Email us with Shaw stuff!

Better Than Beefcake
Sebastian Shaw

by Richard Leech
The Guardian
 December 29, 1994

SEBASTIAN SHAW, who has died aged 89, was a handsome and accomplished actor of great modesty. Known as Buster, he told me (when we shared a dressing room at the Mermaid Theater for Whose Life Is It Anyway?) that he had been a dreadful actor when he was young, successful mainly because he was a "beefcake" -- and had only learned to act properly after the war in his maturer years.

I got to know him well in 1978.  Our dressing room was called Billingsgate.  By then he was already 73, still magnificently handsome, coruscating with vitality and totally fearless.  One day he came in and casually mentioned that a mugger had tried to steal his purse.  Buster sprinted after him, floored him with a rugger tackle and recovered his property.

His father, Dr. Geoffrey Shaw, was music master at Greshams School in Norfolk, which Buster attended after his stage debut at the age of eight as one of the juvenile band in The Cockyolly Bird at the Court Theater. At Greshams he gave a roistering performance as Petruccio, taming a plump little boy called W. H. Auden, who was the shrew.

Despite his talent for acting he put in two years at the Slade before getting a scholarship to Rada, but he left after a couple of terms in order to earn his living in the theatre.  He started in rep at Stratford, Liverpool and Hull, landing his first London job -- fittingly as the Archangel -- in The Sign In The Sun in 1925.

He took various parts in The Constant Nymph among a series of handsome matinee idol roles in the West End, making his Broadway debut in 1928.  He was Claudio in Measure For Measure in 1931, and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet at the Embassy, Swiss Cottage, in 1932, He was a hugely popular and successful jeune premier right up to the war.

In 1936, Alex Korda put him under contract at 300 pounds a week. Buster told me in our Billingsgate confessional that, at the time, he thought it was because of his acting talent, but with clearer hindsight he now realized that Sir Alex was hiring clanking heterosexuality.

He starred in many films opposite such exciting ladies as Gertrude Lawrence, Miriam Hopkins, Ann Todd and Gladys Cooper.  He and his wife lived the life of Riley in a smart set of chambers in Albany, off Piccadilly.   When war broke out he was starring opposite Judith Evans, but at 34, he immediately joined the RAF as an ac/plonk.

Those of his fellow airmen who were not begging for autographs, tended to poke the Charlie at him for his posh accent. He annihilated them by replying in a wicked imitation of their unposh accents. Told that his only chance of flying was to be a rear gunner, he tired to avoid a commission and, when asked at an interview how much he earned in civvie street, snapped "none of your damned business" -- adding, after a cold survey of the top brass, "but, at a rough estimate I'd say about what you lot earn put together."

He served till the end of the war, and, when he was demobbed, there was no flat in Albany and no Korda contract. I remember asking him if he felt bitter at the time, and he said: "Not a bit." He'd forseen it all and acted with his eyes open.  He had always been known as Buster, but in Billingsgate, despite the stage door procession of beautiful ladies, he maintained that his nickname was no longer appropriate.  I didn't agree. He arrived every night like a steak fed tornado.

Certainly it described his return from the war.  He wrote plays, burst into television, and landed a splendid part in His Excellency at the Prince's in 1950.  The roles became more interesting.  He took the title role at the Ludlow Festival in 1956, in the British premiere of Hofmansthal's Everyman.  He wrote, directed and played the detective in Take A Life at the Mermaid in 1961.

He worked for Frank Hauser at the Oxford Playhouse, and joined the renaissance of the Royal Court Theater (also in 1961) playing Sir Desmond in Empress With Teapot, and (in 1965) General Conrad von Hotzendorf in Osborne's A Patriot For Me.  He was a regular at the Court in the mid 60-s, in Shelley, The Cresta Run, Sergeant Musgrave's Dance, A Chaste Maid In Cheapside, and Their Very Own And Golden City.

He then, for a decade, offered definitive incarnations of the Shakespearean patricians for the RSC (including Friar Lawrence, the King of France, Duncan, Gloucester, Ulysses, Polonius, Cymbeline).  He was a fine Justice Overdo in Bartholemew Fair, and, at Windsor, he played Captain Shotover in Heartbreak House, having earlier played Magnus in The Apple Cart at Oxford.  He was in Enemies, Three Sisters, Ivanov.

He published a novel when he was 70 (The Christening, 1975), and was painted in the nude by his nephew Brian Ocean when he was 73.  He was a breathtaking phenomenon.

Richard Leech

Sebastian Lewis Shaw, born May 3, 1905; died December 23, 1994