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Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov, CBE (April 16, 1921 – March 28, 2004), born Peter
Alexander Baron von Ustinov, was an Academy Award-winning English actor, writer,
dramatist and raconteur of French, Italian, Swiss, Russian, German and Ethiopian
ancestry.
 Childhood and
early life
Ustinov was born in Swiss Cottage, London. His father, Iona (Jona) Baron von
Ustinov, known to his friends as "Klop" ("blow" in Yiddish, "bedbug" in Russian),
was of Russian and German descent, and had served as a Lt. in the German Air Force
in World War I, worked as a press officer at the German Embassy in London in the
1930s, and was a reporter for a German news agency. In 1935 he began working for
the British intelligence service MI5 and became a British citizen, thus avoiding
internment or deportation during the war. (Peter Wright mentions in his book
Spycatcher that Klop was possibly the spy known as U35; Ustinov says in his
autobiography that his father hosted secret meetings of senior British and German
officials at their London home.) Jona von Ustinov also had Ethiopian royal
ancestry; Peter's great-grandfather, a Swiss missionary, married Susan Bell in
Magdala, whose mother belonged to the Tewodros Dynasty. This means that Ustinov
could arguably be considered the first man of known African descent to have won an
Academy Award. The distinguished Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, whose stepfather was
another Ustinov, is related to this part of the family.
Peter Ustinov's mother, Nadia (Nadezhda) Leontievna Benois, was a painter and
ballet designer of Russian, French and Italian ancestry. Her father Leon Benois was
an imperial Russian architect and owner of Leonardo's painting Madonna Benois. His
more famous brother Alexandre Benois was an outstanding stage designer who worked
with Stravinsky and Diaghilev. Their paternal ancestor Jules-César Benois was a
chef who had left France for St Petersburg during the French Revolution and became
a chef to Tsar Paul.
Ustinov was educated at Westminster School and had a difficult and uncertain
childhood because of his parents' constant bickering and personality clashes.
Whilst at school he considered anglicizing his name to "Peter Austin" but was
counselled against it by a fellow pupil who said that he should “Drop the ‘von’ but
keep the ‘Ustinov’”. After training as an actor in his late teens, along with early
attempts at playwriting, he made his stage début in 1938 at the Players' Theatre,
becoming quickly established. He later wrote, "I was not irresistibly drawn to the
drama. It was an escape road from the dismal rat race of school."
Career
highlights
Following military service as a private soldier during World War II, during which
he had made propaganda films, starting with One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942),
with actors such as David Niven whom he also served as batman, he began to branch
out into writing. His first major success was with The Love of Four Colonels in
1951. He starred alongside Humphrey Bogart and Aldo Ray in We're No Angels (1955).
His career as a dramatist continued alongside his acting career, his best-known
play being Romanoff and Juliet (1956). His film roles include Roman emperor Nero in
Quo Vadis? (1951), Captain Vere in Billy Budd (1962), Lentulus Batiatus in
Spartacus (1960), an old man surviving a totalitarian future in Logan's Run (1976),
and in a half dozen films as Hercule Poirot, a part he first played in Death on the
Nile (1978). Ustinov voiced the well-known anthropomorphic lion Prince John of the
1973 Disney animated movie Robin Hood. He also worked on several films as writer
and occasionally director, including The Way Ahead (1944), School for Secrets
(1946), Hot Millions (1968) and Memed, My Hawk (1984).
He won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in Spartacus (1960) and
Topkapi (1964). He also won one Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor for
the film Quo Vadis, according to IMDB.com (he famously set the Oscar and Globe
statues up on his desk as if playing doubles tennis; the game was also a love of
his life, as was ocean yachting). Furthermore, Ustinov was the winner of three
Emmys, one Grammy, and was nominated for two Tony awards.
Between 1952 and 1955 Ustinov starred alongside Peter Jones in the much-loved BBC
radio comedy In All Directions. The show featured Ustinov and Jones as themselves
in a car in London perpetually searching for Copthorne Avenue. The comedy derived
from the characters they met along the way, often also played by themselves. The
show was unusual for the time as it was largely improvised rather than scripted.
Ustinov and Jones improvised on to a tape which was then edited for broadcast by
Frank Muir and Denis Norden who also sometimes took part. Possibly the favourite
characters were Morris and Dudley Grosvenor, two rather stupid East End spivs whose
sketches always ended with the phrase "Run for it Morry" (or Dudley as
appropriate.) Sadly no recording is known to survive.
