Robert Archibald Shaw (9 August 1927 – 28 August 1978) was an English actor and writer. Beginning his career in theatre, Shaw joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre after the Second World War and appeared in productions of Macbeth, Henry VIII, Cymbeline, and other Shakespeare plays. With the Old Vic company (1951–52), he continued primarily in Shakespearean roles. In 1959, he starred in a West End production of The Long and the Short and the Tall.
Shaw was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for his role as Henry VIII in the drama film A Man for All Seasons (1966). His other film roles included the mobster Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting (1973) and the shark hunter Quint in Jaws (1975). He also played roles in From Russia with Love (1963), Battle of Britain (1969), Young Winston (1972), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), Robin and Marian (1976), and Black Sunday and The Deep, both of which were released in 1977.
Shaw was also a notable writer, winning the 1962 Hawthornden Prize for his novel The Sun Doctor. His novel and play The Man in the Glass Booth was an international success, earning Shaw a Tony Award nomination for Best Play, and adapted into a 1975 film.
Robert Archibald Shaw was born on 9 August 1927 at 51 King Street in Westhoughton, Lancashire, the son of Thomas Archibald Shaw and Doreen Nora, née Avery. His father, a medical doctor and former Royal Field Artillery Lieutenant, was of Scottish descent; his mother, a former nurse, was born at Piggs Peak, Swaziland. He had three sisters named Elisabeth, Joanna, and Wendy, and one brother named Alexander.
When Shaw was seven years old, the family moved to Scotland, settling in Stromness, Orkney. After his father's suicide when Shaw was twelve, his mother relocated the family to Cornwall, where he attended the independent Truro School. For a brief period, he was a teacher at Glenhow Preparatory School in Saltburn-by-the-Sea in the North Riding of Yorkshire, before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, graduating in 1948.
Shaw began his acting career in theatre, appearing in regional theatre throughout England. He played Angus in a production of Macbeth at Stratford in 1946. He played at Stratford for two seasons.
In 1947, he appeared in The Cherry Orchard on British TV; also for that medium, he performed scenes from Twelfth Night and Macbeth.
He had a small part in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), playing a police laboratory technician towards the end of the film; the following year he made his London debut, in the West End, at the Embassy Theatre in Caro William. That year he appeared on TV in A Time to Be Born (1952). He returned to Stratford in 1953.
Shaw had small roles in The Dam Busters (1955), a TV version of The Scarlet Pimpernel (1956), the films Doublecross (1956) and A Hill in Korea (1956) (alongside other young actors like Michael Caine), and a TV version of Hindle Wakes (1957).
Shaw became a TV star in the UK when he starred as Captain Dan Tempest in The Buccaneers (1956–57) which ran for 39 episodes.
He was by this time a TV leading man, having lead roles in TV films such as Success (1957) and a TV version of Rupert of Hentzau (1957). He had a big stage success with The Long and the Short and the Tall on the West End in 1959, directed by Lindsay Anderson, a performance that was filmed for television (though Shaw did not appear in the feature film version).
Shaw had small roles in Sea Fury (1958) and Libel (1959) and guest-starred on William Tell, ITV Television Playhouse, The Four Just Men, and Danger Man. He also appeared in TV plays including The Dark Man, Misfire and The Train Set.
In 1961, he appeared in a Broadway production of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker alongside Donald Pleasence and Alan Bates. Shaw replaced Peter Woodthorpe, who had performed with the others on stage in London. It ran for 165 performances. He had good roles in The Valiant, a war film, and Tomorrow at Ten (both 1962), a thriller. Shaw played the leads in TV versions of The Winter's Tale and The Father (both 1962). He, Pleasence, and Bates reprised their performances in a film version of The Caretaker (1963); Shaw was part of the consortium who helped finance the latter.
Shaw's first novel, The Hiding Place, published in 1960, received positive reviews. His second novel The Sun Doctor (1961), was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1962.
Shaw became well known as a film actor when cast as assassin Donald "Red" Grant in the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love (1963). For TV he adapted and appeared in a production of A Florentine Tragedy (1963), and was Claudius in Hamlet at Elsinore (1964) with Christopher Plummer. He played the title role in The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964), shot in Canada alongside Mary Ure, who became his second wife. He had a role in Carol for Another Christmas (1964). Shaw later said of his early career, "I could have been a straight leading man but that struck me as a boring life."
In 1964, Shaw returned to Broadway in a production of The Physicists directed by Peter Brook but it ran for only 55 performances. "I want very much to avoid doing bad commercial pictures for lots of money", he said. "It's difficult to avoid with six kids and two wives." Shaw then embarked on a trilogy of novels – The Flag (1965), The Man in the Glass Booth (1967) and A Card from Morocco (1969). He also adapted The Hiding Place into a screenplay for the film Situation Hopeless ... But Not Serious starring Sir Alec Guinness.
Shaw was the relentless Wehrmacht panzer commander Colonel Hessler in Battle of the Bulge (1965), produced by Philip Yordan; a young Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966), which earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; General George Armstrong Custer in Custer of the West (1967), again for Yordan; Martin Luther in Luther (a 1968 film made for television); he was top billed in another film version of Pinter's The Birthday Party (1968), directed by William Friedkin.
His play The Man in the Glass Booth was a success in London in 1967. It transferred to Broadway the following year and was a hit, running for 264 performances. His adaptation for the stage of The Man in the Glass Booth gained him the most attention for his writing. The book and play present a complex and morally ambiguous tale of a man who, at various times in the story, is either a Jewish businessman pretending to be a Nazi war criminal, or a Nazi war criminal pretending to be a Jewish businessman. The play was quite controversial when performed in the UK and the US, some critics praising Shaw's "sly, deft and complex examination of the moral issues of nationality and identity", others sharply critical of Shaw's treatment of such a sensitive subject. The play, but not the movie, presents the question: "Given the chance, would Jews behave like Nazis?"