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Actor · Director

1923-10-09 · Plymouth, Devon, England, UK · Male

8 series in the catalog

Sir Donald Alfred Sinden (9 October 1923 – 12 September 2014) was an English actor.

Sinden featured in the film Mogambo (1953), and achieved early fame as a Rank Organisation film star in the 1950s in films including The Cruel Sea (1953), Doctor in the House (1954), Simba (1955), Eyewitness (1956) and Doctor at Large (1957).

He became highly regarded as an award-winning Shakespearean and West End theatre actor and television sitcom star, winning the 1977 Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for King Lear, and starring in the sitcoms Two's Company (1975–79) and Never the Twain (1981–91).

Early life

Sinden was born in St Budeaux, Plymouth, Devon on 9 October 1923, the middle child of chemist Alfred Edward Sinden and his wife Mabel Agnes (née Fuller). His elder sister Joy became an English teacher at Claverham Community College in Battle, East Sussex, and younger brother Leon (1927–2015) became an actor. They grew up in Ditchling, East Sussex, where their home 'The Limes' doubled as the local chemist's shop. After attending a number of private schools, Donald was sent to Hassocks Primary, and thence to Burgess Hill Secondary School after failing his 11-plus qualifying test.

Career

Sinden made his first stage appearance at the amateur Brighton Little Theatre (of which he later became president) in 1941, stepping into a part in place of his cousin Frank, who had been called up to war and so was unable to appear. Offered a professional acting part by the Brighton impresario Charles F. Smith, he made his first professional appearance in January 1942, playing Dudley in a production of George and Margaret for the Mobile Entertainments Southern Area company (known as MESA) and in other modern comedies, playing to the armed forces all along the South Coast of England during the Second World War and later trained as an actor for two terms at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

Rejected for World War II naval service because of asthma, Sinden joined a theatrical company that entertained soldiers, sailors and airmen during the war.

In 1942, in Hove, Sinden befriended Lord Alfred Douglas (known as "Bosie"), who had been Oscar Wilde's lover. He is believed to have been the last surviving person to have known Douglas.

Rank Organisation and Pinewood Studios

After the critical and financial success of his first screen leading role in The Cruel Sea (1953), made by Ealing Studios, in which he co-starred and received top billing with Jack Hawkins, Sinden was contracted for seven years to the Rank Organisation at Pinewood Studios and subsequently had prominent roles in 23 movies during the 1950s and early 1960s, including Mogambo, Doctor in the House, Above Us the Waves, The Black Tent, Eyewitness, Doctor at Large, The Siege of Sidney Street and Twice Round the Daffodils.

Sinden became associated with his character of "Benskin" in the Doctor film series as the duffel-coated medical student, regularly failing his finals and spending most of his time chasing pretty nurses, accompanied by his trade-mark "wolf-growl".

Sinden was the recipient of several "audience-based" awards during this period, including "The actor who made most progress during 1954". In 1956, a profile was written on him which stated:In the three years since his début in The Cruel Sea, the un-temperamental Sinden has moved steadily up the British film ladder until people are noticing, not without surprise, that he is suddenly one of the country's prime box-office favourites. It's as though he arrived on tiptoe. He is not colourful or flamboyant, yet he has his niche in public favour, as a recent poll proved: British women-folk voted him "The face we'd most like to see across our breakfast table." This defines with a certain accuracy the sure, dependable appeal of the man who, so far, has shared star billing with some other more boisterous male idols. He has usually been left, crestfallen and jilted, in the last reel.

However, Sinden never became a top movie star.

Commercial theatre

In 1949, he appeared in The Heiress at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket opposite Ralph Richardson and Peggy Ashcroft, directed by John Gielgud. In his Sky Arts documentary series Great West End Theatres, Sinden said that the play ran for 644 performances (19 months) and he was the only member of the cast not to have missed a performance: "As the play is the longest run in the [Haymarket] theatre's history, I therefore gave more consecutive performances in this theatre than any other actor since it was built in 1820." The management gave him an engraved silver ashtray as a present in recognition of the fact, which he showed in the episode.

Theatre being his first "love", he was a noted farceur and won best actor awards for his appearances in the Ray Cooney farces Not Now, Darling (1967), Two into One (1984) and Out of Order (1990). In 1976, he was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actor for his performance on Broadway as Arthur Wicksteed in Alan Bennett's comedy Habeas Corpus. His other notable leading performances in the commercial theatre included roles in productions such as There's a Girl in My Soup (1966), In Praise of Love (1973), An Enemy of the People (1975), Present Laughter (1981), The School for Scandal (1983), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1985), Major Barbara (1988), Diversions and Delights (one-man show as Oscar Wilde, 1989), She Stoops to Conquer (1993), That Good Night (1996) and Quartet (1999).

Sinden was a leading figure in the campaign to found the Theatre Museum in London's Covent Garden in the 1980s. In 2007, Sinden embarked on a UK, European and American theatre tour to talk about his life, work and anecdotes in An Evening with... Sir Donald Sinden. Produced by his son Marc, this included, on 8 November 2007 as part of Marc's British Theatre Season, Monaco, a performance in front of Prince Albert of Monaco (the son of Grace Kelly, his co-star in the film Mogambo) at the Théâtre Princesse Grace, Monte Carlo.

Royal Shakespeare Company

Joining the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre company in 1946, Sinden was an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) from 1967. Outstanding among his many stage appearances for the RSC, both at Stratford-upon-Avon and in London's West End (usually at the Aldwych Theatre), was his performance in 1963 as the Duke of York in The Wars of the Roses opposite Peggy Ashcroft as Queen Margaret.

Other performances by Sinden for the company were Eh? by Henry Livings in 1964, as Lord Foppington in The Relapse in 1967, Malvolio in Twelfth Night (opposite Judi Dench as Viola) in 1969 and again with Dench and her husband Michael Williams in 1972, as Sir Harcourt Courtly in London Assurance (New Theatre).

After the production transferred to New York in 1975, Sinden became the first recipient of the newly established Broadway Drama Desk Special Award. Sinden sought and received advice about the character's costume and mannerisms in the role from the Regency novelist Georgette Heyer.

For the 1976 Stratford season and then at the Aldwych Theatre in 1977, Sinden won the Evening Standard Award as Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear (with Michael Williams as the Fool). Meanwhile, he was also portraying in repertory, Benedick (regarded as "the most admired Benedick in living memory") opposite Judi Dench's Beatrice in John Barton's highly acclaimed 'British Raj' revival of Much Ado About Nothing. At the same time he was also rehearsing the third season of the LWT sitcom Two's Company with Elaine Stritch during the daytime and filming the show at the studio in front of a live audience on Sunday evenings. He claimed "RSC money isn't very good compared with a normal commercial theatre rate. I was on their 'star' salary, which meant it worked out at about £47 per performance! You work for them 'for the honour' of doing the greatest classical plays, not for the money, so you have to make up the financial short-fall somewhere".

In 1979, he played…