Richardson Sir R
NAME: Richardson, Sir Ralph David
ACHIEVEMENTS: Actor
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: December 19, 1902. Cheltenham, Gloucester, England.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: October 10, 1983, London, England. Aged 80.
DISCIPLINE: Actor
FIELD: Theater, Film, Television, Radio, Audio Recordings.
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: Arthur Richardson, Lydia Russell
SIBLINGS: Christopher (1890) and Ambrose (1892).
SPOUSE: Muriel Hewitt (married from 1924 - 1942) and Muriel Forbes (married from 1944-1983)
CHILDREN: Charles
EDUCATION: Xaverian College; Brighton College of Art
MAJOR WORK:
LIFE AND TIMES:
Richardson worked for a decade in various theatrical companies performing a wide variety of parts before joining <worked with> Gielgud* at the Old Vic Theatre in London in 1930. Here, he began the occasional partnership with Gielgud that would last more than 50 years. During the next few years he performed in works by Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw and J. M. Barrie.
In 1934, he appeared as Charles Appleby in Eden’s End, by <worked with> J. B. Priestley*, beginning another partnership that would result in some of his most successful portrayals. In 1936, he starred in Priestley’s Bees On The Boat Deck, and in 1939 in the same author’s Johnson Over Jordan.
In 1944, Richardson joined <worked with> Olivier* and John Burrell in the management of the Old Vic Company, and entered the period of his greatest work as an actor. He appeared as Cyrano de Bergerac, The Inspector in Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, the title character in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Peer Gynt in the play by Henrik Ibsen, and Bluntschli in Shaw’s Arms and the Man, all to great public and critical approval.
In particular, critics admired his portrayal of Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV parts one and two, many regarding the performance as the best they had ever seen of that part. He continued to manage and perform with the Old Vic until 1947, moving for a season to New York.
In 1947, the board of governors of the Old Vic fired Richardson and Olivier, claiming that they had made the company too much a vehicle for their brilliant performances. Over the next ten years, Richardson’s career alternated between success and failure.
The failures were mostly in serious Shakespearean roles, such as Macbeth, where his acting technique was unable to come to terms with the dark, poetic tragedy of the part. But Richardson began a new period of popular acclaim in 1957 in Flowering Cherry, by Robert Bolt and as the aging, lovesick general in The Waltz of the Toreadors, by Jean Anouilh.
He renewed his partnership with Gielgud in a 1962 production of The School For Scandal, by Sheridan, playing the part of Sir Peter Teazle, the disapproving older husband of a beautiful young woman. The production was very successful, moving to New York the following year. He followed up this popular success by taking on the role of Father in Luigi Pirandello’s surreal Six Characters in Search of an Author.
In the 1960s, Richardson concentrated on traditional roles in familiar plays, but he ended the decade by playing Dr. Rance in Joe Orton’s controversial hit What the Butler Saw in 1969. This began a new, contemporary period for Richardson’s career, and he joined forces again with Gielgud in admired and popular productions of Home, by David Storey (1972), and No Man’s Land (1975), by Harold Pinter. His last stage appearance was in Inner Voices, by Eduardo de Filippo, in 1983, the year of his death.
In 1933, Ralph Richardson began his outstanding film career, though he was primarily a theatrical performer. Among his early film roles were the villainous Boss in H.G. Wells’ prophetic science fiction epic Things To Come (1936) and the blinded Captain in The Four Feathers (1939). He played a butler suspected of murder in Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol (1948) the icily-cruel Dr. Sloper in The Heiress (1950) and the miserly actor James Tyrone opposite Katherine Hepburn in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Days Journey Into Night (1962).
In his later years, he specialized in eccentric film roles, extreme examples being the title role in Richard Lester’s The Bed Sitting Room (1969) and The Supreme Being in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1980). Less exotic highlights include The Wrong Box (1966), O Lucky Man! (1973), and his final film, Greystoke (1983).
He made many television appearances, radio broadcasts, and an extraordinary series of poetry recordings.
ASSESSMENT: Ralph Richardson was one of the best-loved and most admired actors of his time.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Ralph Richardson, a great 20th-century actor
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Dictionary of National Biography
O’Connor, Garry, Ralph Richardson: An actor’s life., New York: Limelight Editions, 1985.