Richard Attenborough: A Life in Film

His face was familiar from the 1940s onwards, as a major film actor.

Good luck to us, Danny.

Lord Richard Attenborough, as he became known in later life,

was a success on both sides of the Atlantic.

Open up, Harry.

We dig, around the clock.

Oh, I've never seen anything like it.

Versatile and skilled, he appeared in over 50 films.

Hey, you got a minute?

-Yeah.

-Come on, I'll show you.

As a director, he created work on an epic scale.

His impact on the entire film industry will be everlasting.

He knew, frankly,

that cinema is probably more influential than political power.

He was wedding the two together.

He was a great equaliser.

He democratised every single space that he was in,

just learn your lines and you will be given, by that director,

Attenborough, the greatest place in the world to stand.

I am aware that I must have given you much cause for irritation,

your Excellency.

I hope it will not stand between us as men.

When someone famous is remembered, we think of their name,

and then we think of their accomplishments.

But I feel differently about Dickie.

I feel like he made the world a better place.

You do everything just the way you always do it, Jack.

When you get to the last bit, I'll be here, too.

I don't know what life is but if there is such a thing

as spirit or soul, I think he was one of the ones

who had a great soul and great spirit.

Rehearsals begin September 22nd.

We are going to rehearse for six weeks,

two-week out-of-town tryout, either in Boston or Philadelphia.

The New York opening will be sometime in mid-January.

He was somebody you wanted to please. Just inherently.

Some directors, you are guarded but with him you were like a lapdog.

What can I do to make it better?

Preaching to the converted is boring, there's no point in doing that.

I want to reach the unknowing, the uncaring and even the antagonistic.

I do believe that no-one can be completely original.

Everybody has, we are, in other words, links in a chain.

He is a complete link.

More in that direction when you eventually do it.

I just have the feeling that I would like...

When Richard Samuel Attenborough was born on August 29th 1923,

the name Attenborough was not famous.

This was a family devoted to academic and social issues.

His father, Frederick, the son of a working-class baker,

rose to become a Cambridge don and Principal of Leicester University.

His mother, Mary, was at one time a suffragette,

and a founder of the Marriage Guidance Council.

For that period, they were a very political family,

unquestionably, and very, very firmly fixed in that semi-idealistic,

and I say this in the most affectionate sense,

idealistic left of centre strand of British politics

that emerged in 1945.

It was the moment of their dreams.

The Governor, as Attenborough called his father,

wanted his son to attend Cambridge University.

The younger boys did

with David Attenborough becoming the world renowned naturalist

and John forging a career in the motor industry.

But encouraged by his mother's interest in theatre, Attenborough

had set his heart on attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Most parents, my parents would have said it to me,

"Steady on, you want to be an actor?

"Hmm, no, no."

Although he had been utterly opposed to my wasting my time,

as he put it, in drama, when I ought to have been preparing myself

to go to university and so on,

I remember very clearly playing in a sketch and my mother told me

afterwards that when they went home that night that he said,

"I think perhaps we'd better let Dick do what he wants to do."

Attenborough worked hard to gain a coveted RADA scholarship

and then at the age of 18, made his cinematic debut,

in the Noel Coward and David Lean wartime production,

In Which We Serve.

Will you be requiring anything more before we close?

Look here, Miss, judging by all I've had tonight,

I ought to be drunk, see.

I want to be drunk!

I want to be drunk

more than I've ever wanted anything in my whole life.

He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt where his life was headed

and what he was going to do with it.

He was born focused and I don't think there was ever any wavering.

He had this all-embracing interest. He was a man of film.

The first appearance I saw was

In Which We Serve, Noel Coward.

A terrified servicemen,

naval battle -

a beautiful performance.

You could always believe in him.

He never seemed, as some of them do,

like a film person in this predicament.

That man has been brought before me,

charged with leaving his post without permission.

He had that extraordinary ordinariness that some players

manage to retain, despite becoming stars.

After his 19th birthday,

the young actor was required to wear a real uniform,

seconded to the RAF film unit at Pinewood Studios

and he was a man in love.

He and Sheila Sim had been students together at RADA

and in January 1945, they wed.

Theirs was a love affair and marriage

that would last for the rest of their lives.

On the horizon, was the film which would transform his career,

Brighton Rock.

He was a little spiv, wasn't he? A little hustler.

I remember the time in 1940, post-war years,

I remember being scared of it,

there was something dark

and ominous about it.

Maybe you wouldn't know me again when you saw me.

Oh, I would never forget a face.

He hit the right way

of conveying the truth of a character

but making it tremendously interesting.

