Although he began his career in musicals and revues, John Mills was quickly appropriated by the film industry and became a beloved British screen star. He managed to make winning forays onto the stage throughout his life but didn’t perform at the National Theatre until the ripe old age of 78, appearing in Brian Clark’s Petition to great acclaim.
“You still move with a dancer’s grace,” said one member of the audience to 87-year-old John Mills during a Guardian interview at the National Film Theatre in 1995. It was true and Mills appeared to be quietly pleased by the compliment, which must have brought back happy memories of the thirties when he sang and danced in top West End revues and musicals. It was only after the Second World War that he really began to carve out a career as a major international film star, eventually becoming, as one critic put it, “the quintessential embodiment of all that is best and most enduring in the English character”. He was in the big league too - when film folk referred to the three musketeers, they meant close friends David Niven, Laurence Olivier and John Mills.
His first big break came when he was spotted by Noel Coward while touring the Far East with The Quaints repertory company. On his return to England, Coward originally chose Mills to sing Mad Dogs and Englishmen in his 1932 revue Words and Music but later decided the number needed “more authority, age and sophistication”, so he gave it to Romney Brent, who was ten years Mills’ senior.
However, in 1934 Mills and Louise Browne did introduce Vivian Ellis and Desmond Carter’s charming I’m on a See-Saw in the musical comedy Jill Darling. Sixty-two years later, aged 88 and almost blind and deaf, he reprised the number to great acclaim at London’s Adelphi Theatre, in a tribute to Ellis following the composer’s death.
In 1941 he was discharged from the Royal Engineers after developing a duodenal ulcer but this condition was cured when he adopted the Hay diet. Mills attributed much of his lifelong good health to this doctrine, which specifies that carbohydrates and proteins should not be consumed together.
After leaving the army, Mills returned to the film studios and in 1942 Coward presented him with the plum role of chirpy Ordinary Seaman Shorty Blake in one of the most successful movies of the war years, In Which We Serve. It was the first of several projects which teamed Mills with director David Lean.
He was back in uniform again as a British Tommy in Waterloo Road (1945), co-starring with screen heart-throb Stewart Granger. Unlike Granger and many of the other leading British films actors of that time who allowed themselves to be typecast, Mills played a rich and satisfying variety of parts, although during the war years - and beyond - he was understandably regarded as the British actor most connected with service pictures. “I didn’t get many romantic roles in the forties,” he recalled. “I was usually in submarines, saying ‘up periscope’.”
Nevertheless, in 1948 he won the Daily Mail’s prestigious National Film Award as Britain’s most popular actor, having given a brilliant performance as Pip in Lean’s Great Expectations (1946). He was later nominated for the Best British Actor BAFTA Film Award for his portrayal of the rebellious draper’s assistant Willie Mossop in another Lean picture, Hobson’s Choice (1954). While paying his third visit to BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs in 2000, Mills said that those were the two movies he was ‘not ashamed of’.
As for the oft-held view that he always played the cool, calm and courageous hero, the fact is that in contrast to his derring-do types in high class British films such as The Way to the Stars, Scott of the Antarctic (1948), Morning Departure (1950) and The Colditz Story (1955), Mills brought an extraordinary technique and depth of emotion to a wide range of dramatic roles, notably with Dirk Bogarde as a couple of Irish terrorist brothers in The Gentle Gunman (1952), a neurotic Army captain in Ice-Cold in Alex (1958) and the tormented commander of a Scottish Highland regiment in Tunes of Glory (1960, Venice Film Festival Award).
Mills also had the central role of Field Marshal Douglas Haig in his friend Richard Attenborough’s first film as a director, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), and created the charismatic schoolmaster Mr Dingle in the excellent British musical picture, It’s Great to be Young! (1956).
In 1971 he won Academy and Golden Globe Awards for his riveting performance as a disfigured mute in Ryan’s Daughter, which was set in Ireland. With typical modesty, Mills apportioned most of the credit to his makeup artist - “I always say the teeth won the Oscar” - and relished the fact that he had no dialogue. “I was drinking draught Guinness in the evenings while the others were learning their lines.” He got the part after having dinner in Rome with David Lean. “After coffee David went a bit quiet and said, ‘Johnnie, do you think you could play a village idiot?’ I replied, ‘It’s typecasting, David’.”
After his first marriage to actress Aileen Raymond ended in divorce, in 1941 Mills married “the love of his life” Mary Hayley Bell and in 2001 they renewed their vows on the occasion of their diamond wedding anniversary at a church near to their home in Denham. The couple’s younger daughter, Hayley, made her film debut at the age of 13 opposite her father in Tiger Bay (1959), giving a sensitive performance which resulted in a lucrative long-term contract with the Walt Disney Studios.
Mills’ appearances were by no means confined to the big screen and for most of his life he continued to star on the legitimate stage, making his debut at the National Theatre at the age of 78 in Brian Clark’s play The Petition. “I suppose I wasn’t asked before,” he remarked, “because Larry (Olivier) felt I was a film star.” Mills didn’t like that term, insisting, “I always wanted to be known as a good actor rather than a star”.
Naturally, with a career spanning more than 70 years, many of the details of his early pictures seem hazy now. But somehow, Mills’ own performances tend to linger in the memory. Surely the sign of a great film star - and a great actor.
• Original feature by John Martland
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