Son recalls a Dad like few others

For us, the bushy-browed, fleshy-jowled and rotund Morley ranked alongside other mid-20th century British thespians who when they went into their particular acts were similarly offbeat – James Robertson Justice, John Le Mesurier, Wilfred Hyde-White and Alastair Sim come to mind; always fun, always individualistic, with no need to resort to clownishness.

A scene-stealer supreme, could anyone possibly out-talk the quick-witted and very properly spoken gentleman Morley? What could he possibly have been like at home, off-screen, off-stage, as Dad? His eldest child, Sheridan Morley, tells us in this book, first issued in 1993.

Father Robert was born in Semley, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, on May 26, 1908 and died in Reading, UK, on June 3, 1992 aged 84 years, three days after a stroke from which he did not regain consciousness. Son Sheridan was born on December 5, 1941 and died on February 16, 2007, having been an author, biographer, dramatic critic and broadcaster. He was the official biographer of Sir John Gielgud and wrote an authorised life story of this British actor that was published in 2001. Sheridan also produced some 18 other biographies of actors, including Noël Coward, David Niven, James Mason, Ingrid Bergman, Gene Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor.

The son was named after being born on the first night of his father’s role as Sheridan Whiteside in “The Man Who Came to Dinner” at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End on December 1941. Later, Sheridan recounts, his father was asked in the Garrick Club in London what it was like having a critic for a son. “Like being head of the Israeli army”, Robert responded, “and waking up to find your son is an Arab.”

That was a typical rejoinder, witty and droll. In his twilight years he would become master of the television chat show, a venerable actor in the grand manner, overwhelming the host and any other guests. Rentaquote, as Sheridan calls him, a beacon of overweight oddness, a raconteur guaranteed to entertain and beloved of the studio audience and viewers.

Robert was flamboyant, theatrical, larger than life. In 1975 he was engaged as a celebrity by a Yorkshire country-house hotel to tell stories to the diners and engage in light conversation. “Is this the sort of thing you want, dears?” he asked the audience after telling a story about Greta Garbo. “Would you like to ask some questions, perhaps?”

“Why are your flies undone?” a man in the front row asked. “I had rather hoped”, Robert replied, calmly adjusting his dress, “that it added to the general air of informality.” What did he think of Yorkshire? “The important thing”, he replied “is what Yorkshire thinks of me.”

What did he think of media figure Malcolm Muggeridge? “It is inconceivable that he would not bore God.” How did he get on with young directors? “I usually give them a week to find out if they know more than I do, and if not I take over myself.” Did he enjoy entertaining people? “As long as I am entertaining myself. I love hearing my own opinions, even if I don’t always agree with them.” What about British tax exiles? “I was born a pauper and I shall almost certainly die a pauper. If a man is fool enough to want to go to live in Jersey and take it all with him, then in my view he deserves everything he gets there.”

Sheridan was the eldest of the five grandchildren of Dame Gladys Cooper, an illustrious British actress of the 20th century, and he also wrote a biography of her that came out in 1979. Dame Gladys, born in Hither Green, London, on December 18, 1888 was a great beauty of her day and in demand in both Britain and Hollywood.

She died in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, on November 17, 1971, and had married three times, first to Captain Herbert Buckmaster from 1908 to 1921. They had two children, one of whom, Joan (1910-2005), married Robert Adolph Wilton Morley in 1940. Sheridan was the eldest of their three children, and thus the third generation of this eminent theatrical family.

Bare facts don’t do justice to this life story, and Sheridan fully delivers in this telling of the over-the-top personality who was his father. Robert’s own father “was a man of many careers, mostly disastrous. A compulsive gambler, he lived a life of regular crisis and  constant financial adventure, bequeathing to his only son a passion for roulette and the rare ability… to live on the financial edge without serious loss of sleep or nerve”.

Robert’s father’s constant and rapid escapes from creditors bred in Robert a love of adventure and a passion for touring ideally suited to the prewar demands of a struggling actor. The boy appeared in a school pageant in Folkestone when five years old and it was after seeing English thespian Esme Percy (1887-1957) in 1921 on a tour of “The Doctor’s Dilemma” by George Bernard Shaw that he decided to act, coming to believe that theatre as an art not only reflected life but extended and exaggerated it into the areas of magic.

At school Robert was tortured by military and physical activities, and didn’t do much better in the classroom, leaving with a deep lifelong horror of any sort of orthodox teaching. These were some of his unhappiest years. In 1926 aged 18 he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the best of London’s theatre schools, more by good luck than talent, but he quit in July 1927 to start making his living as an actor in the real world of the theatre.

His distinctive physical characteristics, portly and plummy, limited somewhat the characters he could portray, and for nine long years he toured the land in a series of regional tours, hardly any of which reached London. But he relished the life and he learned, despite a six-month gap as a travelling door-to-door salesman. He began to write his own first play.

Robert first gained acclaim on the London stage for his title role in “Oscar Wilde” in 1936, then successfully reprised the part on Broadway in 1938, leading to an invitation to Hollywood to act the part of the doomed Louis XVI in “Marie Antoinette” (1938). This earned him a nomination for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, appearing alongside John Barrymore, Norma Shearer and many of Hollywood’s best character actors.

For 20 years after the war he was in semi-permanent residence in West End of London theatres “in plays which only he managed to turn into two-year hits”, Sheridan notes. His first great success as an actor/author was his own “Edward, My Son” in 1947, and “he built up a special affinity with his customers almost akin to that achieved by a great head waiter or hotel manager”.

Sheridan begs to differ with those critical colleagues who said his father was only good at playing versions of himself in essentially lightweight material. If he rejected playing Shakespeare’s Falstaff, for instance, it was not out of fear or laziness but simply because, Sheridan believed, he knew he would not enjoy it, and thus how could his audience?

There came almost 100 films for the big screen and television, 30-plus plays, tours down under, a sideline as a playwright and journalist, popular advertisements for British Airways and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He declined a knighthood.

Robert was a good husband and father, albeit unusual, and great material for a marvellously entertaining biography that, even though presented by his son, maintains its objectivity.