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Cedric Hardwicke 1893 - 1964

Cedric Hardwicke of New York Citry, NY was born on February 19, 1893, and died at age 71 years old on August 6, 1964 in New York.

Cedric Hardwicke

Cedric Webster Hardwicke

Manhattan in New York Citry, NY

February 19, 1893

August 6, 1964

New York, New York, United States

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Cedric Hardwicke Cedric Hardwicke (1893 - 1964)

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Cedric Hardwicke's History: 1893 - 1964

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Introduction

Sir Cedric Hardwicke Biography Born February 19, 1893 in Lye, Worcestershire, England, UK Died August 6, 1964 in New York City, New York, USA (emphysema) Birth Name Cedric Webster Hardwicke Nicknames Butch Height 5' 9" (1.75 m) Mini Bio (1) Sir Cedric Hardwicke, one of the great character actors in the first decades of the talking picture, was born in Lye, England on February 19, 1893. Hardwicke attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his stage debut in 1912. His career was interrupted by military service in World War I, but he returned to the stage in 1922 with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, distinguishing himself as Caesar in George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, which was his ticket to the London stage. For his distinguished work on the stage and in films, he was knighted by King George V in 1934, a time when very few actors received such an honor. Hardwicke first performed on the American stage in 1936 and emigrated to the United States permanently after spending the 1948 season with the Old Vic. Hardwicke's success on stage and in films and television was abetted by his resonant voice and aristocratic bearing. Among the major films he appeared in were Les Misérables (1935), Stanley and Livingstone (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Suspicion (1941), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). His last film was The Pumpkin Eater (1964) in 1964. Cedric Hardwicke died on August 6, 1964 in New York City, New York. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Guy Lazarus qvs by garryq Spouse (2) Mary Scott (27 July 1950 - 15 November 1961) ( divorced) ( 1 child) Helena Pickard (1927 - 11 May 1950) ( divorced) ( 1 child) Trade Mark (2) Rich baritone voice Aristocratic bearing Had one son with Helena Pickard: Edward Hardwicke. He was created a Knight Bachelor in the 1934 King's New Year Honours List for his services to drama. When he died his money was so eaten up by hospital expenses incurred during his final illness that there was no money left to pay for a funeral. Several actors' funds, in honor of his long, distinguished career, donated the money. He was a favorite of George Bernard Shaw, having made notable appearances in the playwright's "The Apple Cart", "Too True to Be Good" and "Caesar and Cleopatra". Shaw initially referred to Hardwicke as his fifth favorite actor, the other four being The Marx Brothers. Later he referred to Hardwicke as his fourth favorite actor, presumably after Zeppo Marx retired from the act. His hometown of Lye is also home to independent filmmaker Dave James. His father was a simple country doctor who wanted him to carry on in his footsteps. He met his second wife, Mary Scott, in 1949 when she was an understudy for Lilli Palmer, whom he was appearing with on Broadway in a revival of "Caesar and Cleopatra". During World War I he was in the Judge Advocate's branch of the British Army, serving there from 1914-21, and was one of the last members of the British Expeditionary Force to leave France. His favorite screen role was Mr. Brink in On Borrowed Time (1939). Although he was 62 when he played King Edward IV of England in Richard III (1955), his character was only 40 years old when he died on April 9, 1483. He played King Edward IV of England in Richard III (1955) while his son Edward Hardwicke played Lord Stanley in Richard III (1995). He was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures at 6201 Hollywood Blvd. and for Television at 6660 Hollywood Blvd. Had appeared with Vincent Price in five films: The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Wilson (1944), The Ten Commandments (1956) and The Story of Mankind (1957). Had appeared with Peter Lorre in five films: Invisible Agent (1942), The Cross of Lorraine (1943), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), The Story of Mankind (1957) and Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962). Was in five Oscar Best Picture nominees: Les Misérables (1935), Suspicion (1941), Wilson (1944), The Ten Commandments (1956) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Only the last of these won. Personal Quotes (16) I can't act. I have never acted. And I shall never act. What I can do is suspend my audience's power of judgement till I've finished. I believe that God felt sorry for actors, so he created Hollywood to give them a place in the sun and a swimming pool--the price they had to pay was to surrender their talent. Actors and burglars work better at night. England is my wife. America is my mistress. It is very good sometimes to get away from one's wife. [on TV commercials] The last refuge of optimism in a world of gloom. [on sneak previews] Let one dim-witted schoolboy scrawl "lousy" on his card, and the entire studio may be stampeded the following morning in an executive meeting to discuss slicing and revising the picture to shreds. On Hollywood's theory that the customer must know best, the schoolboy's "lousy" is regarded as the last word in dramatic criticism. The director's tricks are accomplished by converting plays into spectacles of love, landscape and lust, and the actors into puppets. Unhappily, a lot of young actors and actresses are destroyed in the process. They are drilled to perfection in a single role, while the director tries to produce performances by direction alone. As a result, they may be ruined for anything beyond the single role. By temperament, a young actor needs to be mercurial, if nothing else, able to shed misfortunes like a duck shedding water and to magnify a pinpoint of hope into a golden dawn. Actors must practice restraint else think what might happen in a love scene. When actors are talking, they are servants of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor. My aim is to leave the theater and the screen better than I found them. I want to be one of those reformers. I am content to makes a virtue of necessity and modestly disclaim my desire to be a great reformer. I am resigned to be one of the myriad little ones; but I propose to be a very good little one. I once heard Shaw [George Bernard Shaw] say there are two kinds of actors: those who are happy and confidant only in being themselves, and those who are timid and self-conscious and only at ease when they are able to take refuge in some character as far removed from themselves as possible. To the former, film acting is a joy; for the latter, it is difficult and disturbing. [on his role in Sentimental Journey (1946)] I did nothing but look at the handsome bosom of Maureen O'Hara and listen to the murmuring of her heart through a stethoscope. Hollywood may be thickly populated, but to me it's still a bewilderness. [on his role as Pharaoh Sethi in The Ten Commandments (1956)] It was a very great pleasure to play it. And, of course, it was a very great privilege to work with Mr. DeMille [Cecil B. DeMille], who really was dedicated to this particular picture.
02/19

