Ronald Colman(1891-1958)
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
British leading man of primarily American films, one of the great stars
of the Golden Age. Raised in Ealing, the son of a successful silk
merchant, he attended boarding school in Sussex, where he
discovered amateur theatre. He intended to attend Cambridge and become
an engineer, but his father's death cost him the financial support
necessary. He joined the London Scottish Regionals and at the outbreak
of World War I was sent to France. Seriously wounded at the battle of
Messines--he was gassed--he was invalided out of service scarcely two
months after shipping out for France. Upon his recovery he tried to
enter the consular service, but a chance encounter got him a small role
in a London play. He dropped other plans and concentrated on the
theatre, and was rewarded with a succession of increasingly prominent
parts. He made extra money appearing in a few minor films, and in 1920
set out for New York in hopes of finding greater fortune there than in
war-depressed England. After two years of impoverishment he was cast in
a Broadway hit, "La Tendresse". Director
Henry King spotted him in the show
and cast him as Lillian Gish's leading man
in The White Sister (1923). His
success in the film led to a contract with
Samuel Goldwyn, and his career as a
Hollywood leading man was underway. He became a vastly popular star of
silent films, in romances as well as adventure films. The coming of
sound made his extraordinarily beautiful speaking voice even more
important to the film industry. He played sophisticated, thoughtful
characters of integrity with enormous aplomb, and swashbuckled expertly
when called to do so in films like
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937).
A decade later he received an Academy Award for his splendid portrayal
of a tormented actor in
A Double Life (1947). Much of his
later career was devoted to "The Halls of Ivy", a radio show that later
was transferred to television
The Halls of Ivy (1954). He
continued to work until nearly the end of his life, which came in 1958
after a brief lung illness. He was survived by his second wife, actress
Benita Hume, and their daughter
Juliet Benita Colman.
