Knight Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Actors (pre-1920)
Which of these actors, born no later than 1920, awarded knighthood in the Order of the British Empire during their career is your favorite?
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Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).
Guinness is really most remembered for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy for which he receive a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In the 1970s, Guinness made regular television appearances in Britain, including the role of George Smiley in the serialisations of two novels by John le Carré: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness was also one of three British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who made the transition from Shakespearean theatre in England to Hollywood blockbusters immediately after the Second World War.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.- Writer
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Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a funny walk.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in Walworth, London, England on April 16, 1889, to Hannah Harriet Pedlingham (Hill) and Charles Chaplin, both music hall performers, who were married on June 22, 1885. After Charles Sr. separated from Hannah to perform in New York City, Hannah then tried to resurrect her stage career. Unfortunately, her singing voice had a tendency to break at unexpected moments. When this happened, the stage manager spotted young Charlie standing in the wings and led him on stage, where five-year-old Charlie began to sing a popular tune. Charlie and his half-brother, Syd Chaplin spent their lives in and out of charity homes and workhouses between their mother's bouts of insanity. Hannah was committed to Cane Hill Asylum in May 1903 and lived there until 1921, when Chaplin moved her to California.
Chaplin began his official acting career at the age of eight, touring with the Eight Lancashire Lads. At age 18, he began touring with Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, joining them on the troupe's 1910 United States tour. He traveled west to California in December 1913 and signed on with Keystone Studios' popular comedy director Mack Sennett, who had seen Chaplin perform on stage in New York. Charlie soon wrote his brother Syd, asking him to become his manager. While at Keystone, Chaplin appeared in and directed 35 films, starring as the Little Tramp in nearly all.
In November 1914, he left Keystone and signed on at Essanay, where he made 15 films. In 1916, he signed on at Mutual and made 12 films. In June 1917, Chaplin signed up with First National Studios, after which he built Chaplin Studios. In 1919, he and Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists (UA).
Chaplin's life and career was full of scandal and controversy. His first big scandal was during World War I, at which time his loyalty to England, his home country, was questioned. He had never applied for American citizenship, but claimed that he was a "paying visitor" to the United States. Many British citizens called Chaplin a coward and a slacker. This and other career eccentricities sparked suspicion with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), who believed that he was injecting Communist propaganda into his films. Chaplin's later film The Great Dictator (1940), which was his first "talkie", also created a stir. In the film, Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, the film grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations.
Another scandal occurred when Chaplin briefly dated 22 year-old Joan Barry. However, Chaplin's relationship with Barry came to an end in 1942, after a series of harassing actions from her. In May 1943, Barry returned to inform Chaplin that she was pregnant and filed a paternity suit, claiming that the unborn child was his. During the 1944 trial, blood tests proved that Chaplin was not the father, but at the time, blood tests were inadmissible evidence, and he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child turned 21.
Chaplin also was scrutinized for his support in aiding the Russian struggle against the invading Nazis during World War II, and the United States government questioned his moral and political views, suspecting him of having Communist ties. For this reason, HUAC subpoenaed him in 1947. However, HUAC finally decided that it was no longer necessary for him to appear for testimony. Conversely, when Chaplin and his family traveled to London for the premier of Limelight (1952), he was denied re-entry to the United States. In reality, the government had almost no evidence to prove that he was a threat to national security. Instead, he and his wife decided to settle in Switzerland.
Chaplin was married four times and had a total of 11 children. In 1918, he married Mildred Harris and they had a son together, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who lived only three days. Chaplin and Harris divorced in 1920. He married Lita Grey in 1924, who had two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin. They were divorced in 1927. In 1936, Chaplin married Paulette Goddard, and his final marriage was to Oona O'Neill (Oona Chaplin), daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1943. Oona gave birth to eight children: Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin, Eugene Chaplin, Jane Chaplin, Annette-Emilie Chaplin, and Christopher Chaplin.
In contrast to many of his boisterous characters, Chaplin was a quiet man who kept to himself a great deal. He also had an "un-millionaire" way of living. Even after he had accumulated millions, he continued to live in shabby accommodations. In 1921, Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1972, he was honored with an Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century". He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1975 New Year's Honours List. No formal reason for the honour was listed. The citation simply reads "Charles Spencer Chaplin, Film Actor and Producer".
Chaplin's other works included musical scores that he composed for many of his films. He also authored two autobiographical books, "My Autobiography" (1964) and its companion volume, "My Life in Pictures" (1974).
Chaplin died at age 88 of natural causes on December 25, 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His funeral was a small and private Anglican ceremony according to his wishes. In 1978, Chaplin's corpse was stolen from its grave and was not recovered for three months; he was re-buried in a vault surrounded by cement.
Six of Chaplin's films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress: The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940).
Charlie Chaplin is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American cinema, whose movies were and still are popular throughout the world and have even gained notoriety as time progresses. His films show, through the Little Tramp's positive outlook on life in a world full of chaos, that the human spirit has and always will remain the same.- Actor
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Born in London, England, John Gielgud trained at Lady Benson's Acting School and RADA, London. Best known for his Shakespearean roles in the theater, he first played Hamlet at the age of 26. He worked under the tutelage of Lilian Bayliss with friend and fellow performer Laurence Olivier and other contemporaries of the National Theatre at the "Old Vic", London. He made his screen debut in 1924. Academy Award Best Supporting Actor, 1981, for Arthur (1981), Academy Award Nomination, 1964, for Becket (1964).- Actor
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Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.
One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsingør), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).
There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.
In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.
More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).- Actor
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Anthony Quayle was born in Ainsdale, Southport, Lancashire, England in September 1913. He completed his education at Rugby School and had a brief spell at RADA, before treading the boards for the first time as the straight man in a music hall comedy act in 1931. Tall, burly, round-faced and possessed of a powerful and resonant voice, he was mentored early on in his career by the well-known stage director Tyrone Guthrie. Letters of introduction led to steady employment with the Old Vic Company by September 1932, and a succession of small roles in classical parts. Quayle's reputation as an actor grew steadily, and, in 1936, he appeared on Broadway opposite Ruth Gordon in 'The Country Wife'. For the next few years, he consolidated his position as a Shakespearean actor. When the Second World War began, he was among the first in his profession to enlist, serving with the Royal Artillery and rising to the rank of major. Some of his wartime experiences, such as coordinating operations with Albanian partisans as part of the secret Special Operations Executive, were destined to be paralleled by his fictional post-war screen exploits as incisive army officers or spies. With the war still fresh in his mind, he subsequently published two novels (respectively in 1945, and in 1947), 'Eight Hours from England' and 'On Such a Night'.
