Roy Redgrave
Encyclopedia
Roy Redgrave was an English stage and silent film
actor. Redgrave was the founder of the Redgrave
acting family.
, a district of Lambeth in South London in 1873, he was the eldest son of George Augustus Redgrave (1851–81), a maker of the board game Bagatelle
, and Zoe Beatrice Elsworthy (née Pym, later Howard; 1856–1936). By 1897, he was professionally known as 'Roy' Redgrave apparently in the belief that he was descended from Rob Roy. The Redgrave family originated in the Northamptonshire village of Crick
. Redgrave also assumed the middle name "Elsworthy" from his mother, and his sister took the stage name Dolly Elsworthy. Redgrave was the eldest of five siblings including, Zoe Adelina "Dolly" Elsworthy (b. 1876), Cornelius (b. 1878), Christopher (b. 1879), and Harriet (b. 1880)
, Devon on 1 September 1894. Their careers reached a high point at their joint debut at the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton
in April 1900 with Roy billed as "The Dramatic Cock o' the North". They had three children, John Kyrle born in 1895, Robin Roy (father of Major-General Sir Roy Redgrave
) born in 1897 and Nellie Maud born in 1898.
About this time Redgrave fell in love with a young actress named Esther Mary Cooke, (known on the stage as Ettie Carlisle), daughter of Victor Cooke, huntsman and riding master. Ellen discovered the affair and Ettie fled England for South Africa. Redgrave followed her to South Africa. They had a son, Victor Redgrave Parrett, born 25 July 1906 in Australia. Carlisle had married Clayton Parrett by special license between 28 October and 10 November 1903, on a Sunday at the Cathedral in Cape Town. Redgrave arrived two days later on the Tuesday. Carlisle left Clayton Parrett and went to Australia with Redgrave.
At some point Redgrave left for Australia alone. In the "History of Australian Theatre" archives, the American actress Tittell Brune made her first appearance in Australia on 21 September 1904 at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney
, in the play Sunday, supported by Roy Redgrave. Roy toured with her on the J. C. Williamson
circuit. According to Corin Redgrave
, Ellen (Judith) pursued Roy to Australia, arriving in time to pay his unsettled hotel bills. Ellen was unable to persuade him to return home with her to his family. Ellen remarried Frederick John Nettlefold, a respectable landed gentleman in 1907.
However Redgrave did return to England, appearing in repertory
at the Grand Theatre, Brighton
, where he met Daisy Bertha Mary Scudamore
. They married at Glasgow Register Office in 1907 while touring in the north and had one child, the actor Sir Michael Redgrave
born on 20 March 1908, later to become the father of actors Vanessa
, Corin
and Lynn
.
Six months after Michael's birth, Redgrave left for Australia again, this time permanently. William Anderson, a Melbourne producer, had just built the King's Theatre, and needed actors. His name appears in June 1909, when he performed in the play The Bank of England. The following year, Anderson, known for his fondness of the lurid and sensational, had Roy collaborate with him on a play about the just ended Crippen
case. Crippen was hanged in November 1910. The play was called By Wireless Telegraphy, but there is no record that a production came out of it. In 1911, Anderson was ruined financially by an expensive flop, and had to lease away his King's Theatre, and Redgrave turned his attention to the new and burgeoning film industry, under contract to Lincoln-Cass Films. He appeared in several silent movie
s, beginning in 1911 with The Christian. Later he played the villain in Moondyne
(1913) as well as six shorts, played the lead in The Hayseeds (1917), and co-starred in Robbery Under Arms (1920). Back in England, the forsaken Daisy had changed her name to Margaret and married Captain James Anderson, a wealthy tea planter.
