Basil Sydney

English actor (1894–1968)

Doris Keane
​
​
(m. 1918; div. 1925)​

Mary Ellis
(m. 1929; div. 19??)
Joyce Howard
  • (m. 1946; div. 19??)
Children3

Basil Sydney (23 April 1894 – 10 January 1968) was an English stage and screen actor.

Career

Basil Sydney and Doris Keane as Romeo and Juliet

Sydney made his name in 1915 in the London stage hit Romance by Edward Sheldon, with Broadway star Doris Keane, and he costarred with Keane in the 1920 silent film of the play.[1][2] The couple married in 1918, and when Keane revived Romance in New York City in 1921, Sydney made his Broadway debut in the parts.[3][4] He stayed in New York for over a decade playing a variety of roles such as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (1922), Domin in R.U.R. (1922), Richard Dudgeon in The Devil's Disciple (1923), the title role in Hamlet (1923), Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part I (1926), and Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew (1927).[1][4][5] In 1937 he starred in the murder mystery Blondie White in the West End.[6]

Trailer for Ivanhoe (1952)

He made over 50 screen appearances, most memorably as Claudius in Laurence Olivier's 1948 film of Hamlet.[7] He also appeared in classic films like Treasure Island (1950), Ivanhoe (1952), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), but the focus of his career was the stage on both sides of the Atlantic.[8]

In 1946 he starred with Flora Robson in A Man About the House at the Piccadilly Theatre.[9]

Personal life

Sydney divorced Keane in 1925.[10] In 1929, he married actress Mary Ellis, and the couple moved to England.[11] There he concentrated more on film than on theatre work. In the 1940s, he married English film actress Joyce Howard;[12] they had three children.[7]

A heavy smoker, Sydney died from pleurisy in 1968, aged 73.[13]

Filmography

  • Romance (1920) as Armstrong
  • Red Hot Romance (1922) as Rowland Stone
  • The Midshipmaid (1932) as Cmdr. Fosberry
  • The Third Clue (1934) as Reinhardt Conway
  • Dirty Work (1934) as Hugh Stafford
  • The Riverside Murder (1935) as Inspector Philip Winton
  • The White Lilac (1935) as Ian Mackie
  • The Tunnel (1935) as Mostyn
  • The Amateur Gentleman (1936) as Louis Chichester
  • Rhodes of Africa (1936) as Dr. Jim Jameson
  • Blind Man's Bluff (1936) as Dr. Peter Fairfax
  • Crime Over London (1936) as 'Joker' Finnigan
  • Talk of the Devil (1936) as Stephen Rindlay
  • Accused (1936) as Eugene Roget
  • The Four Just Men (1939) as Frank Snell
  • Shadowed Eyes (1940) as Dr. Zander
  • Spring Meeting (1941) as James
  • The Farmer's Wife (1941) as Samuel Sweetland
  • The Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942) as Costello
  • Ships with Wings (1942) as Capt. Fairfax
  • The Big Blockade (1942) as Bit Part (uncredited)
  • The Next of Kin (1942) as Naval captain
  • Went the Day Well? (1942) as Major Ortler
  • Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) as Rufio
  • Meet Me at Dawn (1947) as Georges Vermorel
  • The Man Within (1947) as Sir Henry Merriman
  • Jassy (1947) as Nick Helmar
  • Hamlet (1948) as Claudius - The King
  • The Angel with the Trumpet (1950) as Francis Alt
  • Treasure Island (1950) as Captain Smollett
  • The Magic Box (1951)[14] as William Fox-Talbot
  • Ivanhoe (1952) as Waldemar Fitzurse
  • Salome (1953) as Pontius Pilate
  • Hell Below Zero (1954) as Bland
  • Star of India (1954) as King Louis XIV
  • Three's Company (1954) as Dr. Graham (segment "The Surgeon's Story")
  • Simba (1955) as Mr. Crawford
  • The Dam Busters (1955) as Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris
  • Around the World in 80 Days (1956) as Reform Club Member #2
  • Sea Wife (1957) as Bulldog
  • Island in the Sun (1957) as Julian Fleury
  • A Question of Adultery (1958) as Sir John Loring
  • John Paul Jones (1959) as Sir William Young
  • The Devil's Disciple (1959) as Lawyer Hawkins
  • The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960) as Emperor of Lilliput
  • The Hands of Orlac (1960) as Maurice Seidelman
  • A Story of David (1961) as King Saul

References

  1. ^ a b "Basil Sydney | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos". AllMovie.
  2. ^ "Romance (1920)". BFI. Archived from the original on 22 July 2017.
  3. ^ TIMES, Special Cable to THE NEW YORK (5 January 1918). "DORIS KEANE MARRIED.; American Actress Bride of Basil Sydney, Actor, in London". The New York Times – via NYTimes.com.
  4. ^ a b "Basil Sydney – Broadway Cast & Staff | IBDB". www.ibdb.com.
  5. ^ Čapek, Karel (1923). "The cast of the Theatre Guild Production" . R. U. R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) . Translated by Selver, Paul. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company. p. v – via Wikisource.
  6. ^ Wearing, J. P. (15 May 2014). The London Stage 1930-1939: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780810893047 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ a b "Joyce Howard obituary". the Guardian. 29 December 2010.
  8. ^ "Basil Sydney". BFI. Archived from the original on 20 October 2017.
  9. ^ Wearing, J. P. (22 August 2014). The London Stage 1940-1949: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780810893061 – via Google Books.
  10. ^ Fisher, James; Londré, Felicia Hardison (22 November 2017). Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781538107867 – via Google Books.
  11. ^ A Special Relationship
  12. ^ III, Harris M. Lentz (21 March 2016). Obituaries in the Performing Arts, 2010. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. ISBN 9780786486496 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ Willis, John (14 August 1969). Screen World: 1969. Biblo & Tannen Publishers. ISBN 9780819603104 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ "The Magic Box (1951)". BFI. Archived from the original on 9 March 2016.

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