page_title: Lewis Casson
section_title: Post-war career
hierarchical_section_title: Lewis Casson / Post-war career
caption_attribution_description: Dame Sybil Thorndike, Sir Lewis Cassan and Laura Jane Casson
context_page_description: Sir Lewis Thomas Casson MC was an English actor and theatre director, and the husband of actress Dame Sybil Thorndike.
context_section_description: Following the war, Casson resumed his career as a theatrical director. At this point, his wife Sybil, was becoming increaingly well known as an actress, and Casson supported her in her career. He directed his wife in Saint Joan. He also directed productions of The Trojan Women and Medea, written by Euripides and translated by Gilbert Murray, and in 1925 he directed Henry VIII and directed Macbeth in 1926. Thorndike and his wife Sybil toured South Africa in 1928 and the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand in 1932. Whereas Sybil played the role of Edith Cavell in the 1928 silent movie Dawn, Casson had the role of chaplain in the play Nurse Cavell by C.E. Bechhofer Roberts and C.S. Forester in 1934. The same year he appeared in John Van Druten's Flowers of the Forest. In 1938 Casson directed Henry V for Ivor Novello In 1939 he led an Old Vic tour around the Mediterranean, and in 1940 he directed John Gielgud in King Lear at the Old Vic. He played Gonzalo in The Tempest, that tale of a son missing at sea, while his own son was for a time missing off the Norwegian coast.
  During World War II Casson organised tours of the Old Vic company to the South Wales valleys. He was president of the British Actors' Equity Association from 1941 to 1945, and was knighted in 1945. As his wife Sybil had been created a dame in 1931, they were one of the few couples who both held titles in their own right.
  In 1947, Casson was successful in the leading role in J.B. Priestley's The Linden Tree. In 1959, Casson and Thorndike celebrated the jubilee of their wedding by appearing together in Clemence Dane's play, specially written for them, Eighty in the Shade. That same year they both appeared in the film Shake Hands with the Devil as ill-fated loyalists in Ireland.
caption: Casson with wife Sybil and granddaughter Laura Jane in 1958
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