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Richard Gregson, film producer, Oscar-nominated screenwriter and agent who counted Robert Redford among his roster of stars – obituary
Richard Gregson, who has died aged 89, was a film producer, screenwriter and agent, and one-time husband of the American film actress, Natalie Wood. For 20 years he was a leading figure in the film world of Hollywood and London, serving as agent for Robert Redford, John Schlesinger, Alan Bates and Frederic Raphael.
A delightful and friendly man, he survived from the “Mad Men” era when business was done in a civilised way, when men dressed sharply, sported long sideburns and lived life to the full.
Richard John Gregson was born in Poona on May 5 1930, the youngest of the four children of Captain Donald Gregson, 3rd Indian Cavalry. His mother, Violet Hanson, was the daughter of Sir Francis Hanson, second son of Sir Reginald Hanson, 1st Bt, who imported chutneys, curry powders and more from India and sold Red, White and Blue coffee. He was Lord Mayor of London from 1886-1887.
Violet’s father had died young and her difficult mother, Pearl, had married her off to the tutor of her brother Charlie: Billie Bullivant, a rich young homosexual who entertained the likes of Noël Coward, Prince Felix Yusupov and Ivor Novello, and spent time with undergraduates at Cambridge, among them Cecil Beaton.
Violet returned from her honeymoon virgo intacta, so her marriage was annulled “by reason of the incapacity of the Respondent to consummate the marriage”. Donald Gregson was her second husband. They divorced in 1944, and she remarried and lived to be 100. In 1933 her brother, Charlie Hanson, was drowned, somewhat questionably, in the Thames, his head bashed in.
Young Richard and his siblings spent the war years in Canada, and on his return he began work somewhat half-heartedly in a religious bookshop in London, selling vestments, chasubles and stoles to bishops and canons.
He entered the film world by chance in April 1958. The Rev Robin Denniston took over the religious bookshop, swiftly detected Gregson’s lack of suitability and asked him where he saw his future. “I want to work in show business,” he replied.
By chance, some days later, Paul Scott (later famous for The Raj Quartet) came into the shop. He was a partner in the agency David Higham and Associates, seeking to expand the business into film and television. Denniston recommended Gregson, whose only contact in that world was his brother, Michael Craig, the well-known British-Australian actor, under contract to the Rank Organisation. Scott took Gregson on.
He began tentatively, obtaining a £150 film option on Norman Longmate’s novel Strip Death Naked, about police investigating a murder in a nudist colony. He then found himself negotiating with the famed American agent, Arnold Weissberger. In the 1960s he embarked on a career which, as he put it, would take him to “the wilder shores of American showbiz” and a successful 10-year career as an agent.
In his memoir, Behind the Screen Door (2012), he related how he tackled the bullying stage producer David Merrick over Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse and their show, The Roar of the Greasepaint. The screenwriter, Sydney Marks, asked him to be his agent, telling him he had heard he was “a real tough son of a bitch”. Gregson would claim that the joy of being an agent was that anyone could do it – no training was involved.
A high spot in his mercurial career was as the agent for Darling (1965), starring Julie Christie, which won three Oscars. He represented the Italian producer, Jo Janni, the film’s writer, Frederic Raphael, and its director, John Schlesinger. In 1968 he took on London Management in partnership with Gareth Wigan, under the aegis of the Grade Organisation.
Gregson co-scripted the Academy Award-nominated film The Angry Silence (1960), with his brother Michael and Bryan Forbes, about a factory worker (Richard Attenborough) who refuses to take part in an unofficial strike. He also produced films such as Downhill Racer (1969), about an Alpine skier, starring Robert Redford and Gene Hackman, and Cyrano (1973), the Broadway musical starring Christopher Plummer, for which Anthony Burgess wrote the lyrics.
Following marriage to and divorce from Sally Ronaldson, in the mid-1960s Gregson embarked on a long-distance romance with Natalie Wood, who later moved in with him in Pimlico (where she was robbed of jewellery and furs worth £30,000). They married in May 1969, and had one daughter, Natasha, but they divorced the following year after Natalie had overheard him chatting too intimately to his secretary on the telephone.
Natalie Wood later married Robert Wagner; after she drowned in 1980, Gregson immediately went to comfort his daughter. Though he could have pressed for custody, he allowed Wagner to keep Natasha and raise her with her half-sister, Courtney, Wagner pointing out that the two girls needed each other.
As Wagner put it: “Because of Richard’s decency, there were no more losses piled on top of what had already happened.” It also made possible a strong link between Natasha and her father, who enjoyed her beach-time holidays with him every bit as much as her Hollywood life with Wagner, who married the actress Jill St John.
Sally Ronaldson, whom he married in 1958, was Gregson’s first wife. They had two daughters and a son. They were divorced, and she died in 2003.
In 1984 he married, thirdly, Julia Gregson, whose 2009 novel, East of the Sun, won numerous prizes and was translated into 21 languages. They settled happily in North Wales and had a daughter.
Richard Gregson, born May 5 1930, died August 21 2019