Ralph Richardson — He Started at the Bottom (1937) 🇺🇸

In the world of the Theatre which is his home, Ralph Richardson started at the bottom.

by Max Breen

This is more literally true in his case than in those of 99 per cent, of his fellow actors, for he began his working life under the stage, mixing paints and working effects and noises off.

And far more literally than most of his fellows, he must have wished for a chance to get in on the ground floor.

It happened this way: his father was an art master at Cheltenham College, and not too bountifully blessed with this world's goods; and on leaving school at 17, young Ralph (by the way, he pronounces it Ralph, not Rafe) was obliged to look about for a job for which no expensive training was necessary.

His quest led him to a tiny repertory theatre in Brighton.

"But can you act?" they asked him.

"Well, I don't know about that," he hesitated. "But I tell you what — I can draw and paint a bit!"

So they took him on, and promised to let him act provided he would also paint the scenery.

When I was talking to him at Denham the other day he told me with satisfaction that it was some time since anyone had insisted on his painting the scenery before they would let him act!

As a matter of fact when he was at school he had no particular ambition to become an actor; he was far more interested in painting, and even now his artistic ability finds vent in making sketches of how he proposes to look in a character part.

But make no mistake about it, he is wholeheartedly a man of the theatre.

His first real professional appearance was as Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice; in those days he was thrilled by Shakespeare, and he still is.

For two years he was a shining light of the Old Vic, where he played a large number of Shakespearian roles; now, when he has few opportunities of playing in Shakespeare (for a West End actor must keep in front of West End audiences) he relies upon an occasional engagement in a Shakespearian broadcast to keep him in practice.

Here certainly is a sign of the times. A generation ago, if an actor had had his training in Shakespeare it was practically a foregone conclusion that he wouldn't be able to play anything more modern.

Nowadays Shakespeare is played as if he made sense (which he succeeds surprisingly often in doing), and behold the Shakespearian actor — the quiet, easy, naturalistic, but frequently forceful Ralph Richardson.

His style reminds me vividly of Sir Gerald du Maurier's, except that he indulges less in the dangerous habit of throwing away words than that great actor did. His diction is as near perfection as we are likely to hear on our stage, and laudably free from mannerisms.

Personally, though I like him in character roles, I prefer him on the screen in those that don't call for costume or a disguising make-up.

His finest screen performance to date — the Boss in “Things to Come” — was most certainly a character role, inasmuch as he presented a character entirely different from his own; whereas two "costume" parts he has played on the screen, the mad professor in “Bulldog Jack,” and the retired colonel in “The Man Who Could Work Miracles,” were much less convincing.

He is best in non-heroic roles, having a great aptitude for presenting rather unsympathetic characters in such a way as to command the sympathy of the audience.

In South Riding, which Victor Saville is directing at Denham, he has just such a role — that of a somewhat unbending Yorkshire squire who comes into conflict with his less exalted fellow members of the local council.

In less expert hands such a character might well become overbearing and unpleasant; Saville and Richardson between them are making it a human, likeable character with a marked disability, from which most of us suffer, to see any point of view but his own.

"How did you get into films?" I asked him, for to tell the truth I have always been a little puzzled at his being in pictures at all. Not that I don't regard him as a good screen actor — indeed, I would much rather see a performance of his than of most of our matinee idols — but because he is not an obvious type for films.

His worst enemy would not call him an Adonis; probably that's a reason why so many people, surfeited with Taylors and Montgomerys, like him so much — though I think the chief reason for his screen popularity is his delightfully casual manner with its underlying sense of purpose.

However, I doubt whether many picturegoers analyse their preferences to that extent!

"I started filming more or less by accident," he told me. "What happened was that my friend Cedric Hardwicke was playing in a Boris Karloff film called The Ghoul, and he said, 'Come on, Ralph, and try this film game; you'll be interested.' And I did, and was."

Actually, if you only realised it, Richardson played the title-role in that picture; he doesn't realise it either, because one naturally associates "ghoulies and ghosties" with Boris Karloff; but a ghoul, properly speaking, is a robber and/or devourer of the dead, and the only person who robbed the dead in this story is Ralph Richardson himself, disguised as a very normal and inoffensive young parson.

To play the title-role in one's first picture, even by accident — that is something!

Just about the same time he played in another film, "Friday the Thirteenth," at Islington.

In this he was Jessie Matthews's fiancé, and it focused a good deal of attention on him, so that perhaps no one was wildly surprised when he was allotted the title-role in “The Return of Bulldog Drummond” for B.I.P. at Elstree.

This film was just one of those gallant farragoes, full of impossible situations and smashing straight lefts to the jaw; but it demonstrated Ralph Richardson's versatility — which was still more apparent when he undertook the role of the smug son, William, in Java Head.

There followed “King of Paris” at Elstree, again with his friend Cedric Hardwicke, but this failed to cut very much ice; and it was followed by another "Bulldog" picture — “Bulldog Jack,” a wild knockabout farce in which Jack Hulbert played the title-role and Richardson was a burlesque mad professor in an unspeakable wig.

Then came Things to Come, which firmly established his reputation as a film actor, and The Man Who Could Work Miracles, which tried vainly to work the miracle of destroying it again.

I am glad to report that Mr. Richardson is no happier about that characterisation than I am.

In fact, he's not really very happy about any film job he's done.

If pressed for an opinion, he diffidently admits that he was less dissatisfied with The Boss in Things to Come than with the other portraits in his screen gallery.

The truth is, he is still somewhat of an alien in the unfamiliar world of films; one of the most modest of men, he will not admit to any mastery of the mystery.

He gave me the impression of being perplexed but not defeated, his attitude a kind of pathetic stout-heartedness towards this strange new world bounded by mikes, cameras, lights, chalkmarks, tape-measures, and weird jargon.

Yet, being an accomplished actor and withal extremely sensitive to direction, he is regarded by people in the know as one of the greatest assets of British films to-day.

Which is just one more proof that rationality as it is understood in the theatre has no place in the film world — and is apparently not needed.

Ralph Richardson is not an obvious type for films.

Collection: Picturegoer Magazine, July 1937