You asked me to make a record of my voice. Well, here it is.

What you want me to say is, I love you.

Here's the truth.

I hate you, you little slut. You make me sick.

His performance as Pinkie was dazzling.

For somebody who was known

for his charm,

known for his ability to win the birds out of the trees,

he was brilliant at the sinister.

Don't do anything, Pinkie.

It's all right.

Goodbye.

Aah!

HE SCREAMS

CLOCK CHIMES

These banisters have needed mending for a long while.

Now in his mid-20s, Richard Attenborough was a film star,

while Sheila, a fine actor in her own right,

made a difficult decision.

Do you want to know why?

She realised that Dickie was this enormous force

and he needed the background,

a very calm background.

He wanted a family

and the family home

and she gave up her career,

and never went back to it.

I think Sheila, for years,

sacrificed where she would like to be, what she would like to be doing.

She created a kind of cocoon of security around him.

I cannot stress this enough,

Richard Attenborough couldn't have been Richard Attenborough

without Sheila Attenborough.

She was always there, always there, whatever he went,

was always smiling and laughing and relaxed

and I'm sure it was very, very difficult sometimes.

It must be difficult to live with a man who is so focused and so driven.

The couple's children, Michael, Jane and Charlotte,

were all born in the 1950s.

As he grew up, Attenborough's own parents had instilled in him

the importance of family,

and an awareness of the potential horrors of a wider world.

In 1939, at the onset of World War II, Richard's mother, Mary,

brought home two Jewish sisters, rescued from Nazi Germany...

..their parents having died in a concentration camp.

Irene and Helga remained in the care of the Attenboroughs

until they were adults.

For Irene and Helga, whom I adored,

they have helped to shape my life

and we had no hesitation in taking you into our family

and loving and adoring you and being so proud of Ma and Pa...

..who said that is the way to live.

What I was struck by was that he just said

his mother said this is the way it is going to be.

Not because she was headstrong

but because she was confident

she was doing the right thing.

It was disruptive,

it was not something that made family life easier

and yet how defining it became in the long run.

For Dickie, compassion was in his DNA.

It was not something to be sought or quested, it was in his DNA.

I think he was brought up to put into life

the best of what they could do.

-My name is Paul and I am from the Argus.

-Oh, yeah?

-You didn't come out on strike, did you, Mr Curtis?

-No.

In the late 1950s, Attenborough wanted to take more control

over his career and pursue more social realism in his film work.

He set an independent film company with fellow actor Bryan Forbes,

Beaver Films.

Mainly shot on location, the films were powerfully realistic.

Their first production, The Angry Silence,

told of a factory worker's struggle after opposing an unofficial strike.

He had great socialist values, I think, and I think

when he started Beaver Films, they tried to put that into the work.

I think they were brave and independent films.

It was a period in his life where he could have been earning

serious money as an actor, a character actor,

but he chose to try to redefine, and in a sense,

he and Brian did redefine British cinema at one point.

And you lot, you didn't ought to talk to nobody

because you got nothing to say!

You're nothing!

They always wanted to do unusual films,

they wanted to break the mould,

they want to shoot things in a different way.

All the subjects were all very different...

..and had something profound to say about the human condition.

Seance On A Wet Afternoon gave Attenborough his first BAFTA Award,

playing a downtrodden husband,

persuaded by his domineering wife to kidnap a young girl.

All his performances were always crisp and clean

and intelligent, erm...

as if he had a secret.

You were always curious.

I suppose the truth of the matter is,

I haven't taken it in yet...

..what we've done.

What have we done?

We've borrowed a child, that's what we have done.

He also was a wily old fox in that, actually,

the only way he could get films made really, at that period of time

when he first started the Beaver Films thing,

was very inexpensively because there was no money for films.

It was quite amazing they got films made at all, really.

I think one way you did that was to actually convince the focus puller

that he could benefit in the profits of the film.

So we went to Pier Angeli and Michael Craig and Guy Green

and the costumiers, Bermans, and the lawyers and the accountants

and we persuaded everybody to work for nothing.

What happened nine times out of ten was they didn't take money,

they didn't take the salary.

I remember Brian doing films and I remember saying,

"That's wonderful, we can now carpet that room," and he would say,

"No, I'm not being paid, the money will come at the end," or something!

So, our houses were mortgaged.

I think they might have mortgaged Sheila and I

if it had been necessary!

Most profitable was Whistle Down The Wind,

directed by Forbes, produced by Attenborough

and starring Hayley Mills.

-Go on, go on out of here!

-Why should I? It's my barn as much as yours!

