| Cedric Hardwicke | |
|---|---|
on the radio show Three Thirds of the Nation, 3 June 1942 |
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| Born | Cedric Webster Hardwicke 19 February 1893 Lye, Dudley, Worcestershire, England, UK |
| Died | 6 August 1964 (aged 71) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1913–64 |
| Spouse | Helena Pickard (1928–48) (divorced) 1 child Mary Scott (1950–61) (divorced) 1 child |
Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke (19 February 1893 – 6 August 1964) was a noted English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly fifty years. Hardwicke's theatre work included notable performances in productions of the plays of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, and his film work included leading roles in a number of adapted literary classics.
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Hardwicke was born in Lye, Worcestershire, the son of Jessie (nee Masterson) and her husband Dr. Edwin Webster Hardwicke. He attended Bridgnorth Grammar School in Shropshire and then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
In 1928, he married English actress Helena Pickard.[1] Hardwicke's son was the actor Edward Hardwicke, a well-known television actor in the UK.
He made his first appearance on stage at London's Lyceum Theatre in 1912 during the run of Frederick Melville's melodrama The Monk and the Woman, when he took up the part of Brother John. During that year he was at Her Majesty's Theatre understudying, and subsequently appeared at the Garrick Theatre in Charles Klein's play Find the Woman, and Trust the People. In 1913 he joined Benson's Company and toured in the provinces, South Africa, and Rhodesia. During 1914 he toured with Miss Darragh (Letitia Marion Dallas, d. 1917) in Laurence Irving's play The Unwritten Law, and he appeared at the Old Vic in 1914 as Malcolm in Macbeth, Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew, and the gravedigger in Hamlet, among many other roles.
World War I intervened in his career, and from 1914 to 1921 he served with the British Army in France. Following his discharge, in January 1922 he joined the Birmingham Repertory Company. He played many classical roles on stage, appearing at London's top theatres, making his name on the stage performing works by George Bernard Shaw, who said that Hardwicke was his fifth favourite actor after the four Marx Brothers. As one of the leading Shavian actors of his generation, Hardwicke starred in such Shavian works as Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, The Apple Cart, Candida, Too True to Be Good, and Don Juan in Hell, making such an impression that at age 41 he became one of the youngest actors to be knighted (this occurred in the 1934 New Year's Honours). Other stage successes included The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Antigone and A Majority of One, winning a Tony Award nomination for his performance as a Japanese diplomat. In 1928, while appearing with Edith Day, Paul Robeson and Alberta Hunter in the London production of "Showboat", he married Helena Pickard.[1]
In December 1935, Cedric Hardwicke was elected Rede Lecturer to Cambridge University for 1936. In the late 1930s Hardwicke moved to the USA, initially for film work (see below). In the early 1940s he continued his stage career touring and in New York.
In 1944 he returned to England, again touring, and reappeared on the London stage, at the Westminster Theatre, on 29 March 1945, as Richard Varwell in a revival of Eden and Adelaide Phillpotts comedy Yellow Sands, and subsequently toured in this on the Continent. He returned to America late in 1945 and appeared with Ethel Barrymore in December in a revival of Shaw's Pygmalion, and continued on the New York stage the following year. In 1946, he starred opposite Katharine Cornell as King Creon in her production of Jean Anouilh's adaptation of the Greek tragedy Antigone.[2] In 1951–1952, he appeared on Broadway in Shaw's Don Juan in Hell with Agnes Moorehead, Charles Boyer, and Charles Laughton.
His first appearance in an English film was in 1931, and from the late 1930s he was in great demand in Hollywood. He played Dr. David Livingstone opposite Spencer Tracy's Henry Morton Stanley in the 1939 film Stanley and Livingstone and was also memorable that year as Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. In 1940 he played Mr Jones in a screen version of Conrad's Victory. (Frollo and Jones are among the few truly evil characters that Hardwicke played.) He also starred in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) along side Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi.
Hardwicke played in such film classics as Les Misérables (1935), King Solomon's Mines (1937), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Winslow Boy (1948) and Olivier's Richard III (1955). He was also featured as King Arthur in the comedy/musical, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), singing Busy Doing Nothing in a trio with Bing Crosby and William Bendix, and as the Pharaoh Seti I in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 film The Ten Commandments.
He appeared in a 1956 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents entitled Wet Saturday in which he portrayed Mr. Princey, an aristocratic gentleman who tries to cover up a murder to avoid public scandal. On March 6, 1958, he guest starred on NBC's country variety series, The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.[3] In the 1961–1962 television season, Hardwicke starred as Professor Crayton in Gertrude Berg's sitcom Mrs. G. Goes to College, which ran for twenty-six weeks on CBS. The story line had Berg attending college as a 62-year-old widowed freshman studying under Hardwicke, with whom she had previously acted. Earlier, Hardwicke had guest starred on the Howard Duff and Ida Lupino CBS sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve. He starred in The Twilight Zone episode Uncle Simon that first aired 15 November 1963. His final acting role was in the series The Outer Limits in the episode "The Forms of Things Unknown".
He died at the age of 71 in New York City from emphysema.[4] He is buried in London's Golders Green Crematorium.
Hardwicke is remembered by a sculpture by Tim Tolkien at Lye, commissioned by Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. The memorial takes the form of a giant filmstrip, the illuminated cut metal panels illustrating scenes from some of Sir Cedric's best-known roles, which include The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Things to Come, and The Ghost of Frankenstein. It was unveiled in November 2005. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.