page_title: John Gielgud
section_title: War and post-war
hierarchical_section_title: John Gielgud / Life and career / War and post-war
caption_attribution_description: English: Promotional image of John Gielgud and Dolly Haas in the 1947 Broadway production of Crime and Punishment Русский: Долли Хаас и Джон Гилгуд в спектакле «Преступление и наказание»
context_page_description: Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he gained his first paid acting work as a junior member of his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry's company in 1922. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of Shakespeare in 1929–31.
  During the 1930s Gielgud was a stage star in the West End and on Broadway, appearing in new works and classics. He began a parallel career as a director, and set up his own company at the Queen's Theatre, London. He was regarded by many as the finest Hamlet of his era, and was also known for high comedy roles such as John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest. In the 1950s Gielgud feared that his career was threatened when he was convicted and fined for a homosexual offence, but his colleagues and the public supported him loyally.
context_section_description: At the start of the Second World War Gielgud volunteered for active service, but was told that men of his age, thirty-five, would not be wanted for at least six months. The government quickly came to the view that most actors would do more good performing to entertain the troops and the general public than serving, whether suitable or not, in the armed forces.
  Gielgud directed Michael Redgrave in a 1940 London production of The Beggar's Opera for the Glyndebourne Festival. This was a chaotic affair: Gielgud's direction confused his star, and when Redgrave lost his voice Gielgud had to step in and sing the role as best he could. Gielgud felt that something serious or even solemn was necessary for wartime London, where most entertainment was light-hearted. Together with Harley Granville-Barker and Guthrie he reopened the Old Vic with Shakespeare. His King Lear once again divided the critics, but his Prospero was a considerable success. He played the role quite differently from his attempt on the same stage in 1930: in place of the "manic conjurer" his Prospero was "very far from the usual mixture of Father Christmas, a Colonial Bishop, and the President of the Magicians' Union ... a clear, arresting picture of a virile Renaissance notable", according to Brown. The critics singled out, among the other players, Jack Hawkins as Caliban, Marius Goring as Ariel, Jessica Tandy as Miranda and Alec Guinness as Ferdinand.
  Following the example of several of his stage colleagues, Gielgud joined tours of military camps. He gave recitals of prose and poetry, and acted in a triple bill of short plays, including two from Coward's Tonight at 8.30, but he found at first that less highbrow performers like Beatrice Lillie were better than he at entertaining the troops. He returned to filming in 1940, as Disraeli in Thorold Dickinson's The Prime Minister. In this morale-boosting film he portrayed the politician from ages thirty to seventy; this was, in Morley's view, the first time he seemed at home before the camera. Gielgud made no more films for the next ten years; he turned down the role of Julius Caesar in the 1945 film of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra with Vivien Leigh. He and Leigh were close friends, and Shaw tried hard to persuade him to play the part, but Gielgud had taken a strong dislike to the director, Gabriel Pascal. Caesar was eventually played by Gielgud's former teacher, Claude Rains.
  Throughout 1941 and 1942 Gielgud worked continually, in Barrie's Dear Brutus, another Importance of Being Earnest in the West End, and Macbeth on tour. Returning, with more assurance than before, to entertaining the troops, he so far departed from his classical style as to join Lillie and Michael Wilding singing a comic trio. His 1943 revival of William Congreve's Love for Love on tour and then in London received high praise from reviewers. In 1944 he was approached by Ralph Richardson, who had been asked by the governors of the Old Vic to form a new company. Unwilling to take sole charge, Richardson proposed a managing triumvirate of Gielgud, Olivier and himself. Gielgud declined: "It would be a disaster, you would have to spend your whole time as referee between Larry and me."
  A 1944–45 season at the Haymarket for Beaumont included a Hamlet that many considered his finest. Agate wrote, "Mr Gielgud is now completely and authoritatively master of this tremendous part. ... I hold that this is, and is likely to remain, the best Hamlet of our time." Also in the season were A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Duchess of Malfi and the first major revival of Lady Windermere's Fan (1945). These productions attracted much praise, but at this point in his career Gielgud was somewhat overshadowed by his old colleagues. Olivier was celebrated for his recent film of Henry V, and with Richardson (and John Burrell in Gielgud's stead) was making the Old Vic "the most famous theatre in the Anglo-Saxon world" according to the critic Harold Hobson.
  In late 1945 and early 1946 Gielgud toured for ENSA in the Middle and Far East with Hamlet and Coward's Blithe Spirit. Du
caption: Gielgud and Dolly Haas in Crime and Punishment, Broadway, 1947
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