James Robertson Justice

James Robertson Justice (15 June 1907 – 2 July 1975) was a British actor. He is best remembered for portraying pompous authority figures in comedies including each of the seven films in the ''Doctor'' series. He also co-starred with Gregory Peck in several adventure movies, notably '' The Guns of Navarone''. Born in south-east London, he exaggerated his Scottish roots but was prominent in Scottish public life, helping to launch Scottish Television (STV) and serving as Rector of the University of Edinburgh.

Biography

The son of Aberdeen-born mining engineer James Norval Justice and Edith (née Burgess), James Robertson Justice was born James Norval Harald Justice in Lee, a suburb of Lewisham in South East London, in 1907. Educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, Justice studied science at University College London, but left after a year and became a geology student at the University of Bonn, where he again left after just a year. He spoke many languages (possibly up to 20) including English, Spanish, French, Greek, Danish, Russian, German, Italian, Dutch and Gaelic.Sheridan Morley, "Justice, James Norval Harald Robertson (1907–1975)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 200
Retrieved 12 Nov 2007
/ref>

After university

Justice returned to the UK in 1927, and became a journalist with Reuters in London alongside Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. After a year, he emigrated to Canada, where he worked as an insurance salesman, taught English at a boys' school, became a lumberjack and mined for gold. He came back to Britain penniless, working his passage on a Dutch freighter washing dishes in the ship's galley to pay his fare.

On his return to Britain, he served as secretary of the British Ice Hockey Association in the early 1930s and managed the national team at the 1932 European Championships in Berlin to a seventh-place finish. He combined his administrative duties in 1931–32 with a season as goalie with the London Lions.

Justice was entered in a Wolseley Hornet Special in the JCC Thousand Mile Race at Brooklands on 3 and 4 May 1932. The car was unplaced. The following year a "J. Justice (J.A.P. Special)" competed in the Brighton Speed Trials: "Justice's machine 'Tallulah' noisily expired before the end of the course, and was pushed back to the start by way of the arcade under the terrace." The Brighton event was won by Whitney Straight and according to Denis Jenkinson: "Flitting round the periphery of the team was James Robertson Justice." In February 1934, Straight took delivery of a new Maserati: "Jimmy Justice went off to Italy to collect the first car which was 8CM number 3011." ''Motor Sport'' reported in 1963: "We remember him at Lewes with a G.N. and in a Relay Race with a Wolseley Hornet."

Justice left Britain again to become a policeman for the League of Nations in the Territory of the Saar Basin (a region of Germany occupied and governed by France and Germany under a League of Nations mandate originating in the Treaty of Versailles). After the Nazis came to power, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. It was here that he first grew his signature bushy beard, which he retained throughout his career. On returning to Britain, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, but after sustaining a wound in 1943 (thought to be shrapnel from a German shell), he was honourably discharged from the service with a pension.

Love of Scotland

He married nurse Dillys Hayden (1914–1984) in Chelsea in 1941, and they had a son named James. On his return from the war, he reinvented himself with stronger Scottish roots, dispensing with his two middle names and acquiring the new middle name Robertson out of his habit of wearing Robertson tartan. Feeling strongly about his Scottish ancestry, he once claimed to have been born in 1905 under a distillery on the Isle of Skye; many sources listed his birthplace as Wigtown, Wigtownshire. He lived in Wigtown at Orchardton House between 1946 and 1950. He unsuccessfully contested the North Angus and Mearns constituency for the Labour Party in the 1950 general election.

With his earnings from the film ''Doctor in the House'' (1954), Justice purchased a cottage in the Scottish Highlands village of Spinningdale. In 1966 Justice appeared as a narrator in five episodes of the BBC children's television series '' Jackanory'', telling stories and legends from Scotland, including those of The Battle of the Birds and The Black Bull of Norroway.

Acting career

Justice pursued acting after joining the Players' Theatre in London. Under the chairmanship of Leonard Sachs, who was latterly chairman of BBC
...