A Star at War
British movie star David Niven (1910 – 1983) led a rich life as a memoirist and novelist, and most significantly as a perennially popular character actor. He won an Oscar for his role in 1958’s Separate Tables. He also won acclaim for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days, as The Phantom in the Pink Panther, and as a squadron leader in A Matter of Life and Death. Niven was born into a comfortable bourgeoisie family, whose antecedents included a lieutenant general in the British Army. His was killed in 1915 in the Gallipoli Campaign. His mother remarried a knight with whom she had an affair before she was widowed, and who was probably David’s biological father. The young Niven exhibited a wicked sense of humor from early on. Too wicked, as his pranks often earned him corporal punishment at his preparatory school.
Niven continued his pranks, until he was finally expelled at age ten. That wrecked his chances to get into Eton, the elite private school his parents had hoped to send him to. So Niven’s parents sent him to the dumping ground for the unpromising scions of Britain’s elite: the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from which he graduated in 1930. After two years in the military, Niven resigned his commission and left for Hollywood to become an actor. He got a series of bit parts in the 1930s. However, just when he began to attract attention as a potential star and was about to break through, WWII broke out first. Niven returned home, and rejoined the British Army as a lieutenant in a motor training battalion. He craved more excitement, however, so he transferred to the elite Commandos. There, he was assigned to the GHQ Liaison Regiment – a special reconnaissance unit known as the Phantom Signals Unit.
Along the way, Niven was temporarily detached to the Army Film Unit, where he acted in two war films. He returned to the Commandos for the 1944 Normandy Campaign. There, he located German positions, and liaised with commanders in the rear to apprise them of frontline conditions. Despite his reputation as a great storyteller and exceptional raconteur, Niven was always tight-lipped about his wartime experiences, and despised those who glorified their service. He once explained that reluctance thus: “I will, however, tell you just one thing about the war, my first story and my last. I was asked by some American friends to search out the grave of their son near Bastogne. I found it where they told me I would, but it was among 27,000 others, and I told myself that here, Niven, were 27,000 reasons why you should keep your mouth shut after the war.“
