Alec Guinness: A Celebration

by John Russell Taylor

In the span of a career that began in the 1930s, Alec Guinness captivated audiences with each new role he played; almost immediately, he became known as the the man of a thousand masks. His performances ranged Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations, Fagin the pickpocket in Oliver Twist, the British colonel in Bridge on the River Kwai, which won him an Oscar. Such was his virtuosity that in Kind Hearts and Coronets, he played eight different characters both male and female. This photographic tribute richly documents the career of a master of disguise and the last of a heroic generation of actors. John Russell Taylor is the television, theater, film, and art critic of THE TIMES and a former professor of cinema at UCLA. He has written more than 50 books, including definitive studies of the Hollywood musical.

Genres: Biography

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1984

About the author

John Russell Taylor was an English critic, author, and historian whose work shaped modern writing on film, theatre, and visual art. Educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, he emerged in the early 1960s as one of Britain’s most influential cultural commentators. He wrote on cinema for Sight and Sound and Monthly Film Bulletin, and became film critic of The Times, later serving for decades as its art critic.
Taylor authored landmark studies of British drama and cinema, as well as acclaimed biographies of figures such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, and Alec Guinness. His book Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigres 1933–1950 remains a key work on European artists in American film. After developing a close friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, he became the director’s authorised biographer.
From the early 1970s he also taught film at the University of Southern California, while contributing to major British and American publications. In addition to film and theatre, Taylor wrote extensively on modern and contemporary art, producing numerous monographs and broader studies. He also served on juries at major international film festivals and edited Films and Filming magazine for several years.

Reviews

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun book for anyone who admires Alec Guinness and is familiar with his work. The book is primarily about his professional life (it's written by a film reviewer), not so much his personal life. Guinness was famously reticent about his life, but his own books probably reveal as much as he's willing to reveal.

In this book, we move chronologically from his earliest days on the British stage to his later film and theater work. American fans are probably only familiar with his film work, but he had much more work in the theater, mostly in Britain.

There are a number of lovely black and white photos that show him in his stage work, for those of us not familiar with that part of his career. In film, he's probably most widely known for the Star Wars movies (which finally made him rich), but the book highlights his long relationship with the director David Lean, for whom he got his first major movie roles (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist) and continued with such films as Bridge Over the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and finally A Passage to India.

The bonus at the end is a chronological chart listing his complete working career, all the theater and film work in the order he did it. Quite a record of accomplishment.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful black and white photos, and excellent chronological overview of his career. But no great insight or poetry.