1950 Playgoer Monthly Article
Thirty-two year old KENNETH CONNOR loses his youth to old age in the theatre where he specialises in octogenarians.
By Pauline Mathieson
If you met actor Kenneth Connor in the street you would see an upright dark-haired young man, with more than his fair share of vitality and sparkle and looking younger than his thirty-two years. But if he asked you to come to the Strand Theatre and watch him as an actor in “Queen Elizabeth Slept Here,” it is more than likely that your programme would be taken up to find out which character he plays.
The mystery would then be solved, but during the whole action of the play the wonder would be how he turns his youth to portray, Kimber, a gnarled, dried up gardener who certainly won’t see sixty again.
This character interpreting began at the exceedingly early age of two when his father, who was then in the Navy, took him along to the Royal Yachts Concert Party. Young Kenneth made his stage debut singing musical character parts. In fact his father’s comment on his performance as Kimber was “You could have played it better when you were fourteen.”
Kenneth’s problem, like many another character actor, is that as far as stage managements are concerned, he has become old before given a chance to be young. Like Richard Hearne, he has found that it pays to be old. And yet it sometimes happens that casting agents won’t have a young man playing an old one and as he’s not yet accepted as a an actor who can “be his age,” he is finding it difficult to get out of this rut of type casting.
He enjoys playing the sort of roles Moore Marriott made famous, but at the same time is more than anxious to smooth out his stage wrinkles and walk on to the stage without the shambling gait of an old man.
Most character players have been blessed by nature with features and physical attributes which prove an advantage in building up their chosen roles. Famous artistes like Charles Laughton, Edith Evans, Miles Malleson, Flora Robson and Felix Aylmer, are all endowed with the sort of looks that could not be classed as regular or beautiful but which have marked them as “character.”
The success of playing this kind of part demands imagination and more than the average powers of observation. Kenneth Connor has these features but any abnormality of feature he may seem to possess on the stage is entirely due to the makeup box.
After his debut at the age of two, he continued to play in concert parties and charity shows until he was thirteen when he studied dramatic art in Portsmouth. After winning a scholarship to Elsie Fogarty’s Central School of Drama, he stayed there eighteen months and left with a gold medal. During that time he played over ninety parts. Also with him at the school were two people whom he met again during the present run of “Queen Elizabeth Slept Here,” Rosalyn Boulter and Susan Richmond who was then on the staff.
Luck was on his side when he was fortunate enough to be given the part of Prince Jonathan in Sir James Barrie’s “Boy David” with Elizabeth Bergner. He was then nineteen, and one of his proudest recollections was when he was dressed for his part as the Prince wearing a black wig which reached his shoulders, and James Barrie told him it wouldn’t be long before he was playing Richard III.
Then came weeks with various repertories round the country – invaluable experience – which is so often frowned upon by over-ambitious young players who think they should jump straight into a part in the West End.
He came back to London to play Jim Hawkins with Malcolm Keane as Long John Silver at the Savoy and Comedy theatres Christmas, 1937 and 1938.
He left the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park to join the Army in July 1939, and served for six and a half years. Once, during a long guard duty he made a most unhappy discovery when he ventured to work out how much he had earned as an actor from 1936-39. Taking into account the weeks he was out of work, it averaged out as 10s. per week! Rather a discouraging omen for what the future might hold.
During his army career he organised concert parties including the 15th Scottish Division’s own “Tam O’Shanters.” He joined the central pool of artistes and acted in such plays as “Flare Path,” “While the Sun Shines” in Greece, Italy, Palestine and Naples. Each town they visited they took over the local theatre; the Bellini in Naples and the National Theatre of Greece in Athens were among the famous ones in which he played.
After demobilisation he received a telegram in Cairo from William Devlin asking him to go to the Bristol Old Vic. Such an offer had Kenneth in a frenzy of anxiety in case he couldn’t get home in time. The boat home turned out to be the laziest tub in the fleet, and on his arrival he didn’t bother to change into civvies but rushed on in fill marching kit just in time to save his part going to somebody else.
He played two seasons with this company playing Shakespeare’s clowns and fools, Eric Birley in “The Inspector Calls” and parts in Restoration comedy. Then he was asked to play a season with the London Old Vic.
He then went into a concert party at Brighton with Cliff Gordon, Lynd Joyce and Doris Hare, from which he went into “Oranges and Lemons” with Diana Churchill, Max Adrian and Elizabeth Welch.
But now that “Queen Elizabeth Slept Here” has finished, Kenneth has high hopes for the future because Stanley French plans to include him among those artistes he will be casting for the new plays he is to present in the autumn when this talented young character actor will be seen in R. S. Delderfield’s new comedy “Waggon-load Of Monkeys.”
Playgoer Monthly, October 1950.