In 1946, Quayle also made his debut as a theatrical director with a London production of 'Crime and Punishment'. Between 1948 and 1956, he had a distinguished tenure as director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, bringing into the company some of the biggest stars of the stage, including Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. Though acting in films from 1938, the theatre remained his favorite medium. He played diverse roles with great intensity and professionalism, achieving critical acclaim as Petruchio and Falstaff, Tamburlaine and Galileo (on Broadway) and the original role of Andrew Wyke in Anthony Shaffer's play 'Sleuth' (played in the first screen version by Olivier). In motion pictures Quayle tended to portray tough, dependable authority figures. He was good value for money as Commodore Harwood in Pursuit of the Graf Spee (1956), as the enigmatic Afrikaner captain in Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and as the stuffy, by-the-book Colonel Harry Brighton, who nonetheless appears to have a degree of admiration for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Due to his classical training, Quayle was often used in historical epics, giving one of his best performances as Cardinal Wolsey in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), earning him an Academy Award nomination. His voice was heard as narrator of The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and on radio in anything from 'The Ballad of Robin Hood' to Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Purloined Letter'.
The year prior to receiving his knighthood, Quayle founded the touring Compass Theatre Company, and served as its director until a few months before his death from cancer in October 1989.- Actor
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Movie roles are sometimes based upon what the audience expects to see. If the role called for the tall stereotypical Englishmen with the stiff upper lip and stern determination, that man would be C. Aubrey Smith, graduate of Cambridge University, a leading Freemason and a test cricketer for England. Smith was 30 by the time he embarked upon a career on the stage. It took another 20 plus years before he entered the flickering images of the movies. By 1915, Smith was over 50 in a medium that demanded young actors and starlets. For the next ten years, he appeared in a rather small number of silent movies, and after that, he faded from the scene. It was in 1930, with the advent of sound, that Smith found his position in the movies and that position would be distinguished roles. He played military officers, successful business men, ministers of the cloth and ministers of government. With the bushy eyebrows and stoic face, he played men who know about honour, tradition, and the correct path. He worked with big stars such as Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Shirley Temple. As for honours, Smith received the Order of the British Empire in 1938 and was knighted in 1944. He continued to work up to the time of his death.- Actor
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Sir Cedric Hardwicke, one of the great character actors in the first decades of the talking picture, was born in Lye, England on February 19, 1893. Hardwicke attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his stage debut in 1912. His career was interrupted by military service in World War I, but he returned to the stage in 1922 with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, distinguishing himself as Caesar in George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, which was his ticket to the London stage. For his distinguished work on the stage and in films, he was knighted by King George V in 1934, a time when very few actors received such an honor.
Hardwicke first performed on the American stage in 1936 and emigrated to the United States permanently after spending the 1948 season with the Old Vic. Hardwicke's success on stage and in films and television was abetted by his resonant voice and aristocratic bearing. Among the major films he appeared in were Les Misérables (1935), Stanley and Livingstone (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Suspicion (1941), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956).
His last film was The Pumpkin Eater (1964) in 1964. Cedric Hardwicke died on August 6, 1964 in New York City, New York.- Actor
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The British character actor Bernard Miles was born in Uxbridge, Middlesex, England, in 1907; his father was a farm laborer and his mother was a cook. After graduation from Pembroke College, Oxford, he was a teacher for a while and then joined the New Theatre in London. In 1937, he worked in Herbert Farjeon's revue company and established his theatrical career. He made appearances in relatively few films, serving as director, producer, and screenwriter, as well as actor, on a number of them. In 1959, Miles opened the Mermaid Theatre in London; his contributions to the London stage won him a knighthood in 1969 and a life peerage ten years later.- Actor
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Sir Ralph Richardson was one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century English-language theater, ascending to the height of his profession in the mid-1930s when he became a star in London's West End. He became the first actor of his generation to be knighted. He became Sir Ralph in 1947, and was quickly followed by Laurence Olivier in 1948, and then by John Gielgud in 1953. Co-stars and friends, the three theatrical knights were considered the greatest English actors of their generation, primarily for their mastery of the Shakespearean canon. They occupied the height of the British acting pantheon in the post-World War II years.- Actor
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Sir John Mills, one of the most popular and beloved English actors, was born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills on February 22, 1908, at the Watts Naval Training College in North Elmham, Norfolk, England. The young Mills grew up in Felixstowe, Suffolk, where his father was a mathematics teacher and his mother was a theater box-office manager. The Oscar-winner appeared in more than 120 films and TV movies in a career stretching over eight decades, from his debut in 1932 in Midshipmaid Gob (1932) through Bright Young Things (2003) and The Snow Prince (2009).
After graduating from the Norwich Grammar School for Boys, Mills rejected his father's academic career for the performing arts. After brief employment as a clerk in a grain merchant's office, he moved to London and enrolled at Zelia Raye's Dancing School. Convinced from the age of six that performing was his destiny, Mills said, "I never considered anything else."
After training as a dancer, he started his professional career in the music hall, appearing as a chorus boy at the princely sum of four pounds sterling a week in "The Five O'Clock Revue" at the London Hippodrome, in 1929. The short, wiry song-and-dance man was scouted by Noël Coward and began to appear regularly on the London stage in revues, musicals and legitimate plays throughout the 1930s. He appeared in a score of films before the war, "quota quickies" made under a system regulating the import of American films designed to boost local production. He was a juvenile lead in The Ghost Camera (1933), appeared in the musical Car of Dreams (1935), and then played lead roles in Born for Glory (1935), Nine Days a Queen (1936) and The Green Cockatoo (1937). His Hollywood debut was in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) with Robert Donat, but he refused the American studios' entreaties to sign a contract and stayed in England.
Mills relished acting in films, finding it a challenge rather than the necessary economic evil that many English actors at the time, such as Laurence Olivier, felt it was, and it was the cinema that would make him an internationally renowned star. He anchored his film career in military roles, such as those in his early pictures Born for Glory (1935) (a.k.a. "Forever England") and Raoul Walsh's You're in the Army Now (1937). He appeared in the classic In Which We Serve (1942), where he worked with his mentor Coward and with Coward's co-director David Lean, who would go on to direct Mills in some of his most memorable performances.
Throughout his film career Mills played a wide variety of military characters, portraying the quintessential English hero. He later tackled more complex characterizations, such as the emotionally troubled commander in Tunes of Glory (1960). He also played Field Marshal Haig in the satire Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) that mocked the entire genre. However, it was in his World War II films, which included We Dive at Dawn (1943), Waterloo Road (1945) and Johnny in the Clouds (1945), that Mills established himself as an innovative English film star.
With his ordinary appearance and everyman manner, Mills seemed "the boy-next-door," but the Mills hero was decent, loyal and brave, as well as tough and reliable under stress. In his military roles, he managed throughout his career to include enough subtle variations on the Mills heroic type to avoid appearing typed. He could play such straight heroes as Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as well as deconstruct the type in Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and "Tunes of Glory." The latter film features one of his finest film roles, that of the brittle Col. Basil Barrow, the new commander of a Scots battalion. Mills superbly played an emotionally troubled martinet in a role originally slated for Alec Guinness, his Great Expectations (1946) co-star, who decided to take the flashier role of the colonel's tormentor. It was one of Mills' favorite characters.
