Kenneth More
Kenneth Gilbert More was an English actor.
Initially achieving fame in the comedy Genevieve, More appeared in many roles as a carefree, happy-go-lucky gent. His films from this period include Doctor in the House, Raising a Riot, The Admirable Crichton, The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw and Next to No Time. He also played more serious roles as a leading man, beginning with The Deep Blue Sea, Reach for the Sky, A Night to Remember, North West Frontier, The 39 Steps and Sink the Bismarck!.
Although More's career declined in the early 1960s, two of his own favourite films date from this time – The Comedy Man and The Greengage Summer with Susannah York, "one of the happiest films on which I have ever worked." He also enjoyed a revival in the much-acclaimed TV adaptation of The Forsyte Saga and the Father Brown series.
Early life
Kenneth More was born at 'Raeden', Vicarage Way, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the only son of Charles Gilbert More, a Royal Naval Air Service pilot, and Edith Winifred Watkins, the daughter of a Cardiff solicitor. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey, having spent part of his childhood in the Channel Islands, where his father was general manager of the Jersey Eastern Railway.After his graduation, More followed the family tradition by training to become a civil engineer. However, he abandoned his training and worked for a while in Sainsbury's on the Strand.
When More was 17 his father died, and he applied to join the Royal Air Force but failed the medical test for equilibrium. He then travelled to Canada, intending to work as a fur trapper, but was sent back to Britain because he lacked immigration documents.
Windmill Theatre
On his return from Canada, a business associate of his father, Vivian Van Damm, agreed to offer him work as a stagehand at the Windmill Theatre, where his job included shifting scenery and helping to get the nude players off stage during its Revudeville variety shows. After a chance moment on stage helping a comic, he realized that he wanted to act and was soon promoted to playing straight man in the Revudeville comedy routines, appearing in his first sketch in August 1935.He played there for a year, which then led to regular work in repertory, including Newcastle, performing in plays such as Burke and Hare and Dracula's Daughter. Other stage appearances included Do You Remember?, Stage Hands Never Lie and Distinguished Gathering.
More continued his theatre work until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. He had an occasional small role in films such as Look Up and Laugh.
Second World War
Before the war, More was working as an actor in Wolverhampton at the repertory company and living at 166 Waterloo Road. According to the 1939 register, he was also ambulance driver number 207 in preparation for the outbreak of war. More received a commission as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and saw active service aboard the cruiser and the aircraft carrier, ending the war as a lieutenant.Resumption of acting career
On demobilisation in 1946 More resumed work at the Wolverhampton repertory company, then appeared on stage in the West End in And No Birds Sing.More appeared in Paul Vercors' play The Silence of the Sea broadcast on the day British TV recommenced after the war – 7 June 1946 – and this was followed by a number of television roles including Badger in an adaptation of Toad of Toad Hall, and a small role in the film School for Secrets. He was seen by Noël Coward playing a small role on stage in Power Without Glory, which led to his casting in Coward's Peace In Our Time on stage.
More's earliest small roles in films date from before the war, but around this time, he began to appear regularly on the big screen. For a small role in Scott of the Antarctic as Edward Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans, he was paid £500. He thought this film would launch him more than it did and held off from accepting other roles, which resulted in his "nearly starving". He took minor parts in Man on the Run, Now Barabbas, and Stop Press Girl.
Stardom
Rising reputation
More achieved a notable stage success in The Way Things Go with Ronald Squire, from whom More later said he learned his stage technique.He was in demand for minor roles on screen such as Morning Departure and Chance of a Lifetime. More had a good part as a British agent in The Clouded Yellow for Ralph Thomas.
He could also be seen in The Franchise Affair and The Galloping Major. More's first Hollywood-financed film was No Highway in the Sky where he played a co-pilot. Thomas cast him in another strong support part in Appointment with Venus.
More's name was placed above the title billing for the first time with a low budget comedy, Brandy for the Parson, playing a smuggler.
''The Deep Blue Sea''
recommended More audition for a part in a new play by Terence Rattigan, The Deep Blue Sea ; he was successful and achieved tremendous critical acclaim in the role of Freddie. More later wrote "Critics hailed me almost as an overnight discovery, conveniently forgetting I was already thirty-eight, and that I had been working in the theatre for nearly twenty years."During the play's run he appeared as a worried parent in a thriller, The Yellow Balloon. He was in another Hollywood-financed film, Never Let Me Go, playing a colleague of Clark Gable.
Film stardom: ''Genevieve'' and ''Doctor in the House''
Director Henry Cornelius approached More during the run of The Deep Blue Sea and offered him £3,500 to play one of the four leads in a comedy, Genevieve . More said Cornelius never saw him in the play but cast him on the basis of his work in The Galloping Major. More recalls "the shooting of the picture was hell. Everything went wrong, even the weather." The resulting film was a huge success at the British box office.More next made Our Girl Friday and Doctor in the House, the latter for Ralph Thomas. Both films were made before the release of Genevieve so More's fee was relatively small; Our Girl Friday was a commercial disappointment but Doctor in the House was the biggest hit at the 1954 British box office and the most successful film in the history of Rank. More received a BAFTA Award as best newcomer.