Any road, I want to see my kitten.

It was a tale of innocent children's discovery of a fugitive.

Who's that? Who's that fella?

It's not a fella. It's Jesus.

Dickie Attenborough is one of the best producers I've ever worked with. Um...

him and Walt Disney.

Is it really him?

He loved doing what he was doing. It was marvellous, marvellous energy.

Oh, gentle Jesus!

I remember we went to the premiere, none of us had got any money

and we didn't know how it would go

and we all waited up to get the newspapers and they were such

great reviews and we were all dancing in the street we were so excited.

At the age of 39, the now successful independent film-maker was

urged to read the biography of Mahatma Gandhi.

Struck by Gandhi's character and the struggle for independence in India,

he was also reminded that this was a man close to his father's heart.

As a boy, he had been taken to the cinema to see grainy newsreels

of Gandhi's visit to Britain.

The 1960s saw Attenborough

set his heart on bringing Gandhi's story to the screen.

But at the same time he was in great demand as an actor internationally.

He appeared in the cinema classic The Great Escape.

We'll close down Dick and Harry, seal them off.

Put the entire effort into Tom and press right on into the trees.

My pleasure.

Open your eyes, what do you see, this thing's a miracle for you and me!

And won a Golden Globe for his performance

in the musical Doctor Doolittle.

# Within a meagre month I've seen my wildest dreams come true

# Cos I've never seen anything like it, nor have you! #

Hey, hey. Relax, huh?

But his first Golden Globe came for another film with Steve McQueen,

The Sand Pebbles, which also starred Candice Bergen.

CANDICE BERGEN: Dickie and I met in Taiwan in 1965.

Hi.

She's a schoolteacher. I met her on a steamer.

And thank God that Dickie was there because he was, of course,

the most buoyant energy but it was a very long location.

And, um, that was when he started speaking

to me about Gandhi.

He asked me about playing Margaret Bourke-White in Taipei.

And I was thrilled to play it.

I just didn't realise it would be such a long time.

In 1968, he appeared in The Bliss Of Mrs Blossom,

a comedy starring another of Hollywood's leading actresses.

Bravo, Robert. Bravo. You were magnificent tonight!

The first time I worked with him was Bliss Of Mrs Blossom. Bliss.

Darling. Funny.

We played husband and wife with my lover stashed in the attic.

-Darling, Harriet!

-Coming!

To tell you the truth,

most of our interspersed off-screen time

was discussing Gandhi.

I dream of a lifetime about to come true.

Yes, dear.

'And he talked about this with such passion and understanding'

and knowledge and what it meant

and, of course, he was involved with Gandhi's point of view.

Also very involved with the passive resistance,

discussed the Salt March like he had been on it.

I just have the feeling that I would like more in that direction

when you eventually do it.

Attenborough was spending so much money developing Gandhi that as the

'60s turned to the '70s, he said he could barely pay the gas bill.

He couldn't have known it but he would first direct four other films

including Young Winston, though his directing career began unexpectedly.

One night Johnny Mills rung me up and said,

"Dick, I've got a subject which Len Deighton and I have been working

"on which we would like you to read to see if you would like to direct it.

"It's called Oh! What A Lovely War."

Dickie called him up the next morning and said, "I think

"it's marvellous.

"A couple of ideas but actually I think it's marvellous."

I said, "Johnny, I am thrilled, I would adore to do it

"but why did you ask me?"

And he said, "Well, I have to be absolutely honest,

"we decided we either ought to have a director who knew everything

"or one who knew absolutely nothing and that's why we came to you!"

And the rest is history and it was absolutely brilliant.

He was a brilliant director.

Right, nice smile for everybody.

Austrian Archduke assassinated.

And I remember going to see it, the most incredible achievement

that Dickie did on that film was the cast he put together.

To be able to pick up the phone

and get every single great actor in this country to turn up to do

a day's work for very little money and a sandwich and a glass of wine.

Only Dickie could have ever done that.

Happy days, really.

There was a jollity about everybody gathering in Brighton

in seaside hotels on the front

and I suppose behind it all was the vigour of Dickie's

determination to make the film and to give everyone a good time making it.

Oh! What A Lovely War was a musical about the brutality of World War I.

And the first-time director displayed a daringly

modernist vision.

It was a brilliant adaptation of the stage play with the music and

the merry-go-round and fairground and the soldiers coming and going.

If we continue in this way,

the line of trenches will stretch from Switzerland to the sea.

Neither we nor the Germans will be able to break through,

-the war will end in complete stalemate.

-Nonsense!

