Gaz Myas

Career

Braithwaite in early 1900s

Braithwaite made her first professional London appearance as Celia in As You Like It in 1900. Next she appeared in Paul Kester's Sweet Nell of Old Drury at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. In 1901 she joined the company of Frank Benson and with him appeared in a season of the works of Shakespeare at the Comedy Theatre. She then toured with George Alexander and appeared under his management at the St James's Theatre from 1901 to 1904. In 1912 she appeared as the Madonna in C. B. Cochran's production of the mystery play The Miracle at Olympia while in 1913 she played Mrs Gregory in Mr. Wu. In 1921 she was Margaret Fairfield in A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane

Lilian Braithwaite first acted with amateur companies including the Strolling Players and the Oxford University Dramatic Society, but her decision to turn professional was met with strong opposition from her parents. However, in 1897 at the age of 24, she joined the William Haviland and Gerald Lawrence Shakespearean company, making her first professional appearances in minor roles during a tour of South Africa in 1897.[1] She had married Lawrence on 2 June 1897 at the church of St Stephen in Kensington in London,[3] and their daughter, the actress Joyce Carey (1898–1993) was born on their return to London from South Africa. The couple divorced in 1905 following his adultery and desertion

She was born in Ramsgate, Kent, the daughter of the Revd John Masterman Braithwaite (1846–1889), then a curate and later vicar of Croydon, and his wife, Elizabeth Jane, daughter of Colonel Thomas Sidney Powell, CB.[1] Educated at Croydon High School, she was the eldest of seven children, having five brothers, two of whom - Colonel Francis Powell Braithwaite and Vice-Admiral Lawrence Walter Braithwaite - served with distinction in the military.[2] Her sister Dorothy Louisa married Philip Maud.

Dame Florence Lilian Braithwaite, DBE (9 March 1873 – 17 September 1948), known professionally as Lilian Braithwaite, was an English actress, primarily of the stage, although she appeared in both silent and talkie films.

Although largely indifferent to awards, Gielgud had the rare distinction of winning an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony. He was famous from the start of his career for his voice and his mastery of Shakespearean verse. He broadcast more than a hundred radio and television dramas between 1929 and 1994, and made commercial recordings of many plays, including ten of Shakespeare's. Among his honours, he was knighted in 1953 and the Gielgud Theatre was named after him. From 1977 to 1989, he was president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

During the first half of his career, Gielgud did not take the cinema seriously. Though he made his first film in 1924, and had successes with The Good Companions (1933) and Julius Caesar (1953), he did not begin a regular film career until his sixties. Gielgud appeared in more than sixty films between Becket (1964), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for playing Louis VII of France, and Elizabeth (1998). As the acid-tongued Hobson in Arthur (1981) he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His film work further earned him a Golden Globe Award and two BAFTAs.

During the 1930s Gielgud was a stage star in the West End and on Broadway, appearing in new works and classics. He began a parallel career as a director, and set up his own company at the Queen's Theatre, London. He was regarded by many as the finest Hamlet of his era, and was also known for high comedy roles such as John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest. In the 1950s Gielgud feared that his career was threatened when he was convicted and fined for a homosexual offence, but his colleagues and the public supported him loyally. When avant-garde plays began to supersede traditional West End productions in the later 1950s he found no new suitable stage roles, and for several years he was best known in the theatre for his one-man Shakespeare show Ages of Man. From the late 1960s he found new plays that suited him, by authors including Alan Bennett, David Storey and Harold Pinter.

Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH (/ˈɡiːlɡʊd/; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he gained his first paid acting work as a junior member of his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry's company in 1922. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of Shakespeare in 1929–31.

Richardson's film career began in 1931 as an uncredited extra in Dreyfus;[7] he did not take film seriously as a medium, but undertook the work for money. His career in film was described by the film historian Brian McFarlane, writing for the British Film Institute, as "prolific and random"; McFarlane considered that in Richardson's performances, "he would remind one that he had few peers and no superiors in his particular line".[8] Richardson won many awards for his performances on stage and screen before his death, including a BAFTA award for The Sound Barrier; an Evening Standard Award for Home, which he shared with John Gielgud; and a special Laurence Olivier Award. His final film, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes—for which he received further critical plaudits and award nominations—was released after his death

After seeing a production of Hamlet starring Sir Frank Benson, Richardson decided to become an actor and made his stage debut, playing a gendarme in The Bishop's Candlesticks in December 1920.[4] After touring and appearing in rep, he made his London debut in July 1926 as the stranger in Oedipus at Colonus.[3][5] In 1930 he joined the Old Vic where he first met Gielgud, staying with the company until the following year. After service during the Second World War with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, he returned to acting, preferring the works of the more modern authors Luigi Pirandello, Joe Orton, Harold Pinter, George Bernard Shaw and J. B. Priestley to the classic plays of Shakespeare.[3] A radio career ran in parallel to that on the stage, and Richardson was first broadcast in The City in 1929.

Sir Ralph Richardson (1902–1983) was an English actor who appeared on radio, film, television and stage. Described by The Guardian as "indisputably our most poetic actor",[1] and by the director David Ayliff as "a natural actor ... [who] couldn't stop being a perfect actor",[2] Richardson's career lasted over 50 years. He was—in the words of his biographer, Sheridan Morley—one "of the three great actor knights of the mid-twentieth century", alongside Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud.[3]

After seeing a production of Hamlet starring Sir Frank Benson, Richardson decided to become an actor and made his stage debut, playing a gendarme in The Bishop's Candlesticks in December 1920.[4] After touring and appearing in rep, he made his London debut in July 1926 as the stranger in Oedipus at Colonus.[3][5] In 1930 he joined the Old Vic where he first met Gielgud, staying with the company until the following year.