John Clements (actor)


Sir John Selby Clements was a British actor and producer who worked in theatre, television and film.

Biography

Theatre career

Clements made his first professional appearance on the stage in 1930, then worked with Nigel Playfair and afterwards spent a few years in Ben Greet's Shakespearean Company.
In 1935 Clements founded the Intimate Theatre, a combined repertory and try-out venue, at Palmers Green. He appeared in almost 200 plays and also presented a number of plays in the West End as actor-manager-producer.
Clements married the actress Kay Hammond and together they had a critical success with their West End revival of Noël Coward's play Private Lives in 1945. In 1952 they both appeared in Clements's own play The Happy Marriage, an adaptation of Jean Bernard-Luc's . Clements starred as Edward Moulton Barrett in the musical Robert and Elizabeth, a successful adaptation of The Barretts of Wimpole Street.
In December 1951 Clements directed Man and Superman in the West End, and played the role of John Tanner alongside Allan Cuthbertson.
Clements was the artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre from 1966 to 1973.
The actor John Standing is his stepson.

Film career

As a film actor John Clements played bit parts of increasing size for Alexander Korda's London Films in the 1930s. He made quite an impression opposite Robert Donat and Marlene Dietrich in Knight Without Armour as Poushkoff, a sensitive, conflicted young commissar who saves their lives during the Russian Revolution. He came to further prominence when film director Victor Saville chose him to star opposite Ralph Richardson in South Riding. The two actors were reunited in the very successful The Four Feathers.
After that Clements's film career was somewhat intermittent, although he made a series of British war films for Ealing Studios and British Aviation Pictures, such as Convoy, Ships with Wings, Tomorrow We Live and as Yugoslav guerrilla leader Milosh Petrovitch in Undercover. He had a cameo role in Gandhi.

Honours and death

Clements was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956 and was knighted in 1968. He died in Brighton, East Sussex, in 1988.

Filmography

  • The Divine Spark as Florino
  • Once in a New Moon as Edward Teale
  • Ticket of Leave as Lucky Fisher
  • Things to Come as The Airman
  • Rembrandt as Govaert Flinck
  • Knight Without Armour as Poushkoff
  • I, Claudius as Valente
  • South Riding as Joe Astell
  • Housemaster as Undetermined Minor Role
  • Star of the Circus as Paul Houston
  • The Four Feathers as Harry Faversham
  • Convoy as Lieutenant Cranford
  • This England as John Rookeby
  • Ships with Wings as Lieutenant Dick Stacey
  • Tomorrow We Live as Jean Baptiste
  • Undercover as Milosh Petrovitch
  • They Came to a City as Joe Dinmore
  • Call of the Blood as Julius Ikon
  • Train of Events as Raymond Hillary
  • The Silent Enemy as The Admiral
  • The Mind Benders as Major Hall
  • Oh! What a Lovely War as General Helmut von Moltke
  • Gandhi as Advocate General
  • Top Secret! as East German Dignitary

    Selected theatre credits

  • The Venetian
  • Edward, My Son
  • And This Was Odd
  • The Happy Marriage
  • ''The Little Glass Clock''