No male star of English cinema enjoyed such a long and rewarding career as a star while appearing predominantly in English films. As an actor, Mills chose his roles on the basis of the quality of the script rather than its propriety as a "star" turn. Because of this, he played roles that were more akin to character parts, such as shoemaker Willy Mossop in Hobson's Choice (1954). As he aged, his proclivity for well-written roles enabled him to make a seamless transition from a lead to character lead to character actor from the 1950s to the 1960s.
Almost 40 years after his film debut, Mills won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for playing the mute village idiot in Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970), an uncharacteristic part. In addition to "In Which We Serve" and "Ryan's Daughter," Lean had also directed Mills in memorable performances in This Happy Breed (1944) and "Hobson's Choice". He gave one of his finest turns as Pip in Lean's masterpiece "Great Expectations", in which Mills' performance was central to the success of the picture.
Other significant films in which Mills appeared include The Rocking Horse Winner (1949), King Vidor's War and Peace (1956), The Chalk Garden (1964), King Rat (1965), The Wrong Box (1966), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), Young Winston (1972) and Stanley Kramer's Oklahoma Crude (1973). He also appeared with his daughter Hayley Mills in Tiger Bay (1959) and The Family Way (1966) and had a cameo in her Disney hit The Parent Trap (1961). Mills appeared in a Disney hit of his own, Swiss Family Robinson (1960), as the paterfamilias. He had one of the better cameo parts in producer Mike Todd's epic Around the World in 80 Days (1956), playing a carriage driver, and appeared in a non-speaking part as Old Norway in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
In 1967 he appeared in the short-lived American TV series Dundee and the Culhane (1967) on CBS. In the hour-long series Mills played an English lawyer named Dundee who roamed the Wild West with a young American lawyer named Culhane, who was also a fast draw with a six-gun. The network was disappointed with the quality of the show's writing and cancelled it after 13 episodes. One of the series' directors was Ida Lupino, who played Mills' sister in "The Ghost Camera" over 30 years before (Lupino also directed Hayley in The Trouble with Angels (1966)). Mills' most famous television role was probably the title character in ITV's Quatermass (1979).
He appeared on Broadway during the 1961-62 season as the lead character in Terence Rattigan's "Ross," a fictionalization of the life of T.E. Lawrence, for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Tony Award. His only other Broadway appearance was in the 1987 revival of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," in which he played Alfred Doolittle. The play was nominated for a Tony for Best Revival, and Amanda Plummer, playing his character's daughter, Eliza, also received a Tony nomination.
After divorcing Aileen Raymond, whom he had married at the age of 19, Mills married playwright Mary Hayley Bell on January 16, 1941. Since he was serving in the army, they could not have a church service, and they renewed their vows at St. Mary's Church, next to their home, Hills House, in Denham, England, in 2001.
Mills has worked as both producer and director: in 1966, he directed daughter Hayley in Gypsy Girl (1966) (a.k.a. "Gypsy Girl), from a script written by his wife. He produced "The Rocking Horse Winner" and The History of Mr. Polly (1949), the latter film featuring his older daughter Juliet Mills as a child. Whistle Down the Wind (1961) in which Hayley's character mistakes a runaway convict played by Alan Bates for Jesus Christ, was based on a novel written by Mary.
Living in Hollywood during the 1960s where his daughter Hayley enjoyed her own Oscar-winning career as a child star, Mills and his wife became very popular with members of the movie colony. After Hayley grew out of her child actress roles, Mills returned to England, where he continued his film work. He became a council member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a life patron of the Variety Club.
Mills was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1960 and was knighted in 1976. Although he suffered from deafness and failing eyesight and went almost completely blind in 1990, he continued to act, playing both blind and sighted characters with his customary joie de vivre and panache. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts honored him with a Special Tribute Award in 1987 and a Fellowship, its highest award, in 2002. He was honored with a British Film Institute Fellowship in 1995 and was named a Disney Legend by The Walt Disney Co.
After a brief illness, Sir John Mills died at the age of 97 on April 23, 2005, in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England. He was survived by his widow (who survived him by eight months), his son Jonathan, his daughters Juliet and Hayley, and his grandson Crispian Mills, the lead singer of the hit pop music group Kula Shaker. He was the author of an autobiography, "Up in the Clouds, Gentleman Please," published in 1981.- Actor
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Rex Harrison was born Reginald Carey Harrison in Huyton, Lancashire, England, to Edith Mary (Carey) and William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker. He changed his name to Rex as a young boy, knowing it was the Latin word for "King". Starting out on his theater career at age 18, his first job at the Liverpool Rep Theatre was nearly his last - dashing across the stage to say his one line, made his entrance and promptly blew it. Fates were kind, however, and soon he began landing roles in the West End. "French Without Tears", a play by Terence Rattigan, proved to be his breakthrough role. Soon he was being called the "greatest actor of light comedy in the world". Having divorced his first wife Collette Thomas in 1942, he married German actress Lilli Palmer. The two began appearing together in many plays and British films. He attained international fame when he portrayed the King in Anna and the King of Siam (1946), his first American film. After a sex scandal, in which actress Carole Landis apparently committed suicide because he ended their affair, the relationship with wife Lilli became strained. Rex (by this time known as "Sexy Rexy" for his philandering ways and magnetic charm) began a relationship with British actress Kay Kendall and divorced Lilli to marry the terminally ill Kay with hopes of a re-marriage to Palmer upon Kay's death. The death of Kay affected Harrison greatly and Lilli never returned to him. During this time Rex was offered the defining role of his career: Professor Henry Higgins in the original production of "My Fair Lady". He won the Tony for the play and an Oscar for the film version. In 1962 Harrison married actress Rachel Roberts. This union and the one following it to Elizabeth Harris (Richard's ex) also ended in divorce. In 1978 Rex met and married Mercia Tinker. He and Mercia remained happily married until his death in 1990. She was also with him in 1989 when he was granted his much-deserved and long awaited knighthood at Buckingham Palace. Rex Harrison died of pancreatic cancer three weeks after his last stage appearance, as Lord Porteous in W. Somerset Maugham's "The Circle".- Actor
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Comedian Bob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons of Avis (Townes), light opera singer, and William Henry Hope, a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. His maternal grandmother was Welsh. Hope moved to Bristol before emigrating with his parents to the USA in 1908. After some years onstage as a dancer and comedian, he made his first film appearance in The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) singing "Thanks for the Memory", which became his signature tune.
In partnership with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, he appeared in the highly successful "Road to ..." comedies (1940-52), and in many others until the early 1970s. During World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars he spent much time entertaining the troops in the field. For these activities and for his continued contributions to the industry he received five honorary Academy Awards.- Actor
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Although he appeared in approximately 100 movies or TV shows, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. never really intended to take up acting as a career. However, the environment he was born into and the circumstances naturally led him to be a thespian. Noblesse oblige.
He was born Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr. in New York City, New York, to Anna Beth (Sully), daughter of a very wealthy cotton mogul, and actor Douglas Fairbanks (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman), then not yet established as the swashbuckling idol he would become. Fairbanks, Jr. had German Jewish (from his paternal grandfather), English, and Scottish ancestry.