More appeared in a TV production of The Deep Blue Sea in 1954, which was seen by an audience of 11 million. More signed a five-year contract with Sir Alexander Korda at £10,000 a year. '
He was now established as one of Britain's biggest stars and Korda announced plans to feature him in two films based on true stories, one, The Alcock and Brown Story about the Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown in 1919 also featuring Denholm Elliott, and the other Clifton James, the double for Field Marshal Montgomery. The first film was never made and the second with another actor. Korda also wanted More to star in a new version of The Four Feathers, Storm Over the Nile but he turned it down.
However, More did accept Korda's offer to appear in a film adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea gaining the Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance. The film was something of a critical and commercial disappointment but still widely seen. He also did the narration for Korda's The Man Who Loved Redheads.
When The Alcock and Brown Story was cancelled, More was reassigned to another film for Korda, the domestic comedy Raising a Riot, directed by Wendy Toye. This was the eighth most popular movie at the British box office in 1955, and much of the film's success was attributed to More's appeal.
''Reach for the Sky''
More received an offer from David Lean to play the lead role in an adaptation of The Wind Cannot Read by Richard Mason. More was unsure about whether the public would accept him in such a straightforwardly romantic part and refused it, a decision he later regarded as "the greatest mistake I ever made professionally". Lean dropped the project and was not involved in the eventual 1958 film version, which starred Dirk Bogarde and was directed by Ralph Thomas.Instead, More played the Royal Air Force fighter ace, Douglas Bader, in Reach for the Sky, a part refused by Richard Burton. It was the most popular British film of the year. By 1956, More's asking price was £25,000 a film. In October 1956, John Davis, managing director of Rank, announced him as one of the actors under contract to Rank that Davis thought would become an international star.
More received offers to go to Hollywood, but refused them, unsure his persona would be effective there. However, he started working with U.S. co-stars and directors more often. In February 1957, he signed a contract with Daniel M. Angel and was to make ten films over five years, seven which would be distributed by Rank and three by 20th Century Fox. In June of that year, he said:
Hollywood has been hitting two extremes – either a Biblical de Mille spectacular or a Baby Doll. Britain does two other kinds of movie as well as anyone – a certain type of high comedy and a kind of semi-documentary. I believe we should hit these hard.
His next film, The Admirable Crichton, was a high comedy, based on the play by J. M. Barrie. It was released by Columbia Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert who also had made Reach for the Sky and who later said:
I was very fond of Kenny as an actor, although he wasn't particularly versatile. What he could do, he did very well. His strengths were his ability to portray charm; basically he was the officer returning from the war and he was superb in that kind of role. The minute that kind of role went out of existence, he began to go down as a box office star.
Regarding his performance in this film, critic David Shipman wrote:
It was not just that he had superb comic timing: one could see absolutely why the family trusted their fates to him. No other British actor had come so close to that dependable, reliable quality of the great Hollywood stars – you would trust him through thick and thin. And he was more humorous than, say, Cary Grant, more down-to-earth than, say, Gary Cooper.
The Admirable Crichton was the third most popular movie at the British box office in 1957. Josh Billings of Kinematograph Weekly wrote that More was the only star in Britain who could draw audiences solely on the power of his name.
In 1957, More had announced that he would play the lead role of a captain caught up in the Indian Mutiny in Night Runners of Bengal but the film was never made. More refused an offer from Roy Ward Baker to play a German POW in The One That Got Away, but agreed to play the lead role of Charles Lightoller in the Titanic film for the same director, A Night to Remember. This was the first of a seven-year contract with Rank at a fee of £40,000 a film. It was popular though failed to recover its large cost; it was one of More's most critically acclaimed films.
For his next film, More had an American co-star Betsy Drake, Next to No Time directed by Cornelius. It was a minor success at the box office.
More then made The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, a Western spoof originally written for Clifton Webb. He had an American director and co-star, although the film was shot in Spain. It was the tenth most-popular movie at the British box office in 1958.
In December 1958 More announced he had a contract with Rank to make seven films in five years at a flat salary, plus three films in five years for Dan Angel and 20th Century Fox of which Sheriff was the first. He also said he would no longer make a film without an American co star.
More said he had been offered a production deal of his own releasing through British Lion but did not want to do it saying "I've got what I want, and I've never been lucky in business anyway. I think too many actors also try to be their own administrators these days, and I see them walking around with worried faces. Some people have the flair for it, of course. I don't."
More said he would not appear on television. "If I do, it'll kill the theatre business that night. That's true of any big actor in Britain today. It was terrible what happened to the theatres the night Laurence Olivier went on. : Nobody went. So people like myself stay off television, though they offer fantastic sums. I was offered £123,000 to appear in one television series; and most of that money would have been tax-free in one way or another."
More made another film with Ralph Thomas, a remake of The 39 Steps, with a Hollywood co star. It was a hit in Britain.
He appeared in a Fox-Rank film set in India, North West Frontier, co-starring Lauren Bacall and directed by J. Lee Thompson. It was another success in Britain but not in the US. He agreed to star in The Angry Silence at a discount fee but pulled out in order to make Sink the Bismarck!, directed by Gilbert, a more lucrative assignment. This film was a hit in Britain and the US.
More was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1959 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Odeon Cinema, Shepherd's Bush.