visited Sydney with her then husband John Clark
, and vowed to find him. Their search ended at the Sydney Opera House
library, where, as she recounts in her play Shakespeare For My Father
(page 48), they came up with Redgrave's obituary, learning that he had died on 25 May 1922, and was buried at South Head Cemetery
. There they learned that he had been put in an unmarked grave by somebody called Minnie, who paid 15 shillings. (The idea that it may have been the religious Minnie Tittell Brune feeling sorry for him is enticing. More probably it was Minnie Hider, Esther's friend and confidante, who raised Victor.). They found the spot, and arranged for a headstone
, asked his son Michael what it should say, and he said to put, simply, "Roy Redgrave, Actor". It was later discovered that Redgrave married Irish widow Mary Leresche in 1916.http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/IndexSearch?form=IndexingSearch&cgiurl=%2Fcgi-bin%2FIndex%2FIndexingMarriage.cgi&event=marriages&sname=redgrave&gname=&fname=&mname=&frange=1916&trange=1916&place=&x=97&y=14&SessionID=29673448 His marriage certificate makes reference to his previous marriage to Ellen (Judith) but not to any subsequent marriage to Daisy (Margaret Scudamore). Mary died in 1948.http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/IndexSearch?form=IndexingSearch&cgiurl=%2Fcgi-bin%2FIndex%2FIndexingBirth.cgi&sname=redgrave&gname=&fname=&mname=&event=deaths&frange=1948&trange=1948&place=&x=0&y=0&SessionID=29673547
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
actor. Redgrave was the founder of the Redgrave
Redgrave family
The Redgrave family is an English acting dynasty, spanning four generations. Members of the family worked in theatre beginning in the nineteenth century, and later in film and television. Some family members have also written plays and books. Vanessa Redgrave is the most prominent, having won...
acting family.
Early life
Born George Ellsworthy Redgrave in 122 Kennington Road, KenningtonKennington
Kennington is a district of South London, England, mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, although part of the area is within the London Borough of Southwark....
, a district of Lambeth in South London in 1873, he was the eldest son of George Augustus Redgrave (1851–81), a maker of the board game Bagatelle
Bagatelle
Bagatelle is a billiards-derived indoor table game, the object of which is to get a number of balls past wooden pins into holes...
, and Zoe Beatrice Elsworthy (née Pym, later Howard; 1856–1936). By 1897, he was professionally known as 'Roy' Redgrave apparently in the belief that he was descended from Rob Roy. The Redgrave family originated in the Northamptonshire village of Crick
Crick, Northamptonshire
Crick is a village in the Daventry district of the county of Northamptonshire in England. It is close to the border with Warwickshire, west of Rugby and north-west of Northampton. The villages of Crick and West Haddon were by-passed by the A428 main road from Rugby to Northampton when the...
. Redgrave also assumed the middle name "Elsworthy" from his mother, and his sister took the stage name Dolly Elsworthy. Redgrave was the eldest of five siblings including, Zoe Adelina "Dolly" Elsworthy (b. 1876), Cornelius (b. 1878), Christopher (b. 1879), and Harriet (b. 1880)
Family and career
His first wife was actress Ellen Maud Pratt, the daughter of prosperous Devon farmer, John Dew Pratt of Buckland Monachorum. Her stage name was Judith Kyrle. They were married in Littleham cum ExmouthLittleham, Exmouth
Littleham is an area of Exmouth in Devon, England. It was historically a village and civil parish, much older than Exmouth itself.The ecclesiastical parish is now known as Littleham-cum-Exmouth . The original parish church dates back to the 13th century and is dedicated to St Margaret and St...
, Devon on 1 September 1894. Their careers reached a high point at their joint debut at the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton
Hoxton
Hoxton is an area in the London Borough of Hackney, immediately north of the financial district of the City of London. The area of Hoxton is bordered by Regent's Canal on the north side, Wharf Road and City Road on the west, Old Street on the south, and Kingsland Road on the east.Hoxton is also a...
in April 1900 with Roy billed as "The Dramatic Cock o' the North". They had three children, John Kyrle born in 1895, Robin Roy (father of Major-General Sir Roy Redgrave
Roy Redgrave (British Army officer)
Major-General Sir Roy Michael Frederick Redgrave, KBE MC was Commander of British Forces in Hong Kong.-Military career:...