He proved a gifted boy early in life. To the end of his life he remained a multi-talented, hyperactive man, not content to appear in the 100 films mentioned above. Handsome, distinguished and extremely bright, he excelled at sports (much like his father), notably during his stay at the Military Academy in 1919 (his role in Claude Autant-Lara's "L'athlète incomplete" illustrated these abilities). He also excelled academically, and attended the Lycéee Janson de Sailly in Paris, where he had followed his divorced mother. Very early in his life he developed a taste for the arts as well and became a painter and sculptor. Not content to limiting himself to just one field, he became involved in business, in fields as varied as mining, hotel management, owning a chain of bowling alleys and a firm that manufactured popcorn. During World War II he headed London's Douglas Voluntary Hospital (an establishment taking care of war refugees), was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's special envoy for the Special Mission to South America in 1940 before becoming a lieutenant in the Navy (he was promoted to the rank of captain in 1954) and taking part in the Allies' landing in Sicily and Elba in 1943. A fervent Anglophile, was knighted in 1949 and often entertained Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in his London mansion, "The Boltons".
His film career began at the age of 13 when he was signed by Paramount Pictures. He debuted in Stephen Steps Out (1923) but the film flopped and his career stagnated despite a critically acclaimed role in Stella Dallas (1925). Things really picked up when he married Lucille Le Sueur, a young starlet who was soon to become better known as Joan Crawford. The young couple became the toast of the town (one "Screen Snapshots" episode echoes this sudden glory) and good parts and success followed, such as the hapless partner of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (1931) a favorably reviewed turn as the villain in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) or more debonair characters in slapstick comedies or adventure yarns. The 1930s were a fruitful period for Fairbanks, his most memorable role probably being that of the British soldier in Gunga Din (1939); although it was somewhat of a "swashbuckling" role, Fairbanks made a point of never imitating his father. After the World War II, his star waned and, despite a moving part in Ghost Story (1981), he did not appear in a major movie. Now a legend himself, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. left this world with the satisfaction of having lived up to the Fairbanks name at the end of a life nobody could call "wasted".- Actor
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Sir Michael Redgrave was of the generation of English actors that gave the world the legendary John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, Britain three fabled "Theatrical Knights" back in the days when a knighthood for thespian was far more rare than it is today. A superb actor, Redgrave himself was a charter member of the post-Great War English acting pantheon and was the sire of an acting dynasty. He and his wife, Rachel Kempson, were the parents of Vanessa Redgrave, Corin Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave and the grandparents of Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson and Jemma Redgrave.- Actor
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Sir Norman Wisdom has become the great British clown in the mold of Sir Charles Chaplin with his little man in the ill fitting suit and cloth cap. His character is an everyman, much put upon but struggling through to a (usually) happy ending. He was brought up in an orphanage after his mother died and his father disowned him. He joined the British Army at age 14 as a band boy and learnt to play the clarinet, drums and xylophone. In 1941, he went to India with the army and became a comedian by clowning around in camp concerts. When demobbed, he returned home and decided to try to get on the stage but couldn't find an agent who was interested in him.
After marrying his fiancee, Freda Simpson, he spent five weeks in America searching for an agent and work without success. On his return to Britain, he eventually found an agent resulting in him making his first stage appearance at Collins Music Hall on December 17, 1946. Over time, his talent and his popularity grew resulting in him making his first major film Trouble in Store (1953) followed by One Good Turn (1955). Before long, he was writing the screenplays for eight of his films, including The Square Peg (1958), Follow a Star (1959), A Stitch in Time (1963) and The Early Bird (1965). In addition to writing the screenplays, he also composed numerous songs including his theme song "Don't Laugh at Me ('Cause I'm a Fool)".- Actor
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Some of Hordern's finest work was not in films or television but on radio: His performance as Gandalf in the BBC's radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was arguably the definitive portrayal of that character (contrast Hordern's Gandalf with that of Ian McKellen in the 3-part film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings directed by Peter Jackson).- Actor
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Spike was born an 'Army Brat', the son of an Irish Captain in the British Raj in India. Educated in a series of Roman Catholic schools in India and at Lewisham Polytechnic in England, he spent his formative years playing the fool and playing the trumpet in local jazz bands.
He joined the British Army himself (under protest if you believe his auto-biogs) as a conscript at the outbreak of WWII. He served in the Royal Artillery as Gunner Milligan through the North African and Italian campaigns. He got a bit too close to an exploding shell and was hospitalised with shell-shock. On his escape from army life he started his "real" work as an author and humourist.
Most famous for 'The Goon Show' with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe (and originally Michael Bentine), these radio shows are commonly regarded as re-writing the rules of comedy (even before Monty Python). However under the pressure of writing all the scripts he suffered a breakdown and became a clinical manic-depressive.
He was fondly regarded as the last of the great British eccentrics and had written a wealth of comic poetry mainly for children, a few novels and his multi-volume auto-biography. Spike was also a keen (fanatical?) environmental campaigner.- Actor
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Robert Murray Helpmann was born in Mount Gambier, Australia, as the eldest of three children born to stock and station agent James Murray Helpman and Mary Gardiner.
After the family moved to Adelaide in 1914, Helpmann was educated at Prince Alfred's College, but he soon left school at the age of 14 to focus on dance, specifically ballet. He was taught ballet by Nora Stewart. Helpmann first danced solo at the Theatre Royal in Adelaide in "The Ugly Duckling" in 1922. In 1926, he was trained by Alexis Dolinoff, the leading male dancer for Anna Pavlova, whom Helpmann soon became an apprentice for. The next year, in 1927, he joined J. C. Williamson Ltd. as their star dancer.
Helpmann went on to become the principal dancer at Sadlers Wells Ballet from 1933 to 1950. World renowned as a dancer and choreographer, amongst his other achievements he was the director of the Australian Ballet Company. He directed the world tour of Margot Fonteyn in 1963.
Towards the end of his life, Helpmann was living in Balmoral, a suburb of Mosman, in Sydney, Australia. On September 28, 1986, Helpmann died in the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, at the age of 77, from emphysema, having been a lifelong smoker.- Actor
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One of the great British stage actors of his era Donald Wolfit was noted for his magnificent portrayals of King Lear and Tamburlaine. Yet no actor of his generation was surrounded by more controversy. He was temperamental and difficult to deal with, enraged by criticism and tyrannical with the companies he led.
Although his talent was never in any doubt, critics often condemned his companies' poor supporting players and tasteless costumes. Even in death he had his critics.
Wolfit appeared in numerous theatre seasons at the Old Vic and Stratford-upon-Avon but preferred the life of a touring player and as the star of a vagabond troupe. He also appeared in many films and television plays. One of his most barnstorming performances was in the title role of the film Svengali (1954) in which, with his hypnotic real-life stare, he puts Hildegard Knef into a permanent trance.
