Michael Hordern

thumb|Hordern in 1986

Sir Michael Murray Hordern (3 October 19112 May 1995) was an English actor. He is best known for his Shakespearean roles, especially King Lear. He often appeared in film, rising from a bit part actor to leading roles; by the time of his death he had appeared in nearly 140 films. His later work was predominantly in television and radio.

Born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, into a family with no theatrical connections, Hordern was educated at Windlesham House School, then located in Portslade, East Sussex. He went on to Brighton College, where his interest in the theatre developed. After leaving the college he joined an amateur dramatics company, and came to the notice of several influential Shakespearean directors who cast him in minor roles in Othello and Macbeth. During the Second World War he served on HMS Illustrious, reaching the rank of lieutenant-commander. Upon demobilisation he resumed his acting career and made his television debut, becoming a bit-part actor in many films, particularly in the war film genre.

Hordern came to prominence in the early 1950s when he took part in a theatrical competition at the Arts Theatre in London. This led to a season-long contract at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, where he played major parts including Caliban in The Tempest, Jaques in As You Like It, and Sir Politick Would-Be in Ben Jonson's comedy Volpone. The following season Hordern joined Michael Benthall's company at the Old Vic where, among other parts, he played Polonius in Hamlet, and the title role in King John. In 1957 he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for his role as the barrister in John Mortimer's courtroom drama The Dock Brief. Along with his theatrical responsibilities Hordern had regular supporting roles in various films including Cleopatra (1963), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966).

In the late 1960s Hordern met the British theatre director Jonathan Miller, who cast him in Whistle and I'll Come to You, which was recorded for television and received wide praise. Hordern's next major play was Jumpers at the Royal National Theatre in 1972. His performance was praised by critics and he reprised the role four years later. Hordern's television credits towards the end of his life included Paradise Postponed, the BAFTA award-winning Memento Mori, and the BBC adaptation of Middlemarch. He was appointed a CBE in 1972 and was knighted eleven years later. Hordern suffered from kidney disease during the 1990s and died from it in 1995, aged 83.

Life and career

Early life and education

thumb|The Poplars, Hordern's birthplace in [[Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire]]

Hordern was born on 3 October 1911 at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, third son of Edward Joseph Calveley Hordern, of a family of Hampshire landed gentry with a strong clerical tradition, and Margaret Emily, daughter of mechanical engineer Edward Francis Murray.

Edward Hordern's father, Rev. Joseph Calveley Hordern, was the rector at the Holy Trinity Church in Bury. As a young man Edward joined the Royal Indian Marines and gained the rank of lieutenant. During a short break on home-leave he fell in love with Margaret, after they were introduced by one of his brothers. The courtship was brief and the young couple married in Burma on 28 November 1903. They had their first child, a son, Geoffrey, in 1905, followed by another, Peter, in 1907.

Margaret was descended from James Murray, an Irish physician whose research into digestion led to his discovery of the stomach aid milk of magnesia in 1829. The invention earned him a knighthood and brought the family great wealth. Margaret grew up in England, and attended St Audries School for Girls in Somerset.

Four years after the birth of Peter, a pregnant Margaret returned to England, where Michael Hordern, her third son, was born. Still stationed abroad, Edward was promoted to the rank of captain, for which he received a good salary. The family lived in comfort, and Margaret employed a scullery maid, nanny, groundsman, and full-time cook.

Margaret left for India to visit her husband in 1916. The trip, although planned only as a short term stay, lasted two years because of the ferocity of the First World War. In her absence, Hordern was sent to Windlesham House School in Sussex at the age of five. His young age exempted him from full-time studies but he was allowed to partake in extracurricular activities, including swimming, football, rugby and fishing. After a few years, and along with a fellow enthusiast, he set up the "A Acting Association" (AAA),<!--THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE "AN ACTING ASSOCIATION"--> a small theatrical committee, which organised productions on behalf of the school. As well as the organisation of plays, Hordern arranged a regular group of players, himself included, to perform various plays which they wrote, directed, and choreographed themselves. He stayed at Windlesham House for nine years, By the time of his enrolment, his interest in acting had matured. In his 1993 autobiography, A World Elsewhere, he admitted: "I didn't excel in any area apart from singing; I couldn't read music but I sang quite well." Over the next few years, he took part in The Mikado as a member of the chorus, and then appeared as the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance. It was a period which he later acknowledged as being the start of his career. When the war ended in 1918, Edward, who was by now a port officer in Calcutta, arranged for Margaret to return to England. With her, she brought home an orphaned baby girl named Jocelyn, whom she adopted. The following year, Edward retired from active service and returned to England, where he relocated his family to Haywards Heath in Sussex. There, Michael developed a love for fishing, a hobby about which he remained passionate for the rest of his life.

