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As an extra

When Niven pre­sented him­self at Cen­tral Cast­ing, he learned that he needed a work per­mit to re­side and work in the United States. This meant that Niven had to leave the US, so he went to Mex­ico, where he worked as a "gun-man", clean­ing and pol­ish­ing the ri­fles of vis­it­ing Amer­i­can hunters. He re­ceived his res­i­dent alien visa from the Amer­i­can con­sulate when his birth cer­tifi­cate ar­rived from Britain. He re­turned to the US and was ac­cepted by Cen­tral Cast­ing as "An­...

Sam Goldwyn

Niven's role in Mutiny on the Bounty brought him to the at­ten­tion of in­de­pen­dent film pro­ducer Samuel Gold­wyn, who signed him to a con­tract and es­tab­lished his ca­reer. For Gold­wyn, Niven had a small role in Splen­dor (1935). He was loaned to MGM for a small part in Rose Marie (1936) then had a larger one in Palm Springs(1936) at Para­mount. His first size­able part for Gold­wyn came in Dodsworth (1936), play­ing a man who flirts with Ruth Chat­ter­ton. He was loaned to 20th Cen­tu...

Leading man

Niven grad­u­ated to star parts in "A" films with The Dawn Pa­trol (1938) at Warn­ers; he was billed after Errol Flynn and Basil Rath­bone but it was a lead­ing role and the film did ex­cel­lent busi­ness. Niven was re­luc­tant to take a sup­port part in Wuther­ing Heights(1939) for Gold­wyn, but even­tu­ally re­lented and the film was a big suc­cess. RKO bor­rowed him to play Gin­ger Rogers' lead­ing man in the ro­man­tic com­edy, Bach­e­lor Mother (1939), which was a big hit. Gold­wyn used...

After Britain de­clared war on Ger­many in 1939, Niven re­turned home and re­joined the British Army. He was alone among British stars in Hol­ly­wood in doing so; the British Em­bassyad­vis­ing most ac­tors to stay. Niven was recom­mis­sioned as a lieu­tenant into the Rifle Brigade (Prince Con­sort's Own) on 25 Feb­ru­ary 1940, and was as­signed to a motor train­ing bat­tal­ion. He wanted some­thing more ex­cit­ing, how­ever, and trans­ferred into the Com­man­dos. He was as­signed to a train­ing base at In­verailort House in the West­ern High­lands. Niven later claimed credit for bring­ing fu­ture Major Gen­eral Sir Robert E. Lay­cock to the Com­man­dos. Niven com­manded "A" Squadron GHQ Li­ai­son Reg­i­ment, bet­ter known as "Phan­tom". He worked with the Army Film Unit.

Niven re­sumed his ca­reer while still in Eng­land, play­ing the lead in A Mat­ter of Life and Death (1946), from the team of Pow­ell and Press­burger. The movie was crit­i­cally ac­claimed, pop­u­lar in Eng­land and the re­cip­i­ent of the first Royal Film Per­for­mance.

While on leave in 1940, Niven met Prim­ula "Prim­mie" Susan Rollo (18 Feb­ru­ary 1918, Lon­don – 21 May 1946), the daugh­ter of Lon­don lawyer William H.C. Rollo. After a whirl­wind ro­mance, they mar­ried on 16 Sep­tem­ber. A son, David, Jr., was born in De­cem­ber 1942 and a sec­ond son, James Gra­ham Niven on 6 No­vem­ber 1945. Prim­mie died aged 28, only six weeks after the fam­ily moved to the US. She frac­tured her skull after an ac­ci­den­tal fall in the Bev­erly Hills, Cal­i­for­nia home of Ty­rone Power, while play­ing a game of hide-and-seek. She had walked through a door be­liev­ing it to be a closet, but in­stead, it led to a stone stair­case to the basement. In 1948, Niven met Hjördis Paulina Tersme­den (née Gen­berg, 1919–1997), a di­vorced Swedish fash­ion model. He re­counted their meeting: In New York, Niven and Hjördis were next-door neigh­bours with Au­drey Hep­burn, who made her début on Broad­way that sea­son. In 1960, while film­ing Please Don't Eat the Daisies...

In 1980, Niven began ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fa­tigue, mus­cle weak­ness, and a war­ble in his voice. His 1981 in­ter­views on the talk shows of Michael Parkin­son and Merv Grif­fin alarmed fam­ily and friends; view­ers won­dered if Niven had ei­ther been drink­ing or suf­fered a stroke. He blamed his slightly slurred voice on the shoot­ing sched­ule on the film he had been mak­ing, Bet­ter Late Than Never. He was di­ag­nosed with amy­otrophic lat­eral scle­ro­sis (ALS, or "Lou Gehrig's dis­ease" in the US, or "motor neu­rone dis­ease" (MND) in the UK), later that year. His final ap­pear­ance in Hol­ly­wood was host­ing the 1981 Amer­i­can Film In­sti­tute trib­ute to Fred As­taire. In Feb­ru­ary 1983, using a false name to avoid pub­lic­ity, Niven was hos­pi­talised for 10 days, os­ten­si­bly for a di­ges­tive prob­lem. Af­ter­wards, he re­turned to his chalet at Château-d'Œx. His con­di­tion con­tin­ued to de­cline, but he re­fused to re­turn to the hos­pi­tal, and his fam­ily sup­ported...

A Thanks­giv­ing ser­vice for Niven was held at St Mar­tin-in-the-Fields, Lon­don, on 27 Oc­to­ber 1983. The con­gre­ga­tion of 1,200 in­cluded Prince Michael of Kent, Mar­garet, Duchess of Ar­gyll, Sir John Mills, Sir Richard At­ten­bor­ough, Trevor Howard, Sir David Frost, Joanna Lum­ley, Dou­glas Fair­banks, Jr. and Lord Olivier. Bi­og­ra­pher Gra­ham Lord wrote, "the biggest wreath, wor­thy of a Mafia God­fa­ther's fu­neral, was de­liv­ered from the porters at Lon­don's Heathrow Air­port, along with a card that read: 'To the finest gen­tle­man who ever walked through these halls. He made a porter feel like a king.'" In 1985, Niven was in­cluded in a se­ries of British postage stamps, along with Sir Al­fred Hitch­cock, Sir Char­lie Chap­lin, Peter Sell­ers and Vivien Leigh, to com­mem­o­rate "British Film Year".