An imposing figure
There was a time in the 1950s and 60s when no self-respecting British comedy film was made without an appearance from the imposing figure of James Robertson Justice.
First catching the eye of cinemagoers as Dr Maclaren in Whisky Galore and Taff Evans in Scott of the Antarctic, it was as the pompous Sir Lancelot Spratt in the Doctor series of films that he was best known.
He went on to star in classic films including The Guns of Navarone and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Celebrity came to him late, and he was almost into his 40s before acting claimed him, but his life before that reads like a Boy’s Own adventure.
After ditching two university courses early, in 1927 Justice became a journalist for Reuters alongside Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. This lasted barely a year before he moved to Canada where he worked variously as an English teacher, a lumberjack, and an insurance salesman!
A stint as a peacekeeper with the post WWI League of Nations in Germany’s Saar basin, was followed by Justice travelling to Spain to fight for the Republicans against the fascist General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve but was invalided out after suffering a shrapnel wound in 1943.
A sporting life
As a young man, Justice turned out for Beckenham RFC’s First XV rugby team but later turned his sights on ice hockey.
Returning from Canada penniless, Justice played in goal for the London Lions ice hockey team, while also managing the national team at the European Championships in Berlin in 1932 and serving as Secretary to the British Ice Hockey Association.
An avid car enthusiast, Justice entered the Thousand Mile Race at the Brooklands racetrack but was unplaced. A year later, he competed in the Brighton Speed Trials, but his car expired before the end of the course.
Another favourite pastime was wildfowling, the hunting and shooting of ducks and geese – a hobby that he shared with the late Prince Philip, and which led to them striking up a friendship. Soon after World War II, though, Justice turned his attention to the conservation of wild birds. It was this that led to his involvement in Slimbridge.
Friendship between founders
While the story of the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire is dominated by its founder, the naturalist Sir Peter Scott, Justice also played an important role in its inception.
He and Scott, the son of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, had enjoyed a friendship for many years. Cemented by their shared love of birds, this friendship led Scott to invite Justice – a keen and knowledgeable falconer – to become a founding member of the wetland wildlife reserve he planned at Slimbridge. Opening in 1946, the reserve was to be overseen by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, and Justice did indeed become one of its founders.
However, his involvement in the Trust was more than mere celebrity endorsement. In their excellent biography of Justice , entitled What’s the Bleeding Time (a nod to a line from one of his classic films Doctor in the House) James Hogg, Robert Sellers, and Howard Watson describe how he drove from his home in Hampshire every weekend and joined wholeheartedly in preparation of the reserve:
“Everyone got down to work hammering in stakes, digging out ponds, planting willows and, when winter came, shivering in pillboxes counting geese.”
Since its opening, the reserve has gone from strength to strength, while Justice also played a small part in helping Scott to develop a device for catching geese which is still in use today.
A sad demise but a great legacy
While much of his life was filled with adventure, parts were tinged with sadness, too. Married twice, he was bereft when his only son died, aged four, near the family’s watermill home.
Justice was forced to retire from acting in 1970 when a series of strokes prevented him from working, and he died penniless in 1975 aged only 68.
Fifty years later, when so much wildlife is under threat, it seems fitting to remember the great legacy of a such a passionate environmental champion is so much more than simply that of a “film star”.
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