Biography
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"I miss him desperately, and I still call his name out loud and talk to him every day"
- Richard Todd on his son's death

(22/09/05)

Richard Todd loses a second son 'in suicide'.

The actor was said to be 'devastated' last night after the suspected suicide of his eldest son - eight years after another of his sons took his own life.

Peter Todd, 53, is believed to have killed himself in a car close to his home in Kent.

The 1950s matinee idol, who is now aged 86, was told the news yesterday afternoon at his home in the Lincolnshire village of Little Humby.

Mr Todd's youngest son Seumas was just 20 when he killed himself with a shotgun in 1997. He was found by another of the actor's sons, Andrew.

Peter Todd, along with daughter Fiona, was born following Mr Todd's first marriage in 1949, to Catherine Bogle.

In 1970, the marriage was dissolved and the actor married Virginia Mailer. They had two children, Andrew and Seumas, but divorced in 1992.

Richard Todd, born Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd in Dublin, Ireland in 1919, spent a few of his childhood years in India, where his father served as an army physician. Later his family relocated to West Devon, England. He attended Shrewsbury Public School.

Upon leaving school, Todd trained for a potential military career at Sandhurst before inaugurating his acting training at the Italia Conta school. He helped organize the Dundee Repertory Theatre, then spent six years' service in World War II, first as an officer in the Yorkshire Light Infantry, then as a paratrooper with the the 7th Battalion (LI) The Parachute Regiment. Todd served with distinction and on D-Day this Battalion made contact with Major Howard at the Orne Bridge now called Pegasus Bridge. Todd was the officer who made contact. In the Darryl F. Zanuck's D-Day recreation The Longest Day (1962) he played Major Howard and the meeting with Todd was one scene. In D Day The 6th of June (1956) he played the commander of his Battalion in the filming of the same scene.

After the war, he rejoined the Dundee rep, then made his West End debut as The Scot, the ill-tempered, dying protagonist of John Patrick's play The Hasty Heart. In 1949, Todd began his film career when he was tapped to recreate his Hasty Heart characterization before the cameras; the performance would earn him an Academy Award nomination. His co-star in the film, Ronald Reagan, became a life long friend.

Highlights of Todd's 1950s film output include his portrayal of Marlene Dietrich's castaway beau in Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), his swashbuckling heroics in Disney's The Story of Robin Hood (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953) and Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue (1954), and his sensitive performance as "Chaplain of the Presidents" Peter Marshall in A Man Called Peter,

His military derring-do in the 1954 British box-office smash The Dam Busters was his finest hour. This was a true story of how the British attacked German dams in the 2nd World War by using an ingenious technique to drop bombs where they would be most effective.

Todd's achievments in The Dam Busters (directed by Michael Anderson), are made more remarkable when you consider the real life character he portrayed, Wing Cmdr. Guy Gibson was actually a decade younger than Todd when the real life dam busting took place during the 2nd World War. Also from accounts from others who participated in the missions, Gibson wasn't well liked, a bit of a loner - Todd at least gives the character some likeability and it is arguable that without it the film would have failed. The film does have some minor faults; it never really gets over the problems in making the special effects with water believable. Moreover, the build up of tension until the climax in the last 15 minutes could have been better and the language of those on the mission really is too polite. Those on the mission have confirmed that in the tension of the death defying mission much stronger language was used than the British politeness portrayed in the film! And, finally, the actual bombs were the wrong shape! But these qualms aside, it is a classic and in the middle of all of it, holding it together, was Richard Todd.

Tagline for The Dam Busters:

The story of the "bombs that had to bounce" - and the air-devils who had to drop 'em!