In his autobiography Hordern admitted that his family showed no interest in the theatre and that he had not seen his first professional play, Ever Green, until he was 19. In 1925 Hordern moved to Dartmoor with his family where they converted a disused barn into a farm house. For Hordern the move was ideal; his love of fishing had become stronger and he was able to explore the remote landscape and its isolated rivers.

Early acting career (1930–39)

Theatrical beginnings

Hordern left Brighton College in the early 1930s and secured a job as a teaching assistant in a prep school in Beaconsfield. He joined an amateur dramatics company and in his spare time, rehearsed for the company's only play, Ritzio's Boots, which was entered into a British Drama League competition, with Hordern in the title role. The play did well but conceded the prize, a professional production at a leading London theatre, to Not This Man, a drama written by Sydney Box. So envious was he of the rival show's success that Hordern supplied a scathing review to The Welwyn Times calling Box's show a "blasphemous bunk and cheap theatrical claptrap". The comment infuriated Box, who issued the actor with a writ to attend court on a count of slander. Hordern won the case and left Box liable for the proceeding's expenses. Years later the two men met on a film set where Box, much to Hordern's surprise, thanked him for helping to kick-start his career in film making, as he had received a lot of publicity as a result of the court case. but fell ill with poliomyelitis and had to leave. Upon his recuperation, he was offered a job as a travelling salesman for the British Educational Suppliers Association, a family-run business belonging to a former school friend at Windlesham House. Despite his disabilities he would later become a successful theatre manager.

In addition to his Shakespearean commitments, Hordern joined the St Pancras People's Theatre, a London-based company partly funded by the theatrical manager Lilian Baylis. Hordern enjoyed his time there, despite the tiresome commute between Sussex and London, and stayed with the company for five years. By the end of 1936 he had left his sales job in Beaconsfield to pursue a full-time acting career. He moved into a small flat at Marble Arch and became one of the many jobbing actors eager to make a name for themselves on the London stage.

London debut

Hordern's London debut came in January 1937, as an understudy to Bernard Lee in the play Night Sky at the Savoy Theatre.

The part became Hordern's first paid role as an actor for a theatre company. The play was an instant hit and ran at the People's Theatre in Mile End for two weeks. It also starred the English actor Stephen Murray in the title role, but he became contractually obliged elsewhere towards the end of the run. This allowed Hordern to take his place for which Daltry paid Hordern an extra £1 a week.

After Othellos closure, Daltry undertook a tour of Scandinavia and the Baltic with two plays, Hordern's first acting role within the company was as Uncle Harry in the play Someone at the Door. Because of the play's success, Russell employed him in the same type of role, the monotony of which frustrated the actor who longed to play the leading man. It was whilst with the Rapier Players that Hordern fell in love with Eve Mortimer, a juvenile actress who appeared in minor roles in many of Russell's productions.

After a brief holiday with Eve in Scotland in 1938, Hordern returned to London, where he appeared in Quinneys, a radio play broadcast by the BBC in June of that year. The main part went to Henry Ainley whom Hordern described as "a great actor, who, sadly, was past his best".

By the end of 1938 Hordern's father had sold the family home and had bought a cottage in Holt, near Bath, Somerset. The arrangement was convenient for the young actor, who used the premises as a base while he appeared in shows with the Rapier Players. One such piece was an adaption of Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm, which starred Mabel Constanduros, who had adapted the book with Gibbons's permission. Hordern was cast in the supporting role of Seth, a part he described as being fun to perform. The modernised script was "adored" by the cast, according to Hordern, but loathed by the audience who expected it to be exactly like the book. He was accepted but soon grew frustrated at not being able to conduct any rescues because of the lack of enemy action. He decided that it was "not a very good way to fight the war" and volunteered for the Royal Navy. While he was waiting to be accepted he and Eve responded to an advertisement in The Stage for actors in a repertory company in Bath. They were appointed as the company's leading man and lady. Their first and only engagement was in a play entitled Bats in the Belfry which opened at the city's Assembly Rooms on 16 October. Hordern's elation at finally becoming a leading man was short-lived when he received his call-up that December. In the interest of helping to boost public morale, Hordern sought permission from the navy to allow him to complete his theatrical commitment in Bath and to appear in his first film, a thriller called Girl in the News, directed by Carol Reed; his request was accepted, and he was told to report for duty at Plymouth Barracks in the early months of 1940 when the show had finished and he was free from filming responsibilities.