) born in 1897 and Nellie Maud born in 1898.
About this time Redgrave fell in love with a young actress named Esther Mary Cooke, (known on the stage as Ettie Carlisle), daughter of Victor Cooke, huntsman and riding master. Ellen discovered the affair and Ettie fled England for South Africa. Redgrave followed her to South Africa. They had a son, Victor Redgrave Parrett, born 25 July 1906 in Australia. Carlisle had married Clayton Parrett by special license between 28 October and 10 November 1903, on a Sunday at the Cathedral in Cape Town. Redgrave arrived two days later on the Tuesday. Carlisle left Clayton Parrett and went to Australia with Redgrave.
At some point Redgrave left for Australia alone. In the "History of Australian Theatre" archives, the American actress Tittell Brune made her first appearance in Australia on 21 September 1904 at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney
Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney
Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney, Australia, refers to three theatres of the same name:One was a theatre which opened on 10 September 1887 and closed on 10 June 1933.It was located on the corner of Pitt and Market Street, Sydney, where Centrepoint stands today....
, in the play Sunday, supported by Roy Redgrave. Roy toured with her on the J. C. Williamson
J. C. Williamson
James Cassius Williamson was an American actor and later Australia's foremost theatrical manager, founding J. C. Williamson Ltd....
circuit. According to Corin Redgrave
Corin Redgrave
Corin William Redgrave was an English actor and political activist.-Early life:Redgrave was born in Marylebone, London, the only son and middle child of actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson...
, Ellen (Judith) pursued Roy to Australia, arriving in time to pay his unsettled hotel bills. Ellen was unable to persuade him to return home with her to his family. Ellen remarried Frederick John Nettlefold, a respectable landed gentleman in 1907.
However Redgrave did return to England, appearing in repertory
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...
at the Grand Theatre, Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, where he met Daisy Bertha Mary Scudamore
Margaret Scudamore
Daisy Bertha Mary "Margaret" Scudamore was an English actress who began in ingenue roles.-Life and career:...
. They married at Glasgow Register Office in 1907 while touring in the north and had one child, the actor Sir Michael Redgrave
Michael Redgrave
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.-Youth and education:...
born on 20 March 1908, later to become the father of actors Vanessa
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
, Corin
Corin Redgrave
Corin William Redgrave was an English actor and political activist.-Early life:Redgrave was born in Marylebone, London, the only son and middle child of actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson...
and Lynn
Lynn Redgrave
Lynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE was an English actress.A member of the well-known British family of actors, Redgrave trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962...
.
Six months after Michael's birth, Redgrave left for Australia again, this time permanently. William Anderson, a Melbourne producer, had just built the King's Theatre, and needed actors. His name appears in June 1909, when he performed in the play The Bank of England. The following year, Anderson, known for his fondness of the lurid and sensational, had Roy collaborate with him on a play about the just ended Crippen
Hawley Harvey Crippen
Hawley Harvey Crippen , usually known as Dr. Crippen, was an American homeopathic physician hanged in Pentonville Prison, London, on November 23, 1910, for the murder of his wife, Cora Henrietta Crippen...
case. Crippen was hanged in November 1910. The play was called By Wireless Telegraphy, but there is no record that a production came out of it. In 1911, Anderson was ruined financially by an expensive flop, and had to lease away his King's Theatre, and Redgrave turned his attention to the new and burgeoning film industry, under contract to Lincoln-Cass Films. He appeared in several silent movie
Silent Movie
Silent Movie is a 1976 satirical comedy film co-written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks, and released by 20th Century Fox on June 17, 1976...
s, beginning in 1911 with The Christian. Later he played the villain in Moondyne
Moondyne
Moondyne is an 1879 novel by John Boyle O'Reilly, which was made into a film of the same name in 1913. It is very loosely based on the life of the Western Australian convict escapee and bushranger Moondyne Joe.-Background:...
