Flora Robson

Early life

Robson was born in South Shields, County Durham, of Scottish descent to a family of six siblings. Many of her forebears were engineers, mostly in shipping. Her father was a ship's engineer who moved from Wallsend near Newcastle to Palmers Green in 1907 and Southgate in 1910, both in north London, and later to Welwyn Garden City.

She was educated at the Palmers Green High School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Career

Her father discovered that Flora had a talent for recitation and, from the age of 5, she was taken around by horse and carriage to recite, and to compete in recitations. This established a pattern that remained with her.

Robson made her stage debut in 1921. In films, her most notable role was that of Queen Elizabeth I in both Fire Over England (1937) and The Sea Hawk (1940). In 1934, Robson played the Empress Elizabeth in Alexander Korda's Catherine the Great (1934). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Angelique Buiton, a servant, in Saratoga Trunk (1945). The same year, audiences in the U.K. and the U.S. watched her hypnotic performance as Ftatateeta, the nursemaid and royal confidante and murderess-upon-command to Vivien Leigh's Queen Cleopatra in the screen adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1945).

After the Second World War, demonstrating her range, she appeared in Holiday Camp (1947), the first of a series of films which featured the very ordinary Huggett family; as Sister Philippa in Black Narcissus (1947); as a magistrate in Goodtime Girl (1948); as a prospective Labour MP in Frieda (1947); and in the costume melodrama Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948). Her other film roles included the Empress Dowager Cixi in 55 Days at Peking (1963), Miss Milchrest in Murder at the Gallop (1963), the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972), and Livia in the aborted I, Claudius in 1937.

She struggled to find a footing in the theatre after she graduated from RADA with a bronze medal since she lacked the conventional good looks which were then an absolute requisite for actresses in dramatic roles. After touring in minor parts with Ben Greet's Shakespeare company she may have played small parts for two seasons in the new repertory company at Oxford, but her contract was not renewed. She was told that they required a prettier actress. Unable to secure any acting engagements, she gave up the stage at the age of 23, and she took up work as a welfare officer in the Shredded Wheat factory in Welwyn Garden City. Tyrone Guthrie, due to direct a season at the new Festival Theatre, Cambridge, asked her to join his company. Her performance as the stepdaughter in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author made her the theatrical talk of Cambridge. She followed with Isabella in Measure for Measure with a Robert Donat, Pirandello's Naked, the title role in Iphigenia, Varya in The Cherry Orchard, and Rebecca West in Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm.

In the early 1930s, she was cast as the adulterous Abbie in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. Her brief, shocking appearance as the doomed prostitute in James Bridie's play The Anatomist put her firmly on the road to success. "If you are not moved by this girl's performance, then you are immovable" the Observer critic wrote. This success would lead to her famous 1933 season as leading lady at the Old Vic.

She continued her acting career late into life, though not on the West End stage, from which she retired at the age of 67, often for American television films, including a lavish production of A Tale of Two Cities (in which she played Miss Pross). She also performed for British television, including The Shrimp and the Anemone. In the 1960s, she continued to act in the West End, duch as Ring Round the Moon, The Importance of Being Earnest and Three Sisters.

She continued to act on film and television. She was last briefly seen a Stygian Witch in the fantasy adventure Clash of the Titans in 1981. Both the BBC and ITV made special programs to celebrate her 80th birthday in 1982, and the BBC ran a short season of her best films.

Awards and honours

She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Angelique Buiton, a Haitian maid, in Saratoga Trunk (1945).

She was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1952, and raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1960. She was also the first famous name to become president of the Brighton Little Theatre.

On 4 July 1958, she received an honorary DLitt from Durham University at a congregation in Durham Castle.

She was the subject of This Is Your Life in February 1961 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in central London.

Personal life and death

Her private life was largely focused on her large family of sisters, nephews and nieces, who used the home in Wykeham Terrace, Brighton, which she shared with sisters, Margaret and Shela.

