Oscar Profile #458: Michael Redgrave

Born March 20, 1908 in Bristol, England, Michael Redgrave was the son of actors Roy Redgrave and Margaret Scudamore, the first generation of the Redgrave acting dynasty. The elder Redgrave, who had been a star in silent films, left his wife and child behind to pursue acting opportunities in Australia when Michael was two. He died when he was fourteen and his mother subsequently remarried.

The younger Redgrave made his acting debut in a 1934 production of Counselor-at-Law in Liverpool. He spent two years with the Liverpool Repertory Company where he met wife Rachel Kempson. They were married in 1935 and subsequently had three children, future acting legends Corin, Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave.

Redgrave made his London debut in Love’s Labour Lost at the Old Vic in 1936. He made his TV debut in a 1937 BBC production of Romeo and Juliet. He made his film debut top-billed opposite Margaret Lockwood in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 classic, The Lady Vanishes.

The young thespian continued to flourish on the British stage where he was considered one of the acting giants of the era along with such other luminaries as Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Edith Evans and Peggy Ashcroft.

Redgrave’s films from 1940 through 1946, prestigious productions all, included Carol Reed’s 1940 film of A.J. Cronin’s The Stars Look Down; Reed’s 1941 film of H.G. Wells’ Kipps; Roy Boulting’s 1942 fantasy film, Thunder Rock; the classic 1945 horror film. Dead of Night and Basil Dearden’s 1946 prisoner-of-war drama, The Captive Heart. A trip to Hollywood to film Dudley Nichols’ 1947 film of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra resulting in an Oscar nomination. That same year he filmed Fritz Lang’s The Secret Beyond the Door opposite Joan Bennett before he returned to England.

Still a major star in the 1950s and 60s, Redgrave’s performance in 1951’s The Browning Version earned him a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. Other successes during this period included 1952’s The Importance of Being Earnest, 1955’s The Dam Busters, 1956’s 1984. 1958’s The Quiet American, 1959’s Shake Hands with the Devil and The Wreck of the Mary Deare, 1961’s The Innocents, 1962’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1965’s Young Cassidy and The Hill and 1969’s Oh! What a Lovely War, Battle of Britain and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

Knighted in 1959, Sir Michael Redgrave’s last films of note were 1971’s The Go-Between and Nicholas and Alexandra. He retired in 1975 as Parkinson’s Disease was beginning to take its toll on him. He lived another ten years, dying on March 21, 1985, one day after his 77th birthday.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA (1947), directed by Dudley Nichols

Eugene O’Neill’s legendary Broadway play was first performed on Broadway in 1931 with Alice Brady and Alla Nazimova in the roles played on screen by Rosalind Russell and Katina Paxinou as the jealous daughter and her faithless mother. Modern audiences vividly recall Roberta Maxwell and Joan Hackett in those roles in a 1978 TV production available on DVD. Russell, who may have been better to suited to the role of the mother which she wanted to play, is out of her league as the daughter. Redgrave, in his Hollywood debut, though, nails the sensitive brother-son role. Russell and Redgrave were both nominated for Oscars. Both lost.

THE BROWNING VERSION (1951), directed by Anthony Asquith

One of Redgrave’s two favorite roles, he won the best actor award at Cannes along with Terence Rattigan who won for the screenplay which expounds on his one-act play. Redgrave’s browbeaten professor is forced to retire from teaching at an English public school because of declining health at the early age of 43. Cuckolded by a colleague and denied a pension by his penny-pinching headmaster, the once promising teacher has few reasons to be happy. One is his once heralded translation of Agamemnon from the Greek, but even that has been overshadowed by Robert Browning’s classic version. This is despair at its bleakest, yet most profound.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (1952), directed by Anthony Asquith

The definitive version of Oscar Wilde’s classic play comes to the screen directed by the son of H.H. Asquith, the British Prime Minister who in his earlier position of Home Secretary brought the charges against Wilde that led to his imprisonment on charges of immorality. Redgrave and Michael Denison as the two Ernests and Joan Greenwood and Dorothy Tutin as their young ladies are excellent in their roles, but the film belongs to the incomparable Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell and Margaret Rutherford as Miss Prism. Redgrave and Evans had a legendary affair in the mid-1930s when he was in his late twenties and she was in her late forties.

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER (1962), directed by Tony Richardson

Redgrave’s second of his two favorite roles was as the headmaster of the British reform school who makes a star runner of troubled inmate Tom Courtenay. Although Redgrave, who was directed by his son-in-law (Richardson being the first husband of Redgrave’s Vanessa), has star billing the film’s attention as well as that of the movie-going public and the critics was on newcomer Courtenay in his star-making turn. The film is told through the eyes of Courtenay who on his long solo runs recalls the events that led to his incarceration. That’s James Fox as his rival in the climatic race. Edward Fox is an extra in the film.

THE GO-BETWEEN (1971), directed by Joseph Losey

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” was the opening line of L.P. Hartley’s novel and the opening line of the film spoken by Redgrave who plays the older version of the 13-year-old boy through whose eyes we see what the line was referring to in flashback. Dominic Guard as the boy, Edward Fox as Julie Christie’s fiancé and Margaret Leighton as her disapproving mother all won BAFTAs while Christie and Michael Gough as her father were nominated. Alan Bates as Christie’s lover was the only major player not to be nominated. Redgrave is only seen in the film’s prologue and epilogue in the present.