Sebastian Shaw (actor) - World War II and Post-war Career

World War II and Post-war Career

When World War II broke out, Shaw took a break from acting and joined the Royal Air Force. He was commissioned as an Acting-Pilot Officer on probation in the Administrative and Special Duties Branch on 25 April 1941 and over the next three months was promoted to Pilot Officer on probation, then flying officer and then Flight Lieutenant. According to his obituary in The Guardian, he saw little action in the service and was told the only chance he would have to fly would be as a rear gunner. Some of his fellow airmen hounded Shaw for autographs while others mocked his posh accent, to which he retaliated with an excellent and unflattering imitation of their less refined speech. He continued to hold a Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve commission after the war until he resigned the commission in 10 February 1954; he was permitted to retain his rank.

Immediately upon returning to London after the war, Shaw lost his Albany flat and his acting contract, and essentially had to restart his acting career. Although he made 20 films before the war and had already begun to develop a reputation as a strong leading man, in later years he would describe himself as "a rotten actor" in the 1930s who landed roles based mainly on his good looks. He used the phrase "a piece of cinema beefcake" to describe himself as an actor during that period. He felt that after his return home from military service, he learned to act properly and began to mature as a performer. Shaw's Royal Air Force experience was put to good use when he played a pilot in Journey Together, the 1946 RAF training film in which actor Edward G. Robinson coached actor Richard Attenborough in the rudiments of flying.

In 1945, Shaw returned to the Embassy Theatre to direct Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Gambler. Significant theatre roles that decade included Hercules in The Thracian Horses at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in 1946, Mr. Hern-Lawrence in Florida Scott-Maxwell's experimental I Said to Myself at the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate in 1947, Sir James Kirkham in His Excellency at Prince's Theatre in 1950, and Filmer Jesson, MP, in Arthur Wing Pinero's His House In Order at New Theatre in 1951. In 1956, he played the title role in the first English production of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Everyman. That same year, he wrote the lyrics to his father's ballad-opera, All at Sea, which played at the Royal College of Music. In 1957, he played Lucifer in Brother Lucifer in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and a sinister Venetian agent in Jonathan Griffin's The Hidden King in Edinburgh.

As Shaw grew older, his reputation as a dramatic actor grew stronger, and he became known for a sharp intelligence and dignified style. Although his good looks diminished, reviewers felt that he used his florid and weatherbeaten face well in evoking grandeur and self-assuredness in such roles as generals, priests and his familiar Shakespearean parts. In 1956, his wife Margaret Delamere died; she was survived by their daughter Drusilla. Shaw began a romantic relationship in the mid-1950s with Joan Ingpen, the well-known classical music and opera talent agent who had previously represented him. The two were romantically involved, to the point that she took his surname, until Shaw's death. During the 1980s, however, Shaw also had a brief relationship with Harriet Ravenscroft, the mother of the disc jockey John Peel, whom he met while performing at Ludlow Castle at Ludlow. He split his time between Ingpen and Ravenscroft on a four-day rotating basis to which both women consented. Although Peel got along with Shaw and said he made his mother happy, he said he did not feel comfortable with the arrangement. He felt it disrupted his mother's friendships and prospects for a more stable relationship.

In 1965, British theatre director William Gaskill was named artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre, where he hoped to re-establish a repertoire. He approached Shaw, who had made his acting début at the Royal Court Theatre as a youth, and Shaw agreed to return. There he delivered several performances over the next year, including General Conrad von Hotzendorf in John Osborne's A Patriot for Me; various roles in Ann Jellicoe's Shelley; Sir Francis Harker in N.F. Simpson's The Cresta Run and Pte Atterclife in John Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance.