Richard Greene

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For other uses, see Richard Greene (disambiguation).

Richard Greene (25 August 1918 in Plymouth, Devon, UK - 1 June 1985 in Norfolk, UK). Some sources list Greene's birthdate as 1914. His full name was Richard Marius Joseph Greene. He was a noted British movie and television actor. He was of Irish and Scottish Catholic extraction, being born in Plymouth, England. Son of four generations of film actors, Greene was educated at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in Kensington, London. He started off his stage career as the proverbial spear carrier in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in 1933. A good looking young man, Greene helped his income by modeling shirts and hats. Greene joined the Brandon Repetory Company in 1936 where he won accolades in the same year for his part in Terence Rattigan's "French Without Tears" which bought him to the attention of Alexander Korda and Darryl F Zanuck. Aged 20, he joined 20th Century Fox as a rival to MGM's Robert Taylor. His first film for Fox was John Ford's "Four Men and a Prayer". Greene was a huge success, especially with female film goers who sent him mountains of fan mail which at its peak rivalled that of Tyrone Power.

Greene interrupted his acting life to serve in WWII in the Royal Armoured Corps of the Twenty Seventh Lancers where he distinguished himself and rose to the rank of Captain. Greene was discharged in December 1944. The war effectively ruined Greene's rising career and though he did well in the popular "Forever Amber"(1947), Greene then found himself cast in a series of swashbuckling roles. Having turned away from films in favour of stage and screen and having been through a divorce from Patricia Medina, who he was married to from 1941 to 1952, Greene was cash strapped and when Yeoman Films of Great Britain approached him for the lead role in The Adventures of Robin Hood, Greene took it which solved all his money problems and made him into a famous star. Greene married Brazilian Heiress, Beatriz Summers (1960 - 1980, when they divorced) and retired to an Irish country estate where he bred horses, sailed and travelled. He rarely accepted roles from then onwards, seeming to lose interest in the whole industry. Greene underwent surgery in 1982 for a brain tumour and never fully recovered. He died of cardiac arrest three years later.

A matinee idol who appeared in more than 40 films, he was perhaps best known for the lead role in the long-running British TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, which ran 143 episodes from 1955 to 1960.