We need only one more big offensive to break through and win.

My troops are of fine quality

and especially trained for this type of war.

This is not war, sir. It is slaughter.

I think he absolutely fell in love with it.

He couldn't believe how much he loved the directing process.

He was always engaged with you.

Come closer to camera as you come. As close as you can.

I think a lot of that came from his great understanding

of many, many years of being on the other side of the camera.

-ALAN PARKER:

-It's about something really important

and his best films always were when he had something to say.

-JULIET MILLS:

-It had a profound impact about the waste

and futility of war.

Poetic and poignant,

the final scene slowly reveals 15,000 crosses on the hillside.

In an age before computer graphics,

every cross was planted by hand and the little girl who appears is

Attenborough's youngest daughter, Charlotte.

Granny... Granny, what did Daddy do in the war?

But I think to show those headstones

and actually what it was,

what the upshot of it was, was right.

That is very much Richard showing what is really human,

really deeply human.

-DAVID PUTTNAM:

-However finite what you are saying and showing seems,

there is a child and a child represents hope and hope represents continuity.

Strangely enough, I think that's very much the way Richard saw life.

I think he saw it as very difficult, very tough but ultimately hopeful.

Attenborough the director had triumphed.

And was about triumph as an actor again.

Lean right back, shut your eyes, that's it. Shut your eyes.

In the 1971 film 10 Rillington Place, he gives one of his most chilling performances...

It smells a bit funny, Mr Christie.

..alongside a fledgling co-star.

-JOHN HURT:

-It was very exciting to be able to do it, yes.

You know, it was in the beginning, really of my film career.

-It's not a bad district, is it?

-It's not bad.

The film portrays one of Britain's most notorious

miscarriages of justice.

-Yes?

-We've...

-We've um... Come about the flat.

How Timothy Evans would lose his family and be hanged for crimes

committed by real-life serial killer John Reginald Christie.

Richard's style basically throughout the whole of this was

enormously secretive.

-IMPERSONATES ATTENBOROUGH AS CHRISTIE:

-Very north country.

Just sort of in a way that was acceptable in the south

at that time.

There is another couple, very keen - Irish, as a matter of fact.

-No, we'll take it.

-Well, you are doing the right thing.

It was very dark.

I mean, for him to inhabit that man and because we were living it,

there was the street.

Exteriors were filmed in the real Rillington Place.

Now, you and Teddy have a nice sleep. There's a good girl.

I would also suspect that he knew it was a damn good role.

Huh!

-Ooh... Mr Christie.

-I thought you might like a...

-You did make me jump.

-..a little cup of tea.

-Well, I've just had one, actually.

-Well, that's all right.

'We were about to do the scene where he's going to kill me

'and he was not looking forward to it at all.'

And he said to me, "Oh, ducks..." which he always called me,

he said, "You are so lucky, you don't get so nervous," and I said,

"Dickie, do you get nervous?" and he said, "Yes, always."

I had to start an hour, an hour-and-a-half,

before shooting which happened in large measure in the make-up chair.

I didn't talk.

I simply attempted to bring an absolute narrowing

of concentration into this moment of able to experience

the feelings and thoughts of this particular man.

You've had gas before at the dentist, have you?

You know what it feels like, then.

He was brilliant at the sinister.

Absolutely brilliant.

And he managed to be able to touch it just enough and leave it.

-Hello, Mr Christie.

-It's bad news, Tim.

And the sentence of the court upon you is that you be

taken from this place to a lawful prison, and thence to

a place of execution and there you will suffer death by hanging.

It was probably the film that made me

completely absolute politically in terms of capital punishment.

And it was the wrongful conviction that drew Attenborough to the role.

'I suspect he was always interested in the dark side of humanity.'

The unfair distribution of kindness.

In 1976, Richard Attenborough was awarded a knighthood.

I don't think it was in my mind at all and I suppose rather strange.

When I came in just now and you said, "Good afternoon, Sir Richard,"

it does sound very strange indeed.

I suppose one will get used to it!

It was a moment neither of his parents had lived to see.

More than a decade earlier, his mother Mary was killed

in a car crash and in 1973 his father, Fred, died at the age of 85.

For 15 years now, Sir Richard Attenborough had been trying

to finance the film of Gandhi.

In the late 1970s, he teamed up with American impresario

Joe Levine whom he hoped might hold the keys to all the right doors.

But first, Levine wanted him to direct another ambitious film.

He did A Bridge Too Far on the basis that Joe would go with Gandhi.

A Bridge Too Far centred on World War II's Operation Market Garden -

Allied soldiers attempts to capture key bridges

behind German lines.