(1913) as well as six shorts, played the lead in The Hayseeds (1917), and co-starred in Robbery Under Arms (1920). Back in England, the forsaken Daisy had changed her name to Margaret and married Captain James Anderson, a wealthy tea planter.
Remaining in Australia
Redgrave remained in Australia until his death sometime in the 1920s, but exactly where he lived and when he died remained a mystery to his family in England until his granddaughter Lynn RedgraveLynn Redgrave
Lynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE was an English actress.A member of the well-known British family of actors, Redgrave trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962...
visited Sydney with her then husband John Clark
John Clark (actor/director)
Ivan John Clark is an English actor, director, producer, and writer with British, American and Canadian citizenship. He is also known as the ex-husband of actress Lynn Redgrave, to whom he was married for 33 years.-Early career:...
, and vowed to find him. Their search ended at the Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...
library, where, as she recounts in her play Shakespeare For My Father
Shakespeare For My Father
Shakespeare for My Father is a one-woman play written and performed by Lynn Redgrave. The play concerns Redgrave's relationship with her father, the imposing actor and family patriarch Sir Michael Redgrave....
(page 48), they came up with Redgrave's obituary, learning that he had died on 25 May 1922, and was buried at South Head Cemetery
Waverley Cemetery
The Waverley Cemetery opened in 1877 and is a cemetery located on top of the cliffs at Bronte in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It is noted for its largely intact Victorian and Edwardian monuments. The cemetery contains the graves of many significant Australians including the poet Henry Lawson and...
. There they learned that he had been put in an unmarked grave by somebody called Minnie, who paid 15 shillings. (The idea that it may have been the religious Minnie Tittell Brune feeling sorry for him is enticing. More probably it was Minnie Hider, Esther's friend and confidante, who raised Victor.). They found the spot, and arranged for a headstone
Headstone
A headstone, tombstone, or gravestone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. In most cases they have the deceased's name, date of birth, and date of death inscribed on them, along with a personal message, or prayer.- Use :...
, asked his son Michael what it should say, and he said to put, simply, "Roy Redgrave, Actor". It was later discovered that Redgrave married Irish widow Mary Leresche in 1916.http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/IndexSearch?form=IndexingSearch&cgiurl=%2Fcgi-bin%2FIndex%2FIndexingMarriage.cgi&event=marriages&sname=redgrave&gname=&fname=&mname=&frange=1916&trange=1916&place=&x=97&y=14&SessionID=29673448 His marriage certificate makes reference to his previous marriage to Ellen (Judith) but not to any subsequent marriage to Daisy (Margaret Scudamore). Mary died in 1948.http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/IndexSearch?form=IndexingSearch&cgiurl=%2Fcgi-bin%2FIndex%2FIndexingBirth.cgi&sname=redgrave&gname=&fname=&mname=&event=deaths&frange=1948&trange=1948&place=&x=0&y=0&SessionID=29673547
Silent filmography
- The Christian (1911) .... John Storm
- TransportedTransportedTransported is a 1913 Australian silent movie directed by W. J. Lincoln. It stars George Bryant, Godfrey Cass and Roy Redgrave. The movie was 28 minutes long....
(1913) - The Sick Stockrider (1913)
- The Road to Ruin (1913)
- The Reprieve (1913)
- The Remittance Man (1913)
- MoondyneMoondyneMoondyne is an 1879 novel by John Boyle O'Reilly, which was made into a film of the same name in 1913. It is very loosely based on the life of the Western Australian convict escapee and bushranger Moondyne Joe.-Background:...
(1913) .... Isaac Bowman - The Crisis (1913)
- Our Friends the Hayseeds (1917) aka The Hayseeds (Australia) .... Dad Hayseed
- Robbery Under ArmsRobbery Under Arms (1920 film)Robbery Under Arms is a 1920 Australian film directed by Kenneth Brampton. The film was financed by mining magnate Pearson Tewksbury.- Cast :*Jackie Anderson as Warrigal*Vera Archer as Jennie Morrison*Kenneth Brampton as Captain Starlight...
(1920) .... Dan Moran