The money from his film work helped to finance many of his stage productions. Wolfit is best remembered today as the inspiration for the film The Dresser (1983), in which Albert Finney plays a barnstorming actor-manager.- Writer
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Noel Coward virtually invented the concept of Englishness for the 20th century. An astounding polymath - dramatist, actor, writer, composer, lyricist, painter, and wit -- he was defined by his Englishness as much as he defined it. He was indeed the first Brit pop star, the first ambassador of "cool Britannia." Even before his 1924 drugs-and-sex scandal of The Vortex, his fans were hanging out of their scarves over the theater balcony, imitating their idol's dress and repeating each "Noelism" with glee. Born in suburban Teddington on 16 December 1899, Coward was on stage by the age of six, and writing his first drama ten years later. A visit to New York in 1921 infused him with the pace of Broadway shows, and he injected its speed into staid British drama and music to create a high-octane rush for the jazz-mad, dance-crazy 1920s. Coward's style was imitated everywhere, as otherwise quite normal Englishmen donned dressing gowns, stuck cigarettes in long holders and called each other "dahling"; his revues propagated the message, with songs sentimental ("A Room With A View," "I'll See You Again") and satirical ("Mad Dogs and Englishmen," "Don't Put Your Daughter On the Stage, Mrs. Worthington"). His between-the-wars celebrity reached a peak in 1930 with "Private Lives," by which time he had become the highest earning author in the western world. With the onset of World War II he redefined the spirit of the country in films such as This Happy Breed (1944), In Which We Serve (1942), Blithe Spirit (1945) and, perhaps most memorably, Brief Encounter (1945). In the postwar period, Coward, the aging Bright Young Thing, seemed outmoded by the Angry Young Men, but, like any modern pop star, he reinvented himself, this time as a hip cabaret singer: "Las Vegas, Flipping, Shouts "More!" as Noel Coward Wows 'Em in Cafe Turn" enthused Variety. By the 1960s, his reappraisal was complete -- "Dad's Renaissance", called it -- and his "Hay Fever" was the first work by a living author to be produced at the National Theatre. He was knighted -- at last -- in 1970, and died in his beloved Jamaica on 26 March 1973. Since his death, his reputation has grown. There is never a point at which his plays are not being performed, or his songs being sung. A playwright, director, actor, songwriter, filmmaker, novelist, wit . . . was there nothing this man couldn't do? Born into a musical family he was soon treading the boards in various music hall shows where he met a young girl called Gertrude Lawrence, a friendship and working partnership that lasted until her death. His early writings were mainly short songs and sketches for the revue shows popular in the 1920s, but even his early works often contained touches of the genius to come ("Parisian Pierrot" 1923). He went on to write and star (with Gertie) in his own revues, but the whiff of scandal was never far away, such as that from the drug addict portrayed in "The Vortex." Despite his obvious homosexual lifestyle he was taken to the hearts of the people and soon grew into one of the most popular writer/performers of his time.- Actor
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Seymour Hicks was an extremely successful actor and theatrical impresario who flourished from the late 19th century into the 1930s. He was best remembered for his portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol".
Born on January 30, 1871 on the Isle of Jersey, he first trod the boards as a professional at the age of sixteen. He became a musical-comedy star in London in 1894 in "The Shop Girl", which he followed up with "The Circus Girl" (1896) and "A Runaway Girl" (1898), both of which co-starred his wife Ellaline Terriss, whom he had married in 1893.
After the turn of the century, Hicks began writing musical comedies that he and his wife appeared in. These efforts were met with great success. With his earnings from his successful career, he built the Aldwych Theatre in 1905 and the Seymour Hicks Theatre in 1906. (The Hicks was renamed the Globe Theatre in 1909 and eventually the Gielgud Theatre in 1994.) The first production at the Aldwych, Hicks' own musical comedy "The Beauty of Bath", was a hit. Jerome Kern was the composer and P.G. Wodehouse gained his first paying job as a writer on the musical. Wodeouse would be credited with the lyrics to two songs on another Hicks musical, "The Gay Gordons", in 1907.
(Hicks also was instrumental in "discovering" the young Alfred Hitchcock. When the director Hugh Croise walked off the set of the 1923 short Always Tell Your Wife (1923), based on a play by Hicks, starring Seymour Hicks, and produced by his Seymour Hicks Productions, the actor enlisted Hitchcock to finish directing it. It was only the second directing gig for Hitchcock, and though he was uncredited, it was his first film to be screened. (Hitch's first movie, Number 13 (1922), was never completed.))
By the time of the "Always Tell Your Wife" movie, Hicks had successfully navigated the change in theatrical tastes brought about by the Great War. He had begun writing and appearing in light, escapist comedies and satiric farces. Many of the farces he put on in the 1920s were adapted from French plays. Eventually, as his star waned, he worked in music halls.
It was in 1901 that Hicks first played the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, the role for which he was most famous. He appeared in "A Christmas Carol" thousands of times on stage and made two movie versions of the Charles Dickens classic, a silent film (Old Scrooge (1913)) in 1913 and a talkie (Scrooge (1935)) in 1935.
By the mid-'30s, he was a well-established and highly respected actor and theatrical impresario. He became the 13th actor to become knighted in 1934, which came three years after the French Republic awarded him the Legion of Honor in recognition of his services in promoting French theater in England. (In 1915, he had won the French Croix de Guerre for entertaining Allied troops in France during in World War One and would win his second Croix de Guerre in World War II for the same service to the Allies.)
