American Theater Guide:
Richard Bennett |
Bennett, Richard (1873–1944), actor. Born in Deacon's Mills, Indiana, he made his debut in Chicago in 1891 as Tombstone Jake in The Limited Mail, and then played the role in New York later that year. For the next several seasons he toured in popular plays of the day and spent some time in stock, then in New York he appeared as the rich son Jefferson Ryder in the muckraking The Lion and the Mouse (1905); the social climbing Lennard Willmore in The Hypocrites (1906); the first American John Shand, playing opposite Maude Adams in What Every Woman Knows (1908); the ingratiating jewel thief Jack Doogan in Stop, Thief (1912); and George Dupont, the man victimized by hereditary venereal disease, in Damaged Goods (1913), which he co‐produced. A series of failures ensued before Bennett had another long run as Peter Marchmont, who learns the secret of invisibility, in The Unknown Purple (1918), followed by the doomed Robert Mayo in Beyond the Horizon (1920); the good brother, Andrew Lane, in The Hero (1921); the tragic clown in He Who Gets Slapped (1922); and the barkeep Tony who inherits an English title in The Dancers (1923). One of Bennett's most memorable interpretations was Tony, the aging grape‐grower, in They Knew What They Wanted (1924). His next success came four years later as Jack Jarnegan, the cynical film director, in Jarnegan. In 1932 he toured as Cyrano de Bergerac, then made his last Broadway appearance as Judge Gaunt in Winterset (1935). His screen actress daughter Joan Bennett described him as “a handsome, virile man with blue‐gray eyes, a determined chin, a firm and generous mouth, and a magnificent speaking voice.” An intellectual performer, he bore much of the credit for bringing a number of important plays to New York, such as Beyond the Horizon. Alexander Woollcott hailed his Robert Mayo in that play as a performance of “fine eloquence, imagination and finesse.” Biography: The Bennett Playbill, Joan Bennett and Lois Kibbee, 1970.
