Oscar Profile #137: Robert Morley

Born May 26, 1908 in Semley, Wilshire, England, Robert Morley was the son of a major in the British Army and a German-born mother. Educated in England, Germany, France and Italy, he was expected to go into diplomatic service, but chose acting instead.

Morley made his West End debut in a 1929 production of Treasure Island and his film debut in an uncredited role in the 1935 British version of Scrooge. He took the London theatrical world by storm as Oscar Wilde in 1936 and equaled that acclaim as Henry Higgins in the 1937 revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. In 1938 he made his Hollywood debut as Louis XVI opposite Norma Shearer’s Marie Antoinette for which he would receive an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Later that year he brought Oscar Wilde to Broadway and further acclaim.

In 1941 Morley got to act Shaw on screen in the acclaimed film version of Major Barbara in which he played Wendy Hiller’s father. In 1940 he married Joan Buckmaster, daughter of acting legend Gladys Cooper. In 1941, while touring as Sheridan Whiteside in Kaufman and Hart’s The Man Who Came to Dinner, the first of his three children was born. His parents named him Sheridan after Morley’s character. He would become one of Britain’s most acclaimed theatre critics and writers.

Morley co-wrote Edward, My Son which he performed on the London stage in 1947 and on Broadway in 1948 opposite Peggy Ashcroft, but lost out to a miscast Spencer Tracy in the 1949 film version. His screen career picked up in the 1950s with Outcast of the Islands, The African Queen, The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan, Beat the Devil, Around the World in 80 Days, Libel and The Journey among others. He was Panisse in the 1956 London production of the musical Fanny, the role played on screen five years later by Maurice Chevalier.

In 1960 Morley starred in the London production of A Majority of One opposite Molly Picon. Alec Guinness and Rosalind Russell would play their roles on screen the following year. That same year he starred in the long-delayed film version of Oscar Wilde, after which he appeared in such other 1960s films as Murder at the Gallop, Topkapi, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, The Loved One and Hot Millions. He regaled audiences with his appearances on Jack Paar’s late night TV program during the 1964-65 season in which the great raconteur would often tell tales about the hilarious eccentricities of his fabled mother-in-law.

The 1970s found Morley in such films as Cromwell, Theatre of Blood and Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? among others. While he continued to appear in films through 1989, his great successes were by then behind him. In 1990 he became estranged from his son Sheridan after he divorced his first wife and mother of his three children of whom the actor was quite fond.

Robert Morley died of a stroke on June 3, 1992. His wife Joan died in 2005 at the age of 95. Their son, Sheridan Morley died in 2007 at 65. Gladys Cooper died in 1971 at 82.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

MARIE ANTOINETTE, directed by W.S. Van Dyke (1938)

Morley steals the show as Louis XVI in his first credited screen role. He and Basil Rathbone as his predecessor Louis XI in the same year’s If I Were King were both nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar but lost to Walter Brennan in old age makeup in Kentucky. Norma Shearer in one of her last hits as his tragic queen and Tyrone Power in one of his first as her younger lover were also quite good as, of course, were John Barrymore as the dying Louis XV, Gladys George as Madame DuBarry and Joseph Schildkraut as the Duke of Orelans. This one still holds up quite well.

THE STORY OF GILBERT AND SULLIVAN, directed by Sidney Gilliat (1953)

Once a TV staple, this charming film of the life and operettas of the great Gilbert and Sullivan has never been released on VHS or DVD, but occasionally shows up briefly on YouTube before it is taken down. Morley is once again at his best as Gilbert opposite Maurice Evans as Sullivan, supported by a splendid cast that includes Eileen Herlie, Martyn Green, Peter Finch, Dinah Sheridan and Wilfred Hyde-White. The film follows the lives of the two great composers from their first meeting to Sullivan’s death at 58. As a film it may not be as grand as 1999’s Topsy-Turvy but covers a much wider swath.

OSCAR WILDE, directed by Gregory Ratoff (1960)

Morley became an overnight sensation on the London stage in the 1936 Leslie and Sewell Stokes play about the “love that dare not speak its name” based on the works of Frank Harris, which he brought to Broadway in 1938. It took until 1960 to make it into a film when it was released at the same time as the dueling The Trials of Oscar Wilde with Peter Finch brought the same story to the screen. Ralph Richardson, Phyllis Calvert, John Neville, Dennis Price, Alexander Knox, Edward Chapman and Martin Benson co-star. Morley’s eight-year-old son Wilton plays his son in the film.

TOPKAPI, directed by Jules Dassin (1964)

Morley was again quite marvelous as a mechanical genius in this classic heist comedy-adventure, but this time he was on screen with a group of consummate actors who were as adept as he at scene-stealing. Among them were Dassin’s wife, Melina Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov and Akim Tamiroff. Although it is generally conceded that Ustinov in the role that won him a second Oscar is the standout, all his co-stars give it their all. Morley’s role was originally intended for Orson Welles who declined it. Morley’s best friend, Peter Bull, had also auditioned for the role before it was given to him.

WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS OF EUROPE?, directed by Ted Kotcheff (1978)

This is both a tantalizing murder mystery and a comic gem, featuring a delightful cast headed by George Segal as a suspect in the titled murders. Jacqueline Bisset is his ex-wife, a pastry chef who is asked, along with three others, to prepare a special meal for the Queen of England by Morley as an acerbic editor-in-chief and publisher of a famous gourmet magazine. The role won him the Best Supporting Actor award of both the L.A. Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics as well as a Golden Globe nomination, but he was shockingly left out of the year’s list of Oscar nominees in that category.