Michael Hordern

This led to a season-long contract at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, where he played major parts including Caliban in The Tempest, Jaques in As You Like It, and Sir Politick Would-Be in Ben Jonson's comedy Volpone.

[29] In addition to his Shakespearean commitments, Hordern joined the St Pancras People's Theatre, a London-based company partly funded by the theatrical manager Lilian Baylis.

The play, about Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy, was cancelled on the day Hordern was due to start work, with "unforeseen problems" cited as the reason by its producers.

[37] Hordern considered his experience with the Rapier Players to be invaluable; it taught him how a professional theatre company worked under a strict time frame and how it operated with an even stricter budget.

[47] In 1940, after a minor role in Without the Prince at the Whitehall Theatre, Hordern played the small, uncredited part of a BBC official alongside James Hayter in Arthur Askey's comedy film Band Waggon.

[62] Two other roles occurred that year: as Maxim de Winter in a television adaption of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca,[63] followed by the part of a detective in Good-Time Girl, alongside Dennis Price and Jean Kent.

[65][66][n 10] In early 1949 Hordern appeared as Pascal in the Michael Redgrave-directed comedy A Woman in Love, but disliked the experience because of the hostile relationship between Redgrave and the show's star, Margaret Rawlings.

Having seen him perform the previous year, Whiting hired Hordern for the lead role of Paul Southman, a cantankerous old poet who fights off three rebellious army deserters who threaten the tranquillity of his sleepy country village.

[74] Hordern cited Saint's Day's negative publicity as having done his career "the power of good" as it brought him to the attention of the director Glen Byam Shaw, who cast him in a series of plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1951.

[78] The author Fred Guida, writing in his book Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations: A Critical Examination in 2000, thought that Marley's ghost, though a "small but pivotal role", was "brilliantly played" by Hordern.

[79] With the first play of the season imminent, the Horderns moved to Stratford and took temporary accommodation at Goldicote House,[80][n 11] a large country property situated on the River Avon.

A few days later, the actor was thrilled to receive a letter of appreciation from Michael Redgrave, who thought Hordern's Caliban was "immensely fine, with all the pity and pathos ... but with real terror and humour as well".

[91] In early 1955 Hordern was asked by the British theatre manager and producer Binkie Beaumont to take the lead in André Roussin's comedy Nina, directed by Rex Harrison.

The play was cursed with bad luck: Evans fell ill and was replaced midway by an understudy who neglected to learn her lines; Harrison frequently upset the cast, which resulted in reduced morale.

[95] One night, after a performance of Nina in Eastbourne, and having felt that he had "acted [his] socks off",[96] Hordern, along with the rest of the cast, were berated by Harrison who accused them of producing a piece "not fit for the end of a pier".

[98] Another reason was his recognition of the differences between his sense of personal achievement within a theatre compared to that on a film set: "You get a certain sort of satisfaction in delivering what the director wants of you, but the chances of being emotionally involved are slim.

Hordern said the conflict took up a large part of people's lives; "whether it be one of love, loss, nostalgia or tragedy",[106] everybody, according to the actor, had a story to tell and could relate to the situations that were being depicted before them on screen.

[106] He found his earlier naval experience to be an asset when cast in many war films,[107][n 15] including The Man Who Never Was, Pacific Destiny, The Baby and the Battleship, all in 1956, and I Was Monty's Double two years later.

The play was not particularly successful and received mixed reviews: According to the author and theatre critic J. P. Wearing, Hordern was miscast,[115] while a reporter for The Stage, thought he gave a "convincing portrayal".

The press wrote of Hordern's "unintended comic interpretation" when characterising the evil king: "Half his time on stage he cringed like an American carpet seller in an ankle-length black dressing gown of fuzzy candlewick" thought one reviewer, who went on to say "he would make a sinister Shylock, a frightening Fagin.

[124] He played the Roman orator Cicero[125] and was hired on an eight-week contract which due to various setbacks, including cast sickness and adverse weather conditions, was extended to nine months.

[127] After Cleopatra's release, Hordern made a return to films, appearing in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965),[128] Khartoum (1966, as Lord Granville), How I Won the War (1967),[129] Where Eagles Dare (1968),[130] and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969, as Thomas Boleyn).

Mark Duguid of the British Film Institute called it "a masterpiece of economical horror that remains every bit as chilling as the day it was first broadcast",[134] while a journalist for The Telegraph, writing in 2010 about that year's remake starring John Hurt, reminded readers of the "brilliant Sixties production by Jonathan Miller [in which] Michael Hordern made a fine, crusty Parkin".

[141][n 18] Miller decided to further defy convention by concentrating on the relationships between the characters rather than adding detail to scenery and costume; he was eager not to use lavish sets and lighting for the fear of detracting from the characterisations and the sentimentality of the storyline.

"[144] Writing for The Times later that year, the theatre critic Irving Wardle described Hordern's Lear as a "sharp, peremptory pedant; more a law-giver than a soldier, and (as justice is an old man's profession) still in the prime of his life".

But this is not to deny that Hordern's simian habit of scratching his left earlobe with right hand or leaning over his desk as if he is doing intellectual press-ups is very funny to watch or that he is brilliant at displaying cuckolded curiosity.

[161] In 1976 Hordern joined the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he appeared as Prospero for Trevor Nunn in The Tempest, an engagement which the actor found to be unpleasant because of his poor relationship with the show's director, Clifford Williams.

[179] In 1986, John Mortimer, a writer whom Hordern respected greatly, engaged the actor in Paradise Postponed, an eleven-part drama which took a year to make and cost in excess of £6 million.

Despite the political differences, Hordern felt great empathy towards his character, and admired his "plain, straightforward attitude to life, his dottiness, and the way he hung to his faith in a wicked world with a saintliness verging on the simple".

[186] All that was required of Hordern in his next role, the wealthy but terminally ill landowner Peter Featherstone in the BBC adaptation Middlemarch, was for him simply to lie in bed and pretend to die.