Is it fair to say that -with some glorious exceptions- few of his movies were masterpieces?
I don’t know, but couldn’t you say the same thing about virtually every actor or director in Hollywood, with the possible exception of John Cazale?
Well he fell in the trap that most of the stars from the golden age did in the 60s and 70s when the studio system died
He simply had to take every role offered and stopped thinking about quality
in his autobiography he says something like "at my age a job is a job and I love acting too much to be picky although there are several parts he wished he never touched "
British actors tend to be less snobbish about their profession than Americans. The tend to view it as a craft, rather than High Art. If the movie sucks, but the actor did a good job, they don’t feel any need to apologize.
Vanishingly few of anything are masterpieces.
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In other words, Theodore Sturgeon was an optimist.
Some data cites:
David Niven at RT (suprised so much of his work was rated given how far back his career goes) and at IMDb. Definitely in a lot of well thought of stuff back in the 30s. Starting in tiny roles and working up to better roles in stuff like The Prisoner of Zenda and The Dawn Patrol. Not so great stuff for a lot of the 40s and 50s. But still he was Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days which is sort of well regarded. Etc.
All too often in later years he was basically playing himself.
I admit that I wasn’t very familiar with Niven’s body of work, especially when he was younger, so I did a little reading.
It looks like, while he was, indeed, one of the more popular and well-liked movie stars of the late 1940s and 1950s, he primarily worked in lighter films (romantic comedies and the like) and action / war movies, genres which aren’t as often equated with producing “masterpieces.”
He won one Oscar (Best Supporting Actor), for a 1958 film, Separate Tables, with which I’m completely unfamiliar, but which appears to have been well-regarded at the time (it was nominated for seven Oscars in total).
One of the few enduring movies he starred in was Around the World in Eighty Days, and while that was a big hit (and a sprawling production with a huge cast), I’m not sure if it qualifies as a masterpiece, eiter.
So, yeah, he worked a lot, he was well-known, but it doesn’t look like he generally worked in the sort of film that would be a “masterpiece.”
I love David Niven. IMO he’s as good as they get.
In fact, he won for Best Actor in that movie.
It was a departure from his usual natty playboy roles. In Separate Tables he plays a guy who, um, touches young women in dark movie theaters. Very young women. He gets arrested for it, and one of the older ladies at the hotel he stays at demands he be thrown out of the hotel.
The film portrays the old woman as a self-righteous old prune who should mind her own business and have compassion for Niven.
Compassion for molesters. Hmph. That’d be new.
He was in A Matter of Life and Death, which is an actual Powell and Pressburger masterpiece.
There’s a lot to like about Niven: he rejoined the British Army as soon as WWII broke out (and he didn’t need to, really), he never took himself terribly seriously, and he wrote a couple of hugely entertaining autobiographies.
You are, indeed, correct; I misread the IMDB entry for the film.
Remember, he was the star of the original Pink Panther
I’d like to say a bit more about this role. He played a fraud, who passed himself off as a generally upper-crust retired major, when in fact he had never seen battle , never been to college, and ended the war as a lieutenant; he played against type as a stereotypical retired military buffoon when in fact he was a tortured soul who was afraid of sex. The women he molested* in the theater were not especially young, they were adults, if that means anything. Of course we don’t see him doing it, but he does admit it later and acknowledges how wrong it was. Finally, he develops the courage to not leave the hotel, but to stay and face it out as his real persona rather than as the fake major. If the molestation puts the character beyond the pale, which it would not have done at the time, his acting of the role was still masterful. And the nasty old broad’s repressed daughter, played by Deborah Kerr, was in love with him. Sort of virtue signalling for him.
*The extent of the molestation, if I remember rightly, was to sit next to a woman in a movie theater who was alone and attempt to touch her in some unspecified way and in unspecified places. One of them, in the course of the play, reports him to the management and he is arrested Maybe he was trying to put his arm around them; maybe he was trying to cop a feel. We, the audience, don’t know. I don’t know how bad it would have to have been for him to have been arrested and his trial a public record.
eta: I forgot to mention that, irrespective of his acting and personality, he was reputed to be one of the best hung stars in Hollywood, which contributed some to his local popularity.
And, of course, his best performance, at the 1974 Oscar telecast:
Post abreviated.
No opinion on Niven, but this NEEDS to be a bumper sticker.
Indeed he did.
Niven was no great shakes as an actor. He did not have much range and was pretty typecast as the English guy in Hollywood movies.
Separate Tables and A Matter of Life and Death were excellent films that suited his persona, he had some success.
However his books were a couple of the funniest I have ever read. Niven was a great storyteller. It is a pity he did not write more.
Haven’t read his books and not a big fan of his acting. He (too) often played a silly ass, but was okay a few times (e.g., The Guns of Navarone). One of his better dramatic performances occurs in Bonjour Tristesse (1958). I also recall him being funny in The Brain (1969) as a master criminal with an unusual cranial abnormality, but it has been decades since I saw it and it’s possible Eli Wallach is the one who provides most of the entertainment.
I believe Rich Little dubbed Mr. Niven’s voice in at least some of his last few films.
From IMDB:
DN on his performance in Separate Tables: “They gave me very good lines and then cut to Deborah Kerr while I was saying them.”
Also: “He was the visual inspiration for the original illustrations of super-villain and archenemy of the Green Lantern Corps, Sinestro (created in 1961).”
Coolest thing on his resume, imo.
Really? What about being the Best. Bond. EVAR?
Watched this crappy movie just a few days ago.
He ‘nudged’ them with his elbow, trying to get their attention.
Big-Freakin’-Deal.