Basil Sydney

Basil Sydney
Basil Sydney and Doris Keane as Romeo and Juliet.
Born	23 April 1894(1894-04-23) St Osyth, Essex, England
Died	10 January 1968 (aged 73) London, England
Years active	1920 - 1964
Spouse(s)	Joyce Howard (div.) Doris Keane (1918-1925) Mary Ellis (m.1929)

Basil Sydney (April 23, 1894 - January 10, 1968) was an English actor who made over fifty screen appearances, most memorably as Claudius in Laurence Olivier's 1948 film of Hamlet. He also appeared in classic films like Treasure Island (1950), Ivanhoe (1952) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), but the focus of his career was the legitimate stage on both sides of the Atlantic.

He made his name in the London stage hit Romance by Edward Sheldon in the dual role of the priest and the priest's nephew opposite the play's Broadway star Doris Keane in 1915, and costarred with Keane in the 1920 silent movie of the play. The couple married in 1918, and when Keane revived Romance in New York in 1921, Sydney made his Broadway debut in the parts. He stayed in New York for over a decade playing classical roles like Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (1922) Richard Dudgeon in The Devil's Disciple (1923), the title role in Hamlet (1923), Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part I (1926), and Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew (1927).

By then he had divorced Keane and remarried, returning to England and concentrating his energies more on film than on theatre work. He married English film actress (Love On the Dole, Mrs. Fitzherbert, etc.) in the 1940's. He died from pleurisy in 1968, aged 73.

Filmography

• Romance (1920)
• Red Hot Romance (1922)
• The Midshipmaid (1932)
• Dirty Work (1934)
• The Third Clue (1934)
• The White Lilac (1935)
• The Riverside Murder (1935)
• The Tunnel (1935)
• Blind Man's Bluff (1936)
• The Amateur Gentleman (1936)
• Rhodes of Africa (1936)
• Accused (1936)
• Crime Over London (1936)
• Talk of the Devil (1936)
• The Four Just Men (1939)
• Shadowed Eyes (1940)
• The Big Blockade (1940)
• The Farmer's Wife (1941)
• Spring Meeting (1941)
• Ships with Wings (1942)
• The Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942)
• The Next of Kin (1942)
• Went the Day Well? (1942)
• Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
• Meet Me at Dawn (1947)
• The Man Within (1947)
• Jassy (1947)
• Hamlet (1948)
• The Angel with the Trumpet (1950)
• Treasure Island (1950)
• The Magic Box (1952)
• Ivanhoe (1952)
• Salome (1953)
• Three's Company (1954)
• Hell Below Zero (1954)
• Star of India (1954)
• Simba (1955)
• The Dam Busters (1955)
• Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
• Island in the Sun (1957)
• Sea Wife (1957)
• A Question of Adultery (1958)
• John Paul Jones (1959)
• The Devil's Disciple (1959)
• A Story of David (1960)
• The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
• The Hands of Orlac (1960)

External links

• Basil Sydney at the Internet Movie Database

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