Romney Brent
Encyclopedia
Biography
Born Romulo Larralde in SaltilloSaltillo
Saltillo is the capital city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. The city is located about 400 km south of the U.S. state of Texas, and 90 km west of Monterrey, Nuevo León....
, Coahuila
Coahuila
Coahuila, formally Coahuila de Zaragoza , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Coahuila de Zaragoza is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico...
, Mexico, Brent's father was a diplomat, and so he was educated in several countries, especially in New York City.
He studied for the stage under Theodore Komisarjevsky
Theodore Komisarjevsky
Fyodor Fyodorovich Komissarzhevsky or Theodore Komisarjevsky, as he is better known in the West, was a Russian theatrical director and designer. He began his career in Moscow, but had his greatest influence in London...
and began work as an actor with the Theatre Guild
Theatre Guild
The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of the Washington Square Players.Its original purpose was to...
in He Who Gets Slapped when he was 20 and later that year was on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in their production of The Lucky One by A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...
. He established a reputation in "gentle, ingratiating" roles, such as the Lion in George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's Androcles and the Lion
Androcles and the Lion (play)
Androcles and the Lion is a 1912 play written by George Bernard Shaw.Androcles and the Lion is Shaw's retelling of the tale of Androcles, a slave who is saved by the requited mercy of a lion. In the play, Shaw portrays Androcles to be one of the many Christians being led to the Colosseum for torture...
, the worried groom in Shaw's Getting Married
Getting Married
Getting Married is a play by George Bernard Shaw. First performed in 1908, it features a cast of family members who gather together for a marriage. The play analyses and satirises the status of marriage in Shaw's day, with a particular focus on the necessity of liberalising divorce laws.- External...
and Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
. In 1925–26, he appeared in two seasons of the long-running musical revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
Garrick Gaieties on Broadway. Another Broadway success was in The Little Show
The Little Show
The Little Show is a musical revue with lyrics by Howard Dietz and music by Arthur Schwartz. This was the first of 11 musicals that featured the songs of Dietz and Schwartz. The revue opened on Broadway in 1929.-History:...
in 1925–30.
In 1932, in London, he appeared in Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's revue Words and Music
Words and Music (musical)
Words and Music is a musical revue with sketches, music, lyrics and direction by Noël Coward. The revue introduced the song "Mad About the Boy", which, according to The Noël Coward Society's website, is Coward's most popular song...
as compère, as Stanhope in a parody of Journey's End
Journey's End
Journey's End is a 1928 drama, the seventh of English playwright R. C. Sherriff. It was first performed at the Apollo Theatre in London by the Incorporated Stage Society on 9 December 1928, starring a young Laurence Olivier, and soon moved to other West End theatres for a two-year run...
, and as a missionary in a sketch in which he sang Coward's famous song "Mad Dogs and Englishmen
Mad Dogs and Englishmen (song)
"Mad Dogs and Englishmen" is a song written by Noël Coward and first performed in The Third Little Show at the Music Box Theatre, New York, on 1 June 1931, by Beatrice Lillie. The following year it was used in the revue Words and Music and also released in a "studio version"...
". While in London, he directed a Herbert Farjeon
Herbert Farjeon
Herbert Farjeon was a major figure in the British theatre from 1910 until his death. He was a presenter of revues in London's West End, a theatre critic, lyricist, librettist, playwright, theatre manager and researcher....
revue and wrote the book for Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
's Nymph Errant
Nymph Errant
Nymph Errant is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and book by Romney Brent based upon the novel by James Laver. The somewhat controversial story concerned a young English lady intent upon losing her virginity. Porter considered the score his best because of its worldliness and sexual...
. In 1933 Brent was cast as Paul, Duc de Chaucigny-Varennes in Coward's Conversation Piece
Conversation Piece (musical)
Conversation Piece, billed as "A Romantic Comedy with Music", is a musical written by Noel Coward. It premiered at His Majesty's Theatre, London, on 16 February 1934, and ran for 177 performances over five months...
but struggled with the role and was replaced by Coward himself, to whom Brent gladly handed it over, adding "providing you let me still come to rehearsals and watch you find out what a bloody awful part it is."
In New York in the 1930s, Brent created the role of the Rev Phosphor Hammingtrap in Shaw's The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, which he also directed. In London he played Tobias in James Bridie
James Bridie
James Bridie was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and surgeon whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor....
's Tobias and the Angel and Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
. After that, his main work in the theatre was in America, both in the classics and in modern works, as actor and director. For example, in 1946–47 he starred on Broadway in Joan of Lorraine
Joan of Lorraine
Joan of Lorraine is a 1946 play-within-a-play by Maxwell Anderson. It is about an acting company who stages a dramatization of the story of Joan of Arc and the effect that the story has on them. As in the musical Man of La Mancha, most of the actors in the drama play two or more roles...
. In Mexico he directed plays in Spanish.
Brent appeared in numerous television shows from 1930 into the 1960s. Among other films, he appeared in East Meets West
East Meets West (1936 film)
East Meets West is a 1936 British drama film directed by Herbert Mason and starring George Arliss, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle and John Laurie...
(1936), Under the Red Robe
Under the Red Robe
Under the Red Robe is an 1894 historical novel by Stanley J. Weyman, described as his best known book and greatest success. It is set in seventeenth-century France during the ascendency of Cardinal Richelieu, who appears as a character in the novel...
(1937), Dinner at the Ritz
Dinner at the Ritz
Dinner at the Ritz is a 1937 British, black-and-white, mystery romance film, directed by Harold D. Schuster and starring David Niven, Annabella, Raymond Huntley and Ronald Shiner as Sydney, the Porter...
(1937), The Middle Watch
The Middle Watch (1940 film)
The Middle Watch is a 1940 British, black-and-white, comedy film, directed by Thomas Bentley and starring Ronald Shiner as the Ship's Mechanic or Engineer, Jack Buchanan, Greta Gynt, Fred Emney and Kay Walsh. It was produced by Associated British Picture Corporation...
(1940) and The Adventures of Don Juan (1949).
During the last seven years of his life, he taught drama in Mexico City. Brent was married to the American actress and singer Gina Malo
Gina Malo
Gina Malo was an American film actress, born Janet Flynn in Cincinnati, Ohio. She appeared in a number of British films in the 1930s, often playing an American.-Filmography:* In a Monastery Garden * A Tight Corner...
. He died at the age of 74 in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, Mexico.