John Gielgud

"Sir John Gielgud, best known to American audiences for his beloved, Academy Award-winning turn in 1982's smash comedy Arthur, was one of the foremost talents of twentieth-century theatre and cinema. A peerless actor, he was also one of the most celebrated stage directors of the twentieth century, and one of the preeminent Shakespearean interpreters of his time, second perhaps only to his good friend Sir Laurence Olivier." "Over the course of his legendary career, which spanned eight decades, Gielgud reached a vast and varied audience, as attested by his status as one of only ten people to have won all four of America's top entertainment awards - a Academy Award, a Tony, an Emmy, and a Grammy. From his London stage debut in 1921, when he was only seventeen, through such highly successful later-day films as Gandhi, Shine, and Elizabeth, Gielgud never failed to make an indelible impression." "What is not so widely known as his storied accomplishments on stage and screen is that Gielgud was a meticulous and enthusiastic letter writer. From thousands of letters, beginning with those to his mother when he was an aspiring but still unknown actor, the editor has chosen these nine hundred gems, which span a period of eighty years. In them, Gielgud writes candidly about his friends and colleagues, many of whom - Garbo, Olivier, Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, James Mason, Charlie Chaplin, and Richard Burton, to name only a few - were legends in their own right. Gielgud revels in gossip, and delivers outspoken and candid evaluations of his peers, their talent, and his personal relationships. He was quite open about his homosexuality at a time when such candor was rare, and his letters offer a glimpse into the gay community of the entertainment industry over the course of the twentieth century, as well as his own very frank assessments of his personal romances." "Fans of all ages of this actor and director, as well as anyone interested in the history of film, theatre, Shakespeare, and the arts, will treasure this glimpse behind the curtain. This is, in effect, the autobiography that Gielgud never wrote."--Jacket.

In his two seasons at London's Old Vic Theatre from 1929 to 1931 John Gielgud established himself in the forefront of Shakespearean actors, and in the six decades since then he has scaled the heights of most of the great parts, from Romeo, Richard II and Hamlet, to Macbeth, Lear and Prospero. American theatregoers acclaimed his 1936 Hamlet, which broke all previous records for the run of the play on Broadway, ironically exceeded only by his own production with Richard Burton in the title-role in 1964. In the Fifties and Sixties he toured his solo Shakespeare recital Ages of Man in more than sixty cities in Canada and the United States and recorded it for television; in 1959 he brought his original Stratford-on-Avon production of Much Ado About Nothing to Boston and New York, where he bade farewell to his brilliant Benedick. His Shakespearean films have been some of the most successful, notably his Cassius in Julius Caesar with Marlon Brando and James Mason, King Henry IV in Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight and his most recent - Prospero's Books, directed by Peter Greenaway, in which he at last achieved his long-held ambition to bring The Tempest to the screen. In this book Sir John brings together a lifetime's experience of Shakespeare, as both actor and director, and illuminates the work and the man with his characteristic humor and intuitive perception of the challenges and rewards offered by these great verse-dramas. He draws vivid pictures of many fellow-actors and directors, and with the help of evocative and lavish illustrations weaves a brilliant theatrical tapestry of the twentieth century.

"John Gielgud wrote letters almost every day of his adult life. Whether at home in London and later in Buckinghamshire, or acting abroad or on location, he delighted in sitting down each day and recounting what had been going on and what he felt about events around him." "Not long before his death aged ninety-six in May 2000, he was still writing in an increasingly idiosyncratic and minuscule hand, which he confessed even he required a magnifying glass to read." "Through the letters, which begin with those to his mother, we meet a man who delights in gossip, in describing what he sees and experiences." "Here for the first time - and not previously available to biographers - are some of Gielgud's love letters. They show that he was not shy in expressing the intimacies of personal relationship." "Gielgud had a reputation for speaking his mind, and this is evident as he writes about his contemporaries, including the great actors of the period: Olivier, Richardson, Redgrave, Peggy Asticroft, Edith Evans and the like."--BOOK JACKET.

John Gielgud tells the story of his life in the theatre, from the time of the great actor/managers like Tree and du Maurier and star actresses like Sarah Bernhardt and his own great aunt Ellen Terry, to his famous partnerships with Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson. With his own unique warmth and humour, he describes the plays he has starred in and directed, the films he has appeared in, and the actors he has known, from James Mason, Marlon Brando and Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Liza Minnelli.