Кеннет Мор: Жизнь и карьера актера

British actor (1914–1982)

Kenneth Gilbert More, CBE (20 September 1914 – 12 July 1982) was an English film and stage actor. Initially achieving fame in the comedy Genevieve (1953), he appeared in many roles as a carefree, happy go lucky gent. Films from this period include Doctor in the House (1954), Raising a Riot (1955), The Admirable Crichton (1957), The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958) and Next to No Time (1958). He also played more serious roles as a leading man, beginning with The Deep Blue Sea (1955), Reach for the Sky (1956), A Night to Remember (1958), North West Frontier (1959), The 39 Steps (1959) and Sink the Bismarck (1960). Although his career declined in the early 1960s, two of his own favourite films date from this time – The Comedy Man (1964) and The Greengage Summer (1961) with Susannah York, "one of the happiest films on which I have ever worked." He also enjoyed a revival in the much acclaimed TV adaptation of The Forsyte Saga (1967) and the Father Brown series (1974).

Kenneth More was born at 'Raeden', Vicarage Way, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the only son of Charles Gilbert More, a Royal Naval Air Service pilot, and Edith Winifred Watkins, the daughter of a Cardiff solicitor. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey, having spent part of his childhood in the Channel Islands, where his father was general manager of the Jersey Eastern Railway. After his graduation, More followed the family tradition by training to become a civil engineer. However, he abandoned his training and worked for a while in Sainsbury's on the Strand. When More was 17 his father died, and he applied to join the Royal Air Force but failed the medical test for equilibrium. He then travelled to Canada, intending to work as a fur trapper, but was sent back to Britain because he lacked immigration documents.

On his return from Canada, a business associate of his father, Vivian Van Damm, agreed to offer him work as a stagehand at the Windmill Theatre, where his job included shifting scenery and helping to get the nude players off stage during its Revudeville variety shows. More's earliest small roles in films date from before the war, but around this time, he began to appear regularly on the big screen. For a small role in Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as Edward Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans, he was paid £500. He thought this film would launch him more than it did and held off from accepting other roles, which resulted in him "nearly starving". He took minor parts in Man on the Run (1949), Now Barabbas (1949), and Stop Press Girl (1949).

More achieved a notable stage success in The Way Things Go (1950) with Ronald Squire, from whom More later claimed he learned his stage technique. He was in demand for minor roles on screen such as Morning Departure (1950) and Chance of a Lifetime (1950). More had a good part as a British agent in The Clouded Yellow (1950) for Ralph Thomas. He could also be seen in The Franchise Affair (1951) and The Galloping Major (1951). More's first Hollywood financed film was No Highway in the Sky (1951) where he played a co pilot. Thomas cast him in another strong support part in Appointment with Venus (1952). More's name was placed above the title billing for the first time with a low budget comedy, Brandy for the Parson (1952), playing a smuggler.

Roland Culver recommended More audition for a part in a new play by Terence Rattigan, The Deep Blue Sea (1952); he was successful and achieved tremendous critical acclaim in the role of Freddie. More later wrote " Critics hailed me almost as an overnight discovery, conveniently forgetting I was already thirty eight, and that I had been working in the theatre for nearly twenty years." During the play's run he appeared as a worried parent in a thriller, The Yellow Balloon (1953). He was in another Hollywood financed film, Never Let Me Go (1953), playing a colleague of Clark Gable.

Director Henry Cornelius approached More during the run of The Deep Blue Sea and offered him £3,500 to play one of the four leads in a comedy, Genevieve (1953) (a part turned down by Guy Middleton). More said Cornelius never saw him in the play but cast him on the basis of his work in The Galloping Major. More recalls "the shooting of the picture was hell. Everything went wrong, even the weather." and the most successful film in the history of Rank. More received a BAFTA Award as best newcomer. More appeared in a TV production of The Deep Blue Sea in 1954, which was seen by an audience of 11 million. More signed a five year contract with Sir Alexander Korda at £10,000 a year. ' He was now established as one of Britain's biggest stars and Korda announced plans to feature him in two films based on true stories, one, The Alcock and Brown Story about the Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown in 1919 also featuring Denholm Elliott, The first film was never made and the second (I Was Monty's Double) with another actor. Korda also wanted More to star in a new version of The Four Feathers, Storm Over the Nile (1956) but he turned it down. However, More did accept Korda's offer to appear in a film adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea (1955) gaining the Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance. The film was something of a critical and commercial disappointment (More felt Vivien Leigh was miscast in the lead) but still widely seen. He also did the narration for Korda's The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955). When The Alcock and Brown Story was cancelled, More was reassigned to another film for Korda, the domestic comedy Raising a Riot (1955), directed by Wendy Toye. This was the eighth most popular movie at the British box office in 1955, and much of the film's success was attributed to More's appeal.

In 1960, Rank's Managing Director John Davis gave permission for More to work outside his contract to appear in The Guns of Navarone (1961). More, however, made the mistake of heckling and swearing at Davis at a BAFTA dinner at the Dorchester, losing the role (which went to David Niven). Some felt More's popularity declined when he left his second wife to live with Angela Douglas who had been in the cast of Some People. Others argued his appeal was simply becoming out of date. Film writer Andrew Spicer thought that "More's persona was so strongly associated with traditional middle class values that his stardom could not survive the shift towards working class iconoclasts" during that decade. Another writer, Christopher Sandford, felt that "as the sixties began and the star of the ironic, postmodernist school rose, More was derided as a ludicrous old fogey with crinkly hair and a tweed jacket." He returned to television with the lead in Heart to Heart written by Terence Rattigan. More received an offer to star in The Comedy Man directed by Alvin Rakoff, but the film was not released for two years. More than made Collect Your Hand Luggage (1963) for television directed by Ted Kotcheff. He was going to star in a film about the Cyprus Emergency called The Cyprus Story, playing an intelligence officer who falls in love with Elsa Martinelli who plays the daughter of an EOKA sympathiser. Pre production was difficult director Robert Day quit and was replaced by Roy Baker, however filming, which was to start in June 1963 in Cyprus, did not proceed. More went back to the stage, appearing in Out of the Crocodile (1963) and Our Man Crichton (1964–65), which ran for six months. He also appeared in a small screen version of Simon Raven's The Scapegoat. He appeared in a 35 minute prologue to The Collector (1965) at the special request of director William Wyler, but it ended up being removed entirely from the final film. Critic David Shipman said More's personal notices for his performance on stage in The Secretary Bird (1968) "must be among the best accorded any light comedian during this century".

The Kenneth More Theatre, named in honour of the actor, was founded in 1975, in Ilford, east London. A plaque commemorates More at 27 Rumbold Road, Fulham, his home at the time of his death. Another memorial plaque was installed at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End (where More gave his acclaimed performance as Freddie Page in a production of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea).