Michael Redgrave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Michael Redgrave | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | Michael Scudamore Redgrave March 20, 1908 Bristol, Gloucestershire, England |
||||||||||||||||||
| Died | March 21, 1985 (aged 77) Buckinghamshire, England |
||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse(s) | Rachel Kempson (1910-2003) | ||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE (March 20, 1908 — March 21, 1985) was an English actor.
Redgrave was born in Bristol, England the son of the silent film actor Roy Redgrave and the actress Margaret Scudamore. He never knew his father, who left when Michael was only six months old, to pursue a career in Australia. His mother remarried Captain James Anderson, a wealthy tea planter, but he hated his stepfather.[1]
He studied at Clifton College and graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was briefly a schoolmaster at Cranleigh School in Surrey before becoming an actor in 1934. The Redgrave Room at the school was later named after him.
His first major film role was in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). Redgrave also starred in The Stars Look Down (1939), with James Mason in the film of Robert Ardrey's play Thunder Rock (1943), and in the ventriloquist's dummy episode of the Ealing compendium film Dead of Night (1945).
Redgrave's first American film role was opposite Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In the 1950s, he starred in the films The Browning Version (1951), The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), The Dambusters (1954), and 1984 (1956).
Throughout his career, he acted on the stage in Britain, often with his wife Rachel Kempson. One of his most notable roles was as the title character in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in 1962. Harold Pinter has said of this: "I now know that it was one of the great performances of all time that anyone has ever given on the stage". He also excelled in Shakespearean roles like Hamlet, Macbeth, Mark Antony and Prospero. He played Claudius opposite the Hamlet of Peter O'Toole in 1962 in the inaugural production of the Royal National Theatre.
His play The Aspern Papers, based on the novella by Henry James, was successfully staged on Broadway in 1962, with Wendy Hiller and Maurice Evans. The 1984 revival in London's West End featured his daughter, Vanessa Redgrave, along with Christopher Reeve and Dame Wendy Hiller, this time in the role of Miss Bordereau.
Redgrave was married to the actress Rachel Kempson for fifty years from 1935 until his death. Their children Vanessa, Corin and Lynn Redgrave, and their grandchildren - Natasha and Joely Richardson; Jemma and Luke Redgrave; and Carlo Nero - are all involved in film making (all as actors except Luke Redgrave).
Redgrave and his family lived in "Bedford House" on Chiswick Mall from 1945 to 1954. [2]
Redgrave was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1952. He was knighted in 1959. He died in a Denham nursing home from Parkinson's disease in 1985, the day following his 77th birthday.
He wrote four books:
- The Actor's Ways and Means
- Mask or Face
- The Mountebank Tale
- In My Mind's I
The Redgrave Theatre in Farnham is named in honour of Sir Michael Redgrave.
Contents |
[edit] Sexuality
The 1996 BBC documentary film Michael Redgrave: My Father, narrated by Corin Redgrave, and based on his book of the same name, discusses Michael's bisexuality in some depth.
Rachel Kempson recounts that, when she proposed to him, Redgrave said that there were "difficulties to do with his nature, and that he felt he ought not to marry". She said that she understood, it didn't matter and that she loved him. To this, Redgrave replied "Very well. If you're sure, we will".
During the filming of Fritz Lang's Secret Beyond the Door... (1948), Redgrave met Bob Michell. They became lovers, Michell set up house close to the Redgraves, and he became a surrogate "uncle" to Redgrave's children (then aged 11, 9 and 5), who adored him. Michell later had children of his own, including a son he named Michael.
During one of Corin's visits to Michael, the latter said "There is something I ought to tell you". Then, after a very long pause, "I am, to say the least of it, bisexual". Corin helped his father in the writing of his last autobiography, and encouraged him to acknowledge his bisexuality in the book. Michael agreed to do so, but in the end he chose to remain silent about it.
A card was found among Redgrave's effects after his death. The card was signed "Tommy, Liverpool, January 1940", and on it were the words (quoted from W. H. Auden): "The world is love. Surely one fearless kiss would cure the million fevers".
[edit] Selected filmography
|
|
[edit] References
- ^ Michael Redgrave: My Father, 1996 BBC documentary film narrated by Corin Redgrave, based on his book of the same name; produced and directed by Roger Michell
- ^ Roe, William P., "Glimpses of Chiswick's Development, 1999,ISBN 0 9546512 2 6, page 94