thumb|left|, on which Hordern served during the Second World War

In 1940, after a minor role in Without the Prince at the Whitehall Theatre, Hordern played the small, uncredited part of a BBC official alongside James Hayter in Arthur Askey's comedy film Band Waggon. Soon after, he began his naval gunnery training on board City of Florence, a defensively equipped merchant ship (DEMS) which delivered ammunition to the city of Alexandria for the Mediterranean Fleet. He found that although his middle class upbringing hindered his ability to make friends on board the ship, it helped with his commanding officers.

By 1942 Hordern had been commissioned as an officer and given instruction in radar and the relaying of its data for the direction of fighter planes. He later said "It was suggested that this would be excellent work for me with my strong actor's voice". After his training at Yeovilton he was appointed Fighter Direction Officer on board the aircraft carrier . He was later appointed to the Admiralty to serve in the office of Naval Assistant to the Second Sea Lord, responsible for appointing Fighter Direction Officers. Also in the office was fellow actor Kenneth More.

Marriage and post-war years

During a short visit to Liverpool in 1943, Hordern proposed to Eve; they married on 27 April of that year with the actor Cyril Luckham as best man. After the honeymoon, Hordern resumed his duties on Illustrious while Eve returned to repertory theatre in Southport. During his time in the Admiralty Hordern and his wife rented a flat in Elvaston Place in Kensington, London, and he began to seek work as an actor. After a short while, he was approached by André Obey who cast him in his first television role, Noah, in a play adapted from the book of the same name. Hordern was apprehensive about performing in the new medium and found the rehearsal and live performance to be exhausting; but he was generously paid, earning £45 () for the entire engagement.

Hordern's first role in 1946 came as Torvald Helmar in A Doll's House at the Intimate Theatre in Palmers Green. This was followed by the part of Richard Fenton, a murder victim, in Dear Murderer which premiered at the Aldwych Theatre on 31 July. The play was a success Dear Murderer thrilled the critics and Hordern was singled out by one reporter for the Hull Daily Mail who thought that the actor brought "sincerity to a difficult role". The following month Eve gave birth to the couple's only child,|group= n That Christmas he took the role of Nick Bottom in a festive reworking of Henry Purcell's The Fairy-Queen. The play was the first performance by the Covent Garden Opera Company, which later became known as The Royal Opera.

Towards the end of April 1947, Hordern accepted the small part of Captain Hoyle in Richard Llewellyn's comic drama film Noose. Two other roles occurred that year: as Maxim de Winter in a television adaption of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca, followed by the part of a detective in Good-Time Girl, alongside Dennis Price and Jean Kent. The following year he took part in three plays: Peter Ustinov's The Indifferent Shepherd, which appeared at the newly opened Q Theatre in Brentford, West London; Ibsen's Ghosts; and an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in which he portrayed the part of the blustery, eccentric Mr Toad. a large country property situated on the River Avon. The first of his two plays, The Tempest, caused Hordern to doubt his own acting ability when he compared his interpretation of Caliban to that of Alec Guinness, who had played the same role four years earlier. Reassured by Byam Shaw, Hordern remained in the role for the entire run. A few days later, the actor was thrilled to receive a letter of appreciation from Michael Redgrave, who thought Hordern's Caliban was "immensely fine, with all the pity and pathos... but with real terror and humour as well". More praise was received as the season continued; an anonymous theatre reviewer, quoted in Hordern's autobiography, called the actor's portrayal of Menenius Agrippa "a dryly acute study of the 'humorous patrician' and one moreover that can move our compassion in the Volscian cameo", before going on to say "we had felt that it would be long before Alec Guinness's Menenius could be matched. The fact that Michael Hordern's different reading can now stand beside the other does credit to a player who will be a Stratford prize."

The Old Vic

thumb|left|[[Rex Harrison, whom Hordern despised as a person but admired as an actor]]

Hordern's contract at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre lasted until mid-1952, and on its expiration, he secured a position within Michael Benthall's theatrical company at the Old Vic in London. and opened on 14 September 1953.