Seymour Hicks died on April 6, 1949 in Hampshire, England. He was 78 years old. He had continued appearing on stage and in movies until the year before his death.- Actor
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John Clements hailed from southern England and was educated at St Paul's School in London and St John's College, Cambridge. His acting aspiration prompted his first stage appearance at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in 1930 in the play "Out of the Blue". Through the 1930s, he continued to develop his acting skills touring with the Ben Greet Company. It was in late 1935 he founded the Intimate Theatre at Palmer's Green in North London. There he provided weekly plays in repertory until 1941. During the war, he worked with Entertainments National Service Association (E.N.S.A) and from 1944 worked with the Old Vic Company headed by Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, while the theater group was resident at the New Theatre in London. Already he had broken in to films with the Anthony Kimmins science fiction story Once in a New Moon (1934). He had other small parts in two historically significant films of cinema: the Alexander Korda production Rembrandt (1936) with Charles Laughton and the unfinished I, Claudius (1937) of Josef Von Sternberg with its stellar British cast. Clements had another small but most memorable role in the adaption of the James Hilton novel Knight Without Armor (1937), as a young communist police official helping English spy Robert Donat and beautiful noblewoman Marlene Dietrich escape from the Russian Revolution. Clements finally got star billing with Richardson, being chosen by director Victor Saville for the rather soap opera-tinged South Riding (1938). The next year, again with Richardson, he had the romantic lead in his most recognized role as the principled coward who redeems himself fourfold in the epic The Four Feathers (1939) by the ever enterprising Korda Brothers. Though his films numbered less than 30, and into the 1940s the roles became decidedly 'B' in production value, his stage appearances numbered 200. And Clements had found himself drawn to directing as well as acting. He wrote, directed, and produced his film Call of the Blood (1948). Also, he functioned as actor-manager-producer in a number of West End theater productions from the mid-1940s into the early 1950s and others productions to 1957, acting with his second wife actress Kay Hammond to critical success. In 1955, he accepted the appointment as Advisor on Drama to Associated Rediffusion Ltd and also as one of the Board of Directors of the Saville Theatre. He was appointed Director of the Chichester Festival Theatre from 1966 to 1973. He had continued small supporting film and a few TV roles intermittently through the 1960s, his last film appearance being a cameo in the Richard Attenborough biographical flick Gandhi (1982). For his distinguished work as actor, director, and producer John Clements was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the Queen's Honours List 1956 and awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 1968 Queen's Honours List for his services to drama.- Godfrey Seymour Tearle was born in 1884, the son of British actor/manager George (Osmond) Tearle and American actress Marianne Conway (her second marriage). His father and uncle were first-generation acting Tearles, and his mother also came from a family of actors. It seems that Godfrey's destiny was set at birth. The Tearles' family's origins lay rooted in the rural areas of Bedfordshire. His grandfather was a soldier who served in the Crimean War. Godfrey made his stage debut at age nine as young Prince Richard, Duke of York, in his father's production of "Richard III." He subsequently attended Carlisle Grammar School in Carlisle, England, but continued acting in his father's company into his teen years. His older half-brother, Frederick (Levy), was also a successful actor and later billed himself as Conway Tearle and earned distinction as a suave silent-era matinée idol. In 1908 Godfrey made his film debut in a shortened version of Romeo and Juliet (1908), at the Lyceum Theatre, which co-starred then-wife actress Mary Malone. Building up his stage reputation in the classics, he became a Shakespearean player of note with sterling portrayals of "Othello", "Macbeth" and "Henry V", among others. Active service in the Royal Field Artillery in 1915 temporarily interrupted his budding theater career for nearly four years. He returned to the footlights, but also attempted to earn a reputation in silents. Although he was less successful, Godfrey's mellifluous voice proved ideal for sound and he made a mild go of it with occasional movie forays in the 1930s and 1940s. He distinguished himself as patrician gents in both character leads and supports. He made a particular impression in The 39 Steps (1935), Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller, in which he played the professor (aka menacing agent) minus a finger; The Beginning or the End (1947) as President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Crash of Silence (1952), a four-tissue tearjerker, as the grandfather of a deaf child; and the charming comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) as a genial bishop, which was released the year of his death. On the personal front, he and actress Malone were divorced after 20 years of marriage, and Godfrey married much-younger starlet Stella Freeman in 1932. Tragically she died aged 26 in May 1936 from pneumonia, just a few months after the suicide of his actor/brother Malcolm Tearle. A third marriage failed for but he managed to enjoy the last few years of his life in the company of Stratford stage actress Jill Bennett. He was knighted in 1951 and died two years later in London, following a lengthy illness, at age 68.
- British character actor Felix Aylmer was educated at Oxford and later studied drama, making his stage debut at the London Coliseum in 1911. During World War I he served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and resumed his stage career after the war ended. He entered films in 1930 and stayed in them for the next 40 years, specializing in elderly, doddering characters (often clerics). Arguably his most memorable film appearance is that of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Laurence Olivier's Henry V (1944). He is also well-known for his portrayal of Father Anselm in the television series Oh Brother! (1968).
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Herbert Beerbohm Tree was born on 17 December 1852 in Kensington, London, England, UK. He was an actor and director, known for King John (1899), Henry VIII (1911) and The Tempest (1905). He was married to Lady Tree. He died on 2 July 1917 in Marylebone, London, England, UK.- When one thinks of the great English actors who have been knighted, one thinks of Henry Irving, the greatest actor of the middle-to-late Victorian period who became the first thespian to have a sovereign's sword patted on both shoulders in 1895, or the likes of
Laurence Olivier(acclaimed as the greatest actor of his generation), John Gielgud (considered by many critics to be the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation and possessor of what Olivier called "The voice that wooed the world"), or Alec Guinness (a unique and versatile talent), or even movie stars like Sean Connery (the only Brit to be #1 at the box office in the United States) or Michael Caine (a delightful old warhorse who, like the Energizer bunny, keeps going and going well past a prudent time for retirement). Seldom does one think of the name of John Martin Harvey (1863-1944) when one thinks of the great actors of the English stage, but in 1921, he became the seventh actor to be knighted.
John Martin Harvey, or as he styled himself after obtaining his knighthood, Sir John Martin-Harvey, is known to history now, if at all, for playing Sydney Carton in an adaption of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1935), a part more associated with Ronald Colman. But Martin Harvey, who had done his apprenticeship in Irving's company, claimed to have played the part of Carton 3,000 times on stage in his own production called The Only Way (1925), which was filmed in 1927. Directed by Herbert Wilcox, it reportedly was the first film of its length (10,000 feet) made in Britain.
Martin Harvey had been born in Wivenhoe, Essex, England in 1863, the son of a yacht-maker and was apprenticed at his father's boatwright business to learn the family trade. He wanted to become an actor, and one of his father's clients was the playwright and lyricist W.S. Gilbert, who helped him get acting lessons. In 1881, he manged go win the part of a boy at London's Court Theatre. The following year, a friend of his father gave him the 19-year-old tyro a letter of introduction to Bram Stoker, the general manager of Henry Irving's company at the Lyceum Theatre. Martin Harvey would spend 14 years toiling in minor roles in Irving's company, though eventually, when he was 25 years old, Irving allowed him and others to form the Lyceum Vacation Company.
The Lyceum Vacation Company toured during the summer "By permission of Mr. Henry Irving" (an endorsement as good as royal letters patent) equipped with the parent Lyceum company's sets, props, costumes and prompt books for free. For six years, he acted with the Lyceum Vaction Company for six weeks each summer, including tours of the United States and Canada, which enabled him to play leading man roles. Martin Harvey proved to be far more popular in Canada than in the U.S., as he would be far more popular in the provinces than in London when he set out on his own as an actor-manager in the 20th Century.
He married Nina de Silva, a fellow member of the company. While participating in Irving's North American tour of 1897-98, Nina decided to make Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" the property on which they would strike out on their own. They began writing their own adaptation in Chicago, and when they got back to London, they hired the playwright Freeman Wills's to continue the adaptation of the classic novel into a dramatic property.
In 1898, he was acclaimed playing Pelleas in Maurice Maeterlinck's "Pelleas and Melisande" opposite Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Meanwhile, the Martin Harveys managed to obtain financing for their production of Dickens's novel, called "The Only Way", and were able to rent the Lyceum itself, which was vacant.