In every sense, it was an epic, not least, for the stellar cast.

-Morning, Derek.

-Morning, sir.

Glad to see somebody knows where we are going.

I think he demystified the skill of the director,

he didn't complicate it, he didn't make a big deal about it.

He shot it...and moved on.

-Something just occurred to me.

-What's that, sir?

You're wearing the wrong camouflage. It's all very well for the country,

but I doubt very much if it's going to fool anyone in the towns.

Come on, come on.

'Oh, and nothing fazed him at all.

'You got to do your homework and that's what he expected

'and he came from that school - do your homework.

'Show up, get on with it.'

And that's where... Richard was tenacious and powerful.

-Many of them?

-Can't tell, sir. I can only hear them at the moment.

'And I liked that about him.

'He was charming, but I could see through him.'

I said, "You're just foxy, aren't you?" He said, "What did you say?"

I said, "You are just an old fox, aren't you?" He said, "Oh, yes."

-Look after that man.

-Open fire! Fire!

HE SHOUTS IN GERMAN

TYRES SCREECH

-Hello, Harry.

-Hello, Johnny.

A Bridge Too Far was a tribute to people he knew,

people he knew during the war.

He actually had a very clear understanding of sacrifice.

How short are we? A mile?

The whole enterprise of the film was so worthwhile,

had such a point and an importance to it that all those actors will

have done it for that reason and for Richard, really, for his enterprise.

For Attenborough's next venture, one of those actors had to learn

new skills as a ventriloquist in the thriller Magic.

-Hey, you know what I think?

-No, what do you think?

We're going to be a star!

Richard never bothered me, never wanted to test me,

but one day he said, "How are you getting on with

"the ventriloquism?" And suddenly I started doing the voice of Fats.

-I don't think you are very funny.

-Well, they do.

-AUDIENCE LAUGHS

-Thank you.

You know, I worked very hard to get it right, the ventriloquism, and the

magic, and he left me alone, he just trusted that I would do my homework,

he doesn't...hamper you like some directors - "You going to do this? You going to do that?"

He said, you're an actor, that's what you have to do.

Was you thinking about her?

But if trust was broken, there was another side to Attenborough.

And I remember someone who was consistently late, winching...

He said, "I don't know what I've got to do in this scene."

He said, "But, darling, you're the actor, that's your contract.

"You signed it, so that's up to you.

"No, no, I don't know how to direct you, because this is your job...

"But as you can't do it..."

"..bye-bye."

By 1980, Gandhi was closer to becoming a reality,

though the financing was still precarious.

He had mortgaged, sold, borrowed money,

whatever he could do...on his house, on his children, everything

he could do to raise the money to make the movie, he did it.

It's just a saga of such size and he never lost faith

and he never gave up.

Furthermore, he faced prejudice and ignorance.

The common wisdom in Hollywood was you wouldn't want to make

such a picture because nobody under 40 had ever heard of Gandhi.

Even those who revered Gandhi had reservations.

There were questions in the Indian Parliament about the making

of the film.

One MP insisted that Gandhi should never be seen on screen,

he should be a moving light...

..to which Dickie responded, "I'm not filming bloody Tinkerbell."

Then there was the question of casting the leading actor.

Hello! I'm looking for Mr Gandhi.

Believe it or not, it's in his book somewhere,

he asked me to play Gandhi.

I mean, he did test me for Gandhi, we saw each other in Los Angeles.

Me, Gandhi?

I was very wary of the fact that I was distinctly Caucasian.

My father asked me, "Gandhi?

"Who's going to play Pandit Nehru, Harry Secombe?"

He said, "A comedy, is it?"

It was Attenborough's son, Michael,

who suggested a relatively unknown theatre actor.

I tend to keep my eyes closed during make-up,

so that when I open my eyes and hopefully see someone else.

And I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror and there he was.

Richard walked into the room, looked at me,

collapsed into an armchair and for a little while looked...defeated,

but I realised it wasn't defeat,

it was that strange exhaustion of reaching the top of a mountain,

or one mountain in a range of mountains...and he just looked

at me and said in a rather quiet voice, "Ben, I want you to do it."

In those few seconds he entrusted me

with 20 years of hard labour on his part.

The filming of the life of Mahatma Gandhi finally

began at the end of 1980.

Attenborough still had mountains to climb,

as areas of investment failed.

When I arrived in Bombay, he would shoot all day.

That's it.

And then at night, he would go out and have dinner with people...

from whom we hoped to raise money.

Action! Go, action. Move, move!

