Kenneth Gilbert More (20 September 1914 – 12 July 1982) was an English actor.
Initially achieving fame in the comedy Genevieve (1953), More appeared in many roles as a carefree, happy-go-lucky gent. His films from this period include Doctor in the House (1954), Raising a Riot (1955), The Admirable Crichton (1957), The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958) and Next to No Time (1958). He also played more serious roles as a leading man, beginning with The Deep Blue Sea (1955), Reach for the Sky (1956), A Night to Remember (1958), North West Frontier (1959), The 39 Steps (1959) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960).
Although More's career declined in the early 1960s, two of his own favourite films date from this time – The Comedy Man (1964) and The Greengage Summer (1961) with Susannah York, "one of the happiest films on which I have ever worked."Kenneth More (1978) More or Less, Hodder & Stoughton. He also enjoyed a revival in the much-acclaimed TV adaptation of The Forsyte Saga (1967) and the Father Brown series (1974).
Early life Kenneth More was born at 'Raeden', Vicarage Way, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the only son of Charles Gilbert More, a Royal Naval Air Service pilot, and Edith Winifred Watkins, the daughter of a Cardiff solicitor. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey, having spent part of his childhood in the Channel Islands, where his father was general manager of the Jersey Eastern Railway.
After his graduation, More followed the family tradition by training to become a civil engineer. However, he abandoned his training and worked for a while in Sainsbury's on the Strand.
When More was 17 his father died, and he applied to join the Royal Air Force but failed the medical test for equilibrium. He then travelled to Canada, intending to work as a fur trapper, but was sent back to Britain because he lacked immigration documents.
Windmill Theatre On his return from Canada, a business associate of his father, Vivian Van Damm, agreed to offer him work as a stagehand at the Windmill Theatre, where his job included shifting scenery and helping to get the nude players off stage during its Revudeville variety shows. After a chance moment on stage helping a comic, he realized that he wanted to act and was soon promoted to playing straight man in the Revudeville comedy routines, appearing in his first sketch in August 1935.
He played there for a year, which then led to regular work in repertory, including Newcastle, performing in plays such as Burke and Hare and Dracula's Daughter. Other stage appearances included Do You Remember? (1937), Stage Hands Never Lie (1937) and Distinguished Gathering (1937).
More continued his theatre work until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. He had an occasional small role in films such as Look Up and Laugh (1935).
Second World War
Before the war, More was working as an actor in Wolverhampton at the repertory company and living at 166 Waterloo Road. According to the 1939 register, he was also ambulance driver number 207 in preparation for the outbreak of war. More received a commission as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and saw active service aboard the cruiser and the aircraft carrier , ending the war as a lieutenant.
Resumption of acting career On demobilisation in 1946 More resumed work at the Wolverhampton repertory company, then appeared on stage in the West End in And No Birds Sing (1946).
More appeared in Paul Vercors' play The Silence of the Sea broadcast on the day British TV recommenced after the war – 7 June 1946 – and this was followed by a number of television roles including Badger in an adaptation of Toad of Toad Hall (1946), and a small role in the film School for Secrets (1946). He was seen by Noël Coward playing a small role on stage in Power Without Glory (1947), which led to his casting in Coward's Peace In Our Time (1948) on stage."Popular new star" The Australian Women's Weekly (via National Library of Australia), 1 June 1955, p. 44. Retrieved: 6 May 2012.
More's earliest small roles in films date from before the war, but around this time, he began to appear regularly on the big screen. For a small role in Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as Edward Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans, he was paid £500. He thought this film would launch him more than it did and held off from accepting other roles, which resulted in his "nearly starving". He took minor parts in Man on the Run (1949), Now Barabbas (1949), and Stop Press Girl (1949).
Stardom Rising reputation More achieved a notable stage success in The Way Things Go (1950) with Ronald Squire, from whom More later said he learned his stage technique.Shipman 1972, p. 371.
He was in demand for minor roles on screen such as Morning Departure (1950) and Chance of a Lifetime (1950). More had a good part as a British agent in The Clouded Yellow (1950) for Ralph Thomas.
He could also be seen in The Franchise Affair (1951) and The Galloping Major (1951). More's first Hollywood-financed film was No Highway in the Sky (1951) where he played a co-pilot. Thomas cast him in another strong support part in Appointment with Venus (1952).
More's name was placed above the title billing for the first time with a low budget comedy, Brandy for the Parson (1952), playing a smuggler.
The Deep Blue Sea Roland Culver recommended More audition for a part in a new play by Terence Rattigan, The Deep Blue Sea (1952); he was successful and achieved tremendous critical acclaim in the role of Freddie. More later wrote "Critics hailed me almost as an overnight discovery, conveniently forgetting I was already thirty-eight, and that I had been working in the theatre for nearly twenty years."More p 156
During the play's run he appeared as a worried parent in a thriller, The Yellow Balloon (1953). He was in another Hollywood-financed film, Never Let Me Go (1953), playing a colleague of Clark Gable.
