Background
Mills, John was born on February 22, 1908 in England. Son of Lewis and Edith (Baker) Mills.
Mills, John was born on February 22, 1908 in England. Son of Lewis and Edith (Baker) Mills.
He attended Balham Grammar School in London, Sir John Leman High School in Beccles, Suffolk and Norwich High School for Boys.
Britain forced responsibility on him: In Which We Serve (42, David Lean and Noel Coward); We Dive at Dawn (43, Anthony Asquith); This Happy Breed (44, Lean); Scott of the Antarctic (48, Charles Frend); Morning Departure (50, Roy Baker); The Colditz Story (54, Guy Hamilton); Above Us the Waves (54, Ralph Thomas); Ice Cold in Alex (58, J. Lee Thompson); and I Was Monty ’s Double (58, John Guillermin). He was a private soldier in Dunkirk (58, Leslie Norman), but the strain of so many stiff upper lips was finally released in the crack-up of Tunes of Glory (60, Ronald Neame).
Mills had been in British films since the earlv 1930s: The Midshipmaid (32, Albert de Courville); Those Were the Days (34, Thomas Bentley); Britannia of Billingsgate (35. Sinclair Hill); Forever England (35, Walter Forde), a version of C. S. Forester’s Brown on Resolution, Tudor Rose (36, Robert Stevenson); O H.M S. (37, Raoul Walsh); Goodbye, Mr Chips (39, Sam Wood); The Green Cockatoo (40, William Cameron Menzies); Old Bill and Son (40, Ian Dalrymple); Cottage to Let (41. Asquith); The Black Sheep of Whitehall (42, Basil Dean and Will flay); The Big Blockade (42, Frend); and The Young Mr. Pitt (42. Carol Reed).
Invalided out of the forces. Mills was inevitably drawn into the celluloid war effort, but in 1946 he was excellent (if too old) as Pip in Great Expectations (46, Lean). And as the years went by he took the few serious opportunities that came his way amid pompous or jollv nonsense: The October Man (47, Baker); So Well Remembered (47, Edward Dmytryk); The History of Mr Polly (49, Anthony Pelissier); The Rocking Horse Winner (49, Pelissier); Mr. Denning Drives North (51, Anthony Kimmins); The Long Memory (52, Robert Hamer); The Gentle Gunman (52, Basil Dearden); Hobson’s Choice (54, Lean); The End of the Affair (54, Dmytryk); Escapade (55, Philip Leacock); It’s Great to Be Young (56, Cvril Frankel); The Baby and the Battleship (56, Jay Lewis); and Town on Trial (57, Guillermin).
In 1959, for the first time on screen, he appeared, tactfully upstaged, with daughter Hayley in Tiger Bay (Thompson). That signaled a decline and some direly cheerful adventures:
Summer of the 17th Doll (59, Norman); Swiss Family Robinson (60, Ken Annakin); The Singer Not the Song (61, Baker); Flame in the Streets (61, Baker); Tiara Tahiti (62, William T. Kotcheff); The Chalk Garden (64, Neame); The Truth About Spring (65, Richard Thorpe); Operation Crossbow (64, Michael Anderson); King Rat (66, Bryan Forbes); Sky West and Crooked (66, which he directed himself); The Wrong Box (66, Forbes); The Family Way (66, Roy Boulting); Africa, Texas Style (67, Andrew Marton); Chuka (67, Gordon Douglas); Lady Hamilton (68, Christian-|aque); Oh! What a Lovely War (69, Richard Attenborough); Run Wild, Run Free (69, Richard C. Sarafian); Adam’s Woman (70, Leacock); Lady Caroline Lamb (72, Robert Bolt); Oklahoma Crude (73, Stanley Kramer); The ''Human" Factor (75, Edward Dmytryk); A Choice of Weapons (76, Kerin Conner); The Devil’s Advocate (78, Guv Green); The Big Sleep (78, Michael Winner); and The Thirty-Nine Steps (78, Don Sharp).
He was in Young at Heart (80, Stuart Allen); The Umbrella Man (80, Claude Whatham); Operation Safecrack (81, Alan Gibson); as the Viceroy in Gandhi (82, Attenborough); Sahara (83, Andrew V. McLaglen); A Woman of Substance (84, Sharp); as Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (84. Roy Ward Baker); Edge of the Wind (85, Kenneth Ives); Murder with Mirrors (85, Dick Lowry); Hold That Dream (86, Sharp); The Tme Story of Spit MacPhee (88, Marcus Cole); A Tale of Two Cities (89, Philippe Mon- nier); The Lady and the Highwayman (89, John Hough); Around the World in 80 Days (89, Buzz Kulik); and Ending Up (89, Peter Sasdy).
Not always well, at or around ninety, Mills has persisted in work: Night of the Fox (90, Charles Jarrott); Harnessing Peacocks (92, fames Cellan Jones); Frankenstein (93, David Wickes); as Jack the Ripper in Deadly Advice (93, Mandie Fletcher); The Big Freeze (93, Eric Svkes); as Mr. Chuffey in Martin Cliuzzlewit (94, Pedr James); The Grotesque (95, John-Paul Davidson); as Old Norway in Hamlet (96, Kenneth Branagh); Bean (97, Mel Smith); Cats (98, David Mallet); The Gentleman Thief (01, Justin Hardy).
Council Royal Academy, of Dramatic Art (RADA) since 1965. Board Govs, of British Film Institute. Variety Club.
The Mills family has so crowded us out with insipid, tennis-club talent it is easy to forget that Mills is a reasonable actor. He has made more trite or bad films than good ones, and suffered from the way British cinema has used him as officer material under stress. Nevertheless, his long career is sprinkled with worthwhile things, and if the supporting actor Oscar for his village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter (70, David Lean) was more a tribute to the makeup artist and to English admiration of impersonation, he might have had the same award for his peasant caught up in the retreat from Moscow in War and Peace (56, King Vidor). For Mills is a small man, with an East Anglian complexion and a sense of the ordinary that suits him better to the ranks than to the mess. He was trained in song-and-dance, and one suspects he should have been encouraged in comedy.
Skiing, golf, painting.
Married Mary Hayley Bell, January 22, 1941. Children: Juliet, Hayley, Jonathan.