It was exhausting because it was such a huge movie in every way.

Almost every scene involved many, many extras

and the weight of the subject matter.

And he was really spent.

Keep moving.

Attenborough never let money troubles affect the set

or his actors.

Every day was new, every day was fresh.

What he brought to the film set was a joyous passion in telling

one of the most beautiful stories that history has ever produced

'for us to tell each other now.'

-We'll go.

-Long live!

-Gandhiji!

-Long live!

-Gandhiji!

-Long live!

-Gandhiji!

Long live...!

'And it was like a military campaign,

'particularly something like the funeral that we shot'

on the anniversary of Gandhi's real funeral, which was probably

the single most extraordinary day of my life, actually.

We had been advertising in the villages and on television

and on radio - "Please come and help us re-enact the funeral

"of Mahatma Gandhi."

When the massive crowd turned up, it was staggering.

What did I ask for? I asked for the road to be blocked.

What they haven't done is they've let people come in.

So I want the road blocked and I want all these people...

-LOUD-HAILER BLOCKS OUT SOUND

-..Will you do that straightaway, please?

You'll need to feel that you can hold on to something.

Out. Round, round and out.

It was like an aeroplane going to a locus and we were banging,

people were banging into the car and I said to...the second aid,

who had very discreetly got me onto the funeral carriage,

on which I lay for seven hours without moving,

"How many people here?" He said, "This end, about 40,000.

"How many people altogether? I think 400,000."

It was the biggest movie crowd in history.

As filming ended, another challenge lay ahead.

Rather than try to go out in the marketplace quickly,

we wanted a year to work on it.

We had to educate the public on who Gandhi was.

We got out booklets to teach in the schools.

We put a bulletin board up and we said, "A world event."

Now, what made it a world event? We said it was a world event.

-Richard Attenborough for Gandhi.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The world event won five BAFTAs

and was up against ET and Tootsie at the 1983 Academy Awards.

It was nominated for 11 Oscars.

Have you heard the news?

Well, we won eight.

LAUGHTER "Bleedin' hell, eight!"

I was there, I was there with him

the night that he won the eight Oscars,

it was a pretty amazing event.

I've never seen a man happier in my life.

I mean, you know,

to have this around two Oscars is not bad.

So, doesn't happen to many people.

If Gandhi had been a failure,

Richard would have been bankrupt, there was no doubt about it.

Knowing Dickie, I should think after the Oscars and he was on the

plane home, he was thinking of the next thing that he wanted to do.

'Again.'

And the next thing he wanted to do was a surprise departure.

Left, right, point two, back point.

14, left, right, up, down, ooh, ooh. And through.

One, two, turn, turn, and up. 14. Left, right, lead front...

'I don't know that it was the right film for him to do, I think that...'

To tell you the truth, I think that, you know, after Gandhi he was

the hottest thing around, you know, because everybody loved every...

He must have made about 50 speeches and they are all brilliant,

so he was pretty hot and he got the hottest project around at that

moment in time, which was A Chorus Line.

# Move on

OK, hold it, hold it. Let's go on, away from the mirror.

'It was tough.'

Needless to say, I don't think A Chorus Line was the high point

for either mine or Lord Dickie's careers.

-One, two, three, four, five.

-OK, listen up.

Larry's got the exact style I'm looking for, very '30s.

Everybody, just keep your eye on Larry.

Let's continue now from Moment In Her Presence. And...

The musical A Chorus Line was released in 1985.

Many had tried to bring the successful stage show to the screen.

Critics were surprised it was an Englishman directing such

an American story.

'I think you had to be very brave to undertake it...in the end...'

But knowing the struggles after Gandhi, knowing the complete

and incredible struggles he had to get that picture made,

there was a part of him, I think, that enjoyed...

He had passion, you know, he had passion and he had tenacity

and he'd like to fly without a net once in a while.

# She's the one

# One

# One

# One. #

'Nobody came out of it as far as the talent, even including me,'

nobody came out of it as a star, but it was a wonderful,

wonderful opportunity to get to know well a magnificent man.

I went to visit him, in New York.

I was in New York working, and he was making A Chorus Line.

And we had lunch together, Sheila was there.

And we were talking about, this was happening at this particular

point of his life, and he suddenly said to me, "Putts, Putts...

"I would give ANYTHING to be your age."

"What's the difference with our ages?" He said, "A dozen years."

"..Anything to be your age, the energy I would have had," he said.

"Dammit, it all came too late."

DOGS BARKING

We have reason to believe you are in possession of subversive documents.

We have orders to search these premises.

