WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers

Born: 9th August 1927

Died: 28th August 1978

Born in Westhoughton, Lancashire, Robert Shaw was the oldest of five children, his mother was a nurse and his father was a doctor. At the age of 7 the Shaw family relocated to Scotland, the home of his father’s family, but five years later his father committed suicide – the man had been an alcoholic and manic depressive most of his son’s life – and his mother returned, with the family, to Cornwall where she had been working when she met her future husband. Even though Shaw was a very athletic young man he studied hard and earned himself a scholarship to study medicine in London, with the chance to further his education at Cambridge yet he turned it down in favour of acting – a passion inspired by one of his teachers who encouraged him to read and took his students on trips to London’s theatres. Shaw used an inheritance from his grandmother to attend RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) and after two years he went to study in Stratford-upon-Avon where he worked under Sir John Gielgud, an actor who he had seen in Hamlet on one of his first trips to London. Robert joined the Old Vic and played minor roles in many Shakespeare plays, a career he felt was to be his future until he met Sir Alec Guinness who invited him back to London to perform Hamlet with him – a play which seems to have become his springboard into film as one of his first roles was a small part in The Lavender Hill Mob, which starred Guiness. He married his first wife about this time and he decided to take a TV role in The Buccaneers to support his family, he made £10,000 for eight months work (roughly £957,942 in today’s money). Over the next seven years Shaw wrote his first novel, became a reporter for Queen (a British society magazine), made several TV appearances and starred on stage before getting his big break in From Russia with Love.

How appropriate is it that the film that enters at number one has probably one of the best introductions for a character in film history? It has to be Quint scraping his nails down the chalkboard in Jaws – Quint is the weathered and grizzled shark hunter hired by the town of Amity to catch ‘Jaws’. But it is with the trio on the boat that Shaw comes to his best; the drunken singing, the change in mood when he tells the story of his past as a naval officer (based on real history but not his own) and the darkness that descends when catching the shark becomes his priority; it’s almost like he lives and breathes Quint. His exit is almost as memorable as his entrance – but I have seen better. Now a bit like Jaws I could watch this next film whenever – there are some films that I struggle to watch over and over and then there are films like The Sting. It stars Shaw, Paul Newman and Robert Redford (all now deceased) and I’m going to watch it for each and every one of them (even though I probably wouldn’t have to) the film is that good! Shaw is Doyle Lonnegan, the main mark for Newman and Redford’s characters and you can understand why – he is a mean piece of work and Shaw plays him so well; it is a subtle yet sophisticated performance. The scene where Lonnegan and Gondorff (Newman) play poker on the train is very telling how these two actors worked together – there is no one-up-manship between them and the fact that Shaw has to call Newman ‘Mr Shaw’ throughout it gives it a somewhat funny undertone without it being played out on the screen. Right, considering that The Deep was made two years after Jaws, Shaw looks younger and with his accent – which I’m assuming might be his natural voice – he is almost unrecognizable! In The Deep Shaw plays treasure hunter and historian, Romer Treece, who helps Gail and David research some artifacts they find whilst diving. Treece is very knowledgeable about what he does and becomes very protective of the two young divers although at first I wasn’t sure if he was going to be a good guy or a bad one ready to capitalise on their finds but I think this is one thing that Shaw does best he can play both sides so well that you question which side he is playing at which time. I’d like to point out here that, just like Jaws, The Deep is also based on a Peter Benchley book only this time Shaw spends his time in the water without being eaten and I would say that all his underwater stunts, or at least most of them, he did himself so hats off to his commitment. At first, I didn’t recognise Shaw in this next film and the best way to describe Robert’s character, Donald ‘Red’ Grant, in From Russia with Love is probably strong and silent – one of his first appearances sees him punched in the stomach with a brass knuckle and all he does is what looks like a bow! For most of the film he makes many appearances but it’s not until the last half an hour when he actually speaks and he probably is the only character throughout the film that gets any descent screen time with Sean Connery’s Bond – twenty minutes in which they virtually explain the whole plot and have a fight! Shaw has a terribly good English accent, almost the quintessential Englishman very clipped and proper, obviously these Russians teach their spies to blend in very well! Is it me or does Robert Shaw hardly move his mouth throughought Black Sunday? Maybe he is trying to keep the accent of Israeli commando Major David Krobakov because when he does start opening his mouth more there’s an English or Irish accent coming through! This is a bit of a plod along thriller – with action at the start and the end and not much happening in between which didn’t bode well for Shaw’s character as I found I lost interest in everything about halfway through the film. This was two and a half hours that could have been summed up quicker and made more of Krobakov’s role.

However much I love The Sting my favourite role of Robert Shaw’s has to be that of Quint* in Jaws. I think it is a role that shows a multitude of emotions and the strength of the actor himself. It is a shame that this is a role that comes very close to Shaw as a person – mainly the drinking scene on The Orca, but that does not distract from his performance although I gather, having read some history on the making of Jaws, there was no close bond between Shaw and Dreyfuss they had a somewhat tumultuous relationship off screen which in one way adds to the characters as Hooper (Dreyfuss) wishes to study the shark and Quint is out to kill it. Quint is a unique character in both attitude and look and I wonder if putting on that cap made Shaw Quint you know how some actors have that prop/costume/make up that makes them the character like Olivier and his noses.

*The character of Quint received Shaw a posthumous win from the Online Film & Television Association for his turn in Jaws.

Even though Robert Shaw was a heavy drinker most of his life he held onto an illustrious career not only in acting but also as a writer; he wrote six novels in the sixties – his second ‘The Sun Doctor’ won The Hawthornden Prize (a British literary award given annually to a British, Irish or British-based author for a work of “imaginative literature”). He dramatized his first novel, it was produced by an English network and an American network produced a different dramatization. Others turned into plays or screenplays sometimes with his involvement. He was married three times and had ten children; – Jennifer Bourke, actress – four daughters; Mary Ure, actress – two daughters, one son and one adoption (The two of them had an affair whilst he was married to Jennifer and she to John Osborne and there is a belief that her son with Osborne is actually Shaw’s biological son); Virginia Jansen – one son and he adopted her son from a previous relationship. Both of Robert Shaw’s last two films were released posthumously – Shaw planned to use the proceeds from his last film, Avalanche Express,to pay off his taxes before concentrating on writing and doing the odd small role, yet he died two months after the film’s director/producer Mark Robson, who died in the final days of filming. Both men died from heart attacks. Reportedly Shaw was driving home with his wife and son in the car when, feeling unwell, he pulled over and collapsed only later to be pronounced dead at Castlebar General Hospital. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered near his home in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, Ireland.