Sybil Thorndike: A Star of Life
by Jonathan Croall
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Though a name seldom heard in today's popular culture, Dame Sybil Thorndike lives on in the theatregoing psyche with the likes of Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry, considered by many as one of the 20th century's greatest actresses.
A quintessentially English figure, she was a humanitarian of global proportion, working tirelessly offstage and on, bolstering endless philanthropic causes and mentoring an entire generation of great classical actors - Lord Laurence Olivier called her his surrogate mother.
A staunch unionist, she was involved in the early days of British Equity. A visionary and an innovator, she was involved in establishing The Arts Council, The Old Vic, the National Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre and the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead.
The First British actress to appear on a postage stamp, her ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey.
Bernard Shaw wrote Saint Joan for her, in which she starred to major acclaim in London in 1924, not long after the Roman Catholic Church's canonisation of Joan of Arc. Having first played 19-year-old Joan at almost 32, Sybil reprised the role periodically for various recitals throughout her long and distinguished career.
Made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1931, then Companion of Honour in 1970, she was awarded an honorary degree from Manchester University in 1922 and an honorary D.Litt from Oxford University in 1966.
Never a raving beauty, she was known for her loathing of dressing-up (yet also for mingling with royalty). An arch-eccentric, she was a self-proclaimed 'Socialist-Royalist' (a contradiction in terms, some argued), who lived on a pittance for most of her life whilst quietly becoming an arts legend.
Though perceived from afar as a formidable force, she had no airs or graces close-up and knew everyone's name down to the lowliest understudy or stagehand she worked with. She was in her element performing in the open parks and ancient ruins of Britain, Europe, Africa and the East without so much as a curtain, costume or stage.
Most notably a great tragedienne, she also loved smaller, 'interesting' roles, light comedy and experimental theatre. Unlike many of her great contemporaries, ego was not her defining feature and it was to Sybil that many a teary, bullied greenhorn thespian turned for succour and encouragement.
Irrepressibly ebullient, she saw only the best in people, places and situations. A whirlwind of positivity with distinctively precise diction and a voice like a great bell that readily filled any arena unamplified (this acoustic power, despite having damaged her voice on a 1905 US Shakespearean tour, with recurring vocal problems plaguing her for her remaining working life).
Jonathan Croall's enthralling 584-page biography sits among the finest I have read of anyone. Riddled with priceless anecdotes both hilarious and heartwarming from start to finish, this theatrical time capsule is pure gold. Croall's historical research is meticulous, his literary craftsmanship sublime. His strong theatrical background shines through each rich paragraph.
Why he has not been more prolific in this field in which he so excels is baffling. His talents have perhaps been well spent elsewhere, as co-founder and editor of Arts Express magazine, editor of the National Theatre's magazine StageWrite and Programmes Editor at the Old Vic. Croall's other works are now absolutely on my to-read list, headed by his extensive work on Sir John Gielgud.
But Sybil ...
Born in Lincolnshire in 1882, this daughter of Rochester Cathedral's Canon lived and worked into her 90s, gracing the world's stages with some of the finest classical drama seen, often appearing with her husband Sir Lewis Casson.
She had first trained for classical piano, commuting to London for weekly lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. At 11 she debuted publicly as a pianist, but by 18 piano cramp had forced her to abandon that vocation. Only then, encouraged by her brother, actor-author Russell Thorndike, did she train formally in drama – though the sibling pair had since toddlerhood acted recreationally, hamming it up along with their younger sister.
At 21, Sybil had her first professional contract, touring the USA with actor-manager Ben Greet's company. In four years she played some 112 roles. By 1908, understudying the title role of Candida in a production directed by that play's author, George Bernard Shaw, she met Lewis Casson, whom she married that December. The couple had four children, several grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren, many becoming actors, directors or tutors.
Sybil went to Broadway in 1910, then joined London's Old Vic Company from 1914–18 playing leading Shakespearean and other classical roles. She played Hecuba in Euripides' The Trojan Women (1919–20), then from 1920–22 with her husband starred in a British version of France's Grand Guignol directed by Jose Levy.
Thorndike and Casson were active Labour Party members with strong Leftist views. They preferred living in or around abject poverty to remain true to their craft rather than take on commercial success, which nevertheless constantly beckoned.
Sybil especially preferred being away from London, touring the British provinces, kipping in their familiar seedy digs, performing to adoring throngs of miners and other unlikely labourers - regularly extending this ritual to far flung places like South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, relishing giving live recitals to natives in fields, pubs, historic sites, libraries, barns and civic halls.
As a pacifist, Sybil was a member of the Peace Pledge Union and gave readings for its benefit. During WWII, she and her husband toured in Shakespearean productions on behalf of the Council for the Encouragement of the Arts, before joining Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson in the Old Vic season at the New Theatre in 1944.
At the end of WWII, it emerged that Sybil was on "The Black Book" or Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. list of Britons to be arrested in the event of Nazi invasion!
Though she mostly shunned the big screen, favouring live performance, she had made her film debut in Moth and Rust (1921), appearing in numerous silent films the next year, including Bleak House, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice and The Scarlet Letter. Her most notable film roles include Nurse Edith Cavell in Dawn (1928), General Baines in Major Barbara (1941), Mrs. Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby (1948), Queen Victoria in Melba (1952) and the Queen Dowager in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, for which she was awarded the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress. She made her last film appearance – in a version of Uncle Vanya in 1963.
Her last live performance was at the Thorndike Theatre (built for and named after her) in Leatherhead, Surrey, in There Was an Old Woman in 1969, the year Lewis Casson died. She continued with radio and TV recordings, her final screen appearance in the TV drama The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens, with Anthony Hopkins in 1970.
I became so intensely hooked with this book, for several ecstatic weeks, I was reluctant to finish it. I shall certainly reread it, probably more than once. A reading treat to top all others, this is one of my all-time favourite biographies.
Can't recommend it highly enough.
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