In 1987, the 64-year-old Attenborough

turned his attention to the appalling truth of racial

segregation in South Africa's apartheid era.

Donald, there after Evelyn.

Cry Freedom told the story of intimidation

suffered by journalist Donald Woods and his family.

Forced to flee the country after reporting on the death

in police custody of Steve Biko.

You are forbidden to write anything,

whether privately or for publication.

You are forbidden to enter any printing or publishing premises

of any kind.

And are restricted for that five years

to the magisterial district of East London.

Attenborough experienced threats himself in South Africa

and moved to filming to Zimbabwe.

We had to provide day and night security for him.

-They follow you everywhere.

-They think they do.

The Special Branch in South Africa would have stopped at nothing

to stop the movie

and the way to stop the movie was to stop Richard Attenborough

and a bullet would be the way to do it.

We may hate the bastards that run this country

but this is still our home.

What do you want to do? Just accept Steve's death?

Accept what this government's doing, is going to go on doing?!

But he was so single-minded, you see.

Once he'd got it into his head,

"This is the film I'm making,"

nothing would have put him off that.

-ALAN PARKER:

-He was the only one doing that kind of story -

you know, he made a film about apartheid

in the Hollywood system,

which I think which I think is just an enormously

incredible achievement. It's very easy to say now

because so many films have been made since.

But when you're the first, you know, it's not that easy.

And I think he did incredibly to get the film made in the first place.

'But you, a black child -

'smart or dumb, you are born into this.

'And smart or dumb...

'you'll die in it.'

The film showed his great power as a film-maker.

But the work Attenborough considered his best

was a smaller, more emotional piece

set in the English countryside.

The thing that Dickie did so wonderfully with Shadowlands

was first of all he cast wonderfully.

He really understood that he needed somebody who had that

quality of restraint - repression if you like,

of things happening beneath the surface.

I'm a little in awe of you and so I'm a little tense.

And when I get like that I get kind of...

I don't know...

It's very childish, I'm sure I'll get over it soon.

Not too soon, I hope, please. Because I like a good fight myself.

Shadowlands was the true story of author CS Lewis

and poet Joy Davidman,

their four-year marriage and her early death from cancer.

It was Attenborough's most triumphantly intimate work.

It was one of the few films

that I felt sad at the end of every day.

Because I never got to say those words again.

-You do everything just the way you always do it, Jack.

-Mmm.

When you get to the last bit... I'll be here too.

I will of course always personally remember him

in sobs on the set of Shadowlands!

Because it did rather make us laugh,

he literally was in floods at the end of practically every take.

We were doing the scene and sometimes they said,

"We'll have to cut because we can hear the director crying."

And I used to laugh at him, I said, "You're such a crybaby."

He said, "Why are you so hard? You have no heart.

I said, "No, I don't."

I said, "Why do you cry all the time?"

He said, "Because it affects me. But you're such a cold fish."

I said, "Yes." He said, "For a Welshman that's disgraceful."

I said, "Well, that's what I am, I'm pretty heartless."

'I remember we were filming the very last scene, in Oxford,

'in Magdalene College I think it was.

'I'm looking out the window and I say a line about being a boy...'

Twice in that life, I've been given the choice...

And I AM pretty tough.

I don't cry. I don't like sentiment, I can't stand it.

And as a man,

the boy chose safety,

the man chooses suffering.

'And as I started the line, I broke down.'

I just broke up, I couldn't speak.

I choked up, and I don't know why.

And Attenborough said, "I got you!"

"Got you! You DO have a heart."

After a 14-year gap,

the director was lured back to acting by an ardent fan,

Steven Spielberg.

Welcome...to Jurassic Park.

His performance introduced him to a new generation.

Followed by a role that endeared him to millions more,

in Miracle On 34th Street.

He was a great Kris Kringle.

He was the closest, just his persona, to BEING Santa Claus.

I mean, he had a cheeriness in those eyes...

Merry Christmas to YOU, Bryan.

In 1993, he was made a life peer.

I, Lord Richard Attenborough, do swear by Almighty God...

Lord Attenborough of Richmond upon Thames

was more than a successful actor, producer and director -

he was a tireless charitable campaigner.

-NEWS ARCHIVE:

-Arriving at Downing Street this morning

was the President of the Muscular Dystrophy Group, Lord Attenborough.

He handed in a petition of 100,000 signatures

calling on the Prime Minister to give equal treatment

to severely disabled people across the UK.

I went to a Variety Club luncheon, my father was making a speech

about Dickie. And he proceeded to read out a list of positions.

President this, and chairman of that, founding member of this -

and it went on and on and on.

