Harcourt Williams

English actor and director

Ernest George Harcourt Williams (30 March 1880 – 13 December 1957) was an English actor and director. After early experience in touring companies he established himself as a character actor and director in the West End. From 1929 to 1934 he was director of The Old Vic theatre company; among the actors he recruited were John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. After directing some fifty plays he resigned the directorship of the Old Vic but continued to appear in the company's productions throughout the rest of his career. He appeared in thirty cinema and television roles during his later years.

Williams was born in Croydon, Surrey, the son of John Williams, a merchant. He was educated at Beckenham Abbey and Whitgift Grammar School, Croydon. This made Williams the first known actor to play Mr. Darcy on the professional stage. He then worked for three other companies, including that of Ellen Terry, which he joined in 1903. In 1906 Williams made his American debut, with H. B. Irving, touring the US for a year. In the First World War, as a conscientious objector, he volunteered for the Friends' Ambulance Unit. One of Williams's most notable parts of this period was General Lee in John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln in 1919; In 1922, in Mary Stuart by Drinkwater, he was "exquisitely repulsive" as Darnley. In a third historical drama by the same author he was John Hampden in Oliver Cromwell at His Majesty's in 1923, to the Cromwell of Henry Ainley. In 1923 he directed G K Chesterton's play Magic at the Everyman Theatre. In 1926 he appeared in John Barrymore's production of Hamlet at the Haymarket Theatre, as the Player King. In 1929, when he was forty nine, Lilian Baylis appointed Williams as the new director of her Old Vic theatre company. He was responsible for engaging first John Gielgud and then Ralph Richardson to join the Old Vic as leading man.|

After leaving the directorship of the Old Vic, handing over to Tyrone Guthrie after the 1933–34 season, Williams frequently accepted invitations to act with the company, for Guthrie and his successors. In 1953 he appeared in A Day by the Sea by N. C. Hunter. Williams celebrated his golden jubilee as an actor while appearing in a long running production of Shaw's You Never Can Tell described by The Times as "the liveliest show in town". He died in London after a long illness, aged 77.