David Niven
David Niven (1910 – 1983) led a rich life as a memoirist and novelist, and most significantly as a perennially popular character actor, winning an Oscar as Best Actor for his role in the 1958 movie Separate Tables. He also won acclaim for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days, as The Phantom in the Pink Panther, and as a squadron leader in A Matter of Life and Death.
Born into a comfortable bourgeoisie family, with antecedents including a lieutenant general in the British army, David lost his father in 1915 when the latter was killed during the Gallipoli Campaign. His mother remarried a knight with whom she had been having an affair before being widowed, and who was probably David’s biological father.
The young Niven exhibited a wicked sense of humor from early on – perhaps too much so, as his propensity for pranks kept earning him corporal punishment at his preparatory school. He took his licks and kept pranking, until administrators expelled him when was 10. That doomed his chances for getting into Eton, the elite private school his parents had hoped to send him to. So they sent him to the era’s dumping ground for unpromising scions of Britain’s elite, the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from which he graduated in 1930.
After two years in the military, Niven resigned his commission and left for Hollywood to pursue an acting career. He got a series of bit parts during the 1930s, but just when he began attracting attention within the film industry and seemed to be on the verge of breaking out, WWII broke out first. Returning home, Niven rejoined the British army as a lieutenant in a motor training battalion. Craving more excitement, he transferred to the elite Commandos and was assigned to the GHQ Liaison Regiment – a special reconnaissance unit known as the Phantom Signals Unit.
Putting his acting experience to use, he was detached to the Army Film Unit, where he acted in two war films. During the 1944 Normandy Campaign, Niven served with his Commando reconnaissance unit to locate and report German positions, and liaise with commanders in the rear to apprise them of frontline conditions. Notwithstanding his reputation as a great storyteller and exceptional raconteur, Niven remained tight-lipped about his wartime experiences until his dying day and was contemptuous of those who glorified their service. He once explained that reluctance thus:
“I will, however, tell you just one thing about the war, my first story and my last. I was asked by some American friends to search out the grave of their son near Bastogne. I found it where they told me I would, but it was among 27,000 others, and I told myself that here, Niven, were 27,000 reasons why you should keep your mouth shut after the war.”