Because if he COULD help, he WOULD help. And he DID help.

And he helped one hell of a lot of people in his time.

He used his influence and experience

to advance the film industry and broadcasting,

with patronage of the National Film and Television School,

the BFI, RADA, BAFTA, Capital Radio and Channel 4.

BAFTA would not exist today

had it not been for him bailing it out when it was in deep crisis.

BFI would have been a very difficult body.

Film School would have been a different body.

I'm interested obviously mostly in the arts in general,

and in cinema and media, including television, video and so on.

I have absolutely no doubt

that without Richard Attenborough,

right now at this moment in time

there would BE no British film industry.

He was that important.

But what could be described as his greatest personal achievement

was shared with Sheila.

They spent more than seven happy decades together -

a tight family unit.

-EAMONN ANDREWS:

-Your children, Michael and Jane!

He's sorry Charlotte couldn't be here,

but we thought was a bit late for her to stay up.

-ANTHONY HOPKINS:

-They were very much alike.

Quiet, very English.

Very English.

Very calm... It was like being back in the '50s, being with them.

-SHIRLEY MACLAINE:

-It gave you hope for monogamy,

it gave you hope for longevity in marriage.

They supported one another, they were...

so lovingly involved with the

everyday-ness of life. Yeah.

Sometimes we make more of an effort being nice to strangers

than we do to the person closest to us,

and I think Sheila and Dickie

always recognised the fact out of having

tremendous mutual respect for each other,

and never taking the other one for granted.

That's what it was like,

a peaceful summer Sunday afternoon in Chertsey or somewhere like that.

Or like a John Betjeman poem. That's what they were like.

Like a little John Betjeman poem.

Attenborough didn't believe in retirement.

Always forward-looking, he directed Closing The Ring

at the age of 83.

-You don't smoke?

-I thought I'd take it up again.

The film dealt with loss, and it would turn out to be his last.

-You won't forget to do something for me, will you, Ethel?

-What's that?

Grieve?

And Richard Attenborough was a man in grief himself,

having suffered a terrible family tragedy.

His daughter Jane, aged 49, and her daughter Lucy, 15,

had been swept away in the 2004 Asian tsunami

while on holiday in Thailand.

He was really dealing with the, erm...

grieving process at the same time he was being creative.

And we talked about death, and we talked about what does that mean

and that was paramount in his mind, how to deal with that loss.

Death will be no more.

Mourning, and crying,

and pain will be no more.

For the first things have passed away.

And there was nothing to say. It's the most...

It's incomprehensible, the grief and the awfulness

of a situation like that. And, erm...

they very, very rarely spoke about it afterwards. It was too enormous.

In 2008, Richard Attenborough suffered a severe fall

caused by a stroke. His health then declined.

In 2012, he joined Sheila at Denville Hall,

a care home for actors,

and a place which they had both supported over decades.

I last saw him and Sheila together a few months ago.

And Sheila was basically Richard's voice, because his vocabulary

and his ability to speak was very, very, very limited.

So, erm...

it was, it was the same relationship.

The roles had just modulated into,

erm...

something equally expressive,

very loving, and jolly.

Just devoted. The word is "devoted", and it's absolutely the right word.

Erm...

And seeing them together at Denville,

just sitting on... You know, Sheila sitting on Dick's bed.

Just...amazing, and wonderful and totally inspirational.

In fact, one of the last things I saw Richard do

was wink at his wife and look at me and say, "Cheeky!"

-NANETTE NEWMAN:

-I shall never think of Dickie as he was

the last few years of his life, because

the person that I remember,

and the person that I think went on till a very old age,

was this man of enthusiasm,

of passion,

of desire to do better, explore new areas -

and with such a...a gust for life.

Lord Richard Attenborough.

Compassionate and tenacious,

who lives on through 70 years of film,

and always in the hearts of those who knew him.

And if I look back over MY own life,

little did I know when I watched that film that I would actually...

do fine with him, I'd become a friend of his.

And we'd share confidences.

On the few occasions of my life where I really needed -

needed, needed, needed to have a friend,

he has been utterly consistent. He was always there.

Generous, warm, kind.

And always prepared to believe the best of you.

He was doing more than making wonderful movies.

He was also trying to make people see

and make people appreciate what they had, what they didn't have,

what they should be striving for, I think.

-JOHN HURT:

-The thing is that he was working through

a period of British film

which was extremely difficult to navigate.

And he was responsible, as captain of that ship,

for getting it through.

I remember him as somebody in whom I placed an absolute trust.

And whom I loved very much.