Internationally known for his many film roles, particularly in Jaws, The Sting, and A Man for All Seasons, Robert Shaw was well respected on stage too, working with Vanessa Redgrave, Peter Brook, Peter Hall, Harold Pinter and the Angry Young Men at the Royal Court. Moreover, he was a writer himself, author of five award-winning novels and a play that ran in the West End and on Broadway.
But Shaw was a driven man. Plagued by his father's suicide when Shaw was only eleven, he was almost insanely competitive, with more than a penchant for booze and expensive cars. He was also driven by a need for children of his own: four by his first wife, four by his second, actress Mary Ure, whom he 'stole' from John Osborne, and a ninth by his third wife. His extravagance led him into trouble with the tax man and thence into unwilling exile, living in Orson Welles's house in Spain before it 'accidentally' caught fire, damaging some of the artefacts from Citizen Kane.
This biography of a troubled and talented man is made special by the unusual insights of the author - Shaw's friend and agent during the last years of his life. No other biographer is so well equipped to tell the real inside story of the working life of an international star, the deals, the tax fraud, the films that were made, the films that weren't, the parts that were offered and those that were refused - all bound up with moments of frightening intimacy, as when Shaw has to be prevented from overdosing after the death of Mary Ure on the first night of her West End comeback.
Against a background of the film and theatre industries, drawn from first hand experience, John French's book offers a vivid and unique insight into the self-destructive life of a man who could have been - and very nearly was - a major talent.