1893

Birthday

February 19, 1893

Birthdate

Unknown

Birthplace

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Military Service

During World War I he was in the Judge Advocate's branch of the British Army, serving there from 1914-21, and was one of the last members of the British Expeditionary Force to leave France.
Personal Life & Family

Cedric Hardwicke Famous Memorial VETERAN BIRTH 19 Feb 1893 Lye, Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, West Midlands, England DEATH 6 Aug 1964 (aged 71) New York, New York County, New York, USA BURIAL Golders Green Crematorium Golders Green, London Borough of Barnet, Greater London, England PHOTOS 2 FLOWERS 497 Actor. He was one of the greatest character actors on stage and in early film with a fifty-year career. Following in his father's footsteps, he had planned to become a physician, but after not passing medical school entrance exams, he entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and was on the stage in London by 1912. His successful acting career halted with the outbreak of World War I; he served in the British Army from 1914 to 1921 in France as an officer in the Judge Advocate's branch, and was one of the last British officers to leave France. In January 1922, he resumed his acting career appearing in London's top theaters. He made such an impression on his audience that at the age of 41, he was the youngest actor to be knighted and held that honor until Lawrence Olivier in 1947. For the Broadway production of the 1960 "A Majority of One", he was nominated for a Tony Award. He was elected to the 1936 Rede Lecturer at Cambridge University. In the late 1930s, he relocated to the United States to make New York City his home, but over the years, he traveled between each location for various assignments. His first film, "Nelson," was made in England in 1926 as a silent film. Soon after, he was in Hollywood making films. He had a singing part with Bing Crosby in the 1949 film, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"; as Pharaoh Seti I in the successful 1956 film "The Ten Commandments"; and as the Bishop in the 1935 "Les Misérables." His last TV performance was an episode of "Outer Limits" that aired May 4, 1964, "The Forms of Things Unknown"; Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke died three months later of COPD. The film "Pumpkin Eater" was released in November 1964 after his death. He is credited with over 110 film roles including his two silent films and TV episodes, dozens of stage performances, 25 guest appearances as himself on TV shows, along with being a director twice and a producer once. Bio by: Linda Davis Family Members Spouses Helena Pickard 1900–1959 (m. 1927) Mary Lydia Scott Heller 1921–2009 Children Edward Cedric Hardwicke 1932–2011 Flowers • 497 Left by Larry E. Barnes on 14 Nov 2023 Left by Memories on 29 Sep 2023
08/6

