Robert Louis Anstruther Harris (1900-1995), actor of stage and screen.
Robert Harris possessed one of the finest and most flexible voices in the British theatre; it was said of him that, when he spoke, there was music in the air. It was fitting, therefore, that much of his best work was done in Shakespeare – from Hamlet through Oberon to Richard II.
On the other hand, it was his misfortune to have too romantic a presence to fit easily into run-of-the-mill parts. Yet, before the Second World War, he was rarely out of work, playing in a long list of West End successes in the 1920s and the 1930s, including a comedy at the St Martin’s called The Wind and the Rain in which he co-starred with Celia Johnson and which ran for more than two years.
Harris was educated at Sherborne School (Abbeylands) and New College, Oxford. He then went straight to RADA, where in 1923 he won a Reandean scholarship (named after the theatre company of which Basil Dean was managing director). Securing this award meant that Harris did his early stage work under the baleful eye of Dean, who was not a tranquil figure but who seldom stifled talent. At Christmas 1924 Dean cast him as Oberon in a famous Drury Lane revival of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From that moment on his career took off. Over the next 16 years he was to appear in more than fifty roles, take part in two Old Vic seasons and make three visits to Broadway.
His most exciting season was probably that of 1931 when he joined the Old Vic-Sadler’s Wells Company in September and over the next six months played Oberon (again), the Chorus in Henry V, Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, Feste in Twelfth Night, and Hamlet (a title role in which he alternated with Robert Speaight). His reward came in June 1932 when he was chosen by John Gielgud to play the Earl of Oxford in his production of Richard of Bordeaux in which Gielgud himself starred as Richard II.
After the war Sir Barry Jackson, in his Stratford-upon-Avon changes, enlisted Harris (1946-47) as head of the company in such parts as Richard II, Macbeth, and Faustus. A decade later (1957) he was back at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre as King John, and as Jaques in As You Like It. But by then his career was beginning to wind down.
The truth was that Harris was, in a sense, an unlucky actor. The morning of his career had certainly been golden but, perhaps because of the war, its promise was never quite fulfilled.
Old Shirburnian Society Annual Record, November 1995.
Robert Louis Anstruther Harris (1900-1995)
Born on 28 March 1900 at Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
Son of Alfred Herschell Harris (1863-1953), Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and Suzanne Amelie Harris (nee Anstie) (1866-1955).
Prep School: Hamilton House, Lansdown, Bath.
Sherborne School (Abbeylands) September 1913-July 1918 (VI b); Lower 6th form; School Prefect; Head of House; Barnes Elocution Prize (1918), 2nd XV (1916-18), Class leader with badge, Editor of The Shirburnian, Sergeant in OTC, member of The Sophists (with whom he performed in many of their productions).
New College, Oxford.
RADA, Reandean scholarship (1923), graduated 1925.
WW2, BBC Empire Service.
Desert Island Discs castaway with Roy Plomley on 10 February 1955.
Lived in retirement at Denville Hall, Northwood, Middlesex [a retirement home for professional actors, actresses and members of other theatrical professions]
Died on 18 May 1995.
See also:
- Robert Harris (wikipedia)
- Robert Harris (IMDb)
- Robert Harris (BFI)