Film stardom: Genevieve and Doctor in the House Director Henry Cornelius approached More during the run of The Deep Blue Sea and offered him £3,500 to play one of the four leads in a comedy, Genevieve (1953) (a part turned down by Guy Middleton). More said Cornelius never saw him in the play but cast him on the basis of his work in The Galloping Major.More 1978, p. 157.Thompson, Harold. "From the 'Windmill' to the 'Sea'." The New York Times, 29 May 1955, p. 53. More recalls "the shooting of the picture was hell. Everything went wrong, even the weather." The resulting film was a huge success at the British box office.
More next made Our Girl Friday (1953) and Doctor in the House (1954), the latter for Ralph Thomas. Both films were made before the release of Genevieve so More's fee was relatively small; Our Girl Friday was a commercial disappointment but Doctor in the House was the biggest hit at the 1954 British box office and the most successful film in the history of Rank. More received a BAFTA Award as best newcomer.
More appeared in a TV production of The Deep Blue Sea in 1954, which was seen by an audience of 11 million. More signed a five-year contract with Sir Alexander Korda at £10,000 a year. '
He was now established as one of Britain's biggest stars and Korda announced plans to feature him in two films based on true stories, one, The Alcock and Brown Story about the Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown in 1919 also featuring Denholm Elliott, and the other Clifton James, the double for Field Marshal Montgomery."Herald features." The Sydney Morning Herald (via National Library of Australia), 9 September 1954, p. 11. Retrieved: 6 May 2012. The first film was never made and the second (I Was Monty's Double) with another actor. Korda also wanted More to star in a new version of The Four Feathers, Storm Over the Nile (1956) but he turned it down.
However, More did accept Korda's offer to appear in a film adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea (1955) gaining the Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance. The film was something of a critical and commercial disappointment (More felt Vivien Leigh was miscast in the lead) but still widely seen. He also did the narration for Korda's The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955).
When The Alcock and Brown Story was cancelled, More was reassigned to another film for Korda, the domestic comedy Raising a Riot (1955), directed by Wendy Toye. This was the eighth most popular movie at the British box office in 1955, and much of the film's success was attributed to More's appeal.
Reach for the Sky More received an offer from David Lean to play the lead role in an adaptation of The Wind Cannot Read by Richard Mason. More was unsure about whether the public would accept him in such a straightforwardly romantic part and refused it, a decision he later regarded as "the greatest mistake I ever made professionally".More 1978, p. 228. Lean dropped the project and was not involved in the eventual 1958 film version, which starred Dirk Bogarde and was directed by Ralph Thomas.
Instead, More played the Royal Air Force fighter ace, Douglas Bader, in Reach for the Sky (1956), a part refused by Richard Burton. It was the most popular British film of the year. By 1956, More's asking price was £25,000 a film."Star Dust." The Mirror (Perth, WA) (via National Library of Australia), 11 February 1956, p. 11. Retrieved: 6 May 2012. In October 1956, John Davis, managing director of Rank, announced him as one of the actors under contract to Rank that Davis thought would become an international star.
More received offers to go to Hollywood, but refused them, unsure his persona would be effective there. However, he started working with U.S. co-stars and directors more often. In February 1957, he signed a contract with Daniel M. Angel and was to make ten films over five years, seven which would be distributed by Rank and three by 20th Century Fox. In June of that year, he said: Hollywood has been hitting two extremes – either a Biblical de Mille spectacular or a Baby Doll. Britain does two other kinds of movie as well as anyone – a certain type of high comedy and a kind of semi-documentary. I believe we (the British film industry) should hit these hard. His next film, The Admirable Crichton (1957), was a high comedy, based on the play by J. M. Barrie. It was released by Columbia Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert who also had made Reach for the Sky and who later said: I was very fond of Kenny as an actor, although he wasn't particularly versatile. What he could do, he did very well. His strengths were his ability to portray charm; basically he was the officer returning from the war and he was superb in that kind of role. The minute that kind of role went out of existence, he began to go down as a box office star.MacFarlane 1997, p. 222. Regarding his performance in this film, critic David Shipman wrote: It was not just that he had superb comic timing: one could see absolutely why the family trusted their fates to him. No other British actor had come so close to that dependable, reliable quality of the great Hollywood stars – you would trust him through thick and thin. And he was more humorous than, say, Cary Grant, more down-to-earth than, say, Gary Cooper.Shipman 1989, pp. 414–415. The Admirable Crichton was the third most popular movie at the British box office in 1957. Josh Billings of Kinematograph Weekly wrote that More was the only star in Britain who could draw audiences solely on the power of his name.