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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
- Generator -
Biography