"The Only Way" opened to good reviews and good business in February of 1899 and made the couple's reputations, but business soon fell off. The Martin Harvey company's 1900-01 London season was poor, likely as they were using plays and and acting techniques that were seen as old-fashioned at the dawn of the 20th Century by sophisticated Londoners. Martin Harvey aped Henry Irving and styled himself as a Romantic actor, relying on plays of suspect literary merit that afforded him leading roles in which he could shine. This type of theater relied heavily on costumes and spectacle. The play was not the thing, but the actor; everything, including the lighting, was focused on the star performer.
Reeling from poor houses in London, a friend advised Harvey Martin to go on a provincial tour with "The Only Way". He did and made a great success of it, so much so that he became known as "The King of the Provinces." By 1921, he had notched the 2,000 performance of "The Only Way" in Liverpool and would continue touring with the vehicle for nearly another decade, playing to audiences of up to 3,000 people a night.
He proved to the "The King of the Provinces" in North America, too, literally. His 1903 tour of The States was a disaster and it was re-routed to Canada where he again was a great success in the Provinces of the Dominion. He returned to Canada in the fall of 1919 and often toured there for the following 15 years.
After Irving died in 1905, Martin Harvey revived plays that Irving had thrived in, often using Irving's own props, further burnishing his reputation as the last of the great Romantic actors. Aside from Irving's repertoire, he won acclaim as Oedipus in a 1912 production staged by Max Reinhardt at Covent Garden. The year before, Reinhardt had designed his stage production of Hamlet using a cyclorama in order to reduce the need for time-consuming set changes. At the time, it was a radical idea, but Martin Harvey's portrayal of the Gloomy Dane had no one forgetting Johnston Forbes-Robertson's masterful performance, which was considered definitive at the time.
He also had great success in Maeterlinck's The Burgomaster of Stilemonde (1929) and in A Cigarette-Maker's Romance (1913), both of which were filmed. (He only appeared in six movies during his career.) Though his production of George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple (1959) was a success, neither he nor Shaw was satisfied with it. Martin Harvey would never be successful in Shavian drama (unlike Forbes-Robertson, for whom Shaw wrote the part of Julius Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)) or other modern parts. He would continue to rely on "The Only Way" and other old Victorian chestnuts, which was alright in the provinces, but was frowned upon by more sophisticated London and American audiences and critics.
During the Great War, Martin Harvey toured the country giving military recruitment lectures and raising money for the Red Cross and other charities, most notably the Nation's Fund for Nurses. Established in 1917 by the British Women's Hospital Committee, the Fund financially support the newly created College of Nursing with the aim of providing relief for sick or disabled nurses. Martin Harvey and his wife raised enough money to buy a building for the College of Nursing in 1920 which became a rest home for nurses.
He was knighted on the New Year's Honour's List in 1921, most likely due to his charitable work as his London reviews at that time of his career were lacking. Some of it may have been snobbish London critics deriding the "King of the Provinces".
After being knighted, he hyphenated his name. He continued to tour the provinces, including Canada, with diminishing success. By the time of his last Canadian tour in 1934, he was appearing to small houses and little acclaim.
Sir John Martin-Harvey died in 1944 at five weeks shy of his 81st birthday. - Actor
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George Robey was born on 20 September 1869 in Herne Hill, London, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Chu Chin Chow (1934), Don Quixote (1933) and The Temperance Fete (1932). He was married to Blanche Littler (manager) and Ethel Haydon (performer). He died on 29 November 1954 in Saltdean, Sussex, England, UK.- Actor
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Sir Gerald Du Maurier was one of the top thespians on the English stage in the first third of the 20th Century, and his distinguished career as an actor-manager led to his being knighted by King George V in 1922. Born in Hampstead, London on March 26, 1873, he was the son anglo-French writer and cartoonist 'George du Maurier', best known for creating the character of Svengali in his 1894 novel "Trilby", and the former Emma Wightwick. Sir Gerald also was the father of writer Dame Daphne Du Maurier and the uncle of the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired the boy characters in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1924).
Du Maurier was educated at Heath Mount School from 1882 to 1887 and then at Harrow. He became a businessman after Harrow, but he did not like it and his parents' connections enabled him to enter a life in a theater with one of the top companies, as his father's friend John Hare gave him a part in a production of Sydney Grundy's "An Old Jew" at the Garrick Theatre. Like Seymour Hicks, another theatrical knight who was a contemporary (and who played a key role in his success), Du Maurier toiled in small parts for many years before his breakthrough came in two plays by J.M. Barrie, the writer who was inspired by his nephews. Du Maurier scored in Barrie's The Admirable Crichton (1918) in 1902 and, in a role closer to home, triumphed in the dual role of George Darling and Captain Hook in Barrie's "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up" in 1904. (Hicks, who who achieve immortality playing Ebenezer Scrooge several thousands times on stage and on screen, turned down "Peter Pan".) Interestingly, Du Maurier's daughter Angela may have partially inspired the character of Wendy.
From 1910 to 1925, Du Maurier managed Wyndham's Theatre with Frank Curzon before moving his company to the St James's Theatre. Audiences were enamored of his subtly realistic acting style that suggested rather telegraphed emotion. According to his daughter Daphne in her biography of her father, Du Maurier used a casual manner on stage and disliked it when an actor in his company showed too much emotion. Sir Gerald would reproach an actor who played a scene too enthusiastically by asking, "Must you kiss her as though you were having steak and onions for lunch? It may be what you feel but it's damned unattractive from the front row of the stalls. Can't you just say, 'I love you,' and yawn, and light a cigarette and walk away?"
He was made knighted in 1922 and such was his popularity, in 1929, a filtered cigarette brand was named after him in an endorsement deal. A heavy smoker, Du Maurier himself smoked filterless cigarettes and never partook of the brand named in his honor, but the deal gave him income to pay off a tax debt to the Inland Revenue.
Sir Gerald Du Maurier continued to perform onstage and in movies until his death. He died of colon cancer in London on April 11, 1934 at the age of 61.- When one thinks of the great English actors who have been knighted, one thinks of Sir Henry Irving, the greatest actor of the middle-to-late Victorian period who became the first thespian to have a sovereign's sword patted on both shoulders in 1895, or the likes of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, the greatest Hamlet of his generation. In the 20th Century, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, who became at the age of 40 the youngest actor to ever be knighted, made his reputation in the works of George Bernard Shaw and had a distinguished career both on-stage and on-screen, gracing the silver screen as an A-List character actor. (Sir Cedric also gave the world of British theater one of its best anecdotes. When he went to Buckingham Palace to be knighted in 1934, as he knelt before King George V, the King's courtier whispered the name of the actor into the King's ear. The hard-of-hearing sovereign, after anointing the thespian with a swat of the sword on both shoulders, then solemnly intoned, "Rise, Sir Cedric Pickwick," conflating him with a character out of Charles Dickens.
Starting his career in 1912, Sir Cedric Hardwicke flourished on stage after the Great War (he served in the British Army from 1914 to 1921), a decade before the flowering of Sir Laurence Olivier(acclaimed as the greatest actor of his generation and the first of three actors to be made a peer) and Sir John Gielgud (considered by many critics to be the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation and possessor of what Olivier called "The voice that wooed the world"). Seldom does one think of the name of Nigel Playfair as one of the immortals of the English stage, but in 1928, he became the tenth actor to receive a knighthood.