She died in Brighton, aged 82; the cause was never revealed. She had never been married or had any children. The two sisters, with whom she shared her life and home, died around the same time: Shela shortly before Flora, in 1984, and Margaret on 1 February 1985.

Legacies

Dame Flora Robson Avenue, built in 1962, in Simonside, South Shields, is named after her. There is a plaque on the house in Wykeham Terrace, Dyke Road, Brighton, and also one in the doorway of St. Nicholas's Church, of which Flora Robson was a great supporter.

There is also a plaque to commemorate the opening of the Prince Charles Theatre (Leicester Square, London) by Flora Robson.

In 1996, the British Film Institute erected a plaque at number 14 Marine Gardens, location of Flora's other home in Brighton, where she lived from 1961 to 1976.

A plaque at 40 Handside Lane in Welwyn Garden City records Flora Robson living there from 1923 to 1925.

A blue plaque sponsored by Southgate District Civic Trust and Robson's former school Palmers Green High School was unveiled at her family home from 1910 to 1921, The Lawe, 65, The Mall, Southgate, on 25 April 2010.

Partial filmography

Theatre performances

• Queen Margaret in Will Shakespeare at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London, 1921
• Shakespearean repertory with Ben Greet's company, 1922
• JB Fagan's company at the Oxford Playhouse, 1923
• Two seasons at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge, 1929–30
• Abbey Putnam in Desire Under the Elms at the Gate Theatre, London, 1931
• Herodias in Salome at the Gate Theatre, London, 1931
• Mary Paterson in The Anatomist at the Westminster Theatre, London, 1931
• Stepdaughter in Six Characters in Search of an Author at the Westminster Theatre, London, 1932
• Bianca in Othello at the St. James' Theatre, London, 1932
• Olwen Peel in Dangerous Corner at the Lyric Theatre, London, 1932
• Eva in For Services Rendered at the Globe Theatre, London, 1932
• Ella Downey in All God's Chillun Got Wings at the Embassy Theatre, Swiss Cottage, 1933
• A season at the Old Vic, London, 1933–34
• Lady Catherine Brooke in Autumn at the St. Martin's Theatre, London, 1937
• Ellen Creed in Ladies in Retirement at the Henry Miller's Theatre, New York, 1940
• Sarah, Duchess of Malborough in Anne of England at the St. James Theatre, New York, 1941
• Rhoda Meldrum in The Damask Cheek at the Playhouse Theatre, New York, 1942–43
• Thérèse Raquin in Guilty at the Lyric, Hammersmith, 1944
• Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at the National Theatre, New York, 1948
• Lady Cicely Waynflete in Captain Brassbound's Conversion at the Lyric, Hammersmith, 1948
• Christine in Black Chiffon, at the Westminster Theatre, 1949 and the 48th Street Theatre, New York, 1950
• Lady Catherine Brooke in Autumn at the Q Theatre, London, 1951
• Paulina in The Winter's Tale at the Phoenix Theatre, London, 1951
• The Return at the Duchess Theatre, London, 1953–54
• Janet in The House By the Lake at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, 1956
• Mrs Alving in Ghosts at the Old Vic, 1958–59 and the Prince's Theatre, London, 1959
• Miss Tina in The Aspern Papers at the Queen's Theatre, London, 1959 and on tour to South Africa, 1960
• Grace Rovarte in Time and Yellow Roses at the St. Martin's Theatre, London, 1961
• Miss Moffatt in The Corn is Green at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing, the Flora Robson Playhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne and on tour to South Africa, 1962
• Gunhild in John Gabriel Borkman at the Duchess Theatre, London, 1963
• Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Flora Robson Playhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1964
• Hecuba in The Trojan Women at the Edinburgh Festival, 1966
• Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 1968
• Mother in Ring Round the Moon at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 1968
• Agatha Payne in The Old Ladies at the Duchess Theatre, London, 1969
• Elizabeth I in Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England at the Edinburgh Festival, 1970