Black Country movie legend’s first star role
THE celebrated actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke enjoyed a long and successful career on stage, in film and in television, on both sides of the Atlantic.
He was born in Lye in 1893, the son of Dr Edwin Hardwicke and his wife Jessie. Cedric was educated at Bridgnorth Grammar School and showed enthusiasm for the theatre from an early age, staging his own performances of Shakespeare at his home.
He followed his father’s wishes and began to train in medicine but it quickly became apparent that his talents lay elsewhere and at the age of 17 Cedric went to London and enrolled at Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s school of acting, which later became the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and while studying he began to take minor walk-parts in theatre.
Hardwicke was beginning to establish himself on the London stage when the First World War broke out. Hardwicke answered the call to arms and fought in the Battle of Somme and at Arras. He ended the war with the Judge Advocate’s branch and remained in France until 1921.
He resumed his acting career after the war and found fame appearing in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, whom he became great friends with.
In 1926 Cedric Hardwicke made his first film, taking the lead role in Nelson, a biopic of the great naval hero.
Silent
The silent film was made by British Instructional Films with the approval of the Admiralty. It was based upon the 1813 book The Life of Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson by the Poet Laureate Robert Southey and featured all the wellknown elements of Nelson’s life. The director was Walter Summers and Hardwicke’s co-stars included the American actress Gertrude Mccoy, as Lady Hamilton, and Frank Perfitt as Thomas Hardy.
These photographs show some of the scenes from Nelson, which ran for 80 minutes.
The film is a rare survivor from the early days of British film-making, although the passing years have not been kind to the film’s reputation. Other pictures made by British Instructional Films include Cheese from Milk and Margarine from Oil, so perhaps they were not best suited to make a movie of the dramatic life of the swashbuckling admiral. The film can be viewed today online and largely consists of static scenes with the actors standing still while speaking, with caption cards explaining the plot. Even the battle scenes are not that exciting.
Talkie
The film’s poor reception may explain why, in 1931 when Hardwicke published a short autobiography in The Windsor Magazine, he ignored this film and instead focused on his first “talkie” Dreyfus, made in 1931 by British International Pictures, telling the story of the notorious French political scandal.
Cedric Hardwicke went on to have a distinguished career in film, both in Britain and Hollywood. Among his best pictures were Stanley and Livingstone (1939) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1940), Suspicion (1941), The Winslow Boy (1948), Richard III (1955) and The Ten Commandments (1956).