Playfair (1874-1934) made his reputation as the actor-manager of the Lyric Theatre after completing his studies at University College, Oxford. From 1904 to 1924, Playfair made The Lyric a success. His 1919 production of William Shakespeare's As You Like It (1936), first staged at the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1919 and then re-staged at the Lyric a year later, was attacked by conventional critics. However, the production was a watershed, revolutionizing the presentation of The Bard on stage by bringing Shakespeare into the modern age. Playfair broke with the tradition of hidebound presentations of classical Elizbethan and Jacobean theater that had remained rooted in the spectacle-driven, fancy dress Romantic productions of Irving and his contemporaries, a tradition evoking their predecessors and a style of presentation dating back to David Garrick. By the time Playfair and other modernizers tackled Shakespeare, his plays had been heavily bowdlerized and amended with rewritten business by the likes of Colley Cibber, in which the play was no longer the thing but a vehicle for star-actors.
Aside from bringing Shakespeare simultaneously back on his own term and into the 20th Century, Playfair's other great contribution was his involvement with the British Broadcasting Corp. In 1923, as a radio show producer, he oversaw the BBC's first transmissions of Shakespeare plays on the "wireless". As a BBC producer, he commissioned the first radio play to be broadcast in England, Richard Hughes's three-men-caught-in-a-coal-mine potboiler "Danger", which was broadcast on January 15, 1924.
For his contributions to the theater, Nigel Playfair was knighted in 1928. He died in 1934. - Actor
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Sir Lewis Casson was a British actor and theatrical director who was married to the legendary actress Dame Sybil Thorndike. He played a role in modernizing the British theatre, expanding it to embrace social critiques as well as new techniques, and was an advocate for a National Theatre.
Lewis was born on October 26, 1875 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England to Thomas Casson, a bank manager who had been born in Wales, and Laura Ann. The family moved to Denbigh, Wales when Lewis was still a boy. His father's passion was building organs, and in 1891, the family moved to London where Thomas became a professional builder of theatrical organs. Lewis worked for his father but eventually attended university to study chemistry but left school without completing his degree. He then trained to become a teacher at St Mark's College, Chelsea. After getting his teaching certificate, he returned to his father's organ-making business in 1900.
The young Casson was attracted to socialism and became a supporter of Keir Hardie, the leader of the new Labour Party. Lewis had always been interested in acting and had participated in amateur theatricals while young. He became a tutor at St. Mark's and acted in semi-professional productions staged in non-theatrical venues London's East End.
He turned professional in 1903 when he was recruited by the managers of the Royal Court Theatre. Whilst at the Royal Court he appeared in George Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman" and "Major Barbara", eventually befriending Shaw, who was a socialist and one of the founders of the Fabian Society that had helped create the Labour Party.
In 1907, he joined the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, which was founded as the first repertory theatre in Great Britain by Annie Horniman. It was a watershed event in his life as it was at the Gaiety that he first directed a play. It was also at the Gaiety that he met Sybil Thorndike, another member of the company. She had first seen him in a production of Shaw's "Widowers' Houses", a polemic against slum lords. Initially, she disapproved of his socialism and political activism, but he -- a believer in equal rights for women -- introduced her to women suffragists working and she joined the cause of securing the vote for women. Marrying in December 1908, they would remain husband and wife for over 60 years until his death and had four children.
The couple soon moved to London to be part of Charles Frohman's repertory company. Frohman arranged an American tour for Thorndike, where she appeared on Broadway with the leading actor John Drew, the uncle of Lionel Barrymore, ' Ethel Barrymore and John Barrymore in W. Somerset Maugham's play "Smith". Casson was in the cast. The company later toured America. After the American tour, Casson became focused on directing after returning to Britain. In 1912, he directed a production of Stanley Houghton's "Hindle Wakes" about a mill girl who goes off for a weekend with the mill-owner's son and then refuses to marry him so that she can remain independent. Sybil played the fiancée of the mill-owner's son.
The play was scandalous for the time and showed that Casson was determined to expand the parameters of what was acceptable theatre. He directed an experimental production of "Julius Caesar" at the Gaiety, and although it received critical praise, Annie Horniman thought it was "an experiment for experiment's sake", which led Casson to resign as director. He soon became the artistic director of the Scottish Playgoers Company, Glasgow (his son John would become an actor and director at the company's successor organization, the Citizens Theatre).
With the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Casson was torn over supporting the war as he opposed it as a socialist, thinking it was an imperialist war. Many socialists and Hardie of the Labour Party initially opposed the war. However, family members and friends had joined the military and Casson, as did many Labourites and socialists, believed that the government would enact reforms after the war if socialists showed their loyalty. He lied about his age in order to enlist in the Royal Army Service Corps and made the rank of sergeant.
In 1916, due to his half-completed chemistry degree, he received a commission in the Royal Engineers and was tasked with working on the development of poison gas warfare. He was eventually promoted to Captain and given his own company that set up gas projectiles during The Somme and other battles. In 1917, he received a shrapnel wound in the shoulder while his company was preparing gas projectiles for which he was awarded a Military Cross. He was invalided back to England but returned to the Western Front in 1918 to resume his role on gas warfare. He was credited with creating a more efficient gas missile mechanism. By autumn, he was sent on a mission to Washington to discuss gas warfare as a secretary of the Chemical Warfare Committee. His brother was killed during the war.
Demobilized in 1919 with the rank of major, he returned to the theatre and became well-known as a director whilst his wife established herself as one of the greatest actresses of her generation. He worked closely with George Bernard Shaw when directing the premiere of Saint Joan (1957), which starred his wife Sybil as Joan of Arc. The play was a huge success. He then courted controversy again by directing the Marxist Ernest Toller's "Man and the Masses". When Great Britain was hit by the General Strike of 1926 over the exploitation of miners, he fully supported the strike and strikers despite the fact that Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald refused to support it. After the General Strike collapsed, the Conservative government implemented anti-strike legislation. In 1934, during the trough of the Great Depression, Casson toured in socialist playwright Miles Malleson's "Six Men of Dorset", about workers who were transported to Australia for trying to create a trade union. The tour focused on industrial cities and areas suffering from high unemployment.
In the late 1930s, he was affiliated with the Old Vic company, and directed Laurence Olivier in "Coriolanus" in 1938 and 'John Gielgud' in "King Lear" in 1940. He called for the Old Vic to serve as the nucleus of a National Theatre, a dream that would come to fruition under Olivier in 1963. From 1941 to '45, he served as president of the British Actors' Equity Association, a union created by the amalgamation of Actors Association and the Stage Guild. Casson had been one of the movers behind the merger.
Sybil Thorndike was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1931, and in June 1945, Casson himself was knighted for his contributions to the theatre. He continued to act until a year before his death. He died on May 16, 1969, at the age of 93 in a Nuffield Nursing Home.