Sybil Thorndike

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Sybil Thorndike (1943)

Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike (born October 24, 1882 in Gainsborough , Lincolnshire , † June 9, 1976 in London ) was a British actress and author .

Life

Sybil Thorndike was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, the daughter of Canon of Rochester Church Arthur Thorndike and his wife Agnes Macdonald. In Rochester she attended elementary school for girls. At the same time she received classical piano lessons with weekly visits to London and lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama . At the age of 11 she made her first public appearances as a pianist, but stopped playing the classical piano in 1899. On the advice of her brother, she now decided to act.

At the age of 21 she received her first contract and in 1904 went on a tour to the USA, primarily with Shakespeare plays. She was discovered in 1908 by George Bernard Shaw , who signed her for a theater tour. Here she played the role of Candida . But she also met her future husband, the actor and theater director Lewis Casson , whom she married in December 1908 and with whom she had four children. When asked why she never left her husband or what the relationship with him was, she is said to have said: never divorce, kill more often .

This was followed by appearances on Broadway , from 1910, and at the Old Vic Theater in London. She achieved great fame from March 1924 when she played the title role in Shaw's drama Saint Joan in London . She played numerous major theater roles on both sides of the continent, including Medea , Macbeth , Othello and A Family Reunion . Thorndike was one of the most respected actresses in her country.

Thorndike was not only at home on the theater stages. As early as 1921 she appeared in the first silent films, later she was seen in several sound films, including Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Red Lola (1950) with Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman and The Prince and the Dancer (1957) with Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe .

In 1931 she was named Dame Commander des Order of the British Empire and in 1970 Companion of Honor , after her death her urn was buried in Westminster Abbey . In the feature film My Week with Marilyn , Sybil Thorndike was played in a supporting role by Judi Dench in 2011 .

As a pacifist she was on the Fascist special wanted list of those persons who should first and foremost be arrested in a German invasion of the country.

Filmography (selection)

Publications

  • Sybil Thorndike: Religion and the stage . E. Benn, London 1928 (29 pages; part of the series “Affirmations: God in the modern world”).
  • Sybil and Russell Thorndike: Lilian Baylis . Chapman & Hall, London 1938 (biography).
  • Foreword to: Ninette Hélène Jeanty, Certified sane. Translated from the French Charles Reginald Roberts. Sheppard Press, London 1948 (basically a diary of their arrest, imprisonment and liberation)
    • Foreword to: Ninette Hélène Jeanty, La peine de vivre . Les éditions de Visscher, Brussels 1952; also Nouvelles éditions latines NEL, Paris 1952; again NEL, 2008 ISBN 9782723319515
  • Sybil Thorndike: Favorites. A personal selection . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1973, ISBN 0-340-17825-6 (volume of poetry).

literature

  • John Casson: Lewis and Sybil. A memoir . William Collins & Sons, London 1972, ISBN 0-00-211488-7 .

Web links

Commons : Sybil Thorndike  - collection of images

notes

  1. The patriotic film about Belgium in World War I was shot in the Senate in Brussels and in the rest of the city. It is about the nurse Edith Cavell , played by Thorndike, who was shot by the German occupiers in 1915 for hiding down British pilots of the Entente and escorting them to the Netherlands to rescue them.
  2. ^ The French original, identical in text to the 1948 edition; exp. Appendix with statement of the most important lawyer involved in her imprisonment until 1945 (this text also in the appendix to the 1948 edition in a slightly different form) as well as some opinions on her 1948 book and on Jeanty's person.