"The Quintessential Englishman"..."The Personification of the Gentleman Hero"..."The Velvet Voice"...Ronald Colman, Oscar-winning English actor, was one of only a handful of legendary stars who triumphed in both silent and sound films, over a 40-year career that encompassed stage, screen, radio, and television.Born to middle-class parents in Richmond, Surrey, England on February 9th, 1891, he was orphaned at 16, and found employment as an office boy in a British steamship company. He served in WWI, was severely wounded at Ypres, and upon returning to England decided to pursue an acting career. By 1917, he starred in "Damaged Goods" on the London stage, and his success led to film work. Starting with bit parts, between stage productions, he got his big break in the British film, "The Black Spider" (1920), and America, offering more opportunity and prestige (and the promise of better paychecks), soon
beckoned.
After a very rough start in New York (sometimes reduced to sleeping on benches), he began to find stage work, eventually moving up into leading roles. While in the hit, "La Tendresse", he caught the eye of legendary star Lillian Gish, who chose him as her co-star in "The White Sister" (1923), which established the 32-year-old actor as a romantic leading man in silent films (Director Henry King would also take credit for 'finding' him). One of the era's most popular stars,
Colman was frequently paired with Vilma Banky, in films such as "The Dark Angel" (1925) and "The Winning of Barbara Worth" (1926), a film that featured young Gary Cooper. He would also appear with May McAvoy in "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1925), in the silent version of "Beau Geste" (1926), and with Norma Talmadge in "Kiki" (1926).With the arrival of sound pictures, Colman's incredible speaking voice was revealed, insuring not only his continued success in film, but an even wider audience. In his two earliest sound fims, "Bulldog Drummond" (1929) and "Condemned" (1929), he would be nominated for an Oscar as "Best Actor". Under contract to Samuel Goldwyn throughout much of the silent era, he detested the producer's methods of promotion (often insulting his stars, creating slanderous rumors about them to promote his films), and he would sue Goldwyn in the early thirties, winning a release from his contract. Thus Ronald Colman became one of the first major stars to freelance between studios. He was alcoholic barrister Sidney Carton in Selznick's definitive "A Tale Of Two Cities" (1935), and scored another huge success for Selznick, playing dual roles in "The Prisoner of Zenda"(1937). At ease in both period and contemporary films, he was as beloved as vagabond poet François Villon in "If I Were King" (1938) as playing self-sacrificing diplomat Robert Conway in the classic "Lost Horizon" (1937).
By the 1940's, he decided to reduce his film work, appearing more frequently on radio (often with second wife Benita Hume), and working tirelessly for war-related charities, but his film choices were often brilliant, appearing as a Supreme Court nominee in a romantic triangle with Jean Arthur and Cary Grant in "The Talk of the Town" (1942), as the amnesiac hero of "Random Harvest" (1942), opposite Greer Garson, and winning a "Best Actor" Oscar as a stage actor driven to madness while portraying "Othello" in "A Double Life" (1947).In declining health, and with suitable film roles harder and harder to find (he turned down the Alec Guiness role in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" because of the long shooting schedule in Ceylon), he devoted himself primarily to radio and television work in the 1950s, starring in the fondly-remembered "The Halls of Ivy", with his wife, Benita; his best-remembered screen appearance would be a cameo in "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956).Ronald Colman died of a lung infection on May 19th, 1958 in Santa Barbara, California, at 67.To learn more about Ronald Colman, visit The
Internet Movie Database , Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia , and
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