John G: The Authorized Biography of John Gielgud - Hardcover

Morley, Sheridan

3.9

49 ratings by Goodreads

9780340368039: John G: The Authorized Biography of John Gielgud

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340368039 ISBN 13: 9780340368039

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001

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John Gielgud has no place in the history of twentieth-century British theatre for the simple reason that he was that history. In a career spanning almost eighty years on stage and screen, radio and television, he effectively reinvented Shakespeare for the modern stage; he was the first great Hamlet of our time; with his brother Val he virtually created the BBC radio drama; decades before the founding of the National Theatre or the RSC, he pioneered the idea of a resident classical company in the West End. He made stars of Alec Guinness and Paul Scofield as well as hundreds of other actors, directors and designers; from Peter Brook to Peter Greenaway, he worked with all the revolutionary artists of his time.
The great-nephew of Ellen Terry, John was the bridge from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, and he was the founder and last survivor of a group of classical actors (Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, Peggy Ashcroft, Sybil Thorndike and Edith Evans) such as the world had never seen and will never see again.
Twelve years before his death, John Gielgud invited Sheridan Morley to become his only authorised biographer, handing over to him letters and diaries and personal files. In addition to this huge archive, Morley has interviewed more than two hundred of John's colleagues, friends, rivals and critics to form a fully rounded and detailed portrait of the great man. Alongside hitherto unpublished views from contemporaries such as Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson, Morley fully researches the events surrounding John's 1953 arrest for homosexual soliciting - an incident that helped eventually change the law in Britian.

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About the Author:

Sheridan Morley is one of Britain's foremost award-winning theatre critics, broadcasters and biographers. He has written the first biographies of Noel Coward, David Niven and James Mason as well as lives of many other actors including his father, Robert Morley, and his grandmother, Dame Gladys Cooper.

Review:

Born into a thespian family, Sheridan Morley was given not so much a silver spoon - more a silver typewriter. His numerous subjects have included Coward, Bogarde, Garland, Hepburn and Niven, as well as his father, Robert Morley, and his grandmother, Gladys Cooper. As to Gielgud, whom he grew up knowing as a friend, Morley took over the project in 1988 on the death of Observer Arts Editor Richard Findlater, who had originally been assigned the task. Drawing on the hundreds of interviews he'd undertaken, plus hundreds more of his own, Morley didn't finally begin writing until the week following Sir John's death last year. Though the actor never wanted a right of veto and had never asked that the study be published posthumously, neither biographer nor publisher saw how it could be published in Gielgud's lifetime. Inevitably, there are revelations that will hurt - others as well as the subject: Gielgud wasn't the only distinguished actor charged with soliciting, though he was the only one to make the headlines. The book is as much a biography of 20th century British theatre in a golden age that may never be surpassed as it is the story of an actor who, far from being cosy and avuncular, was a radical, a revolutionary in terms of his career and how he saw the theatre.

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