Perhaps the busiest actor of his generation and the founder of an acting dynasty that continues today, Michael Scudamore Redgrave was born on March 20, 1908 in Bristol, England; he was the son of silent movie actor George "Roy" Redgrave and actress Daisy Scudamore. Before Redgrave was a year old, Roy Redgrave deserted the family and went to Australia to further his career. Soon after, his mother changed her name to Margaret and married a rich tea planter named James Anderson. Redgrave was not fond of his stepfather, but Anderson paid for a first class education at Clifton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate at Magdalene, he joined a group of young gay men which included the future spy Anthony Blunt.

After completing his studies, Redgrave worked as a schoolmaster at Cranleigh School in Surrey, England, where he directed the theatrical performances, including several works by Shakespeare. In 1934, he made his first professional appearance on stage as Roy Darwin in Counselor-at-Law at the Liverpool Playhouse. It was while in Liverpool that Redgrave met his future wife, actress Rachel Kempson. When she proposed to him, he revealed his bisexuality but they went on with the marriage, which lasted fifty years until his death in 1985. According to his son, Corin, Redgrave was always plagued with guilt over his marriage and family. Each had their own lovers but the marriage produced three children, all of whom became celebrated actors: Vanessa, Lynn and Corin.

Redgrave spent the majority of the 1930s on stage, and, invited by Tyrone Guthrie, arrived in London in 1936, where he played Laertes with Laurence Olivier in the title role of Hamlet. That same season, he played Orlando in As You Like It with Edith Evans, which was a hit for Redgrave. Despite being married and twenty years younger, Redgrave fell in love with his much-older costar.

In 1937, Redgrave made his television debut for the BBC, playing scenes from Romeo and Juliet. That year, he became a member of John Gielgud's famed 1937-1938 company at The Queen's Theater, in which he acted in Richard II, The School for Scandal and The Three Sisters

It was not surprising that the film industry took notice of the handsome, 6'4" Redgrave. With his smooth speaking voice, he easily transitioned into films in 1938, when he made his debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. Redgrave played a musicologist who falls in love with Margaret Lockwood and helps her to find a missing governess, while uncovering a spy network in the process. The film was a box-office hit and made Redgrave a movie star. The following year, 1939, Redgrave appeared in another early television broadcast, playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and was a critical success in the film The Stars Look Down (1940). In the 1940s, Redgrave continued to move between the stage, in roles such as Captain MacHeath in The Beggar's Opera and onscreen, most notably in Alberto Cavalcanti's horror classic Dead of Night (1945), which is made up of several vignettes. Redgrave, as an insane ventriloquist who believes his dummy is alive and dangerous, is the standout episode of the film. Redgrave had enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1941, but an injury to his arm resulted in a medical release in November 1942. He would return to the theater as a director and actor, often appearing with his wife.

After the war, Redgrave went to Hollywood in the hopes of launching a career there. His co-starring role with Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), directed by screenwriter Dudley Nichols, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He next starred opposite Joan Bennett in the noir thriller Secret Beyond the Door (1947), directed by Fritz Lang, but neither film was a box-office success and Redgrave returned to England and the British film industry. A collaboration with director Anthony Asquith resulted in a trio of indelible roles; the doomed flight lieutenant in The Way to the Stars (1945), as Jack Worthing in a Technicolor version of The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), and the cuckolded and disliked schoolmaster in the film adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Browning Version (1951). For this role, Redgrave won the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival, while the film itself won the Grand Prize. It was also nominated for a BAFTA award, and won a Bronze Berlin Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Redgrave was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1952, a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog by the Danes in 1955, and knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1959, becoming Sir Michael Redgrave.

When not performing on stage and screen, Redgrave managed to find time to be a lecturer in drama at Bristol University. Those lectures were later published in book form in 1953 as The Actor's Ways and Means. In 1955, he won the New York Critics Award for playing Hector in Tiger at the Gates, and the same year he appeared in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin. While many actors of his age were seeing film roles dwindling, Redgrave flourished, making solid impressions in The Innocents (1961) with Deborah Kerr, and as the kind reform school headmaster in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), in which he was directed by his son-in-law, Tony Richardson, who married Redgrave's daughter, Vanessa.

With all his successes, Redgrave did have what he considered his share of failures, like the 1964 stage production of Hobson's Choice. "I couldn't do the Lancashire accent and that shook my nerve terribly - all the other performances suffered." That same year, he felt he had failed again as Halvard Solness in The Master Builder. Part of the problem may have been the first signs of Parkinson's disease, which was not diagnosed for some time. While performing in The Old Boys on stage, Redgrave found that he couldn't remember his lines. The hearing aid he was given to help him hear the prompter literally fell apart on the stage. At that point, he realized he had a problem, "I then knew I really couldn't go on, at least not learning new plays." Redgrave's Parkinson's disease had begun to affect him by 1975, although he did go on acting, seemingly without pause until May 1979, with his final appearance in the ironically titled Close of Play, directed by Harold Pinter at the National Theater.

During his last years, Redgrave undertook writing his autobiography, In My Mind's Eye (1983), in which he was assisted by his son, Corin. In addition to The Actor's Ways and Means, he had also written Mask or Face: Reflections in an Actor's Mirror (1958) and The Mountebank's Tale (1959). Michael Redgrave died in a nursing home in London the day after his 77th birthday, March 21, 1985 from the effects of Parkinson's disease.

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
Fisher, Luchina "Vanessa Redgrave: Grieving and Glorying After Sister's Death" ABC News 13 May 10
Read, Piers Paul Alec Guinness: The Authorized Biography
http://wikipedia.org
The Internet Movie Database
http://movies.nytimes.com/person/59205/Michael-Redgrave
http://www.redgrave.com/biomr.htm
http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=7745
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/460508/