Alec Guinness [Paperback]

Piers Paul Read (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 2004

Sir Alec Guinness was one the greatest actors of the twentieth century. With a talent recognised by discerning critics from his very first appearance on the stage he gained a world-wide reputation playing roles on the screen such Fagin in OLIVER TWIST and THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT. His performance as Colonel Nicholson in BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI won him an Oscar and in his later years he captivated a new generation of admirers as George Smiley in TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY and Ben Kenobi in STAR WARS. Guinness was a man who vigorously guarded his privacy and, despite publishing an autobiography, BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE, and two volumes of his diaries, he remained an enigma to the general public and a mystery even to his family and closest friends. After his death in August, 2000, his widow Merula asked the author Piers Paul Read, who had been a friend of her husband, to write his biography. Given full co-operation by the Guinness family and free access to Sir Alec's papers, including his private and unpublished diaries, Read has written a penetrating and perceptive account of an intriguing and complex man.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Guinness died in 2000, his widow designated Read (Alive!) as the actor's authorized biographer, and the results are mixed. Read doesn't allow his friendship with Guinness to interfere with an honest account of some unsavory aspects of the actor's personality (e.g., his frequent cruelty to his wife). But Read's treatment of his subject's professional career is spotty—while Guinness's early years in London theater are well represented, some of his best films from the 1950s are barely mentioned, and even his most famous role, as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and its sequels, gets less than 10 pages. Instead, Read offers repeated, lengthy speculations about his subject's sexuality. Anecdotal evidence and cryptic diary entries do suggest Guinness may have wrestled with an attraction to men, and might even on occasion have acted upon it and felt guilty afterward, but the issue probably doesn't require quite so much attention. Read fares better in discussing other aspects of Guinness's emotional life, including his ambivalence toward the mother who conceived him out of wedlock, and an adult conversion to Roman Catholicism. Readers hoping for the usual celebrity biography filled with the star's encounters with other stars, however, will likely be disappointed. B&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The authorised life of a truly great actor by a highly accomplished novelist, historian and journalist, who happened also to be a friend of the actor and his family. This is a perfect meeting between author and subject matter, Read's prose being comfortably equal to the abundance of material he had to work with, including many private letters as well as various published sources, notably two volumes of diaries. The result is a highly readable account of a private individual who loomed large in public consciousness across the generations, the actor who won an Oscar as Colonel Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai being better known to many either as George Smiley or as Ben Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743416147
• ISBN-13: 978-0743416146
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,649,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sad look at the personal life of a legendary actor, August 2, 2005

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography (Hardcover)

Alec Guinness's career spanned generations. Great-grandparents might recall his days on the British stage. Grandparents may have seen such classics as The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. Younger cinemaphiles still picture him as Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars.

Like most actors, Guinness had more than his share of success with a few clinkers thrown in. Piers Paul Read reveals the enormity of his life's work, along with a massive account of Sir Alec's personal side, in ALEC GUINNESS: The Authorised Biography.

Read, author of more than a dozen books, has done a huge amount of research, culling letters and journals from Guinness and his extended Guinness family, as well as a large circle of friends and acquaintances, to produce an intimate portrait of one of the greatest actors --- along with fellow Englishmen Olivier and Gielgud --- of stage, screen and television.

Guinness came from humble roots. His mother was an alcoholic who never married his father and became an embarrassment to the celebrity as he grew older. It was a stigma that no doubt weighed heavily on him as a young man and beyond, and formed his persona. He was at the same time generous and tight with his money, easily offended but quick to make friends. These paradoxes form the main theme for ALEC GUINNESS.

He found a soul mate in his wife, Merula, to whom he would be married for more than forty years, but once their son, Matthew, was born, their conjugal relationship was non-existent. Nevertheless, she was the perfect partner, casting a blind eye to his moodiness and confusing behavior, especially when it came to Guinness's "infatuations" with pretty young men.

Read is very careful in his phraseology, employing language such as "While there is no evidence whatsoever of a sexual relationship between Alex and this, or indeed, any other man..." and "The exact nature of Alec's sexuality, however, is not at all clear." Such refusal on the part of the author to take a stand can be infuriating, since so much of this psycho-biography is devoted to Guinness's "leanings."

Perhaps as a method to fight his demons, the actor sought refuge in religion, converting to Catholicism and putting great stock in his friendships with priests and nuns. A significant portion of the book flips back and forth between the sacred and the profane, so to speak, with Read reporting dozens of instances of behavior that can only be viewed as questionable, despite the fact that Guinness does not seem to have ever acted on his confusing urges. "It would seem...that Alec felt disordered passions could be controlled, if not cured, by prayer, repentance and the Grace of God. Yet he was never able to detach himself altogether from his homosexual alter-ego."

As can be expected from books of this type, the author covers the major accomplishments in his subject's life, for which movie fans can be grateful. The details can get a bit much; the book no doubt could have been shorter than its 600-plus pages but no less interesting had Read omitted copious recounts of how much Guinness spent on hotel rooms or lunches.

Ultimately, ALEC GUINNESS is a sad book. One has the feeling that between the sexual situation, concerns over finances, and relationships with family and friends --- and despite all of the artistic accomplishments --- Sir Alec was rarely truly happy. Read makes us actually feel sorry for the legendary actor.

