A curiously inadequate series called “Acting Dynasties” has been assembled for Thursday evenings this month on Turner Classic Movies. It began last night by touching base with Walter, John and Anjelica Huston and then Lloyd, Jeff and Beau Bridges.
The Redgraves get a similar flyby next Thursday: a triple bill that begins with Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes,” which features patriarch Michael Redgrave in his first starring role, circa 1938, and then revisits daughters Lynn and Vanessa in youthful appearances from the middle 1960s, “The Girl With the Green Eyes” and “Blow-Up,” respectively.
Since this also is the centennial month for the late Mr. Redgrave, born March 20, 1908, in Bristol, England, a more generous reprise of his career (and, arguably, the still-active careers of his children and grandchildren) would have been a commendable gesture.
An admired Shakespearean and Chekhovian actor from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, Mr. Redgrave was regarded as the peer of John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson during the prime of his theatrical career. He didn’t sustain a comparable luster while playing leads or character parts in about 50 movies from “The Lady Vanishes” through “Nicholas and Alexandra,” but there were several impressive and memorable credits along the way.
Landmarks include “The Stars Look Down” and “Kipps” for director Carol Reed in the early 1940s, “The Browning Version” and “The Importance of Being Earnest” for director Anthony Asquith in the early 1950s and “The Quiet American” for director Joseph L. Mankiewicz 50 years ago.
Mr. Redgrave also anticipated Vanessa Redgrave’s talent for finessing brief, tour-de-force portrayals. “Dead of Night” is probably the first famous example of this specialty.
Exceptionally tall at 6 feet 4 inches and vocally distinctive, Mr. Redgrave manipulated an often high-strung emotional instrument. He could do a lot with expressions of sorrow, self-pity or remorse, not to mention total nervous breakdowns. “Dead of Night,” a 1945 anthology of supernatural scare stories, gave him an opportunity for nuttiness in a nutshell while cast as a schizophrenic ventriloquist who fears his dummy plans to desert him.
Mr. Redgrave’s eyes could go crazy on you, and so could his voice — which came in handy while he was portraying the split personality of “Dead.” It’s also one of the roles of the period in which the actor seems to be forecasting Anthony Perkins in “Psycho.” Two others are preserved in his haywire Hollywood ventures, “Mourning Becomes Electra” and “Secret Beyond the Door,” which bound him to explicitly mother-fixated and homicidal basket cases.
“Mourning,” a supremely stilted prestige production, brought his only Academy Award nomination, as best actor of 1947. He struggled with the nearly unplayable role of Oren, Eugene O’Neill’s Freudianized update of Orestes. So much laughable torment is afoot in the first two acts that it’s something of a miracle to observe Mr. Redgrave and Rosalind Russell, the miscast revamp of Electra, securing a grip on the treacherous and humiliating material during a big scene in the third act. You’re amazed that anything could be salvaged from such an incorrigible shipwreck.
Mr. Redgrave should have been in Oscar contention for both “The Browning Version” and “The Quiet American.” Both were remade recently (with Albert Finney and Michael Caine, respectively) but the content remains more persuasive as Redgrave country, uniquely suited to his genius for disillusion and self-reproach. Andrew Crocker-Harris, the sickly, browbeaten schoolmaster of “Browning,” may have drawn to some extent on Mr. Redgrave’s experience as a teacher in the early 1930s, when he also was an avid amateur performer but hadn’t fully committed to a theatrical career.
He married an actress, Rachel Kempson, when they were members of the Liverpool Repertory Playhouse in 1935. The marriage endured for half a century, and some of its trials were acknowledged later by Miss Kempson in her memoirs and by their son Corin in a biographical study, “Michael Redgrave: My Father.” (The actor died in 1985, the day after his 77th birthday; his wife died in 2003 at the age of 92.)
Corin Redgrave also narrated a BBC documentary tribute with the same title as the biography in 1996. Book and film included an official postmortem “outing” of his father’s homosexual tendencies, which seem to surface out of left field in fleeting passages of Michael Redgrave’s autobiography, “In My Mind’s Eye.”
It’s not difficult to envision Michael Redgrave as an actor who couldn’t always conceal a divided heart or troubled conscience from the camera. That state of mind may enhance his performances, wittingly or unwittingly, from time to time. It even might help in a comic vein. For example, his expert portrayal of Jack Worthing, the respectably aspiring but expediently devious suitor in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” could reflect a certain sense of relief about mocking a double life.
Another inside joke was hidden in the casting: This delightful movie reunited Mr. Redgrave with an improbable old flame, Edith Evans, still unsurpassed as Lady Bracknell. One of the jollier confessions of “Mind’s Eye” is that they shared a love affair in 1936, shamefully soon after the Redgraves’ marriage. Mr. Redgrave was cast as Orlando and Miss Evans as Rosalind in an Old Vic revival of “As You Like It.” He was 28 at the time, and she was 48. This must be the starting point of a delirious backstage romantic farce, still unwritten.
Rachel Kempson, whose acting career was sidetracked by maternity for several years, ended up with an Oscar advantage on her husband: She played supporting roles in both “Tom Jones” and “Out of Africa,” named best picture in 1963 and 1985, respectively. Husband and wife added numerous television credits to their resumes, although it seems a pity that Michael Redgrave’s repertory of classical roles was never systematically preserved in TV adaptations.
His superb performance as Fowler, the embittered protagonist of “The Quiet American,” reminds you that an entire Graham Greene bookshelf might have been right down his hypersensitive, conscience-stricken alley. It also would have been fun to see him as Sherlock Holmes at some point. Despite the oversights, it’s easy to cherish him as both an inimitable actor and a genetic boon to the English stage and screen.
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