Background
Niven, David was born on March 1, 1910 in Kirriemuir, Scotland. Son of William Graham and Lady (Comyn Platt) Niven.
Niven, David was born on March 1, 1910 in Kirriemuir, Scotland. Son of William Graham and Lady (Comyn Platt) Niven.
Attended Heatherdown Preparatory School, Stowe School and graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
Niven had served as a young man in the Highland Light Infantry and, during the Second World War, he was a major in the Commandos. It was an ingredient of his self-deprecating flavor of pink gins that he should seem implausible as a man of action, more suitably cast as the bogus major in Separate Tables (58, Delbert Mann), caught committing an indecent olfense in a Bournemouth cinema. In fact, neither Nivens actual vigor nor literary wit—he wrote a novel, as well as two funny autobiographies—properly carried across the screen. He preferred to seem brittle, unreliable, a man whose banter and charm occasionally crumbled to reveal inadequacy: that is the vein abused, it rewarded with an Oscar, in Separate Tables, and best displayed in the superb Bonjour Tristesse (58, Otto Preminger).
From the army, Niven went into lumberjacking and thence into cheap Westerns as an extra. Without any preliminaries in British cinema, in 1935, he was signed up by Goldwyn in what was a long and abrasive relationship.
It was several years before he began to get proper parts: Splendor (35, Elliott Nugent); Barbary Coast (35, Howard Hawks); Feather in Her Hat (35, Alfred Santell); Doclsworth (36, William Wyler); The Charge of the Eight Brigade (36. Michael Curtiz); as Fritz in The Prisoner of Zend a (37, John Cromwell); Dinner at the Ritz (37, Harold Schuster); Beloved Enemy (37, II. C. Potter); Scotty in The Dawn Patrol (38, Edmund Goulding); Four Men and a Prayer (38, |ohn Ford); Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (38, Ernst Lubitsch); as Edgar in Wuthering Heights (39), loathing Wyler’s endless retakes; Bachelor Mother (39, Carson Kanin); The Real Glory (39, Henry Hathaway); Eternally Yours (39, Tay Garnett); and Raffles (40, Sam Wood).
Niven returned to Britain for the war and made two pictures—The First of the Few (42, Leslie Howard) and The Way Ahead (44, Carol Reed)— between active service.
After the war, Niven was not quite as welcome in America and Goldwyn often loaned him away to Korda: Magnificent Doll (46. Frank Borzage); The Pei feet Marriage (46, Lewis Allen); the pilot whose fate is judged in A Matter of Fife and Death (46, Michael Powell); The Other Love (47, Andre de Toth); The Bishop's Wife (47, Henry Koster); Bonnie Prince Charlie (48, Anthony Kim mins); Enchantment (48, Irving Reis); A Kiss in the Dark (48, Delmer Daves); The Elusive Pimpernel (50, Powell); A Kiss for Corliss (50, Richard Wallace); Happy Co Lovell/ (51, Bruce Humberstone); Soldiers Three (51, Garnett); The Moon Is Blue (53, Preminger); Happy Ever After (54, Mario Zampi); Love Lottery (54, Charles Crichton); The Kings Thief (55, Robert Z. Leonard); Carrington V,C. (56, Anthony Asquith); as Pliileas Fogg, in a hurry but unflappable, in Around the World in SO Days (56, Michael Anderson); The Birds and the Bees (56, Norman Taurog); The Little Hut (57, Mark Robson); Oh Men! Oh Women! (57, Nunnally Johnson); My Man Godfrey (57, Koster); The Silken Affair (57, Roy Kelli no); Ask Any Girl (59, Charles Walters); Happy Anniversary (59, David Miller); Please Don 't Eat the Daisies (60, Walters); Guns of Darkness (62, Asquith); The Best of Enemies (62, Guv Hamilton); unusually observant as the British ambassador in 55 Days at Peking (63, Nicholas Bay); The Pink Panther (64, Blake Edwards); Bedtime Story (64, Ralph Lew); and Lady L (65, Peter Ustinov).
He was consistent, cheery, good value, funny yet polite—an Englishman abroad, too well mannered to insist on being Scottish.
Bv then, he was made to resort to such nonsense that even his smile looked aghast: Casino Royale (67, John Huston); The Impossible Years (68, Michael Gordon); Before Winter Comes (68, Thompson); The Extraordinary Seaman (69, John Frankenheimer); and Pnidence and the Pill (69, Fielder Cook). But he was close to Nabokov’s sense of elegant humiliation in King, Queen. Knave (72. Jerzv Skolimowsld), and a charming Dracula in Vampira (74, Clive Donner). His real smile was based on the foresight he showed in 1953 by joining in the Four Star TV Theatre, a project that allowed him his greatest asset, calm.
His image as a laid-back elitist was strained by TV commercials for instant coffee—not so much deadpan as dead pot. Then he ventured out as a grandad for Disney in No Deposit, No Return (76, Norman Tokar), the title a comment on his involvement; a smoothie in Murder by Death (76, Robert Moore); an English butler for Disney in Candleshoe (77, Tokar).
His health was suffering, but he was in Death on the Nile (78. John Guillermin); A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Scpiare (79, Ralph Thomas); Escape to Athena (79, George Pan Cosmatos); The Sea Wolves (80, Andrew V. McLaglen); Rough Cut (80, Don Siegel); Better Late Than Never (82, Bryan Forbes); Trail of the Pink Panther (82, Edwards), and Curse of the Pink Panther (83, Edwards), for which his voice had to be dubbed by another actor.
Served Highland Light Infantry, Malta.
Married Primula Rollo (divorced deceased.; married Hjordis Tersmeden.