1964

Death

August 6, 1964

Death date

lung illnesses

Cause of death

New York, New York United States
Death location

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Obituary

Sir Cedric Hardwicke Is Dead; Actor on Stage and in Films, 71; Created Roles in Shaw Plays and Excelled in Character Parts for Many Years AUG. 7, 1964 The New York Times Archives Sir Cedric Hardwicke, the actor, died here yesterday of a chronic lung ailment. He was 71 years old. Sir Cedric had been admitted to University Hospital three weeks ago after a long illness. His doctors said he suffered from emphysema, a distension of the lung sacs, which makes breathing difficult. When Cedric Hardwicke earned a knighthood in 1934 for his Shavian performances, he was the youngest theatrical performer ever to have achieved that honor. In the years that followed, he became known to American audiences for mature and dignified characterizations entirely suitable for a “Sir.” At the time he received Britain's high honor, he had never appeared in America. After that, he rarely acted anywhere else. While he proudly guarded the English citizenship that gave him his title, he became one of the most familiar personalities in Hollywood films —the personification of the British gentleman, conservative, aloof, and impeccably polite. It was a rewarding characterization, and he played it well. Sir Cedric was never a movie star, and in the ranks of supporting actors, he usually did exactly that—support. His notices were sometimes excellent, invariably respectful. To the general public, he was a familiar face whose name hovered on the tip of the tongue. In the theater, Sir Cedric was very much a star. Typically, however, two of his most notable Broadway successes, in “Caesar and Cleopatra” and as the Japanese businessman in “A Majority of One,” were in complementary adjunct to glittering actresses, Lilli Palmer and Gertrude Berg. Quite possibly the finest acting he ever did was in Charles Laughton's staged reading of “Don Juan in Hell.” In George Bernard Shaw's exercise in dialectic, he played the statue. Most of his performance, and certainly his most memorable effects, consisted of attitudinizing, with an eloquent “harrumph” and a devastating flip of a page, while Mr. Laughton, Charles Boyer, and Agnes Moorehead articulated the meaty Shavian hyperbole. Cedric Webster Hardwicke was born in Lye, Stourbridge, Worcester, on Feb. 19, 1893. His father, a physician, experienced the traditional British horror of his son's chosen profession in the theater, but nevertheless financed him through his studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Sir Cedric credited George Bernard Shaw with helping to make the actor an acceptable member of society. “He fought as nobody else did for recognition of the actor as an intelligent member of the community,” the actor recalled a few years ago. Shaw became a personal friend when the young actor was appearing in his plays at the Birmingham Repertory Theater. “Shaw was a sort of godfather to me,” Sir Cedric said. The playwright closely supervised the productions as the actor created the roles of Captain Shotover in “Heartbreak House” and the He‐Ancient in “Back to Methuselah.” This high point in Sir Cedric's career came after he had followed the usual fledgling actor's route, touring the provinces in small parts in classics and trivia. “I played Hamlet at 14, and got that out of my system,” he said. His London debut was in 1912, in a walk‐on as a gentleman of the court in “The Monk and the Woman.” Then came World War I, and seven years with the army, ending as a captain in France. He joined the Birmingham company early in 1922, and created there, in addition to the other plays, the role of King Magnus in the first production of Shaw's “The Apple Cart.” He moved on to London in this play and began the series of diversified roles that led to his knighthood. Critics admired him as Captain Andy in “Show Boat,” the sadistic father in “The Barretts of Wimpole Street,” a sympathetic doctor in “The Late Christopher Bean” and the exiled Russian prince in “Tovarich.” “Dreyfus” was his first leading film assignment, in 1931. Hollywood called him the priest in “Les Miserables,” with Mr. Laughton and Fredric March in 1935, and then he appeared in one of the early Technicolor films, “Becky Sharp.” He made his Broadway debut in Henri Bernstein's “Promise” in 1936. It failed, and so did “The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse.” His first Broadway long run was as Canon Skerritt in Paul Vincent Carroll's “Shadow and Substance,” in 1938. Since then he alternated between Broadway and Hollywood, sometimes directing—he had a notable success with Gertrude Lawrence in “Pygmalion” in 1946 — but usually just acting. “I'm the only actor I know who never wanted to do anything else,” he once said. He played Burgess to Katharine Cornell's “Candida” and Creon to her. “Antigone” in 1946. His hit revival of “Caesar and Cleopatra” came in 1949; “Don Juan in Hell” in 1951 —it also had a long and highly successful tour—and “A Majority of One” in 1959. He also appeared in a respectable number of flops—in all, more than 30 plays in New York and stock. Among his better film roles were “The Moon Is Down;” “Wilson”; as Mr. Brink in “On Borrowed Time”; and Livingstone in ‘Stanley and Livingstone,” “The Keys of the Kingdom” and “A Woman's Vengeance.” He was particularly praised in Anthony Asquith's British‐made “The Winslow Boy,” playing a determined father whose son is expelled from school for petty theft, and who fights the case over a period of years to victory in Parliament. He acted for Alfred Hitchcock in “Rope” and for George Stevens in “I Remember Mama.” In these films, he had small roles and gave well‐received performances. He also appeared, to lesser applause, in “The Ten Commandments” and “Around the World in 80 Days,” and as a somewhat senile king in Laurence Olivier's “Richard III.” He acted often on television, but without outstanding success. He also wrote his autobiography twice — “Let's Pretend: Recollections and Reflections of a Lucky Actor” in 1932, and, while playing in “A Majority of One,” “A Victorian in Orbit.” He wanted to call the last one “Fifty Years Without Being Found Out.” In private, Sir Cedric was a dry wit, a club man, and a raconteur. He married and was divorced twice. Both wives were actresses — Helena Pickard, 1928 to 1950, and Mary Scott, 1950 to 1961. He had sons by both wives, Edward, now 32 and an actor, and Michael. Although Sir Cedric made a considerable amount of money during his career, he was not well off financially in his later years, according to his friends. One friend said yesterday that Sir Cedric liked to spend money as fast as he earned it and being “flat broke” did not really disturb him. An associate said that Sir Cedric did not let financial problems make him unhappy. He would smile and shrug his shoulders, the associate said, because it was a regular part of his life and his friends understood. Three years ago, he summed up his private life: “The more I see of life, the more I prefer the world of the theater to the real world.” A funeral service will be held on Monday at 12 at the Universal Chapel, 52d Street at Lexington Avenue.

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Cedric Hardwicke lived 3 years shorter than the average family member when died at the age of 71.

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