JAMES MASON, 75, DEAD; SUAVE STAR OF 100 FILMS
By Peter B. Flint July 28, 1984
The New York Times Archives
James Mason, the British-born actor noted for portraying suave and cerebral aristocrats and scoundrels, died yesterday at Lausanne Univerity Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland, after suffering a heart attack at his home in nearby Vevey.
He was 75 years old.
In more than 100 films over nearly half a century, the actor with a resonant, touch-of-Yorkshire voice effectively played a wide range of roles, often as a romantic villain who brutalizes the leading lady. He alternated those roles with characterizations of good men with damaging or fatal flaws.
Mr. Mason portrayed a demanding piano instructor who psychologically terrorizes Ann Todd and whacks her knuckles with a stick in ''The Seventh Veil'' (1945), a weak and dying Irish revolutionary gunman in ''Odd Man Out'' (1947), a cunning blackmailer in ''The Reckless Moment'' (1949) and a brilliant General Rommel in ''The Desert Fox'' (1951) and ''The Desert Rats'' (1953).
Success in 'Star Is Born'
He played Brutus in ''Julius Caesar'' (1953) and also an alcoholic actor whose career is eclipsed by his wife's career in the 1954 remake of ''A Star Is Born.''
Many reviewers considered his performance opposite Judy Garland in that film the best of his career.
Other major Mason films included ''Five Fingers'' (1952), ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'' (1954), ''North by Northwest'' (1959), ''Lolita'' (1962), ''Georgy Girl'' (1966), ''The Deadly Affair'' (1967), ''The Boys From Brazil'' (1978), ''Murder by Decree'' (1979) and ''The Verdict'' (1982), in which he played an unscrupulous lawyer menacing Paul Newman. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his performance in ''The Verdict'' and for his characterizations, in ''A Star Is Born'' and ''Georgy Girl.''
The actor had little interest in Oscar competition, remarking in The New York Times in 1967, ''They don't mean anything unless you win one; then your salary goes up.''
In 1977, he was awarded Britain's top movie honor - a Golden Seal for contributions to British films.
He appeared on Broadway in 1978 in the short-lived drama ''The Faith Healer.''
Self-Critical Craftsman
Mr. Mason was a self-critical craftsman who once told an interviewer: ''I work better if a director will needle me, discipline me, help sharpen up my ideas.''
His performances in good, bad, and indifferent movies prompted Vincent Canby of The Times to write in 1973 that Mr. Mason ''remains a star and one of the most consistently interesting actors in films today.''
''He has always been superb,'' Mr. Canby wrote, adding ''it's just that because so many of his recent films have been less than great, it's easier to recognize his contributions. He is, in fact, one of the very few film actors worth taking the trouble to see, even when the film that encases him is so much cement.''
James Neville Mason was born on May 15, 1909, the son of a wool merchant in the Yorkshire mill town of Huddersfield.
He majored in architecture at Marlborough College and Cambridge University, but the Depression had begun, and he soon shifted to acting, explaining to an interviewer that he decided he had ''a better chance of earning a living on the stage than designing buildings.''
Mr. Mason played in repertory in the provinces, in secondary roles at the Old Vic, and for three years, with the Gate Company in Dublin. He also commuted to England, tentatively beginning a film career as the leading man in a batch of shoestring movies, dubbed ''quota quickies.''
The Rise to Stardom
He alternated in increasingly better movies and West End plays until 1943 when he rose to stardom in ''The Man in Grey,''
a preposterous Regency melodrama co-starring Margaret Lockwood and Phyllis Calvert.
The movie caught the fancy of war-weary Britain, and readers of Picturegoer magazine voted Mr. Mason actor of the year. When the film arrived in the United States, Time magazine concluded: ''Swaggering through the title role, sneering like Laughton, barking like Gable and frowning like Laurence Olivier on a dark night, he is likely to pick up many a female fan.''
By 1945, Mr. Mason was the top box draw in British films. ''The Seventh Veil'' confirmed him as the screen's most polished brute. Pauline Kael concluded that the melodrama was ''a rich, portentous mixture of Beethoven, Chopin, Kitsch, and Freud.''
Mr. Mason moved to Hollywood in 1946, accompanied by his wife, Pamela, and 12 cats. His aloofness and caustic comments about some leading ladies and the press antagonized Hollywood, and he was long described by gossip columnists as eccentric.
The antagonism was fanned by his filing several slander suits.
The Masons had two children, Portland Allen and Alexander Morgan Mason. After 23 years together, his wife divorced him in 1946, and asked more than $1 million in property settlements and $14,000 a month for child support. That, according to some, was why he made so many bad movies.
The introspective actor avoided personal appearances and formal functions, but in later years became more affable with interviewers. His hobbies included painting and sketching caricatures.
He called himself ''American-minded'' in being more compatible with the American emphasis on modern culture compared with British traditionalism.
Mr. Mason took up residence at Vevey, off Lake Geneva, in 1962, and, in 1970, married Clarissa Kay, an Australian actress.
Of his decision to live in Switzerland, he said: ''I go there to rest and get away from people. The truth is I don't really care where I live so long as it is a civilized country.'
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