SIR MICHAEL REDGRAVE and the REDGRAVE FAMILY: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (5)

 

[This is the fifth in an occasional series describing British actors and performers who achieved fame in the theatre or in the movies.]

It may be true that Sir Michael Redgrave never quite scaled the acting heights of the three great 20^th century theatrical knights – Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson – but there is no doubt Redgrave was an actor in the very front rank, handsome and authoritative on stage and the paterfamilias of a richly talented dynasty comprising Vanessa, Corin and Lynn with Vanessa’s Natasha and Joely ushering in the next generation.

Michael Redgrave, Matinee Idol

Michael Redgrave (1908-1985) was born in Bristol of a theatrical family; his father left his mother when Michael was 8, becoming a silent film star in Australia. His mother then married a tea-planter whom Michael intensely disliked. After school at Clifton College he went up to Magdalene, Cambridge, befriending, among others, later Soviet agent Guy Burgess. He became a schoolmaster at Cranleigh, being much involved in school theatricals, and entered the acting profession in 1934.

Tyrone Guthrie offered him a job at The Old Vic and after a busy apprenticeship he had a success as Orlando in 1936 in As You like It playing opposite and falling madly in love with Edith Evans. Yet in 1935 he had already married another talented actress Rachel Kempson – they stayed married until his death 50 years later. She had to be particularly tolerant as Michael was bi-sexual, like many of his circle, although he hid his homosexual side from his family until the 1970s, despite having an affair with Noel Coward in the 1930s and many such liaisons thereafter.

He made his film debut as an artist in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes in 1939 and The Stars Look Down, A. J. Cronin’s tale of injustice in a mining community. After 2 years in the Navy he was invalided out and returned to a variety of West End and Old Vic roles. He was often to repeat his acclaimed part as Ratikin in Turgenev’s A Month in the Country.

It was in the 1940s and 1950s that he built his movie career. A ventriloquist with a sinister dummy in Dead of Night (1945) was followed by Fame is the Spur Howard Spring’s 1947 drama about a politician betraying his socialist principles. Redgrave triumphed as the schoolmaster Crocker-Harris in the 1951 film of The Browning Version from Terence Rattigan’s play and he shone too in Anthony Asquith’s The Importance of being Earnest (1952) as Jack Worthing. 

Dead of Night

As Barnes Wallis in The Dam Busters

 

He brought distinction to the role of boffin Barnes Wallis in The Dam Busters (1954) opposite Richard Todd as Guy Gibson VC and he was often in uniform – a spooked air-commodore in The Night my Number came up (1955) and a ditched airman with fellow-gay Dirk Bogarde in The Sea shall not have Them, prompting Noel Coward waspishly to quip “Oh, I don’t see why not, everyone else has!”

Michael’s defining stage role was as the eponymous Uncle Vanya in the 1962 Chichester and West End production of Chekhov’s classic directed by Laurence Olivier. Redgrave conveyed self-doubt and wistfulness to perfection. Olivier’s professional jealousy prevented their partnership being repeated.

Redgrave experienced the onset of Parkinson’s in 1971, forgetting his lines on a first night, and his last work was a narration of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner in 1975. Unable to work, he was looked after by wife and children and dictated his memoirs. Knighted in 1959, he died in 1985, much respected as the fine actor he most assuredly was.

Redgrave as Uncle Vanya

The Redgrave Family was certainly highly talented if not always well-balanced. The senior member now is Vanessa Redgrave (born 1937) who has had a most distinguished acting and movie career, progressing from a 1960s icon in Blow-up to the fey title role in Isadora, a splendid Mary Queen of Scots - she has won many honours and glowing critical eulogies for stage and film roles. 

Vanessa in Blow-up

Vanessa, CND Marcher

 

A strikingly beautiful young woman, all 5ft 11in of her, she had a turbulent marriage in the 1960s to admired director Tony Richardson, who later died of AIDS. Although father Michael was a man of the far Left, he did not parade his views. Vanessa is quite different. Espousing CND and decrying the US over historic anti-communist witch-hunts and her later policies in Vietnam, Vanessa became a shrill militant. With her brother Corin, she founded and financed the Trotskyite Workers Revolutionary Party, veterans of many a noisy demo: their party fractured into The Marxist Party and has now morphed into the wholly insignificant Peace and Progress Party. It has characteristically championed the supposed rights of Palestinians, Chechen insurgents and detainees at Guantanamo.

For me, her extreme political views are a huge turn-off and I would not wish to see her perform, however inspiring her genius.

I regret that the same would have been true of Corin Redgrave (1939-2010). He was an excellent Shakespearean actor (I recall his icy Octavian in Antony and Cleopatra) and also in the West End. But his political fanaticism clouded his reputation; after writing a candid biography of his father Michael, he died of heart problems in 2010, aged 70.

Vanessa and Corin’s sister, Lynn Redgrave (1943-2010) was more conventional. After an apprenticeship in rep, she performed both at the Old Vic and the West End. She appeared in the hit movie Tom Jones (1963) before taking the leading role in the stunningly successful Georgy Girl. A busy career in stage, screen and TV followed in Britain and the US. I remember seeing her on Broadway in 1985 in a lively Aren’t we All? With Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert – she became a US citizen. Sadly her life was cut short by breast cancer and she died in 2010.

Corin Redgrave, actor and fanatic

Lynn Redgrave as Georgy Girl

Vanessa had two daughters Natasha and Joely. Natasha Richardson (1963-2009) was pretty and intelligent, who carved out a remarkable career on the stage and on screen. She made her film debut as Patti Hearst in 1988 but her Broadway debut, which earned her critical awards, was in the revival of O’Neill’s drama Anna Christie in 1994. She also scintillated as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Marrying star Liam Neeson as her second husband in 1995, Natasha seemed destined for a career in the first rank and was seen in the popular movies The Parent Trap (1998) and Maid in Manhattan (2002). Natasha died in 2009 after a freak accident during a skiing lesson sustaining a traumatic brain injury. 

Finally Joely Richardson, born 1965, has carved out for herself a notable career particularly in film and TV drama. She has played Wallis Simpson in a saga Wallis and Edward, Queen Catherine Parr in an American series on The Tudors, and is a star in the US drama (100 episodes) Nip/Tuck about two Florida plastic surgeons. Clearly the inspired Redgrave acting gene swims powerfully in her bloodstream.

Natasha Richardson

Joely Richardson

  

SMD

28.02.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014