WALKER, Alexander 1930-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born March 22, 1930, in Portadown, Armagh, Northern Ireland; died July 15, 2003, in London, England. Journalist and author. Walker was a renowned film critic for the London Evening Standard who also wrote several actor biographies and other books about film. He inherited a love for the cinema from his mother, who began taking her son to the movies when he was only four years old. When, during World War II, she broke her glasses and could not see the screen, Walker went to see the pictures for her and then reported to her on what happened in what would become his earliest practice as a critic. As a teenager, he fell in love with classic movies such as Citizen Kane and began writing, selling a radio play to the British Broadcasting Corp. when he was only fifteen years old. He received a B.A. from Queen's University, Belfast and later attended the College d'Europe, in Bruges, Belgium, and the University of Michigan, where he taught philosophy and comparative government from 1952 to 1954. While in Michigan he met the owner of the London Evening Standard, who promised him a job if he came back to England. When Walker decided to take the job offer, the publisher reneged. Nevertheless, Walker found a job in England as a features editor for the Birmingham Gazette, followed by three years as film critic for the Birmingham Post. In 1960 he managed to get his foot back in the door at the Evening Standard, and from then until his death he was a regular feature-writer in that newspaper. Walker, who was named Critic of the Year in 1970, 1974, and 1998 by the British Press, gained a reputation as a fair, sometimes painfully frank critic although he could also be ebulliently effusive about the films he enjoyed.

Making friends with a number of actors and directors—he was especially close to Peter Sellers and director Stanley Kubrick, whose 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange Walker much admired—the critic at one point famously rankled director Ken Russell, who punched Walker during a television program after receiving a bad review. In addition to his work for the Evening Standard, Walker was a columnist for Vogue from 1974 to 1986 and often appeared on radio and television programs. He also was the author of movie-star biographies and general books on film, including Stanley Kubrick Directs (1971), Garbo: A Portrait (1980), National Heroes: British Cinema in the Seventies and Eighties (1985), "It's Only a Movie, Ingrid": Encounters on and off the Screen (1988), Fatal Charm: The Life of Rex Harrison (1993), and Audrey: Her Real Story (1994). Among his honors, Walker was named a chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1981.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Writers Directory, 18th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2003.

PERIODICALS

Daily Post (London, England), July 16, 2003, p. 11.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), July 16, 2003.

Guardian (London, England), July 16, 2003, p. 23.

Independent (London, England), July 16, 2003, p. 16.

Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2003, p. B13.

Times (London, England), July 16, 2003, p. 27.