Esmond Knight

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Esmond Penington Knight (born May 4, 1906 in East Sheen , Surrey , England , † February 23, 1987 in London ) was a British theater and film actor .

Life

Esmond Knight was born in Surrey in 1906 as the youngest of four sons of the cigar dealer Frank Knight and the singer Bertha Pennington. He attended Willington Preparatory School in Putney, London, and later, like his brothers David, Tony and Gilbert, Westminster School , where he discovered his love of acting during a theater performance. He then trained as an actor at London's renowned Old Vic Theater . From 1925 he was a regular on the theater stage and appeared in numerous Shakespeare plays at the Old Vic Theater, including The Merry Wives of Windsor , Julius Caesar , Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet . In 1930 he was also seen in Hamlet alongside John Gielgud , who played the title role, at the Queen's Theater. In 1931 his film career finally began, where he B. In 1934 Johann Strauss played in Alfred Hitchcock's Waltzes from Vienna . However, he continued to appear frequently in plays such as Oscar Wilde's Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest .

During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy , which was involved in a naval battle against the German battleship Bismarck in 1941 . He sustained serious injuries that led to temporary blindness. After he had regained his eyesight, he was back in front of the film camera from 1943, often appearing in films by the director and producer duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger , for example as an old general in The Black Narcissus (1947) alongside Deborah Kerr or in the ballet film The Red Shoes (1948). Knight also worked with Laurence Olivier several times, including on the Shakespeare films Heinrich V (1944), Hamlet (1948) and Richard III. (1955) and in the comedy film The Prince and the Dancer (1957). In 1951 they also appeared in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra with Vivien Leigh in London. In 1960, Knight played in the film The Last Voyage of the Bismarck the captain of the warship HMS Prince of Wales , the ship on which Knight was seriously injured during the war. In the course of his career he also played in numerous television productions, often based on theater plays.

From 1929 to 1946 he was married to the actress Frances Clotilde Clare (1904-1994). From the marriage in 1933 his daughter Rosalind Knight emerged, who, like her parents, also became an actress. In 1946 Esmond Knight married the actress Nora Swinburne (1902-2000), with whom he stood in front of the camera and several times on stage in Jean Renoir's Der Strom (1951). The marriage lasted until his death. Esmond Knight died of a heart attack in 1987, aged 80, the day after returning to London from filming in Egypt .

Filmography (selection)

Stage appearances (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. esmondknight.org.uk
  2. ↑ a b Esmond Knight in the All Movie Guide (English)
personal data
SURNAME Knight, Esmond
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knight, Esmond Penington (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British theater and film actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH East Sheen , Surrey , England
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1987
Place of death London