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (...)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alec Guinness: The Authorized Biography, March 29, 2011

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SusieQ (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography (Hardcover)

I found this to be an outstanding biography of Alec Guinness, the man and the actor. I have to say I don't really understand the objections that the Publisher's Weekly blurb (directly above) raises about this biography: "Read's treatment of his subject's professional career is spotty... some of his best films from the 1950's are barely mentioned." Huh? There's more than just adequate coverage of Guinness's 1950's films (and films from other decades). Read describes the directors and other personalities involved; he describes Guinness's performances and how they were received by critics both at the time, and later.

"Readers hoping for the usual celebrity biography filled with the star's encounters with other stars...will be disappointed." GOOD, I say! This biography offers us much, much more than that kind of shallowness. There are no mere "encounters" here, thankfully, but many warm friendships.

And I, for one, can live comfortably with less than 10 pages about Obi-Wan. Alec Guinness's life and career are worth much more than that one role.

I didn't find any "repeated, lengthy speculations about his subject's sexuality" here. Just a kind of caring, gently worded, non-blatant exploration of the question of bisexuality or homosexuality. It was apparently a lifelong conflict, so naturally the biographer would have to raise the issue more than once as the subject's life went on. I prefer the fact that this author presents Mr. Guinness's whole life in "shades of gray", as opposed to reducing it to a black or white, definitive - he was this/he was that. No man's life, especially sex life, can be summed up with that kind of ease.

Guinness was a conflicted man and a very unhappy man at times. He frequently made those closest to him unhappy too, but he was living with the hand he was dealt by his birth and the experiences of his childhood. His conversion to Catholicism, and the way he incorporated; actively tried, to live his Catholic faith (even in his doubtful periods) is described very thoroughly and affectingly. However, I can't help thinking (and regretting) that his times and his character didn't allow Guinness to seek out a therapist. Talking and working with a therapist might have alleviated at least some of the inner torments Catholicism couldn't reach.

This sometimes makes for sad reading, especially when one sees how 'un-faithfully', cruelly, he could treat his friends and family. Yet his religion apparently did provide him with comfort, and a guiding power. As the author mentions, and I paraphrase: Evelyn Waugh was noted to say that he recognized he was an unpleasant man, but without Catholicism he would have been much worse. Guinness agreed with that as regards himself.

Finally, I don't understand the Amazon reviewer who said that Merula Guinness must have commissioned Mr. Read to write this authorized biography to "get a bit of her own back" (i.e., revenge herself?). If that were so (and she was way above that, in any case) she would have chosen a hack writer. This biography is so much more than a hack job.

Mr. Read presents his subject's life articulately in a readable, engrossing, and revelatory (in the best sense) manner. Highly recommended.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unlikeliest Of Stars, October 18, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography (Hardcover)

When Alec was a young boy, he figured out that his mother was something of a tart. She infuriated him by refusing to reveal the name of his real father. Out of such childhood trauma an unpleasant personality was born, but Piers Paul Read shows us that the same whirlpool of insecurity and class consciousness was the birthplace of Guinness' amazing talent. He could slip so deeply into character that oft-times those directing him worried that he would never again come out, and indeed, as Read ably shows, aspects of some of his roles seem to have grafted themselves onto his personality aftewards, so that a few of his roles marked him deeply. Sometimes this seems silly; imagine that his famous conversion to Roman Catholicism was due to him playing a priest early on and liking the way he was feeling.

The reader ponders all these imponderables, and quietly gives up hope for Alec Guinness about halfway through the book. He was so mean and nasty to poor Merula, who authorized Piers Paul Read to write this biography. I bet she did, if only to get her own back. But alas she died before it could be published. Read interviews many members of her family all of whom lived in fear of Alec Guinness, who admittedly was in a difficult position. He was making huge sums for his acting, and he began to feel, not without warrant, that some of Merula's relations were just leeching onto them for the money involved. Thus he treated them like scum and they had to learn to take it, or do without the necessary. Little Matthew, his only child, had a troubling bout with polio in the 1950s, and Alec met a bet with God; if he would cure Matthew, then Alec would convert to Catholicism. What kind of God makes bargains like that? And yet that is exactly what happened.

Was Alec Guinness gay? Read says he can't find a single believable account of anyone who slept with him (outside of Merula). However on the other hand every other thing in the book seems designed to persuade us that this was Guinness' big secret. Just printing that one photo of ultra-sexy Omar Sharif that Alec is said to have snapped while making LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is enough to convince me. No straight man took that photo, I could swear to it!

It seems he was in love with Glenn Ford, which I did not know, and that one way or another Glenn decided to cool Alec's jets by eventually withdrawing from his company. Kind of sad.

Poor Eileen Atkins deserves a medal, the way she sought to maintain a friendship with the ultra-difficult Alec. And yet he could be charming when he wanted to. People say he was the most amazing conversationalist and could make anyone feel at home, feel loved; and then he would turn on you when you did something wrong. He was the unlikeliest of stars, and the most self-effacing, disappearing into his roles like a tortoise withdrawing his head into his shell.