angus and Mearns constituency for the Labour Party in the 1950 general election.[14]
With his earnings from the film Doctor in the House (1954), Justice purchased a cottage in the Scottish Highlands village of Spinningdale. In 1966 Justice appeared as a narrator in five episodes of the BBC children's television series Jackanory, telling stories and legends from Scotland, including those of The Battle of the Birds and The Black Bull of Norroway.
After a series of strokes prevented him from working as an actor, Justice was declared bankrupt in 1970.[16] He died in penury in 1975. His ashes were buried on a north Scotland moor near his former residence in the Highland village of Spinningdale.
A biography entitled James Robertson Justice—What's The Bleeding Time? (referring to a joke in the first Doctor film) was published by Tomahawk Press on 3 March 2008.[17] It was written by James Hogg, Robert Sellers and Howard Watson.
