Robert Shaw played hard men who were sure of themselves and let the certainty do the work, so Lonnegan in The Sting and Quint in Jaws are frightening and funny at once. When he overplayed, he did it grandly, and it seldom cost the film.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Doyle Lonnegan lose at cards in The Sting (1973). Robert Shaw does not bluster, does not signal that he is the villain, and does not let us know he finds any of it funny. He simply refuses to be charmed, and because everybody else in the film is charming, the refusal becomes the joke. Two years later, as Quint in Jaws (1975), he does the opposite with the same equipment: the relish is out in the open, and the heavier presence he brings aboard makes Brody and Hooper look like men who have wandered into the wrong story. In both cases the trick is certainty. Shaw's men know exactly who they are, and we are left to decide whether to be scared or amused.
He came to this from the classical stage. His early years were spent with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford and the Old Vic, and there is stage voice and stage stillness in everything he did on film. Television gave him The Buccaneers (1956–57). The film breakthrough was Red Grant, the assassin in From Russia with Love (1963), and it fixed his casting for years: menacing, physical, deep-voiced, the hard man in the corner. A Man for All Seasons (1966) gave him Henry VIII and a licence to be loud with a purpose. Then the American films of the 1970s, The Sting, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and Jaws, made him a familiar face rather than a familiar type, and Robin and Marian (1976) put him opposite Sean Connery as the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Jaws is the performance people remember, and rightly. He reworked parts of the Indianapolis speech himself, and it is the one stretch of the film in which the shark can be forgotten entirely. We have seen it many times and it still makes us hold our breath; Shaw tells the story of a sinking as if it were a fishing anecdote, and the flatness is what makes it awful. Elsewhere he pushes Quint towards the theatrical, and beside Roy Scheider's quieter, more practical fear the pushing shows. It is a fault, and we said so, but it is the fault of an actor enjoying a part built to be enjoyed.
Lonnegan is the more disciplined piece of work. A con film needs someone who will not be conned easily, and Shaw's severity gives Paul Newman and Robert Redford something to push against. He is funnier there than in Jaws because he never once asks for the laugh.
The later films were uneven, and he knew it. Some, Force 10 from Navarone (1978) among them, were taken partly for the money, and he told Dick Cavett in 1971 that "when you're working, it's terrible because you're usually doing rubbish." The remedy is to watch The Sting and Jaws back to back. In neither is he the lead, and in both the film changes temperature when he walks in.
Biography
Robert Archibald Shaw (9 August 1927 – 28 August 1978) was an English actor, novelist and playwright. Born in Westhoughton, Lancashire, he began his career on the stage after the Second World War, appearing with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and later with the Old Vic company in productions of Shakespeare plays.
Shaw achieved prominence in film with roles including Donald 'Red' Grant in From Russia with Love (1963), King Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966), Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting (1973) and Mr Blue in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). He is best remembered for his performance as the shark hunter Quint in Jaws (1975). He was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for A Man for All Seasons. Shaw also wrote novels and plays, including The Hiding Place and The Man in the Glass Booth.
