David Niven, the film star whose pencil moustache, stiff upper lip and nonchalant charm served as emblems of upper middle-class England for more than 40 years, died in 1983 at his home near Lake Geneva. He was 73 and had been in poor health for months. In February he had flown to London for nine days of treatment at Wellington private hospital and was reported to be suffering from a wasting muscular disease.
Anthony Quayle, who starred with him in The Guns of Navarone and was a friend of 25 years, said in a tribute: “The marvellous thing about David Niven was his endless and genuine merriness and lightness of heart. I once said to him, ‘Are you always like this – jokey and buoyant and fun?’ And he said, ‘As a matter of fact I am, old thing, because life’s so miserable that I feel it’s one’s duty to try and be cheerful and keep spirits up’.” Niven, he said, had been “an immensely accomplished performer. He knew how to put himself over and he played himself with enormous skill and adroitness.”
In a last letter to Quayle, only two weeks ago, but not written in his own hand, Niven had said, after a reference to “hoping for the best”: “I can’t write, swallow well, walk properly, but apart from this I’m fine. Don’t, whatever you do, get motor neuron disease.”
Niven’s array of unflinching, debonair heroes and occasional cads did have some connection with his own life. He was born in Scotland, followed in his father’s footsteps as a British Army officer, resigned his commission to be a Canadian lumberjack, and then had a fine second world war, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel.
His Hollywood career, achieved after drifting into a film studio’s casting office, soon led to a role in Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and Flora Robson. Dame Flora, who later starred with Niven in 55 Days at Peking, said: “I’m very sad he’s died. I was so very fond of him. He was a quite wonderful actor.”
Niven’s own estimate of his career, which reached a peak and an Oscar with the role of the bogus major in Separate Tables, was modest. But the sense of enjoyment and humour he brought to life and movie-making survives. Only three years ago, filming in a heat-wave in Goa, he left an interview to return to the set. “Critics,” he exclaimed as he left, “everywhere in the world you go, critics.” And there in a tree at which he pointed were a brace of vultures
– The Guardian obituary.