During the 1960's, with the encouragement of Sir Georg Solti, Ustinov directed
several operas including Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole,
Schonberg's Erwartung, and Mozart's Magic Flute. Further demonstrating his great
talent and versatility in the theater, Ustinov later did set and costume production
for Don Giovanni.
His autobiography, Dear Me (1977), was well received and saw him describe his life
(ostensibly his childhood) whilst being interrogated by his own ego, with forays
into philosophy, theater, fame, and self-realization. In concluding, Ustinov muses
"We have gone through much together, Dear Me, and yet it suddenly occurs to me we
don't know each other at all".
In the later part of his life (from 1969 until his death), his acting and writing
tasks took second place to his work on behalf of UNICEF - the United Nations
Children's Fund, for which he was a Goodwill Ambassador and fundraiser. In this
role he visited some of the neediest children and made use of his ability to make
just about anybody laugh, including many of the world's most disadvantaged
children. "Sir Peter could make anyone laugh," UNICEF Executive Director Carol
Bellamy is quoted as saying. "His one-man show in German was the funniest
performance I have ever seen – and I don’t speak a word of German."
Ustinov also served as President of the World Federalist Movement from 1991 until
his death. He once said, "World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable;
and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest, in its only sense,
the patriotism of men who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to
preserve them in safety for the common good" (see ).
He is best-known to many Britons as a chat-show guest, a role to which he was
ideally suited. Towards the end of his life he undertook some one-man stage shows
in which he let loose his raconteur streak - he told the story of his life,
including some moments of tension with the national society he was born into (as
just one example, he took a test as a child which asked him to name a Russian
composer; he wrote Rimsky-Korsakov but was marked down, told the correct answer was
Tchaikovsky since they had been studying him in class, and told to stop showing
off).
A car enthusiast since the age of four, he owned a succession of interesting
machines ranging from a Fiat Topolino, several Lancias, a Hispano-Suiza, a
pre-selector Delage and a special-bodied Jowett Jupiter. He made records like
Phoney Folklore which included the song of the Russian peasant “whose tractor had
betrayed him” and his "Grand Prix of Gibraltar" was a vehicle for his creative wit
and ability at car engine sound-effects and voices.
He spoke English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Russian, fluently, as well
as some Turkish and modern Greek. He was proficient in accents and dialects in all
his languages.
In the late 1960s, he became a Swiss citizen to avoid the British tax system of the
time which taxed the earnings of the wealthy at up to 90 per cent. However, he was
knighted in 1990, and was appointed Chancellor of the University of Durham in 1992,
having previously served as Rector of the University of Dundee in the late 1970s (a
role in which he moved from being merely a figure-head to taking on a political
role, negotiating with militant students).
He received an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
(Belgium).
Ustinov was a frequent defender of the Chinese government, stating in an address to
the University of Durham in 2000, "People are annoyed with the Chinese for not
respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult
to have the same attitude to human rights."
In 2003, Durham's postgraduate college (previously known as the Graduate Society)
was renamed Ustinov College.
He died on 28 March 2004, due to heart failure in a clinic in Genolier, near his
home in Bursins, Vaud, Switzerland. He was so well regarded as a goodwill
ambassador that UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy spoke at his funeral and
represented United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
When, in an interview, he was once asked what he would like it to read on his
tombstone, Ustinov replied "Please keep off the grass".
Amongst his lesser known works, Ustinov presented and narrated the official video
review of the 1987 Formula One season. His commentary proved highly entertaining.
Ustinov also narrated the documentary series "Wings of the Red Star."
Ustinov graciously gave his name to the Foundation of the International Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences for their prestigious Sir Peter Ustinov Television
Scriptwriting Award, given annually to a young television screenwriter.
World
Politics
Peter Ustinov was the President of the World Federalist Movement from 1991 to 2004,
the time of his death. WFM is a global NGO that promotes the concept of one world
government. WFM wish to lobby those in powerful positions to establish a unified
human government based on democracy and civil society. The United Nations and other
world agencies would become the institutions of a World Federation. The UN would be
the federal government and nation states would become like provinces.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Sir Peter Ustinov
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