Background
MORLEY, Robert was born on May 26, 1908 in Semley, Wilts. Son of Major Robert and Gertrude Emily (nee Fass) Morley.
MORLEY, Robert was born on May 26, 1908 in Semley, Wilts. Son of Major Robert and Gertrude Emily (nee Fass) Morley.
Educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, and later at RADA.
Robert Morley was a stage actor, an occasional playwright, as well as a radio and television personality blessed by impromptu wit and deep good nature. But for more than fifty years he was a supporting actor in films, and a routine lead, of enormous versatility—nearly always funny, often touching, indubitably English, despite the range of notions (and wretched pictures) he lent himself to: as Louis XVI with Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (38, W. S. Van Dyke), for which he won a supporting actor nomination; Return to Yesterday (40, Robert Stevenson); as Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara (41, Gabriel Pascal); The Big Blockade (41, Charles Fiend); The Foreman Went to France (41, Freud); Charles James Fox in The Young Mr Pitt (42, Carol Reed); I Live in Grosvenor Square (45, Herbert Wilcox); The Small Baek Room (45, Michael Powell); at his best in Outcast of the Islands (51, Reed); as the brother in The African Queen (51, John Huston); the director in Curtain Up (52, Ralph Smart); Melba (53, Lewis Milestone); as Gilbert in The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (53, Sidney Gilliat); superb in Beat the Devil (53, Huston); The Good Die Young (54, Lewis Gilbert); George III in Beau Brummell (54, Curtis Bernhardt); another French king in Quentin Durwood (55, Richard Thorpe); Loser Takes All (56, Ken Annakin); Law and Disorder (58, Charles Crichton); The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (58, Raoul Walsh); The Journey (59, Anatole Litvak); The Doctor’s Dilemma (59, Anthony Asquith); Libel (59, Asquith); The Battle of the Sexes (60, Crichton); the lead in Oscar Wilde (60. Gregory Rat off), a role he had played onstage in the 1930s; The Young Ones (61, Sidney J. Furie); The Road to Hong Kong (62, Norman Panama); Nine Hours to Rama (63, Mark Robson); Murder at the Gallop (63, George Pollack); The Old Dark House (63, William Castle); Take Her; She’s Mine (63, Henry Koster); Topkapi (64, Jules Dassin); Of Human Bondage (64, Ken Hughes); Hot Enough for June (64, Ralph Thomas); Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (65, Ken Annakin); A Study in Terror (65, Jaines Hill); Life at the Top (65, Ted Kotcheff); Genghis Khan (65, Henry Levin); The Loved One (65, Tony Richardson); The Alphabet Murders (66, Frank Tashlin); Hotel Paradiso (66, Peter Glenville); Tender Scoundrel (66, Jean Becker); Way . . . Way Out (66, Gordon Douglas); The Trygon Factor (67, Cyril Frankel); Hot Millions (68, Eric Till); Sinful Davey (69. Huston); Cromwell (70, Ken Hughes); Song of Norway (70, Andrew L. Stone); When Eight Bells Ring (71, Etienne Perrier); Theatre of Blood (73, Douglas Hickox); The Blue Bird (76, George Cukor); Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (78, Kotcheff), as a great gourmet; The Human Factor (79, Otto Preminger); Loophole (80, John Quested); High Road to China (83, Brian G. Hutton); The Wind (87, Nico Mastorikis); Little Dorrit (87, Christine Edzard); Istanbul (90, Mats Arehn).
Married Joan Buckmaster (daughter of the late Dame Gladys Cooper, D.B.E.) in 1940.