Background
Ronald Colman was born on 9 February 1891 in Richmond upon Thames, United Kingdom.
Ronald Colman was born on 9 February 1891 in Richmond upon Thames, United Kingdom.
While working for the British Steamship Company, Colman took part in amateur dramatics; invalided out of the First World War, he went on the stage professionally. He was successful and made a few films in Britain before going to America in 1920. While working there in the theatre, he was seen bv Henry King and chosen to play with Lillian Gish in The White Sister (23, King).
Goldwyn put him under contract and Colman quickly became a romantic star: Romola (24, King); Tarnish (24, George Fitzmaurice); Her Night of Romance (24, Sidney Franklin); A Thief in Paradise (25, Fitzmaurice); His Supreme Moment (25, Fitzmaurice); The Sporting Venus (25, Marshall Neilan); Her Sister from Paris (25, Franklin); The Dark Angel (25, Fitzmaurice); Stella Dallas (25, King); Lady Windermere’s Fan (25, Ernst Lubitsch); Kiki (26, Clarence Brown); Beau Geste (26, Herbert Brenon); The Winningof Barbara Worth (26, King); The Night of Love (27, Fitzmaurice); The Magic Flame (27, King); Two Lovers (28, Fred Niblo); and The Rescue (29, Brenon).
As an actor, Colrnan was not troubled by the coming ol sound—indeed, his aura of class gained from it. No more handsome than several silent rivi ils, when he spoke he revealed himself as urbane and sympathetic. Nearly forty, his mustache, his manners, and his Englishness cast him perfectly as the mature, amused romantic, and as such he won a huge following. He was not a searching actor, but he had learned how attractive consistent underplaying could be, and he took care to preserve his looks. His first great success with sound was Bulldog Drummond (29, F. Richard Jones) and he carried on with Condemned (29, Wesley Buggies); Raffles (30, Harry d'Arrast and George Fitzmaurice); The Unholy Garden (31, Fitzmaurice); and The Devil to Pay (31, Fitzmaurice). Colrnan did not work as often as many other stars: he often pondered over accepting parts, but scarcity added to his gentlemanly distinction. Invariably, his parts were ideally suited to his talent: Arrow-smith (31, John Ford); Cynara (King Vidor); and The Masquerader (33, Richard Wallace).
At this stage, Colrnan left Goldwyn after his employer suggested that Colrnan acted better when he had been drinking. Colrnan now joined Twentieth and made Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (34, Rov del Ruth), Clive of India (35, Richard Boleslavsky), and The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (35, Stephen Roberts). He was a very good, alcoholic Sidney Carton at MGM in A Tale of Two Cities (35, Jack Conway) and at the same studio in Under Two Flags (36, Frank Lloyd). In 1937, he made two of his best remembered movies: at Columbia, Lost Horizon (Frank Capra) and, for Selznick, The Prisoner of Zaula (John Cromwell). He played François Villon in If I W ere Ling (38, Lloyd) and was unusually touching as the painter in The Light That Failed (39, William Wellman); Lucky Partners (40, Lewis Milestone); My Life With Caroline (41, Milestone); The Talk of the Town (42, George Stevens); the shrewdly calculated sentiment of Random Harvest (43, Mervyn Le Roy), in which Colrnan was opposite Greer Garson. After Kismet (44, William Dieterle) he worked less and less and was more clearly in middle age in The Late George Apley (47, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) and A Double Li fe (47, George Cukor), for which he won the best actor Oscar as an actor who gets too far inside “Othello.” He was also very good in Champagne for Caesar (49, Richard Whorf) and thereafter retired, returning only for two guest roles:
Around the World in 80 Days (56, Michael Anderson) and The Story of Mankind (57, Irwin Allen).