INDOMITABLE MAN OF THE RADIO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 731, 17 July 1953, Page 25

INDOMITABLE MAN OF THE RADIO

| ICHAEL REDGRAVE, the British 3 film star, enters a new and exciting stage of his career because for the first time he is appearing in a regular radio series and he is playing a character he has always wanted to portray-Horatio Hornblower, in C. S. Forester’s stories (the four ZB stations and 2ZA, Fridays at 9.0 p.m.). Redgrave began his acting career three years after he left’ Cambridge. The slump of the °30’s had forced him away from his ambition to be a writer. He accepted a temporary post as a junior modern languages master at Cranleigh, his old school, where. he revived the school’s dramatic society, producing six shows: As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest, Samson Agonistes and H.M.S. Pinafore. But the life of a schoolmaster was not sufficient. His family had -always been actors, and his mother, Margaret Scuda-

more, a singer. So; when he escorted a French class up to London to see a French company in two plays, he obtained an audition with Lillian Bayliss at the Old Vic and was offered a £3 a week contract. William Armstrong, of the Liverpool Repertory Company, also offered him a contract. Since two people expressed their confidence in his ability, and Armstrong’s offer was for an extra £1, he decided to take a chance and become — temporar-ily-an actor. Within six months he was playing leads. With the outbreak of war he became an Ordinary Seaman in the aircraft carrier Illustrious, until he was in-

valided out in 1942, when he returned to the theatre and films and fame. A confirmed pipe smoker, one of Redgrave’s proudest possessions is’ an outsize meerschaum, presented to him by his Czech fans in admiration of his performance in The Captive Heart, ‘in which he starred with his wife. This magnificent object measures 18 inches from stem to stem, is decorated with two chamois-fur tassels and holds nearly an ounce of tobacco. "A very satisfying smoke," he. says. Redgrave brings to the radio part of Hornblower an original interpretation which C. S. Forester himself has calléd ‘the very embodiment of his character-that, indomitable man. of the sea. The photograph below shows Michael Redgrave (right) and the direc-tor-producer, Harry Alan Towers.