James Robertson Justice

James Robertson Justice studied at University College London, University of Bonn and Marlborough College. The recorded working language is English, German and Spanish. Residence is recorded at London. Employment is recorded with Reuters. Positions recorded include Rector of the University of Edinburgh.

Despite his later Scottish claims, James Norval Harald Justice was born on 15 June 1907 in Lee, a suburb of Lewisham in south-east London. He was the son of Aberdeen-born mining engineer James Norval Justice and Edith (née Burgess), Justice was educated at St Hugh's School, Bickley, Kent, and Marlborough College in Wiltshire. He later 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.

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."

In the mid 1930s Justice became a member of the League of Nations's international peacekeeping force in the Territory of the Saar Basin. The 3,300-strong International Force in the Saar had been established under a mandate originating in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Britain (1,500), Italy (1,300), Sweden (260) and the Netherlands (250) had agreed to provide troops to guard this region of occupied Germany, which was governed by both France and Germany.

After the Saar, Justice fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. It was during this time that he first grew his signature bushy beard, which he retained throughout his career. In 1939, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve at the outbreak of the Second World War. After sustaining a shrapnel wound in 1943, he was honourably discharged from the service with a pension.

Following his Navy discharge, Justice pursued acting after joining the Players' Theatre in London. Under the chairmanship of Leonard Sachs, who was latterly chairman of BBC television's The Good Old Days, the club would stage Victorian music hall nights. Substituting for Sachs one night, Justice was recommended for the film For Those in Peril (1944). With his domineering personality, bulky physique (he played rugby for Beckenham RFC First XV in the 1924–25 season alongside Johnnie Cradock who would become the partner of 1950s TV chef Fanny), and rich, booming voice, Justice was soon established as a major supporting actor in British comedy films. His first leading role was as headmaster in the film Vice Versa (1948), written and directed by Peter Ustinov, who cast Justice partly because he had been "a collaborator of my father's at Reuters". Justice made it to Walt Disney in a film adaptation of Robin Hood called The Story of Robin Hood (1952) where he took the role of Little John. Justice also was the demanding surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt in the "Doctor" series of films of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Doctor in the House (1954), playing the role for which he is possibly best remembered. In his films he was sometimes credited as Seumas Mòr na Feusag (Scottish Gaelic, translation: Big James with the Beard), James R. Justice, James Robertson or James Robertson-Justice. On 31 August 1957, he helped launch the TV station Scottish Television (STV), hosting the channel's first show, This is Scotland. From 1957 to 1960, and again from 1963 to 1966, he was Rector of the University of Edinburgh. In the war film The Guns of Navarone (1961), he had a co-starring role as well as narrating the story. He also appeared in Hancock’s Half Hour on radio in 1958. He appeared in four films with Navarone co-star Gregory Peck, including Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), and Moby Dick (1956), in which he played the one-armed sea captain also attacked by the white whale. In the film, Justice's character tries to befriend Captain Ahab (played by Peck), but is amazed and repulsed by Ahab's obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick. He was under contract to the Rank Organisation and appeared in many of its films. He notably appeared in several movies with Leslie Phillips. Not long after completing his work for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968, Justice suffered a severe stroke, which signalled the beginning of the end for his career. However, he nevertheless appeared in a number of films afterwards, albeit in less prominent roles (i.e. playing his best known character, Sir Lancelot Spratt, for the final time in Doctor in Trouble (1970), appearing briefly in several scenes). He suffered a further series of strokes, which left him unable to work.

Justice married nurse Dillys Hayden (1914–1984) in Chelsea in 1941. They had a son named James. However, in 1949, he accidentally drowned, aged four, near their watermill home in Whitchurch, Hampshire. After a series of affairs, Justice separated from Hayden. Their marriage was dissolved in 1968. Justice first met the Baltic German actress Irene von Meyendorff on the set of the 1960 film The Ambassador. They became a couple, marrying three days before he died in 1975. Justice spoke many languages (possibly up to 20) including English, Spanish, French, Greek, Danish, Russian, Basque, German, Italian, Dutch and Gaelic.

On his return from the war, Justice reinvented himself with stronger Scottish roots. He dispensed with his two middle names taking the new middle name Robertson; out of his habit of wearing Robertson tartan. Justice felt so strongly about his Scottish ancestry, he once claimed to have been born in 1905, under a distillery on the Isle of Skye; sources even 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 £1,500 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.

After a series of strokes prevented him from working as an actor, Justice was declared bankrupt in 1970. He never recovered from another stroke in 1972. He died in penury, found in his bed in King's Somborne on 2 July 1975 at the age of 68. His ashes were buried on a north Scotland moor near his former residence in the Highland village of Spinningdale.